JIM HANDS 
 
 RICHARD WASHBLRN CHILD 
 
 
 I 
 
 THE MACM1LLAN COMPANY
 
 7 
 

 
 JIM HANDS
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK BOSTON CHICAGO 
 ATLANTA SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED 
 
 LONDON BOMBAY CALCUTTA 
 MELBOURNE 
 
 THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. 
 
 TORONTO
 
 RATHER INK
 
 JIM HANDS 
 
 BY 
 RICHARD WASHBURN CHILD 
 
 FRONTISPIECE BY J. A. WILLIAMS 
 
 Neto ||0rk 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 1911 
 
 All rights reserved
 
 COPTKIGHT, 1910, 
 
 BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 
 
 Set up and electrotyped. Published November, 1910. Reprinted 
 January, 1911. 
 
 Norton oB 
 
 J. 8. Gushing Co. Berwick & Smith Co. 
 Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
 
 JIM HANDS
 
 JIM HANDS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 OUTSIDE the cottage, somewhere behind the purple 
 veil of evening, sounded the voice of some woman, 
 softly singing as if to one unborn. A joyful girl had 
 opened sensitive lips to a snatch of a crooning Irish 
 lullaby. 
 
 Jim Hands, engaged in the important task of packing 
 his pipe, stopped to raise his gray head. The light from 
 the western sky, still lingering in the room like some 
 thing the day, with its stir and toil, had left behind, 
 disclosed the strange, faint smile upon his face. 
 
 He turned his rocking-chair toward the window. 
 "You heard her," he said. "There are sounds that 
 take a feller back - He stopped. The clock on the 
 wall, taking advantage of the moment of silence, as 
 serted its sense of duty by a solemn ticking. The fore 
 man of the upper leather room spoke again. "It s 
 a mystery - Again he stopped, and bracing against 
 the chair-arms with his calloused hands, he rose. He 
 went to the window. He looked down at the town. 
 
 "Come here," he said. "Look at the lights in them 
 windows. Them lights mean people. Do you know 
 
 B 1
 
 2 JIM HANDS 
 
 that? Look at that town. A town ain t just a town. 
 It s got a soul. The girl s voice you heard- But 
 ain t people interesting? Look at that town!" 
 
 There it was, winking its eyes in the dusk. To it a 
 railroad winds up the valley through woods that are 
 brightest green in spring and brilliant with color in the 
 fall. Those who go back and forth on the trains must 
 notice that it is only the pines that are eternally black 
 against the cold, moonlit sky of winter and against the 
 fire of the summer sunsets. Across a snow-covered 
 bridge comes the railroad, and curves through the fac 
 tory village like a live and sinuous creature bound for the 
 hazy blue mountains at the end of the valley. But the 
 river has been up there. It is coming back now. It 
 loafs in the meadows. It rushes through the muddy 
 town. It cuts Main Street in two where the bridge 
 stands; it sings a hearty tune at night over the flash- 
 boards of the dams; its ice booms with the bitter cold 
 of the winter; clouds of gnats hover over its industry- 
 stained waters in August ; on one side, in the bending 
 alders, the catbird squawks; on the other bank the 
 belting in the red shoe factory complains. 
 
 The factory squats on the bank like a creature too. 
 Its windows are eyes. They keep watch over the town. 
 They see the flag raised on the old New England lib 
 erty pole at the end of the green common; they see 
 farms on the half-distant hillsides red and white 
 with rock-filled pastures and winding white roads edged
 
 JIM HANDS 3 
 
 with the yellow of goldenrod. They see wisps of wood 
 smoke from the chimneys at supper-time. 
 
 The factory windows see the lighted face of the clock 
 on the " Opera House." They see the few old man 
 sions between the elms at one end of the village; they 
 see a hundred modern wooden cottages and boarding- 
 houses where live the workmen in the factories. They 
 see the farm wagons go by with the old type on the seats. 
 They see the barber-shop across the river next to the 
 Phenix Hotel with the new type in its chairs. 
 
 The factory sees that some sort of a new civilization 
 is replacing some sort of an old civilization. It sees, 
 in the break of buildings between the First National 
 Bank and Masonic Hall on Main Street, the move- 
 --ment of pay-day night, when the store windows are 
 bright and the screen-doors slam behind well-dressed 
 wives of well-clothed factory workmen. It sees the 
 modern hats of girls, gayly trimmed, mingling with the 
 sombre bonnets of women who are in from the country. 
 
 Before its doors, in the right weather, when the heat 
 waves rise from the gravel road, wagons pass laden 
 with hay, leaving behind them the smell of fields 
 to mingle with the odors of machine grease and sole 
 leather and thread wax. And at the factory door one 
 can listen to the turbine rolling and nevertheless hear 
 also the splash of a pickerel in the river. 
 
 Like the factory windows, the windows of Jim Hands 
 cottage see all below and all up the valley, where, on
 
 4 JIM HANDS 
 
 moonlight evenings in autumn the river mists, so it 
 seems, sway out of their hollows toward the mountains. 
 Jim surveyed it all with his hands upon the ledge. The 
 fading light showed the homely front room of his house ; 
 especially it exhibited the family photographs perching 
 upon the mantel over the stove, the stove which had 
 fought many a gallant battle with the crisp cold that 
 comes down over the Canadian border. The last rays 
 fell across the foreman s own face. 
 
 When one works on a cutting-bench and turns a 
 knife about the sharpest corner on the pattern, it is 
 necessary to screw up the features, no matter how 
 imperceptibly, as if to warn the hand against a slip. 
 After years and years that screwing up of the corners 
 of the mouth and eyes makes its irreparable mark, 
 as millions of feet will wear out the marble steps of 
 the court-house. Jim has the significant wrinkles. 
 He, like his front room, is homely. And yet there is 
 in his face that which awakens in other men a warm 
 and pleasant feeling. It could only belong to an 
 American, in spite of all its traces of foreign blood. 
 There are qualities in it which call to mind those sombre 
 portraits of old citizens, sea-captains, perhaps, or farm 
 ers, or presidents of ancient institutions, which are 
 found in musty albums or mildewed in rickety picture- 
 frames. They looked like men who had wrestled 
 with something and won a victory of some kind. 
 Somehow it seemed as if their lives and their accom-
 
 JIM HANDS 5 
 
 plishments and the lines in their faces had grown out 
 of one soil. The clothes they wore did not conceal the 
 significance of the national traits common to all these 
 faces. Nor do the soft shirt and drooping coat and 
 nose-reddening spectacles of Jim Hands conceal his 
 right to belong to the brotherhood of that virtuous 
 endeavor which has in it something typical of America. 
 His features are, indeed, homely. They are patient, 
 kind, and strong. 
 
 Had some old ballad-maker strolled out of the past 
 as Jim stood there with his hands on the window-ledge 
 and his face reflecting the sunset, he might have said, 
 Let me sing of the army of the nameless, the drudg 
 ing clerks, the obscure family doctors, the fameless 
 * judges of probate, the toilers in the factories, and men 
 like these in many callings, who labor cheerfully 
 in shadows, in their homes are patient, and outside are 
 just, and maintain, though it be not true, that every 
 woman is good." 
 
 The rattle of a dish in the kitchen behind the closed 
 door ended Jim s reflective mood. He lit his pipe. 
 He went back to the rocking-chair. "Annie," said he, 
 speaking of his wife, "will soon have the dishes done. 
 Little John has been helping her wipe em since he 
 come back from his school, and the only reason I know 
 it is that I ve been missing so much of the crockery." 
 He grunted between each puff of his pipe. "It s 
 dark here now do you want a lamp lit ? Some
 
 6 JIM HANDS 
 
 people must always sit in a glare of light. They re 
 the same kind that like red wall-paper. Trying to have 
 things cheerful. As if cheerfulness could be hung 
 at so much a roll or drawn through the gas-pipe into 
 a city flat. Of course, if you want a light, it s no 
 bother, just say so. I - 
 
 Again the girl s voice, humming a snatch of tune, 
 silenced him. There were steps on the gravel, and 
 between the two trees that stood one on either side 
 of the path from the gate to the door a flick of moving 
 white showed in the haze of the night, as if some half- 
 real creature of the forest had come out to dance over 
 the fields down the lights of the factory town. 
 
 Jim s rocking-chair creaked as if the muscles of his 
 body were reflecting some emotion. He did not move 
 as the front door was softly opened and shut, nor as 
 a light step moved toward the second door which 
 separated the living-room from the hall that hall 
 where the children s hats hung and rubber shoes stood 
 in a row upon the floor. The door was pushed open 
 quietly, but the darkness prevented any one within 
 from seeing who stood framed there. 
 
 Then, suddenly, Jim struck a match. The circle 
 of light expanded; it seemed to reach out across the 
 rose-patterned carpet ; it touched the hem of a woman s 
 gown; it leaped upward to the woman s face. Eyes 
 as clear as mountain pools, and the color of reflected 
 autumn foliage, momentarily half dazed by the sudden
 
 JIM HANDS 7 
 
 light, looked from the doorway, as if trying to determine 
 whether Jim Hands sat alone. 
 
 She had the rich, half-red, half-brown mass of hair 
 which so often is seen as a peculiar beauty conferred 
 upon women with cold, white, transparent skins and 
 small stature. In this girl, however, the luxury of 
 color and mass crowned a figure which was tall, erect, 
 pliant, and poised as only healthy bodies can be, with 
 the suggestion of easy muscular action unhampered 
 by too much weight. And the flesh of her hands, her 
 face, and neck was of that warm color that suggests, 
 like a field of ripening grain, the open air and sunlight. 
 Upon her face a look of doubt and a smile of greeting, 
 both in being at one moment, indicated the adaptability 
 of her features to express her emotions; her beauty 
 was the beauty of a woman who has had enough of 
 living to enrich these emotions, not too much to dull 
 them or to take the light and vivacity from a girlish 
 face. 
 
 That a woman s attractions compel observation 
 before any peculiarity of her dress is an unusual trib 
 ute to her personality; this girl, one could see, not 
 at the first, but only at the second, glance, was not 
 dressed as a member of a workman s family. There 
 was no elaboration of her gown ; it was simple drapery 
 of a light and flowing material that spoke in some un 
 known way of its own elegance. It was of that buff 
 color sometimes seen in orchids; with it she wore a
 
 8 JIM HANDS 
 
 single ornament a malachite pin that held together 
 the folds of the gown at the point where her neck was 
 bare. The green of this pin revealed by the flare of 
 the burning match made a well-balanced harmony 
 between the color of the material and the warm and 
 delicate flesh tints. For the moment, neither her 
 fresh beauty, her bearing, nor her clothes seemed a part 
 of Jim Hands household. The picture was as sur 
 prising as would be the sudden appearance of a mer 
 maid in a public fountain. 
 
 She gave a little exclamation of surprise. The match 
 went out. She had only stood there a moment. Like 
 an image of the fancy she had gone. Only the sound 
 of a soft, retreating step in the hall remained, and in 
 the room, dark once more, Jim s pipe-bowl, topped 
 by a disk of glowing red, was the only discernible object. 
 He was drawing upon it with measured, deliberate 
 inhalations. 
 
 "That was her/ he said. "She s a beauty. But 
 she don t know it now. You think so, don t you? 
 At twelve she was all elbows and knees, and tripping 
 over anything that weren t sandpapered down to a 
 dead level, and loose-moving like this month s colt or 
 a hound puppy, and had a voice that would kinder 
 make a tin pan ashamed to look you in the face. 
 She s changed. I oughter know; I ve seen her for 
 twenty-four years, and her youngster is two years old 
 now fat and healthy as an exhibit at a county fair.
 
 JIM HANDS 9 
 
 " Ain t it funny where people come from and where 
 they get to and where they re going? Ain t it funny 
 how people even women can aim at something 
 and get there by and by Ain t it strange about her? 
 Why, that s my girl that s Katherine my daugh 
 ter. I ll tell you about her. I ll tell you"
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 CHILDREN is a terrible investment. Of course they re 
 much riskier for rich folks than for people like my 
 Annie and me. Rich families don t have the time to 
 give to raising em, being altogether too busy trying 
 to fill in moments of idleness. And while I m speaking 
 of Katherine I might as well say that children is like 
 caterpillars. My little Mike s school-teacher gave him 
 a lot of em and told him to raise em to butterflies. 
 That is the training the youngsters get in these days 
 to prepare em for a world filled with newspapers ad 
 vertising gold-mines. Anyhow, some of these cater 
 pillars were soft and furry and pretty as anything you 
 ever saw, and others of em were that ugly that just 
 looking at em would make you feel like a morning at 
 the dentist s. But you couldn t tell how they was 
 going to come out. The homeliest of em hatched 
 into little flying-machines, so pretty that they would 
 embarrass a lot of Christmas-tree ornaments. 
 
 That was the way with my youngsters. Little John 
 was a baby then, so ugly that the neighbors hated to 
 look at him and hear my Annie tell how pretty he was, 
 and Michael was always in a dream, and kinder stupid 
 acting, though I ve learned since he was thinking out 
 
 10
 
 JIM HANDS 11 
 
 for himself what most boys have to learn by conversa 
 tion. And there was Katherine just as I said 
 awkward and falling over chairs, and thin and flat- 
 chested, and when she d stand up she d stoop in two 
 places so she looked like the letter S. 
 
 I loved em. And I said nothing to my Annie, but 
 I remember I sometimes would watch em going down 
 Maple Street to school and say, "Jim, your posterity 
 will leave some queer impressions about the old man." 
 
 My Annie herself began to worry about Katherine. 
 Have you noticed that there are two mother instincts? 
 The second one comes when a daughter begins to stop 
 being a little girl and the time for her mating has come. 
 I ve seen mothers act like tigers then. They put on 
 war-paint and other aristocracy, and make dresses for 
 the girl till their ringers is all stained with the brass 
 thimble, and look at every young man as if he was a 
 burglar, and every day they fight to see that if any match 
 is made it will be a good one, and every night they lie on 
 the pillow, looking up at the moonlight on the ceiling, 
 and plan so hard they have to turn down another blanket. 
 And Annie began to see that something would have 
 to be done about the girl. 
 
 "Jim," she says to me, "I think Katherine oughter 
 have some accomplishments," she says. "She ll soon 
 be a woman before we realize it," she says. "She s 
 seventeen now." 
 
 "And plays on the pianner," says I.
 
 12 JIM HANDS 
 
 "Yes, dear, she does," says she; "but she has to stop 
 and go back so much that it sounds the way writing 
 looks on tissue paper when you go back and try to rub 
 out every other word." 
 
 "Well," says I, "what accomplishments do you want 
 her to have?" I says. "Name em," I says. 
 
 "Tis very hard to name accomplishments," says 
 my Annie, smoothing down her dress. "They re the 
 things a girl can do in company who don t chew gum," 
 she says. "Maybe it s manners I have in mind," 
 she says. "I believe the girl will have to go to a con 
 vent," she says, "for a year or so," she says. 
 
 It was them words that started the whole story. It 
 was them words that took the girl away from us, and 
 it was them words that taught me the great lesson that 
 too much peace and prosperity is a terrible affliction 
 upon defenceless human beings. 
 
 You take it from me, prosperity is an awful fix. The 
 happiest part of a man s life is when he ain t. If any 
 body comes along and offers to give you a hundred 
 thousand dollars, tell him to go bet it on the races. 
 Don t get along so fast that you can t enjoy it. 
 
 It s a fact. The best fun in life is being young, 
 healthy, married, and poor ! You know my Annie 
 the best ever. Sense and grit in car-load lots, freight 
 paid that s her ! Twenty-one years I d been married 
 to her. It had been a circus, ups and downs and all 
 arounds. Once, when I was working on the laster s
 
 JIM HANDS 13 
 
 bench, we had to use overcoats for blankets, and it 
 was a choice sometimes whether we d have hot water 
 or cold for lunch. We grinned, though, she and 
 me, we grinned together. She was always singing 
 and healthy and bothering with the kids clothes or 
 hair or "Thank you, ma am," and right to-day she s 
 as straight and thin and pink as the day I married her. 
 I believe health is just having no time to be sick. And 
 maybe it helps out a little to have the kitchen boiler 
 burst once in a while in winter, and a rat die in the walls 
 sometime during the summer, for health ! 
 
 But, as I was saying, this time I speak of began four 
 years ago come this October. " We ve got to send the 
 girl to the convent," says Annie to me. " She s been 
 learned all they can learn her at the high school, which 
 ain t much, or the teacher in the third grade wouldn t 
 wear them hair puffs." 
 
 "Who ll play the pianner so poor when she s gone," 
 says I, ugly at the thought of it. "And we just bought 
 it made of rosewood, too, that is twice the sweeter 
 toned than them black ones." 
 
 "You might as well say a red automobile goes faster 
 than a green one," says she. 
 
 "Well, I don t pertend to know nothing of musical 
 instruments," says I, "but I do pertend to know that 
 the girl sets on the arm of my chair when I read evenings, 
 and it s worth eight dollars a sit." 
 
 "She oughter go," says Annie; confidential, I ll
 
 14 JIM HANDS 
 
 tell you that she s the boss of the house, though you 
 must say nothing about it; "We have the money 
 to send her," she says, "and Jim, dear, our boy Mike 
 will be away this winter, too, and little John, as you 
 know, is with his aunt Maria." 
 
 "And you might as well have no children! " says I, 
 "with every one of em away forgetting whether I 
 wear a mustache or a beard." 
 
 She looks at me with the devil in her eyes, and she 
 says, says she, " Tis very sudden you get so tender 
 and sentimental," she says. "Only yesterday you was 
 laying plans to put little John over your knee for smok 
 ing coffee in your favorite pipe, and you was going to 
 disown Michael altogether for buying a pair of red and 
 black striped socks, and you told your darling daughter 
 that the next time she leaned over the fence to talk 
 with that silly Bolton boy, you d go and take a room 
 at the hotel, where you didn t have to listen to such 
 foolishness." 
 
 "Oh," says I, " tis all right. I suppose you ll have 
 it all arranged now. Who am I to oppose you ? " 
 
 "Jim, dear," she says, coming and sitting beside 
 me on the door-step. "You ll not misunderstand, 
 dear, will you? But I just want to tell you that for 
 nearly eighteen years ever since the daughter came 
 - there hasn t been a minute that I haven t been a 
 wife and mother. It makes me laugh when I think 
 of the number of cakes of soap, safety pins, and hand-
 
 JIM HANDS 15 
 
 fuls of baking-soda have gone through these two hands 
 of mine. And I suppose that the idea of the house 
 being free and clear of it all for the winter seems good 
 to me because I m tired, maybe, and now we re in good 
 circumstances, Jim, I just thought I d like to have - 
 
 And there she stopped, so I says to her, "What is it, 
 Annie?" 
 
 "Well," she says, plucking at her apron, "I don t 
 know what you ll think of me, but I ll just be glad for 
 the children to be away now that it s for their good to 
 go. I d be glad to have nothing to do. I d be glad 
 to have a little idleness, dear." 
 
 "God save you," says I, with half a lot of trouble not 
 to have my eyes wet. "You ve earned it sixty ways. 
 You want nothing to do, and I ll give it to you. We ll 
 have a peaceful winter ! " says I, and with that she 
 presses my hand as if she was still a young thing sitting 
 out with me on a park bench. 
 
 And she says over after me, "A peaceful winter," 
 and it s terrible to think of them words ! 
 
 I m not speaking of the wrench it gave us to get rid 
 of the children. That was bad enough. I remember 
 the day came for Katherine to go. All the arrange 
 ments had been made, and Annie was saying that this 
 dress was in the tray of the trunk, and the heaviest 
 underclothing had all been marked with her name. 
 I guess there weren t any of us Annie, the girl, or me 
 that knew what it was going to be to say good-by.
 
 16 JIM HANDS 
 
 It is only at them times that you get them wonderful 
 forewarnings of railroad accidents and disease and 
 awful dangers that don t happen and that women call 
 their intuition, if I have the word correct. 
 
 We got down to the station all right. It was about 
 four o clock, and the finest day you ever saw. A good 
 many people knew the girl was going away, and there 
 was a lot of talk about it, and I was proud that I could 
 send her. I was feeling fine and in good spirits. And 
 then the engine whistled and the old station-master, 
 Harry Batchelder, dragged the baggage truck out on to 
 the edge of the platform, and I seen my girl s new trunk 
 on it, and it almost turned me sick. 
 
 "Annie," I whispers, grabbing my wife s arm, 
 "Katherine is going away!" I says. 
 
 "Of course she is," says Annie, laughing at me. 
 "What did you buy a ticket for?" says she. "Did 
 you think you d get one with a lucky number? " says 
 she. "What s the matter with your hand? Have 
 you got a chill?" she says. "Don t show your silly 
 feelings to all these folks," she says. "Watch me, and 
 learn how to control yourself," she says. 
 
 By that time the train had come in. It was all over 
 in a minute. Katherine had climbed up on the back 
 platform. The train was going out. It all went like 
 a moving picture running too fast. And then Annie 
 caught at my coat and began to cry. Somehow it 
 didn t seem wrong.
 
 JIM HANDS 17 
 
 But I was watching that girl on the platform wav 
 ing to us. She didn t look the same. All at once she 
 seemed to be ready to come out of herself into some 
 thing new. I seen for the first time that she weren t 
 awkward. I seen she was almost pretty. I seen how 
 thick her hair had grown. I seen her figure had filled 
 out. I seen she was almost a woman. And I was 
 scared, for I couldn t just see what she would become 
 any more than I could tell about little Mike s cater 
 pillars. And I was scared. I never guessed what 
 them months would do.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 WE had some experience right at home. I ain t 
 saying that things didn t go right at first, you under 
 stand. Of course, it was surprising how large the house 
 got. I didn t know I d bought anything but a cheap 
 cottage, but when the children was gone, every room 
 seemed as big as an opera hall, and there weren t any 
 rubbers on the floor under the stairs, nor new digs in 
 the wall-paper at the landing, and the books on the 
 parlor table was piled so neat, I got mad and turned 
 em upside down so s the biggest ones would sit on 
 the top, and when the mice would come out for crumbs 
 after dinner when I was reading my paper, I could 
 hear em very plain. It sounded as if they wore 
 wooden shoes. 
 
 Annie would sit on the other side of the table eve 
 nings and sew, and we talked to each other for a month, 
 and then began all over again, saying just what we d 
 said before, and after a month had gone by we d told 
 each other everything we knew, and some extras. The 
 wind would holler outside, and maybe Annie would 
 say it smelled like snow that night, and then a fly that 
 had been warmed by the round stove would buzz into 
 the corners where it was dark, and I could hear the 
 
 18
 
 JIM HANDS 19 
 
 water drip from the faucet in the kitchen sink, and I 
 kinder missed Annie s step upstairs when she would 
 walk around over my head, putting little John to bed. 
 
 "This quiet is a great blessing to us both, Jim, ain t 
 it ? " says she, studying to see how I d answer. 
 
 "It s more monotonous than a lot of noise," says I 
 to myself; and to her I says, "What do you think 
 about when I m at the factory? " says I. 
 
 "Why, I don t know, Jim, " says she. "There used 
 to be so much to plan when we was scraping along. 
 I d plan then of how we d be able to buy a pianner 
 for the daughter, and what we d plant around the 
 maple tree if we owned the house, and whether I d 
 get gray blankets that don t look so swell and put 
 white spreads over em, or white blankets that cost 
 more and don t need no spread for the likes of us. 
 But I don t have to plan like that any more. It s a 
 perfect rest," says she. "I don t have to think of 
 nothing. And if it weren t for a pain I have here," 
 she says, putting her hand under her arm, "that worries 
 me," she says, "I d be contented, I suppose." 
 
 "A pain!" says I. "Worries you!" 
 
 "Yes," she says. "I ve had a mind to go see Dr. 
 Ward. I ve not been to a doctor these eight years. 
 Many s the time I feel bad and say nothing to you, Jim. 
 And yesterday I was looking in the mirror, and I be 
 lieve I ve got something growing in my throat." 
 
 I drops my newspaper on the floor and was scared,
 
 20 JIM HANDS 
 
 till I remembered how healthy she d always been. 
 But there weren t two weeks gone when something 
 worse began to happen. I remember how I come 
 home one day from work and I seen her sitting in the 
 parlor winder; but she didn t come to meet me at the 
 door, and when I walks in she was still sitting looking 
 out over the hills. 
 
 " You ve got bad news/ I says, with my lungs laying 
 down in my stomach for freight. 
 
 "Oh, no," says she. "I m just tired out. If it 
 weren t wicked, I d wish I was dead. Every day is 
 just like another. It seems as if I was no good any 
 more no good to any one," she says. "There s 
 the fourth letter from our girl. It depressed me to 
 read it," she says. 
 
 I thought maybe something was wrong with Katherine, 
 so I picked the envelope off the mantelpiece and hardly 
 dared to start it. 
 
 "It s good, firm, stylish handwriting," I says. 
 "I think I see an improvement in them o s and capital 
 W s," I says. "What s this ? Getting along fine? 
 Rising early in the morning for prayers. Sister Maria 
 says she has a bending toward the French language. 
 All the other girls think her dresses is pretty. Fine 
 view from her window over the St. Lawrence River. 
 Complexion much better. Why," says I, "what have 
 you to complain of ? There ain t any member of my 
 family could write as graceful as that and cut them
 
 JIM HANDS 21 
 
 literary figure eights," I says, "or report better news," 
 I says. 
 
 "0 dear!" says she, shaking her head very sad. 
 "She has outgrown her mother," she says. "I m no 
 more use to her." 
 
 "You re crazy," says I. "Annie, girl, there ain t 
 anything the matter?" 
 
 With that I seen her look up at me with a flash in 
 her eyes I ain t seen since I quit drinking. "Oh, 
 that s like you," she says, throwing up her hands. 
 "I never thought it would come to this. You ve as 
 good as called me a liar." 
 
 "No, I ain t, Annie," I says. "I was only going to 
 say-" 
 
 "I know what you was going to say," she comes 
 back at me before I could finish. "You was going 
 to say that I showed signs of growing old." 
 
 "What the hell!" says I. 
 
 With that she jumped up. "Jim Hands," says she, 
 hot and shrill, "you ve sworn at me ! You ve cursed 
 your wife ! " 
 
 "Annie," says I, "I m sorry. I never - 
 
 "Don t expect me to forgive it," says she. "You 
 have no shame," says she, "to stand up there and admit 
 it. But it s like you. I thought it would come out some 
 day. It s your brutal nature," she says. 
 
 "Look here," says I, for by that time an angel 
 in heaven d be looking for a brickbat, "what do
 
 22 JIM HANDS 
 
 you think you are? You behave yourself, or I ll give 
 you something that ll surprise you." 
 
 "Not me ! " she says, says she. It was at the door 
 she was standing, and she says, "You weren t ever 
 fitted to have a wife. Don t expect me to care what you 
 do," says she, and went up the stairs; and I heard 
 the key turn in the bedroom lock. 
 
 I was hot. I sticks on my hat again and out I went. 
 You know how a feller feels. Starts off to walk a 
 thousand miles and never come back ! It had just come 
 on to rain, one of them cold December rains, - 
 and I hadn t gone half a mile before I began to feel bad 
 about it. We d never in eighteen years passed hot 
 words before. I knew well enough it weren t my 
 fault, but yet I suspected it was. I might have done 
 this or said that, see? I was a big fool to turn back. 
 Once started, I oughter have done something to scare 
 her. But you know how it is, being a man. It s for 
 them weaknesses women gets the best of us and 
 it s better so, maybe. 
 
 As I say, I went back with feet so soaked that every 
 time I lifted em they sounded like bottles of cough 
 syrup, and there was the front door standing open and 
 my Annie in it, caring nothing for the wet or wind; 
 and when she seen me she give a little scream and says, 
 "Oh, Jim, Jim, I thought you might be dead. Come 
 right into the kitchen till I get you a dry pair of socks. 
 Oh, Jim, I ve been such a fool."
 
 JIM HANDS 23 
 
 It was true, of course, more ways than one. For 
 standing in the doorway that night she d caught a cold 
 that kept her hacking and tossing at night for the next 
 three weeks, and after a month was gone she did look 
 kinder bad. I was scared. I never knew what struck 
 her. I couldn t tell what was the matter. 
 
 She had forty different pains. Never sang no more, 
 and was cross. And somebody lent her a book called 
 " Every Man his Own Doctor," with a list of symptoms 
 in the book. And that made things seventy times 
 worse, and maybe eighty. 
 
 "Jim, dear," she says, "I feel all tired out, and I can 
 scarce move. This growth in my throat, too. Will 
 you look in and see what you can see? Whenever it 
 comes on to snow, like it did to-day, it s worse, I think. 
 It may be a cancer read there in the book just above 
 where your thumb is now. I ll hold the lamp, dear, 
 and you look down my throat," she says. 
 
 I couldn t see nothing, and the next day when I 
 went off in the morning she was about as happy as a 
 pan of wet coal ashes. " Another weary day," says 
 she, "and I feel so bad, Jim ! I stayed awake all night, 
 thinking. I wondered if I was ever able to do my duty 
 again. I wondered if you loved me ! " 
 
 "G wan," says I, "what talk is this from a woman 
 who has a good husband who don t drink, and three fine 
 children, all healthy, and a house of her own, and the 
 respect of everybody in town even the boss s wife ! "
 
 24 JIM HANDS 
 
 "I know, dear/ she says, "but I ve been wondering 
 what I would do if Applegate s store didn t have them 
 preserves I used to buy there last winter. It just made 
 me cry, and my memory s gone, and two nights running 
 I dreamed I was going to die. And, Jim, dear, I have 
 a feeling that it will come true ! " 
 
 Then I was scared. I knew for three months there d 
 been trouble. That was sure. It stuck out and smoked 
 like the fuse on a big cannon cracker. Thunder was 
 going to pop ! But I didn t know what the trouble 
 was, so I went off hot-foot for Dr. Ward. 
 
 You know him Charlie Ward. His father s a 
 farmer up in Goldenville, just above here. You wouldn t 
 believe it to see Charlie. He don t even look as if 
 he came from a muddy, manufacturing, water-power 
 town like this. And he s a fine doctor, they tell me; 
 only he says that horse-chestnuts carried in the pocket 
 won t keep out rheumatism, and so he s lost customers 
 on that account. 
 
 He said to me he thought it wiser to see Annie at 
 home than in his office on Main Street ; and, of course, 
 it was lots wiser for him a dollar and a half wiser 
 each time. So he came in that night, scenting up the 
 room with that doctor smell, and rubbing his chin as 
 if the seat of thought was in his jaws, and stepping 
 soft and speaking quiet as if he was an advance agent 
 for a cremation company. 
 
 "How long have you had this little cough?"
 
 JIM HANDS 25 
 
 " Three weeks," says Annie. 
 
 "H m ! H m ! " says he, like that as if he d have 
 us know he was thinking, but none of our business what 
 he thought. 
 
 " Don t forget," says I, "to tell him of your ache 
 under your arm, and how your hair comes out, and 
 the shooting pain across the back of your neck, and 
 the dizzy spells, and how your heart slips under the 
 belting, and you can t sleep, and you re all tired out," 
 I says. 
 
 "H m! H m!" says he, and he takes a picture of 
 Father Ryan off the mantelpiece and looks at the front 
 of it and at the back of it, and he says, "Have you had 
 any fever afternoons ? " 
 
 "I believe I have," says she, "now that you speak 
 of- it." 
 
 "H m! H m! " says he. "You d best come to the 
 office to-morrow, and we ll make an examination," 
 he says, squinting one eye. "We oughter know just 
 what s the matter, hadn t we ? " he says for all them 
 doctors talk to you like plumbers, as if you didn t know 
 but little about the mysteries of leaks and clogged pipes, 
 and oughter be horsewhipped for knowing that. 
 
 Well, sir, if you ever see a hen sitting on the safety 
 valve of a eighty-ton boiler when she blew off pressure, 
 you ve seen how I felt after I talked to the doctor that 
 next Thursday. 
 
 The big fool put his hand on my shoulder! That
 
 26 JIM HANDS 
 
 was enough. I knew he was going to pass me a package, 
 all right. He meant well. He d seen it done in a play, 
 I guess. But it scared me before he d said a word. 
 
 "And," he says, "Jim," he says, "I m afraid your 
 wife is in bad condition," he says. "She must have 
 a complete rest," he says. "She mustn t do any house 
 work of any kind," he says, "not so much as wipe a 
 dish." 
 
 "What s the matter with her?" I says. 
 
 "It s a combination of things," says he. 
 
 "What s its name?" I says. 
 
 He never answers. But he says, "There is some 
 suspicious symptoms that points toward a tendency 
 to tuberculosis," he says, "and a sign of impoverished 
 circulation," he says, "with attendant melancholia," 
 he says. "Complete rest and care may prevent any 
 thing serious," he says, for I remember them words 
 by the fright they give me. 
 
 "And," he says, "I ve told your wife about what 
 to do," he says, "and she is going to send for her mother, 
 Mrs. Byrnes, I believe. So you can get along, Jim, 
 with her to do the cooking, and it s lucky the children 
 is all away." 
 
 "Have you ever et any of Mrs. Byrnes s bread ? " says 
 I, still solemn; and with that I went out of the office. 
 
 But it turned out that way the old lady came up. 
 You ve never seen her. She s fat, and puffs when she 
 walks. Tis a great secret with her that she can t
 
 JIM HANDS 27 
 
 read or write, and she s from the old country, as she 
 says, though many years ago. Annie takes after her 
 father, who was a granite worker with an arm like a piece 
 of braided steel hawser thin and tough and a 
 back that looked as if it was stuffed with English wal 
 nuts. But the old lady is a great old party, though 
 she s got no learning. She ain t short on experience, 
 and many s the time I heard her say, "A hound s 
 nose is sharper than the school-teacher s." And she s 
 got a brogue as thick as it is long, and ain t never 
 satisfied with life till she s made the house no place to 
 live in by boiling pickles on the stove.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 I WELL remember the night I met her at the station, 
 when the seven-eighteen come coughing up the grade. 
 It s a cold country this in winter, and sleighing lasts 
 from Thanksgiving till you wonder why it don t get 
 tired staying. And the old lady got down from the 
 train with about forty thousand boxes, and things 
 done up in straps, and a tin lard-pail, and a jar of pickles 
 with the paper off, so she looked like somebody who d 
 looted a ship s steerage. And her breath was showing 
 on the cold air puff puff puff like a derrick 
 engine lifting a big block of granite. 
 
 "God bless ye, Jimmy, bye," she says to me just like 
 that. "I took much pleasure reading your letter 
 about Annie s sickness." 
 
 "I didn t write it," says I. "Annie did." 
 
 "I don t doubt ye," says she, "for my eyes is getting 
 bad. And what ails the poor darling?" she says. 
 "Have they put a name to it yet? " she says. 
 
 "No," says I, picking up her stuff for her. 
 
 "Oh, well," says she, "if it ain t one of them old 
 standard disayses," she says, "ye have little to fear, 
 bar the medicine," she says, and winks at me with one 
 of her old eyes. "I ll cook ye one of them pancakes. 
 
 28
 
 JIM HANDS 29 
 
 Ye was after being fond of them in yer courting 
 days," she says. 
 
 That was the kind she was, cheerful all the time, and 
 making bread with bullets of baking-soda peppered 
 through it to surprise your taste. But when she come, 
 Annie seemed to give up. She got so she would hardly 
 dress to come down to her meals, and dinner over, she d 
 give a sigh and go off to her room again. It most drove 
 me crazy. She who d been that healthy and happy, 
 and now thinking of death, and I tell you there was 
 times when I was at work I didn t know whether I was 
 in the factory cutting-room, or sitting thinking in the 
 arm-chair at home the arm-chair we bought out of 
 the back of a magazine. 
 
 I guess it was a week had gone when I come home 
 one night, and I remember it was the day the trap in 
 the penstock busted and filled the turbine full of ice 
 and shut us down. I stayed with the boss and the 
 engineer, blocking her up so she wouldn t freeze if it 
 come up cold, and I was late home. I remember I 
 stopped at the top of the hill there and looked down 
 into the village with the light in the town-hall clock 
 and all them little lights, and I began to think that a 
 feller climbs to the top of happiness and maybe goes 
 too fast and slides down on the other side. 
 
 And when I got in, Annie weren t there, and I found 
 her mother cleaning up in the kitchen. I better say 
 that there s one thing Annie gets from the old woman,
 
 30 JIM HANDS 
 
 and that s a set on her jaw when she s mad. And I 
 could see it on the mother s face right then sticking 
 out like a balcony on a building. 
 
 " Where s Annie?" says I. 
 
 " Whist, there," says she, holding up a bottle. "Make 
 no noise, Jim. I m pouring the doctor s medicine into 
 a rat-hole, for it has the odor for their sorrow, me bye." 
 
 "What s this?" says I, for I saw the row there d 
 be over her crazy tricks. 
 
 "Be still, I tell ye," says she. "I want a talk wid 
 ye in private," she says. "For what is it the doctor 
 says? I ve dognosed her case," says she. 
 
 "Sit there by the stove," says she, "and I ll learn 
 ye something," she says. "I know what s the matter 
 wid the girl," she says, "if my wits ain t broke wid my 
 years. Did ye ever see wan of these rich women with 
 no children and nothing to do ? " she says. 
 
 "I have," says I. "The boss s oldest daughter, who s 
 married to a broker in New York, is one of them." 
 
 "Don t be interrupting me," says she. "Ye know 
 nothing about it, and I do. I was out in service till 
 I married Jawn, and I seen more than many of them. 
 And I tell ye that poor women is lucky not to be rich 
 -for it s a dread disayse to be a rich lady without 
 children." 
 
 "What s that to do with Annie?" says I. 
 
 "She s wan av them!" says she, pressing with her 
 hands on her fat hips and squeezing out a sigh.
 
 JIM HANDS 31 
 
 "She has three good children," says I. 
 
 "They ve gone away," she says, "and this rest the 
 doctor talks about is the cause av the evil. Perfect 
 peace, Jim, me bye, is perfect hell." 
 
 "And what makes you think it of her? " I says. 
 
 "Tis quick told," she says. "She has three notions, 
 and these is them: she thinks nobody loves her any 
 more, and she thinks she s sick, and she thinks she ll 
 see what happens if she raises the devil." 
 
 "Not Annie!" says I, getting mad. 
 
 "G wan," says she. "You d be worse than her if 
 ye had to be here at home all day. An angel would 
 be worse than the rest of us in the same fix, for there d 
 be a complaint about the feathers falling out av the 
 wings." 
 
 "What can we do? " says I, scratching my head. 
 
 She walks over to me, mysterious, and pokes my 
 vest with one of her fat fingers. "Sure, Jim," says she, 
 "we must take this perfect peace and knock spots outer 
 it," says she. 
 
 "We must give her something real to worry about," 
 she says. "We must take all this peace and prosperity 
 and wipe the ground wid it, me bye. Whisper," says 
 she, and, leaning up to my ear as if the kitchen, with 
 its clocks ticking, had been crowded with secret-service 
 men, she told me what we was to do. 
 
 "We must quarrel and fight contin ous," she says, 
 "ye and yer poor old mother-in-law," she says.
 
 32 JIM HANDS 
 
 "It must be strong," she says, with a rascally look in 
 her wrinkled eyes, "fast and furious and vi lent," 
 she says. "Throw plates," she says, "and mind yer 
 don t hit me, or I ll lose me temper," she says, "and 
 then ye ll have something to regret," she says. 
 
 It was she who started it. It was the next morning 
 at breakfast, with the sunlight pouring through the 
 windows and taking the chill out of the air. But my 
 Annie looked as if she d never had a friend. Her head 
 was hanging, and now and then she d cough so as not 
 to let her hand get out of practice. The old lady was 
 bringing the coffee-pot from the stove to the table, and 
 all of a sudden she stops. 
 
 "Well!" she says; "it s a wonder ye wouldn t 
 say good morning to me, Jim Hands," she says. "You 
 old pieface ! " she says. "Anybody would think I was 
 a rent collector by the way ye act to me since I ve been 
 in the house," she says, and with that she let the coffee 
 pot dangle down till a stream of it began to run out 
 the spout. 
 
 "For the love of Heaven, see what you re doing!" 
 screams Annie. "And what s the matter between 
 you and Jim? " 
 
 "I ll soon tell ye," says the old woman, winking at 
 me. "I ain t treated with no respect," she says. 
 "Me and me sixty-eight years," she says. "And I 
 won t take no more av yer abuse, Jim Hands. If we 
 can t have love between us, we ll have something else."
 
 JIM HANDS 33 
 
 And with that she threw the coffee-pot and all into 
 the coal-scuttle. 
 
 "Mother! Mother! Be quiet, dear/ says Annie. 
 
 "Let the old bird go home if she don t like it," I says. 
 
 "Listen to him!" the old lady yells; and sitting 
 down to the table, she says, "I ll eat me breakfast in 
 spite of him he s always starting these rows, darlin ," 
 she says. "I think he s crazy as a tooth dying," she 
 says. 
 
 We had another row at night, too, and breakfast the 
 next morning, and so it went. 
 
 About three weeks later, one evening, when I came 
 home, I found Dr. Ward had dropped in for more 
 expense, and I was half scared to death for fear he d 
 ask about the medicine. But he d only come to sit 
 in the parlor and look at his finger-nails and say, 
 "How is our patient been these days?" 
 
 "About the same, doctor," says my Annie. 
 
 "Any more pains under the shoulder? " says he. 
 
 "That s better," says Annie. 
 
 "H m! H m!" says he, marking off the roses in 
 the carpet with the toe of his boot. 
 
 It weren t till then I noticed the old lady, who was 
 sitting on the sofa, was moving her big weight up and 
 down on the springs. 
 
 And she says, "H m! H m!" after the doctor, 
 and got up and waddles over to where he was sitting. 
 
 "Why don t ye come out with it ? " she says. "What
 
 34 JIM HANDS 
 
 satisfaction will the girl get unless ye give it a name 
 she can tell to the neighbors ? " she says. 
 
 "Say no more," I whispers to her. 
 
 " Things is too quiet," she says to me. 
 
 "I don t believe you quite understand," says Charlie 
 Ward, fingering his collar. 
 
 "And the same to you, and many av them," the old 
 lady says. She was off, and I couldn t stop her. "The 
 next thing we know," she says, "you ll be wanting 
 to cut her open for a look inside," she says. 
 
 The doctor raises up and blinks at her, and Annie 
 says, "Mother, you ve said enough." 
 
 " Twill surprise ye all to hear what I m keeping 
 back," says the old lady. "The doctor wouldn t 
 have to listen to it through that rubber tube of his, 
 ayther. Twould be aisy to dognose my mind when I 
 was through." 
 
 "Excuse me," says Ward, getting up and reaching 
 for his fur cap. "I must be going." 
 
 With that the old lady pokes her finger at him. 
 "Ho! ho! me pill-shooter," says she, with a wicked 
 grin, "we understand each other, don t we? And 
 you, Jim, sit still ; if ye go to begging pardons for me, 
 I may bring shame on me own gray hairs," she 
 says. 
 
 "Hush, doctor," she says, going on with her loose 
 talk. "Let s you and I invent a disayse. What d ye 
 say, old sawbones?"
 
 JIM HANDS 35 
 
 "Oh, mother, dear," cries Annie, plucking at the 
 old lady s checked dress. " You ain t talking like your 
 self. Is everybody crazy ? " 
 
 But she could not stop her. The doctor was red with 
 his temper, and it kinder seemed as if he couldn t 
 speak. But that didn t stop her, either. 
 
 "I know a name for it," she says, "but I ll not tell 
 ye, doctor. You d take it away to frighten folks wid 
 it, ye sly old dog," she says. 
 
 "Mother, mother ! " says Annie again, but the doctor 
 was gone; and though I was afraid he wouldn t never 
 come back, I had to laugh. 
 
 "What are ye grinning about?" says the old lady 
 to me. "Insulting me again, are ye? " 
 
 So it went. Such rowing and noise you never heard 
 in one house, and Annie was getting better. 
 
 The only thing that set her back was hearing from 
 the Sister Superior that Katherine had won some sort 
 of a prize and had gained twelve pounds. It made her 
 feel peaceful again. 
 
 It was on a Monday that the big fuss came. I re 
 member I had been out in the yard after breakfast to 
 pick up a shovel that had got lost that winter under 
 the snow, and when I came back, the old woman was 
 scrubbing clothes in the wash-tubs in the kitchen, and 
 Annie was sitting in a rocking-chair all tired out, as 
 she said. 
 
 "Look there, ye nephew of the devil," yells the old
 
 36 JIM HANDS 
 
 lady to me. "See the mud ye ve tracked across the 
 floor, ye clodhopper ! " says she, shaking her fist. 
 
 "The floor ain t clean, anyway/ says I, which was 
 the truth. "The house ain t clean, and it ain t been 
 real clean since you ve been cleaning it," says I. 
 
 "Oh, ho! " says she. "That s the gratichude I gets 
 for washing out these shirts of yours And she held 
 one up out of the tub, with the water and soap dripping 
 from it, and winks at me. 
 
 "Jim don t mean anything," says Annie. "Don t 
 let s be cross all the time," she says. 
 
 I seen then that our row was having a good effect, 
 and as luck would have it, I remembered then that I d 
 never really done my part to make it seem like real 
 trouble in the house. 
 
 So I reaches out and snaps the cloth out of her hand, 
 and I says, says I, "What s a shirt to me after you ve 
 made a rag of it trying to wash it ? " And I grabs 
 it in my two hands and rips it into two pieces. 
 
 "Oh, Jim, Jim," screams Annie, "that weren t 
 your shirt at all ! Twas mother s Sunday waist ! " 
 
 I seen she was right, but I winked at the old lady 
 and yells, "What do I care? The house is all to pieces 
 because of her," I yells, and I rips out a couple of care 
 ful swear words, being in jest. "She s a trouble- 
 making old lunatic," says I. "Yes, that s what you 
 are you, standing up there at the tub with your 
 mouth always going wherever your mind may be -
 
 JIM HANDS 37 
 
 if you have a mind. I m tired of seeing you walking 
 round here like a butterball you and your fat ! " 
 says I. 
 
 The old lady looks at me a minute, and I expected to 
 see her wink again, but instead of that she grabs the 
 washboard out of the water and tries to come at me 
 right over the chair. 
 
 "I ll show ye!" she yells, rushing at me, and you d 
 thought a house was flung at you, to see her come. 
 She was red in the face, and for that second I had my 
 doubts. 
 
 Then it was crack ! She beat the washboard on 
 my head with both hands, and split the back of it and 
 loosened up the tin part. 
 
 "I ll show ye how far to gowid a joke," she says, out 
 of breath, and smashed at me again so it cut me over 
 the eye. I put up my hand, and I seen she d drawn 
 blood, and I ran out through the hall and up the stairs, 
 with Annie at my heels, who was crying and scared. 
 
 It was half an hour before I went down, and I knew 
 I d be late to work. I was kinder shy of meeting the 
 old lady, too. I was afraid she didn t know when to 
 let well enough alone. I peeped around the door and 
 seen her sitting in the rocking-chair. And she was 
 holding her sides with laughter. 
 
 "Whist! Jim," she says, "come in. I forgot myself 
 - I was that mad ! I don t mind names, but I m not 
 pleased wid mention of me fat, dear," she says.
 
 38 JIM HANDS 
 
 "So I see by my nose here/ says I, feeling of it. 
 
 "How did Annie take it? " she says. 
 
 "It s near broken her heart," I says. "She cried 
 as if her heart would break," I says. "She says I 
 wasn t like her old Jim any more, and she would never 
 know her own mother. It was pitiful to see her, poor 
 girl. She thinks all her happiness is gone." 
 
 "Good ! " says the old woman. "That s fine. She ll 
 be hunting for it soon." 
 
 And it was so. It was one of them days in the spring 
 when things is just beginning to know that it s time to 
 come out and blink their eyes in the sunlight, and when 
 I came home at night, there was little Michael and John 
 at the door to call out to me. 
 
 "Where did you come from?" I says, putting my 
 arm around the two of them. What was the matter ? " 
 
 "Nothing," they says. 
 
 "Where s your mother? " I says. 
 
 "Getting supper," says Michael. 
 
 "Where s your grandmother? " says I. 
 
 "She s laying down upstairs," says John. 
 
 "Laying down ! " says I. 
 
 "Yes," says they. 
 
 So I walks back quick to the kitchen, and there was 
 my Annie watching a pot boiling on the stove, with 
 her sleeves up and her arms in the wash-tub. 
 
 "What are you doing?" I says. "The doctor gave 
 you his orders," I says.
 
 JIM HANDS 39 
 
 She smiled up at me and says: "I have no time for 
 you or them orders, dear. The children came back 
 this afternoon, and such a load of dirty clothes as they 
 brought ! So I had to start washing, and get out 
 blankets and sheets for their beds, and sweep up the 
 house a little, and move the oak bureau back into the 
 front room, and go to the butcher s for more dinner, 
 and set the table over, and mend a hole in little John s 
 stocking. And now I m glad to see you home, Jim. 
 Have you had a hard day ? " 
 
 "No," says I. 
 
 "Nor I," says she, "but I feel like I might sleep good 
 to-night. I believe my cough is going away," she says. 
 
 And at that minute John and Michael, the rascals, 
 chasing each other through the parlor, knocks over 
 something. We heard it fall and smash into pieces, 
 and the laughing and running stopped. 
 
 "Ain t it nice, Jim, dear," says she, "to hear the 
 children?" she says. 
 
 "You ain t given me time," I says, "to ask how they 
 happened to come back," I says. 
 
 With that she comes up to me and puts her wet hand 
 in mine. "You ll not scold me, Jim," says she, "for 
 I sent for them by telegraph," she says, "and, you know, 
 if it hadn t been for you, Jim, I never would have let 
 them go away," she says "especially the daughter," 
 she says. 
 
 "Oh, yes," I says, "it was my fault," I says. "You
 
 40 JIM HANDS 
 
 know I ve been a husband and father so long," I says. 
 "I begged for a little rest and peace," I says, very 
 sarcastic. "Why don t you speak up, dear," I says, 
 "and tell me when the girl is coming home?" 
 
 "Well," says she, laughing, "I ve decided to make 
 a sacrifice for you. She s coming on the noon train 
 to-morrow." 
 
 I could hardly wait for it. And the next day I put on 
 a new necktie and brushed up my old hat. A kinder 
 funny feeling had come over me. I went and looked 
 in the glass in the hall. And I began to have queer 
 notions myself. I began to be afraid. I says to my 
 self, "A year will make a lot of difference. She may 
 not approve of the old man. I ain t very handsome, 
 and if I paid a hundred dollars for a suit of clothes, by 
 evening it would have a thousand wrinkles and the 
 coat would hang like a flannellette nightgown, and 
 there d be a couple of spots where I had sat down on 
 something. You re one of that kind," I says to myself . 
 "And you don t talk French or read Latin in the even 
 ings, and nobody d take you for a railroad president - 
 not even after the rates had been regulated. Do you 
 suppose she ll ever see the day she ll be ashamed of 
 you? Stop thinking so foolish," I says in my own ear. 
 "This is the first time you worried about them inward 
 matters." And then I thought if she didn t always 
 love me a little it would be kinder bad. 
 
 And I stood there on the platform that noon, and I
 
 JIM HANDS 41 
 
 remember the Old Boss s family the Harveys had 
 come to meet somebody, and all of them the Old Man 
 and his youngest daughter and all of em smiled and 
 bowed to me, and it seemed vague, like something you 
 see after you ve got a blow on the head. 
 
 Then I seen my girl get off the train. And I seen she 
 had hatched, and I seen she weren t no dull brown moth. 
 
 It was when we d got home and she d shown me that 
 I was a good deal to her still and all that was off my 
 mind that I suddenly noticed. I was standing on the 
 doorstep with my Annie beside me and watching 
 Katherine chasing little John around the lawn. And 
 I says to Annie: "Ain t she wonderful? She s differ 
 ent!" 
 
 But it was only after supper that I knew. I was 
 smoking right here, and the girl came in graceful and 
 easy and fresh from the outdoors, and sat down on the 
 other side of the table. 
 
 "Was it a dull journey alone? " I says. 
 
 "I met a boy that used to be in the high school when 
 I was there," she says, "and he was with some others 
 from the college. He spoke to me," she says, picking 
 up a book, "and 
 
 "And what? "I says. 
 
 "We talked," she says. 
 
 "All the way?" says I. 
 
 "Most all the way," she says, and with that I put 
 down the Argus and leaned forward.
 
 42 JIM HANDS 
 
 "Who was the young man? " I says. 
 
 At that she laughed one of them little wriggling 
 laughs that has made many a lad tell his judgment to 
 go on about its business. "Don t worry," she says, "I 
 have been cured of all the foolish talk that you used 
 to complain of," she says, putting her soft hand on mine. 
 "We had a very interesting and sensible conversation," 
 says she. 
 
 "Who was the young man? " I says again. 
 
 "Why, it was Robert Harvey," she says. 
 
 "The Boss s son ! " says I, kinder nervous. 
 
 "He is very nice," she says quietly, and she laughed. 
 And then I seen a look come into her face. It was 
 just a flicker, and I knew she weren t a little girl 
 any more.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 ROBERT HARVEY is the only boy the Old Boss has got. 
 He d been away at St. John s School down at the Capital, 
 and then to college, and I couldn t remember just what 
 kind of a boy he was. All I could remember about him 
 was when he was a youngster in our town high school, 
 and that he was kinder thin and girlish-looking. I 
 remembered one day* seeing him playing football on 
 the common then, and how a big fellow named Jenks, 
 the undertaker s son, flung himself on to him, and the 
 ,i>oy s head struck on a gravel path. You know how 
 them pictures stick in your mind. I thought they 
 had killed him, but he got up and shook his head and 
 went on playing blind. You d thought he had the 
 fighting spirit of a mink. It looked funny, because he 
 had a face like a woman, with soft dark hair and pink 
 complexion, like the Boss s youngest daughter, Auna. 
 
 The Old Boss was always talking about that boy. I 
 guess the factory and money and maybe eyesight weren t 
 nothing compared with that boy he used to talk about. 
 He used to mention him to me and tell me he was still 
 playing football in college and working on the second 
 team, I think he said ; for I remember the Boss said the 
 boy was too light in weight to do much, and was just 
 
 43
 
 44 JIM HANDS 
 
 playing like a dead game sport without a chance for 
 cups or pins or glory. The Old Boss used to talk to 
 me a little closer than the other men. And so it was 
 a surprise to me the next week when I seen Robert 
 Harvey. 
 
 He was down on Main Street with a tennis racket 
 and a couple of young girls friends of his sisters, 
 they were, and you could see they had money and 
 belonged to the kind of people that the Boss s family 
 liked to travel with. 
 
 He had grown up a good deal. He weren t very 
 handsome, either, but he had a steady eye and one of 
 them gaits as he walked that you hardly ever see ex 
 cept in good honest feet. He had grown strong, and 
 yet there still was that look of devilment in his face, 
 with them blue eyes and brown skin and soft hair 
 underneath his hat. 
 
 It frightened me. Ain t that funny? The minute 
 I seen him laughing and talking with them girls I thought 
 of the funny little look in Katherine s face, and I found 
 myself trying to think out what the big gap was be 
 tween the Old Boss and me, and his family and mine. 
 I thought of money. They had a lot of it. And I 
 thought of name. And they had that. And I guess 
 for the first time I felt sore about it, and begun to won 
 der what the difference was. I must have been a fool. 
 
 And then all of a sudden it seemed to me that this 
 young Bob Harvey, with all he had, weren t good
 
 JIM HANDS 45 
 
 enough for my girl. There weren t none of J em good 
 enough for her. "And after all," I says to myself, 
 "it s all a matter of nothing," I says, as I was going 
 into Eddie Terhew s hardware store after a couple of 
 hinges for Annie s new china closet. "Just a talk on 
 a train," I says to myself, "and just a chat or two on 
 Main Street," I says, "and just because he stopped at 
 my barn on his way home from rabbit -hunting, it don 
 mean anything," I says. 
 
 I suppose the real truth come to me because of that 
 affair with Jerry Pollock. Ain t it funny how one 
 thing leads to another? Fellers with them stoop 
 shoulders like Jerry s is apt to be a good deal like him, 
 but Jerry is more so than any of em. 
 
 What I mean is that Jerry was one of these good, 
 quiet, gentle fellers who went to a church, though not 
 to Father Ryan s, and was always wondering whether 
 the lightning was going to strike his house, and half 
 expecting the cutworms was going to ruin his squashes, 
 and fearing every sore throat was going to be diphtheria 
 sure, and had a wife with a kind of square jaw, easy- 
 hung, and bony hands and a dry skin. You know 
 them fellers them good old family horses ? 
 
 Jerry Pollock never had but one vacation in his life. 
 I don t mean going away from work to a beach and 
 getting so sunburned you can t laugh without cracking 
 your ear, and buying picture-frames made of sea-shells 
 for your aunts, and having the kids get stung by mos-
 
 46 JIM HANDS 
 
 quitoes till they look just the way cracker crumbs in 
 the bed feels. You ll see what I mean when I tell you. 
 And great guns ! it was going some. 
 
 You never knew Jerry the way I did for more n ten 
 years. He was right at the next bench to me when I 
 first come to work for the Old Boss, and before I thought 
 I d ever be urged along by my Annie and get to be fore 
 man of the room. So I knew him on all sides, at the 
 factory and also at home, because that s his house 
 just back of mine. It would make you laugh to see 
 him come running out of that little barn when his wife 
 called him, or maybe stand up in front of her and twirl 
 his hat like a boy when she was telling him to hurry 
 up and go downtown for a roll of ribbon for her or a 
 bottle of patent medicine. She was some woman ! 
 
 Yes, sir, she was ! I don t mean he wasn t fond of 
 her; that ain t so. He d probably have done things 
 for her, even if he had his own choice, though maybe 
 not so quick. And anyhow, there was a lot to respect 
 about her. She looked kinder severe and the like of 
 that, but I noticed she made jelly to give away when 
 anybody was sick ; and the Clancy family, that was left 
 when their old man was sent away for breaking and 
 entering the depot, could tell you that them lines 
 running up from her nose into her forehead give her 
 heart a bad name that weren t deserved. And then, 
 besides, there ain t nothing Mrs. Pollock didn t do well. 
 You know there are women like that them that
 
 JIM HANDS 47 
 
 have good luck with potted plants and popovers and 
 hens and them embroidery sales and strawberry 
 festivals that the Protestant churches has. But at 
 that her voice sounded like a " no-smoking" sign looks, 
 and she had them gray eyes. 
 
 Jerry was the kind of a husband them women have. 
 He was a good worker at the factory here, and would 
 say "My goodness!" instead of some full-mouthed 
 word, and voted the Republican ticket because it seemed 
 to him respectable, but wouldn t discuss politics much, 
 and got awful mad and ran his fingers around his collar 
 when he did. You know how them Republicans are. 
 He thought a good deal of the heathen in India and 
 missionaries, and never went to them one-night-stand 
 ; shows that come to a little factory town like this, and 
 wore black neckties and square-toed shoes, and carried 
 a mustache comb in his vest pocket. He didn t ever 
 play cards, and he said baseball oughter be stopped 
 because the boys bet on it and lost their money, and I 
 guess he might have smoked two cigars a year one 
 on Christmas, and the other the day his wife went down 
 to her sister s funeral or something. 
 
 They were thrifty them two. Once in a while, 
 maybe, Jerry would buy you a soda-water if he met you 
 looking bust and thirsty in front of the drug store. 
 But you could see that, as they say, he sorter made an 
 occasion of it. He d act kinder sly and put his fore 
 finger up beside the mole on his nose or maybe rub his
 
 48 JIM HANDS 
 
 hands together and make a joke and say, "It s awful 
 hot, Jim, and a man that s done a good day s work 
 oughter give himself and his friend a chance to taste 
 the taste of something." 
 
 "Sweetened wind?" you d say. And then he d 
 laugh and rub his hands again and go and study them 
 nickle-plated faucets to see what flavor he d have, and 
 then all the time he was drinking he d keep looking out 
 over his glass just as if he was afraid of being caught 
 by Mrs. Pollock; and when he d set the expense down 
 in a little notebook, he d sigh as if it hurt him, and 
 next day he d mention the soda to you. He d say, 
 "Weren t that a nice soda we had?" just as if he didn t 
 want you to forget it. You d never thought he d go 
 through what I m going to tell you not a feller like 
 that! 
 
 It all come about because one hot night along that 
 September, Ben Joline, who s bottoming foreman, was 
 setting down in one of them chairs on the sidewalk 
 outside the Phenix Hotel. If he hadn t been there 
 without anything to do and looking idle and good- 
 natured, Jerry Pollock would always have been the same 
 old Jerry Pollock. But Ben sat there and a feller sat 
 there too, leaning back up against the wall and looking 
 at people who passed, and chewing a toothpick the way 
 you do when you re in a strange town. 
 
 This second feller, Ben says, was a travelling man for 
 a collar concern, and he certainly was some dresser.
 
 JIM HANDS 49 
 
 He had a fancy band on his straw hat and a changeable 
 silk necktie and a big pin and a suit of clothes with a 
 big check in it. And it weren t the check so much as 
 the colors. Maybe you d call em wall-paper colors. 
 They was something you could see at night. 
 
 By and by, when a good many stores had closed up 
 and there weren t many people passing any more, the 
 stranger rubbed his hand over his black mustache 
 and he says, "I feel just like sitting in a game of poker," 
 says he. It would have been all right if it hadn t 
 been for the fact that just as he said it, a big fat feller 
 come out the screen door of the hotel. He was a jolly- 
 looking feller one of them that kinder seems to love 
 everybody and has a big voice and knows a lot of funny 
 stories. He didn t look like any harm to nobody. 
 And he heard the remark that was passed, and give one 
 of them fat men s gurgles that sounds like water in 
 a steam radiator. "Sic semper tyrannis," he says, 
 "and also a couple of good erat demonstrandums," 
 he says. "No sooner said than done," he says. "If 
 you two gentlemen woulpl like to play," he says, "I ll 
 wake up a feller I know slightly who s gone to bed in 
 room thirty-two," says he. 
 
 The first I knew about it was Saturday afternoon, 
 the next day. Jerry Pollock and his wife had stopped 
 in when they was going by our house, and was setting 
 on our front steps, and my Annie had made em some 
 lemonade. And as we was setting there, the old feller
 
 50 JIM HANDS 
 
 that drives the bus for the Phenix Hotel went by, and 
 he leaned over the gate and says, "If either of you wants 
 a suit of clothes that s pretty swell, you can buy one 
 very cheap from a travelling man down at the hotel. 
 He s trying to raise the money to pay his hotel bill," 
 he says. 
 
 I knew Jerry and maybe old lady Pollock would 
 sit up when they heard talk about buying something 
 cheap. 
 
 "Huh," says Jerry, rubbing that pointed chin of 
 his, "what kind of a suit is it?" 
 
 "It s a checked suit; it s almost new," says the feller, 
 "and about your size," he says, squinting one eye as 
 if he was fitting it onto Jerry. "Though it might be 
 a little late around the shoulders," he says. 
 
 At that I seen them thrifty looks on Mrs. Pollock s 
 face. 
 
 "It might be a bargain," she says. "I think you 
 oughter see it, anyway, Jerry," she says. "Could the 
 suit be worn as best to church?" she says. 
 
 "Well," says the bus driver, "I could recommend it 
 for most anything but that," he says. "I don t know 
 just how to tell you," he says, "except to say that in 
 church it might look as if it had been worn right through 
 from Saturday night," he says, "and give the wrong 
 impression," he says. 
 
 But even after he d gone, you could see that Jerry 
 and his wife was thinking about the suit, and then
 
 JIM HANDS 51 
 
 Monday at the factory when it got to be noon hour, 
 Jerry come over to me and he says, "Well, Jim, the 
 travelling man has left town," he says. 
 
 "You don t say," says I. "You bought the suit? 
 
 "Yes," says Jerry. "I hope you won t say nothing 
 to anybody about it," he says, "for, of course, it s 
 second-hand," says he. "Yes," he says, "it s fine 
 goods," he says. "I felt of it careful," he says, "and 
 tried it on," he says. "The feller s name was Todd," 
 he says, "and he showed me a tag on the collar all 
 worked in yellow silk, and told me the fit was just 
 right ; that I looked like a man with a roll in my pocket 
 big enough to choke a horse, and that when I walked 
 out with that suit, people would forget that Main Street 
 wasn t Broadway," he says. "And Martha says I d 
 better wear it for everyday," says he. 
 
 So the next morning he come down to the factory 
 with it. He was one of the men that change into their 
 work clothes after they get into the coat room, and when 
 he come in there was certainly some excitement ! 
 
 Dave Pierson says to him, "Jerry, in spite of your 
 gray hairs, I m going to tell it to you straight you 
 look like a real sport. You look like a promoter," he 
 says. 
 
 "It s sure true," says Ed Welch, "you look like a 
 man that sits in a box on the grand stand and talks 
 over the edge to the book-maker s runners," he says. 
 "But that black necktie is all wrong," says he. "It s
 
 52 JIM HANDS 
 
 like a dead fly in a dish of ice-cream," he says. " You ll 
 certainly have to get a tie to go with the suit," he says. 
 
 Jerry was pleased, and then he kinder scratched his 
 gray hairs and felt of his black tie and sighed, and all 
 day there was somebody telling him they d seen him 
 come in with his new suit, and that he looked just like 
 December twenty-fifth, or like a mine-owner, or a man 
 who owned a string of horses, or a New York hotel, and 
 the like of that. So the next day when he come down 
 he was wearing a new tie he d bought at the New York 
 Emporium. And the tie sounded a good deal like the 
 noise you make when you hammer iron pipe. 
 
 The suit was certainly getting in its work on Jerry. 
 Wearing that suit, as far as he was concerned, was like 
 keeping bad company. And he liked to have people 
 see it and how nice it fitted him, and Saturday he went 
 out to the ball-game, though I guess his Martha didn t 
 know it, and when the seventh inning come around 
 and the score was near tied, he went with them eager 
 fellers out back of third base, and even hollered and 
 abused the pitcher of the Turner s Falls team. And 
 somebody said he lost fifty cents on the game. Maybe 
 he did, for he seemed to have remorse the next day. 
 He was kinder solemn and thoughtful. 
 
 But it didn t last long. A few days later in the even 
 ing I seen him in his suit in the pool-room at the back 
 of the barber s shop. He was sitting in a chair in front 
 of the ball-rack, laughing and talking and kinder wrig-
 
 JIM HANDS . 53 
 
 gling them stoop shoulders of his, and his eyes was bright 
 and shiny, and he looked as if he wished he knew enough 
 about playing to go into the game for a quarter a cue. 
 
 "I thought you said you was reading a book called 
 the Rise and Fall of the Something Empire, " I says; 
 " reading evenings," I says. 
 
 "Well, I am," he says, "only in a dull little town 
 like this," he says, "a man can t stay at home all the 
 time and get narrow and old-fashioned and out of the 
 run of things," he says. "You know I don t drink," 
 he says, smoothing down his trousers and shaking his 
 legs to make em fall right. "And so I miss that 
 relaxation," he says, kinder sighing. "But come over 
 to the drug store, Jim," he says, "and have a glass 
 of flavored bubbles," he says. And when we gets 
 over there, he kinder swings one leg over the other, 
 careless, and says to Joe, "Give us a couple of plates 
 of sasparilla water," he says. 
 
 I looked at the suit then, and I looked at it again the 
 next day. I kinder made up my mind that any man 
 who wears a uniform feels like a brave soldier. I 
 thought of it when I heard some feller going by under 
 the wash-room winder trip on a stone or something, and 
 rip out one of them tainted words. I threw the soap 
 into the sink and looked out and I seen the suit. I says 
 to myself, "That weren t Jerry talking, that was them 
 checks." 
 
 To tell you the truth, I don t know what would have
 
 54 JIM HANDS 
 
 become of him if it hadn t been for the grand wind-up 
 that come and broke the spell. 
 
 I remember about the last of September the factory 
 closed down one Friday and Saturday because there was 
 a shift in the line of goods we were making, and they 
 had to get in new lasts and dies and the like of that. 
 It s funny how restless you feel when you ain t at work 
 on one of the regular days, and how you keep starting 
 inside with the feeling that you oughter be down at 
 the factory, and then when you get over that, you 
 wonder what you ll do in the afternoon. Sometimes 
 I even wish that I could go down to work the same as 
 ever. It seems as if there d be a good deal of fun in it. 
 And I think that maybe there s a whole lot of excite 
 ment in what folks call drudgery, after all. 
 
 Anyhow, Saturday morning I d fed the horses and 
 my Annie had come out to the back door with little 
 Mike pulling at her apron to tell me breakfast was ready, 
 when I seen Jerry Pollock coming across that patch he 
 had planted with potatoes, and I seen him wave his hand 
 to me, and when he come up you could see he was all 
 stirred up over something. 
 
 "Jim," he says, "the worm has turned!" he says. 
 "You know the Harrington Fair and Cattle Show?" 
 he says. "Has a midway," he says, winking wicked, 
 "and horse-races and balloon ascension with triple 
 parachute drop," he says. "And this is the big day," 
 he says.
 
 JIM HANDS 55 
 
 "I said to Martha we d take you and Mrs. Hands and 
 go. I said yes and she said no. She said no at five 
 o clock this morning." 
 
 "It s too bad/ I says, "if you set your heart on 
 it." 
 
 " What s too bad?" he says, sticking out his nar 
 row chest. "I guess you don t understand. 7 said we 
 was going," says he. 
 
 "Oh, that s all right," he says; "she didn t want to 
 spend the money," he says, smiling very conceited. 
 "But she s resigned to it now," he says. "And I m 
 going to borrow that Jordan carryall to hitch my horse 
 into, and go home and put on some clothes, and then 
 by that time you ll be ready ? " he says. And he stepped 
 up close as if somebody was listening up in the trees, 
 and he whispers, "Yesterday I got paid a hundred 
 dollars on that Smith mortgage. I m going to carry 
 the money to-day, Jim," he says. "It s a kinder com 
 fort to feel a roll in your pocket that would choke a 
 horse," he says, using the words of the collar drummer. 
 "It gives you a peculiar assurance," he says, waving 
 his hand at me as he went off. "Not that I mean to 
 spend any of it," he says. 
 
 With that I went to the back door and had a talk 
 with Annie. I hadn t been for two or three years, and 
 my Annie was glad of the drive, and there s always 
 something of the girl in her. I remember she come 
 and put her hands on my shoulder when I was drinking
 
 56 JIM HANDS 
 
 my coffee and she says, "The only thing I m sorry foi 
 is that we didn t think in time so s we could have gone 
 alone just you and I." 
 
 "And Katherine ? " I says, looking at the daughter. 
 
 "Oh, no," says she. "Just you and mother," she 
 says. "For I know if I was married," says she, "mar 
 ried the way I d want to be, I d like sometimes to be 
 all alone with him, him with a big H," she says, 
 laughing. "Besides," she says, "it s best to break 
 up in twos, after all," she says. And I didn t know 
 then what it was she had on her mind. 
 
 It was a fine day with a cool bite in the air and sunny, 
 and you know how nice a fair-ground looks on that 
 kind of a day, with white tents and a man selling blue 
 tickets, and the red cloth they use at cane-toss games, 
 and the sound of barkers and a cloud of dust on the 
 race track, and the music of the band that comes louder 
 or fades away according to the shift of the breeze, and 
 cows hollering in them long sheds, and crazy-quilts hung 
 around the door of the exposition building, and the 
 grand stand filled up with people so s it looks like the 
 top of a basket of mixed berries, some red and some 
 blue and some black or yellow. And you can hear 
 the gong on the judge s stand, and maybe see a feller 
 holding a couple of children by the hand and looking 
 up at the picture of a wild man all in bright colors on 
 a canvas, or maybe two women standing right in the 
 middle of the path between them rows of waffle and
 
 JIM HANDS 57 
 
 sausage and lemonade concessions, quarrelling and mak 
 ing the crowd walk one side or the other. 
 
 It was right there that Jerry got his full enjoyment. 
 He rung a cane and carried it kinder sheepish just the 
 way I d feel smoking a cigarette, but you could tell 
 he felt first-rate in that suit, and when his wife and my 
 Annie went over to the big indoor exhibit, he pulled 
 out the handkerchief his wife had made him stick 
 around his collar, and he went up one side of the mid 
 way, wanting to see everything, and invited me in to 
 see the Old Plantation show with fourteen genuine 
 old-time darky dancers and singers of negro melodies, 
 as it said, but I didn t think the show was half as 
 good as the sample they gave outside to make you want 
 ,to see more. And then he stopped to see the Japanese 
 rolling-ball game, and the girl with bleached hair and 
 a dirty blue kimona that was running it picked him 
 right out and bowed and hollers in a voice just like a 
 man s: "Here s a man that s a good old scout. He s 
 a sport, he is. He ll take a chance," she says, like that. 
 "It can t make you or break you, mister. You get a 
 present in any case yes, sir. You bet I can size people 
 up. It s a dime, mister what s a dime to a man of 
 your calibre?" 
 
 So Jerry smiled. "Here s a half a dollar! " he says, 
 careless. "Give me them balls," he says. But he 
 didn t win anything, and he looked kinder disappointed, 
 and felt of his roll of money to see if it was still there, 
 and got a touch of remorse.
 
 58 JIM HANDS 
 
 Maybe she seen him; anyhow she says, "Lean over 
 here," says she, confidential. "I know this game ain t 
 the real thing. But why don t you two gents walk 
 right around this booth? There s a little harmless 
 diversion going on there. You bet I can size up a sport 
 when I see him. There s something about you- 
 she says to him. 
 
 At that you could see that Jerry felt more devilish 
 than ever in that suit. "Come on, Jim," he says, 
 "let s investigate. When things is going on, I want to 
 be in em. That s me ! " he says, and off he started. 
 
 It weren t more than a step or two, and when I looked 
 around the corner I seen ten or a dozen men around a 
 feller with a little stand. I knew in a minute it weren t 
 nothing but the same old shell-game, only this feller 
 had four of them heavy china cups instead of shells, 
 and lumps of sugar instead of peas. One of the men 
 who was betting won just as we got there, and Jerry s 
 eyes stuck out to see the four yellow-back bills counted 
 out to him. 
 
 "Don t you be a fool," I says to him, easy. 
 
 "A fool?" he says, kinder mad. "No, I ain t! I 
 wouldn t play this game ; it s wrong ; but I m going to 
 watch ! I bet I could see closer than some," he says, 
 whispering and pushing his way up close to the table. 
 The feller who was running the game held his hand 
 up in the air to shake his cuffs way up his arm, and he 
 felt of a diamond pin in his tie and pulled his black
 
 JIM HANDS 59 
 
 mustache and kinder looked at Jerry with one eye as 
 if he was sad and weary about something. 
 
 "Well, this is a bad day for me," says the feller. 
 "Yes, gents, a bad day. I ve lost heavy to-day." 
 And then he took one lump of sugar and began to shift 
 it under first one cup and then another, and finally 
 he put it under one of the cups on the right and he says, 
 "Well, gents, you ve seen the lump. Maybe you know 
 where it is. Maybe you don t. I ain t saying whether 
 you do or don t. I m just offering to bet one dollar, 
 five dollars, ten dollars, it s under this here cup," he 
 says, and he put his hand on the cup further to the left. 
 You oughter seen Jerry s eyes! 
 
 He leans close to me and he whispers, "Jim, I ve 
 got him. The sugar has fallen out and it s rolled 
 right under my hand ! " And he turned to the feller 
 and pulled out a ten-dollar bill and laid it down, and 
 says, with his voice shaking, "I bet it ain t under any 
 cup." 
 
 "Oh, you do, do you ? " says the feller, looking sadder 
 and sleepier than ever. "Well, anybody else?" he 
 says. "No? Well," he says, lifting the left-hand cup, 
 "there s the sugar ! : 
 
 It was, sure enough ! Jerry s mouth was open. His 
 eyes was red, and he lifted his hand and showed another 
 lump under it. But the feller just pretended to be mad. 
 
 "What kinder monkey-shines are you trying?" he 
 says. "This game is straight, and if you can t come
 
 60 JIM HANDS 
 
 around here without bringing a lump of sugar to fool 
 me and maybe cheat somebody else, don t come at all/ 
 he says. " I caught you/ he says, sticking Jerry s 
 bill into his pocket. "You must think I m a mark!" 
 he says. 
 
 "I didn t bring the lump. It rolled under my hand 
 just now/ says Jerry, looking surprised and mad and 
 dizzy. And most everybody laughed. So Jerry walked 
 off, and when he d got around the corner he kinder 
 gasped like a feller that goes through the ice in the 
 winter-time. You could see he was crazy about losing 
 the ten, and mad and hurt in the pride all at once. 
 
 "Ten dollars!" he says, holding on to my coat, an 
 then he says, "I saw how he did it. By thunder! 
 I ve got a good mind to go back and just clean him out. 
 If I wasn t afraid of losing, I d do it, for he can t fool me. 
 I ve seen how he does it." 
 
 "Jerry," I says, "you re older than I am; yououghter 
 know better. Nobody stands a show with that feller. 
 You can t win unless he wants to have you win. The 
 quicker you bet, the quicker you lose. That s all," 
 I says. 
 
 "Everybody s got a right to their own opinion," he 
 says, kinder sour, and then we had to go and meet Annie 
 and Mrs. Pollock at the entrance to the grand stand, 
 and I bought some seats, and we picked out the horses 
 we thought would win, and both women always chose 
 any horse that was jet black. They look faster to
 
 JIM HANDS 61 
 
 women. And they laughed and had a good time, but 
 Jerry was sullen and sore, and I guess he even forgot 
 about his checked suit. 
 
 And it was while we was sitting there that Annie 
 grabbed my arm and pressed it with them busy fingers 
 of hers. 
 
 "Look, Jim!" she whispers. "Who is that sitting 
 down there in that yellow dog-cart ? " she says, and I 
 seen her turn color a little. 
 
 I looked where she was pointing. It was down where 
 carriages drive up near the whitewashed fence to watch 
 the races. And there I seen the Boss s horse with her 
 ears pricked up, and behind her there sat the boy and 
 my girl. Maybe it was just as luck would have it. 
 They weren t looking at the race at all. It gave me a 
 shock. They was looking at each other. And right 
 then I knew misfortune had come to us. I knew it as 
 well as if a voice had told me.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 I SUPPOSE the thing that woke me up was the voice of 
 Mrs. Pollock. "I wonder where Jerry went," she says. 
 " Probably to get some peanuts. He s so thoughtful," 
 she says. 
 
 But I didn t stop to hear. I felt like a warden that 
 has forgot to lock the jail, and I jumped up and says, 
 "I ll be back in a few minutes," and I ran down the 
 steps and around the race-track fence, back to where the 
 tents and booths were, and I went in around the Japanese 
 rolling-ball game, and when I got a first look I knew it 
 was too late. 
 
 There was Jerry with his hat off and his eyes wild and 
 red and his breath coming short and a half-dozen men 
 laughing at him. 
 
 He was talking to the feller that run the cup and 
 sugar game. "You cheat!" he says. "You robbed 
 me," he says, "a hundred dollars and more !" he says. 
 "Give it back," he says, "or I ll complain of you," says 
 he. 
 
 "On your way ! " says the feller. "You want me to 
 lose all the time?" he says. "Is that it?" says he. 
 "Now take it from me," he says, pointing with his finger. 
 
 62
 
 JIM HANDS 63 
 
 "You move on! Don t stay around here disturbing 
 these gentlemen. Where d you hire that checked suit ? " 
 he says. 
 
 I could see I d better take Jerry away. So I got him 
 by the arm, and he called me some hot names, but he 
 came with me just the same, and I thought he was going 
 to cry, he was that frightened. "I promised to buy a 
 runabout for Martha with that money. She s been 
 looking forward to it for two years," he says. 
 
 I felt sorry for him. 
 
 Finally he says, "Jim, will you tell my wife for me ? " 
 he says, grabbing my arm. "You don t know how 
 much I d appreciate it," says he. "Somehow I believe 
 it would save talk," he says. "I ve got to tell her. 
 She knew I had the money. I can t lie to her. You 
 tell her, Jim. If you ll do that, I ll go down and harness 
 the horse and never ask you to do a thing," says he. 
 "Tell it all," says he. "Everything you tell will save me 
 a couple of days of talk," says he. 
 
 I m a good-natured fool, I guess. Anyhow, I told him 
 to go hitch up and we d come down at half-past six, 
 ready to eat our lunch that Annie had put up, and then 
 drive home. But after I left him I could see them 
 gray eyes of Mrs. Pollock and them wrinkles in her 
 forehead. I could hear her voice and I could see a 
 Marathon talking contest. I began to look for a hole 
 right then. I ain t a coward, but I can be mighty 
 discreet in them matters. And I can be mighty foxy,
 
 64 JIM HANDS 
 
 too. I tell you what I did. I got my Annie to one side, 
 and she was the one I told. 
 
 "Well," she says, very solemn. "It may not be your 
 fault. You say it ain t. And I suppose it must be 
 done. Jim, dear, it s terrible," she says. "I never knew 
 a man to change so at his time of life. He was so 
 quiet when he was himself," she says. "I wish his 
 wife weren t such a competent woman,-" she says, and 
 she went over and got Jerry s wife and she let her 
 have it. 
 
 I thought the woman was going to faint away and 
 then come too and talk it out. What do you think ! 
 She never said a word ! She just shut her jaws tight and 
 brushed out her skirt and looked like somebody that 
 ain t ready to act but is getting ready. She never said 
 a word till we got down to the hitching-shed. The 
 carryall was there and the horse. 
 
 "Where s Mr. Pollock, my husband?" she says, 
 looking at me as if I d eaten him. 
 
 "I couldn t tell you, ma am," I says, easy and per 
 suading. "I left him here a half hour ago." 
 
 "There s nothing to do but wait," says Annie. "You 
 don t suppose he s playing, as you call it, any more." 
 
 "I do not," says I. He ain t got any of what s 
 most necessary," I says, and sat down on a box. I sat 
 there and listened to Mrs. Pollock s foot. It was tap 
 ping on the bottom of the carriage. It s one of them 
 ugly sounds women makes. And I sat there listening
 
 JIM HANDS 65 
 
 to that and the crickets in the grass and the band a 
 long way off; It was getting cool, too, and I wished I 
 was going to sit down to a warm supper at home, and 
 the girl was on my mind. 
 
 It weren t quite dark when Jerry showed up. You 
 oughter see him. His checked suit was covered with 
 mud, and he had a red swelling on his forehead. But 
 instead of hanging his head and looking humble, he 
 danced in like an old horse that s been doctored with 
 liquor. His wife give him a terrible glare, poor woman, 
 but it didn t do no good. So she tried the voice. 
 
 "Well!" she says. 
 
 "Huh!" says Jerry. "I suppose you all are guess 
 ing," he says, rubbing his hands. "I suppose you all 
 think I m the kind of a man that will let people get the 
 best of me and be down. Not me ! " 
 
 "You ain t been doing it again ? " I says. 
 
 "No," says, he, "I ain t. I did something surer than 
 that," he says squaring them narrer shoulders of his. 
 "I thought that cheating feller might go to the village 
 for his supper, and he did. Who follered him? I did. 
 Who fought with him when he got to a nice quiet 
 place with nobody around ? Me ! Who licked him ? 
 Me! That s me." 
 
 "Pooh!" says Mrs. Pollock, rising up and swelling. 
 "You ain t content with gambling. You must go and 
 fight like a common tough. Ain t you a nice apology ! 
 Fighting won t ever buy that runabout ! "
 
 66 JIM HANDS 
 
 "Huh!" says Jerry. " I ain t so sure." And with 
 that he digs down into the pants pocket of that checked 
 suit and pulls out a couple of handfuls of bills and 
 holds em up. "I took em away from him," he says - 
 "just what was right to a dollar!" And he brushes 
 some dust off the front of his coat. "There s more n 
 one way to be a sport," he says, looking at the money. 
 "That s me," he says. "I ain t afraid of anybody," 
 he says. 
 
 I guess Mrs. Pollock was thinking fast just then. 
 
 "Jerry," she says, "you give me that money - 
 every cent of it ! You give me that money, and I ll 
 never say a word about these terrible events as long 
 as I live. Give it to me." 
 
 "You bet! "says he. 
 
 And I ll always remember how he looked then in that 
 checked suit, trying to give her that money fast and 
 close the bargain in a hurry. 
 
 And I remember the look on Mrs. Pollock s face as 
 she says, "When we get home," she says, "you take 
 off that checked suit and do it up and send it to the mis 
 sionary alliance," she says. "When you wear it, one 
 thing is plain enough. I m taking awful risks with 
 my husband," she says. 
 
 It was only when we got in to start home I knew my 
 Annie had been thinking about Katherine and thinking 
 hard. "Mr. Hands and I will sit together in the back 
 seat," she says, very persuading, and I seen Jerry give a
 
 JIM HANDS 67 
 
 look loaded full of fright, for he was afraid that maybe 
 even the money he d given his wife wouldn t be enough 
 to stop a conversation full of woe and trouble enough to 
 beat disease and death. He was scared it might break 
 loose if he sat beside her, and all the sport in him had 
 gone. 
 
 We drove down over by Hendricks farm, through 
 them dark, cool woods, and it weren t till we crossed over 
 the rattling wooden bridge below the spring that 
 Annie leans over and whispers to me. She only said 
 one word, but you could tell everything by that. 
 
 "Katherine," she says. 
 
 I shook my head and says, "Yes." 
 
 "Oh, Jim, dear," she says, "it goes to show a wife 
 oughter tell everything. But I didn t want to worry 
 you. It was almost two weeks ago he came up Sunday 
 afternoon when you was off shooting with Ben Joline. 
 And I told Katherine she d better not go walking with 
 him, but she laughed at me and said I was getting silly, 
 and she tied the bow at my neck and told me I was the 
 best old warrior she ever knew. I m a weak mother," 
 says she; "I was jollied. I let her go, and the pair of 
 em walked away strong and healthy across the fields. 
 It would do you good to see em." 
 
 "It s the Boss s son," I says, shaking my head. "If 
 he don t love her strong with the kind that makes 
 a man see there ain t but one woman among em all, 
 the kind that makes him look up into the sky and wonder
 
 68 JIM HANDS 
 
 who made so good a world for him and her then," 
 I says, "it s a bad day for all of us. For," I says, "I 
 think she loves him." 
 
 "And if he really loves her?" says she. "What 
 then?" 
 
 "Annie," I says, "I don t know. He s the Boss s 
 son. I hardly know how to think," I says. "I feel like 
 an Iowa farmer trying to catch deep-sea fish with potato 
 for bait," I says. "It can t be true," I says, "but if it 
 is there s trouble, even then," I says. 
 
 I seen her jaw set hard, as if she knew what I meant. 
 "Katherine is better than he or any other man de 
 serves," she says. "Mark my words, Jim. There s some 
 thing stronger than the difference between us and the 
 Boss s family, " she says. "God never put instincts into 
 human beings and sometimes I believe they are good 
 as bad as they ever get to have em hampered by 
 social standing," she says. "Listen to me, and don t 
 forget what I tell you right now. You ve heard it 
 before, but that makes no difference. What is good 
 will win, Jim. The One who is running it all pays 
 no attention to whether calling cards is engraved or 
 printed," she says, taking hold of my hand, "and is 
 very busy with the matter of seeing that what I say is 
 true. Sometimes He s slow in getting around to lend 
 a hand. It s fair to say that. But don t you ever 
 make hints about them differences between us and 
 anybody don t you make em ever again."
 
 JIM HANDS 69 
 
 And then I seen her face in the moonlight. You could 
 see the anxiety on it as plain as bread on a white plate. 
 "Katherine mustn t be going about like this if it isn t 
 best for her/ she says. "I hope she s home by this 
 time. I m going to let you talk to her. I think/ she 
 says, "that women learn about men from men/ she 
 says. 
 
 But it was when we got home and had got out our 
 souvenirs and all them things that you bring home and 
 then throw away the next day and said good night 
 that we was most disturbed. Old Mrs. Byrnes had put 
 the children to bed, and there she sat under the light 
 of the lamp that was turned up too high, and the soot 
 was rising to the ceiling, and there was a cup of cold tea 
 beside her on the table and a lot of knitting in her lap, 
 and her head had fallen over, and every time she took 
 a breath in her sleep she d let it out with a whistle that 
 would make a dog think he was staying out too late. 
 She was alone. Katherine hadn t come home ! 
 
 Annie never said a word. She just looked up at the 
 clock and woke the old lady, and they left me sitting 
 alone. 
 
 Waiting for somebody ain t any fun, and less than 
 that after night has come on. When I think of the 
 women who sit and wait for men to come home, and I 
 think how they try to read, and put the book down, and 
 every chair is uncomfortable, and every sound outside 
 is a disappointment, and the ears are straining, and the
 
 70 JIM HANDS 
 
 noise they make themselves with a rustle of a dress or a 
 sigh seems too loud ; as if it was going to wake some evil, 
 and trains whistle a long way off, and they think of a 
 thousand things that may have happened, and look at the 
 clock a thousand times, and hope that some good feller, 
 as people call em, will come home, then I know very 
 well that women ought to have all the pity. They ain t 
 captains of their own ships. Of course some folks say 
 it ain t necessary, and say it would be better for women 
 not to bear with the troubles men cause em. But I 
 don t say so. I say the evil and the pain of it is just a 
 chance for women s loyalty and patience. It s better 
 to have both than neither. I thought of it as I sat 
 there. 
 
 It was midnight, and the moon had gone down be 
 hind the tops of the trees on the hill before I heard the 
 wheels outside, and the carriage stopped, and the girl 
 came in, running up the path, and pink with the cold. 
 
 "It s late," I says. 
 
 "We let the horse walk," says she. "It was so beau 
 tiful," she says. 
 
 "You didn t say anything to me or your mother 
 about going," says I. 
 
 "Oh, no," she says, looking at the floor, with them 
 long lashes of hers showing on her cheeks. "It was a 
 secret." 
 
 I had hot words on my tongue then, but I rolled them 
 around my teeth a bit. "A feller can ruin his own
 
 JIM HANDS 71 
 
 daughter with a couple of sharp raps on her pride," 
 I says to myself. "It s her ship, and she s got to invite 
 me on board," I says to myself. "It won t do any good 
 to try to knock a hole in the vessel. She d only go to 
 the bottom," I says to myself. 
 
 So I kinder smiled at her and wiped my glasses, and 
 I says, "Will you tell me the next time? Will you let 
 me in?" I says. 
 
 And she just nodded, and I seen the flush in her cheeks. 
 
 "Well," says I, wiping my glasses some harder, and 
 looking at her eyes square and straight, "I want to 
 ask you something, Katherine. You won t mind," 
 I says, "because it s me. Has Bob Harvey in these 
 times you ve been together ever kissed you? " I says. 
 
 "No," she says, waving a good night to me at the 
 door. "But sometimes I ve wished he would," she says. 
 
 "Wait," says I, getting stern with her. "It s time 
 to put an end to this." 
 
 She looked at me then, and her face was set hard all 
 of a sudden. If she d said the words with that ex 
 pression, I wouldn t have worried so, but I seen her 
 relax, and her eyes looked big and innocent and wonder 
 ing, and her lips was open, and she seemed to be talk 
 ing to herself. "Oh, no," she says. "You don t 
 understand. It hasn t begun." And then she gives 
 one of them little laughs of hers and says: "Let him 
 ask for a kiss. They re mine. They cost me nothing, 
 and they wouldn t cost him much."
 
 72 JIM HANDS 
 
 It was that remark I didn t tell to Annie, and the one 
 that kept me thinking like a man in the top story of 
 a building that s afire. For I knew that of all the things 
 a woman is wilful about it is them things she has to 
 give away. And many a small and selfish woman gets 
 credit for being good only because she s selfish. And 
 by the same token many of the best of them are spend 
 thrifts through the bigness of their heart. And if it 
 hadn t been for theDurn Fool maybe Katherine wouldn t 
 have had the life she has. And besides, it was only 
 through him that my girl and me understood each other 
 again.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE Burn Fool was a strange contrivance. The first 
 time we ever saw him was on a colored bill-poster, 
 when a theatre company was coming to town. Fred 
 Duvey, the " inimitable comedian " of the J. K. Little- 
 field Sunlight Comedy Company, it said, though his 
 real name was Fred Duffee. There are only about 
 seven shows a year that play this town, and about three 
 are "Uncle Tom s Cabin" companies, where all the 
 fellers that sit in the front row bring meat to throw on 
 the stage, and make the bloodhounds forget about the 
 girl they re chasing. When a real singing and dancing 
 show with a soubrette and comedian comes along, 
 almost all of the two hundred hands in this factory 
 pack into the town hall. It s better than a fire to 
 break the monotony. 
 
 I remember exactly how that show pulled off. There 
 weren t much to it except Fred Duvey, and he came out 
 and says how he was going to attempt to amuse the 
 audience without any coarseness like was common 
 in variety acts nowadays, and he sang a song about a 
 farmer who had a telephone put in his house, till every 
 body was holding their sides for laughing, and tears 
 was rolling down Dave Pierson s cheeks, who s sort of 
 noted for a long-faced disposition ; and then he danced 
 
 73
 
 74 JIM HANDS 
 
 a buck and wing, with every click of his shoes so prompt 
 and certain it made you hold your knees and jiggle 
 em, and after that he told some stories not the 
 kind of funny stories that slap you over the head, but 
 sort of sly stories that had some of the men with beards 
 giggling like a bunch of stitching-room sorters, and he 
 went out, with the people in the audience laughing and 
 clapping and slapping each other s knees and forgetting 
 about the grocer s bill. 
 
 "He was sure a comical cuss," says Arthur Ferris, 
 going out of the hall; "but, say, wasn t the girl who 
 sang The Hills of Old Vermont sad and pretty, and 
 sick and white ? " he says. 
 
 "You re right," says Teddy Dona van, who knew 
 everything about everybody in town, from their face 
 to the number of their watch. "That s his wife!" 
 
 Well, before the actors had got back to the hotel, 
 the manager left town with the money and whatever 
 stuff he could get together. It was just like the jokes 
 you see in the funny papers. But you bet, I knew it 
 weren t no joke to the Durn Fool. 
 
 He came into the factory next day after a job 
 came up to me as spry and chipper as a horsefly, with 
 his wife behind, quiet and slim, and her hands folded 
 in front, kind of patient. He was a sawed-off feller 
 too much of a fool to grow, as Peter Cross used to say - 
 and fat, with red hair that looked like grass just after 
 the lawn mower has been over it, except for the color.
 
 JIM HANDS 75 
 
 "The Boss sent me to you, Mr. Hands," he says. 
 "Me and my wife want a job, for we ve descended from 
 the sublime artistic life in one night," he says, "to the 
 reality of sordid commerce, and we re more bust than 
 the liquor laws," and with that he did a little break 
 down on the wooden floor and struck an attitude which 
 he said correctly represented Fred Duffee defying 
 adversity. It made all the hands, who d stopped their 
 work and were standing pop-eyed like they do, holler 
 with laughing. Then he reaches out and sort of pats 
 her arm, and I could see his hands was shaky with the 
 fear I d turn him down. So I gave em a place. 
 That s the way we get a lot of our labor, green and 
 fresh as a head of lettuce, and there might have been 
 something in the frail looks of the wife, a fear of the 
 look of disappointment on a woman s face that gives 
 a whole man a scare worse than a six-shooter. 
 
 Duffee, the Burn Fool, never did nothing to earn 
 more than a dollar a day, and did so much talking and 
 chin music and fool-shines to stop the other hands at 
 their work that it cost us about twelve dollars a week 
 to have him in the room. That s what the Boss said. 
 But I says that he was just like one of them machines 
 I was telling you about, different from the rest, - 
 comical and refreshing, and kept the men cheerful and 
 lively and interested in the work, so he more than 
 earned his money. 
 
 He was full of jimcracks and funny little ways, and
 
 76 JIM HANDS 
 
 he could do a serious turn, too, sometimes during the 
 noon hour, and the men used to get him to recite the 
 old favorite, called "The Face on the Bar-room Floor," 
 all about a poor cuss in the grip of drink, and an 
 other poem, too, about how a feller s father found the 
 feller dying on the battle-field after the fighting was over, 
 and Fred used to get down on one knee, side of a pile 
 of scrap leather, and look at it so earnest and sad you d 
 begin to half think the thing was the old man s son. 
 But he never got serious about himself, or, at least he 
 never showed it he was just a durn fool, and I guess 
 he knew it. Even the day he sewed two fingers to 
 gether on the machine he just laughed and said he hoped 
 he hadn t broken anything, and that he felt "so-so," 
 and then over he went, white and limp, like wet tissue- 
 paper, and Gracie, his wife, coming with her little 
 scream. She took his head in her lap, patting and 
 fondling where the folds lay in his little fat neck, and 
 whispering, "Fred, my Fred." But we knew she 
 loved him some, you bet ! 
 
 And she well, she was the silent sort. Nobody 
 ever could treat her brutal, I don t believe, she was 
 that thin and patient. But it seemed kinder as if 
 just being alive was brutal to her as if some big hand 
 you couldn t see was walloping her wherever she turned. 
 It made me nervous to see how steady her head bent 
 over the machine, and no laughing except once in a 
 while when her husband, the Durn Fool, would come
 
 JIM HANDS 77 
 
 up behind her chair and whisper some one of his funny 
 cracks to her. 
 
 And he was an uncommon senseless feller. He never 
 did the right thing, except when it come to doing a little 
 jig step or cheering somebody up when they felt mean. 
 There was a long while before any one in the factory 
 knew there was a- different side to Duffee, and when he 
 didn t keep us laughing with him, we was always laugh 
 ing at him for his durn fool mistakes. It was Duffee 
 had loaned his last week s pay to Joe Carr, who d 
 skipped the town, or Duffee who had bought some 
 shares in a gold-mine for thirty-five cents apiece. 
 
 Well I remember when Duffee seen an advertise 
 ment in the back of a picture paper saying how a feller 
 in Battle Creek, Michigan, would tell you a sure way 
 to get rich for twenty cents in stamps. All he sent 
 Fred was a piece of paper, and written on it, "Fool 
 other fools like I fooled you." And that summer, w r hen 
 the Durn Fool was wearing a straw hat with half a top 
 to it, and the little wife had cut the cuffs off her best 
 shirtwaist for the fringe that was hanging there, he 
 come sneaking around to me. 
 
 "Jim," he says, polishing up a little shiny thing on 
 his sleeve, "we live but once, and Napoleon Bonaparte 
 ain t had a good time for over a hundred years, and as 
 I was saying, I passed by the jeweller s window this 
 morning, and there sat a little ring with a stone in it 
 the color of that bit of sky yonder. Take a look at
 
 78 JIM HANDS 
 
 the sky. And just four years ago to-day I was married 
 to her, see? Well, I thinks she s been a sticker, good 
 and bad, buttered side and bare side and no bread at 
 all. She d do anything for you, boy, I thinks to my 
 self even take in washing while you played the races, 
 as they say in the song, and that s loving some. Give 
 the best, says I to myself; they don t come more de 
 serving. So I buys it cost me the week s pay lack 
 ing a pile of pennies, and I ve been sorry once or twice, 
 for our assets daren t look our liabilities in the face. 
 But, say, what do you think of the ring? " 
 
 He gave it to her all right behind the door of the 
 stitching-room. I seen it, and seen how her face all 
 lit up and then sobered down again, like when you pull 
 down a bulkhead and shut the light out of a cellar, 
 and she says, "How much did you pay for this, part 
 ner? " -it was her way to call him "partner." And 
 he told her, but it weren t till he d gone back to his 
 machine that I seen the tears in her eyes and the cussed 
 little ring wearing heavy on her finger. 
 
 There weren t any brains in his heart that s what 
 ailed the Burn Fool, and he had a thousand-dollar 
 hand with a ten-cent pocket, as he said once himself. 
 
 I suppose none of us ever expected more of him than 
 to hear his joking and breakdowns on the factory floor, 
 and his laugh, great guns ! you should have heard 
 that laugh, there weren t nothing like it, and more n 
 one feller has spoken of how he s missed it since Fred
 
 JIM HANDS 79 
 
 left us. We were half blind, I guess, not to notice, but 
 toward fall the girl got so she couldn t stand the work, 
 and we kind of half realized she was sick; but Fred 
 still kept on with his whistling and imitations of Dutch 
 men and the Irish, and came down to the factory alone, 
 and didn t eat any noon meal, so s to pay the doctor 
 and keep em both alive, and so on. 
 
 Then there came the one time when I see the in- 
 sides of the Burn Fool, the way you might see into 
 a watch when the shiny back is pulled off it. It was 
 a Sunday afternoon, just after the first heavy frost, 
 when the valley and the hills were all streaked and 
 spotted and laid out in colors as bright as a bedquilt, 
 and the air was so clear you could see the crows hanging 
 above the green strip of pine woods on Maple Hill so 
 they looked like flies swooping around in front of your 
 nose. 
 
 I was banking up the earth around the house, for 
 these Northern winters sit heavy, and my Annie was 
 inside pulling the kid s overcoats and things out of the 
 newspapers and camphor, when along comes Fred 
 Duffee, with his little legs a-moving. He weren t so 
 fat then life had bumped him some since he landed 
 in town, but he was whistling, all right. 
 
 "It s a fine day, Jim," he says. "Does every hair 
 on your head feel like a jews -harp ? I want you to 
 take a walk with me for a purpose," he says. 
 
 There was no refusing him. "Wait till I get my
 
 80 JIM HANDS 
 
 coat/ I says, and we went out the Dun s Road, with 
 the frost-hardened gravel crackling under us, and the 
 Durn Fool telling me how he dreaded the winter, being 
 poor, and expecting to have to eat snowballs with maple 
 syrup on em. I guess you could have heard his laugh 
 clean across the pastures. 
 
 It weren t till we stopped to sit on the top rail of 
 a fence, where you could look down and see the river 
 widening out just above the factory, that I knew what 
 he was after. I remember just as if it was now how 
 I looked around at him. His face was all pulled down 
 into lines, and his hands was plucking at his pants. 
 Why, it looked like a sort of a skin had dropped off 
 him you d never know it was him at all. 
 
 "Jim," he says, "I haven t got no hard-luck story, 
 but I m just bound to tell somebody I m near crazy 
 this time. I ve laughed for near thirty years now, 
 but part of it was a cussed sham, and now I m up 
 against the truth, and somehow I can t make any joke 
 of it. It looks to you as if I never seen a sober thing, 
 don t it? It looks to you as if all my mistakes, and 
 so on, don t give no worry to me, and as if being up 
 against it and putting a girl like Grace up against it 
 ain t anything to me. It looks to you as if seeing the 
 color fade out of her face, and she sticking like poultice 
 and never a squeal, don t mean nothing to a feller 
 like me. And what good am I, anyhow? What do I 
 amount to? "
 
 JIM HANDS 81 
 
 "Go on!" says I. "You re all right." 
 
 "All right?" says he. "As what? As a cussed 
 jumping-jack a clown everybody s goat. That s 
 what. And that s all, I guess, I ll ever be a low 
 comedian on life s stage," he says, and pulled his 
 old felt hat down on his head. "Never amount to 
 nothing." 
 
 "What ails you, man? " I says, jumping down and 
 standing in front of him as he sat there on the top rail, 
 all kind of battered-looking, like a wet bird. "You ve 
 got an off day." 
 
 "No, I ain t," he answers. "There s a new misery 
 come to me. It was bad enough to take Grace away 
 from her old man, but she came to me willing enough. 
 I guess I was a cheerful cuss, and she was brought up 
 among stern people and didn t know nothing about 
 the world except duty and sewing and such things. 
 She knows it now, all right ! She s been a house plant 
 set out in cold weather, you bet ! Poor little girl. 
 And her old man is a forbidding feller he set his hand 
 against her when she came with me," he says. 
 
 I was squirming then like a teased angleworm - 
 it was a great change from the laugh of the Burn Fool 
 to that kind of talk. I d rather have heard rattle 
 snakes. 
 
 "Oh, it s been a cup of bitters," he says. "She 
 never says nothing never a squeak, and it s got worse 
 and worse. I m just a chump. That s why I went
 
 82 JIM HANDS 
 
 into the show business, and I couldn t seem to get along 
 even at that, except before I married her. Don t 
 you suppose she s sorry she ever got into it, Jim ? I ve 
 layed awake nights to wonder about it. But that ain t 
 nothing there s more ! " 
 
 " More ? " says I. "What is it now the cholera ? " 
 
 "No," he says, never cracking a smile, "it s being 
 a father." 
 
 "Great guns!" says I, thinking of the pay he was 
 getting, and the stuffy little room they had up at Mrs. 
 Riordan s lodging-house. 
 
 "It ain t the being up against it, Jim it ain t 
 only because I can t take care of em decent when the 
 time comes," says he, "but it s me being a father! 
 How can I show a kid the way when I never found it 
 myself ? He ll I ve always thought of its being 
 a boy he ll grow up to find me what I am, Jim," 
 he says, "and I ain t got no purpose in the world. I 
 don t know what they put me here for. And now 
 they re going to make me have a boy. It s awful; 
 it s too tough to be true." 
 
 I thought of the wife. "That ain t the way you 
 talk to her, is it ? " says I, anxious. 
 
 "No, no," he says, waving his hand like you d make 
 a swipe at a fly in the air; "I darsn t; she s too 
 happy." 
 
 "And you re bust?" I asks. He grins some and 
 looks at the places on his two knees, where what was
 
 JIM HANDS 83 
 
 underneath showed through like two maps of Ireland. 
 Then he jumped down, and we went home. 
 
 When we got to the house, I turned and looked at 
 him, and so help me, it seemed to me he looked just 
 like the Durn Fool again ! "I hear Mellen, the under 
 taker, is doing such a poor business that he has sent 
 his son away to learn to be a doctor," he says. 
 
 "Fred," says I, paying no attention, "come to me 
 you know when you need me," and I jumped the 
 fence to be rid of him. 
 
 It was warm inside with the smell of cooking, and I 
 felt lucky for it all, and for my little Michael with his 
 arms as fat as sausages, and everything. 
 
 My Annie had gone away for a day or two down 
 to the Junction to do some shopping for the winter, 
 and I found the girl in the kitchen arguing with the old 
 lady Byrnes and trying to persuade her not to put 
 rhubarb into a boiled dinner. And when Mrs. Byrnes 
 went out mad and red from standing over the stove, 
 something made me tell the whole story to Katherine. 
 
 "The poor girl, the poor girl," says she, never think 
 ing of the Durn Fool s trouble at all, and catching 
 at my sleeve. "And nobody but that Riordan woman 
 with her. I ll go to her," she says. 
 
 And it come on to rain that afternoon, with the sting 
 of the first touch of winter in the sleet, and it weren t 
 till after dark that Katherine comes in through the door. 
 There was water dripping off her, and her hat was all
 
 84 JIM HANDS 
 
 askew with the wind, but she was fresh in the cheeks, 
 and her mouth was in the curve that means something. 
 
 "Come into the kitchen where I can get a bit of 
 warmth and dry feet," says she. "They ain t got 
 nothing up there. We ve got to make it out for em, 
 somehow. But it s her father she wants to see her 
 father, who shut his door to her. He lives down at 
 Potlake, he s a farmer, well off, too, I guess, and 
 living alone since the other girl died. He don t know 
 where this girl is. But you ve got to go down there 
 to-morrow and bring him up here, Dad, even if they 
 dock you at the factory." 
 
 That s what she says, and I shied the job. "He 
 won t listen to me," says I. 
 
 "He ll listen to me," she says. "I ll go," she says. 
 "There ain t nobody that won t melt if the match is 
 held right," says she. 
 
 "It s a crazy notion for a young girl," I says, but she 
 had her way just the same. 
 
 I ve had to laugh, though, about the way she said she 
 felt on the train, and how she dreaded to walk up the 
 steps of that house out on the road at the edge of 
 Potlake. 
 
 That old man she d gone to see was about six feet 
 tall, for all the bend in his shoulders, and he had a 
 beard and hair about the color of granite, trimmed up 
 just close enough so s you could see the squareness of 
 his jaw. I guess he never laughed. He was one of
 
 JIM HANDS 85 
 
 these old fellers that are so sure they re right, you are 
 more than half sure you re wrong the kind of man 
 who looks well in baggy pants, and wears eye-glasses 
 with black rims. She says the inside of the house 
 smelled musty, like old ledger-books smell. There was 
 a globe of the world in the parlor, and a painting of 
 a woman with one of these red coral neck-pieces, and 
 pressed flowers framed and hanging on the wall, and 
 a stuffed bird on top of a bookcase. 
 
 "How can I serve you? " says he, quiet and polite, 
 just like that, but with a voice like the side of a house. 
 She never made even a pass at returning his lead, and 
 she says her tongue felt so fat she couldn t close her 
 mouth. The old man was so different from Fred 
 Duffee you d hardly know they were two men. 
 
 "I ve come to get you to go to your daughter Grace," 
 says she. "She wants to see you." That burned the 
 fuse down to the powder all right. The old man grabs 
 the arms of his chair with his hands till the wood 
 cracked, and he just looked at her till he was pop-eyed 
 and red like a feller with the sunstroke. 
 
 "I ve got no daughter Grace. A miserable play 
 actor has took her from me," he says, precise and 
 frozen. "I won t listen to you you hireling," he 
 says, and in a minute more he was up on his feet walk 
 ing this way and that, and turning back at the corners 
 like a polar bear in a cage at the circus. "Tell me 
 they re starving," he busts out again, "or perhaps he s
 
 86 JIM HANDS 
 
 left her. That s what you come for; but I guess I 
 know my duty, and I ve done it when I seen it. There 
 ain t no wrong done but what she s done. Who are you ? 
 Miss Hands? Well, Miss Hands, let me tell you I 
 won t go back with you, not on this noon s train or 
 this night s train or any train from now to eternity. 
 The Lord gave me light on this matter, and you can t 
 change me. I m sorry for her suffering and her loneli 
 ness. She s had it. So have I. I m a lonely man, 
 but I ain t going to do any different from what I ve 
 done. There ain t any more to say, is they? " he says, 
 stopping with his hands all in two knots and shaking. 
 
 a Just one, I guess," she says. "You re going to be 
 a grandfather in a day or two if you ain t already." 
 
 The old cuss looked at her with his mouth falling 
 open and a kind of a scare in his eyes. A couple of 
 times he made a pass at saying something, and then 
 he sat down in his arm-chair, and his head kinder shook 
 around to where he could look out the window down 
 the stretch of white road with the elm trees lined up 
 along the sides. She says it was near five minutes 
 that he paid no more attention to her than the chair 
 she was sitting in. And then by and by he crawls up, 
 kinder feeble, and walks over to the table and opens 
 up a big book with a mirror in the cover a photo 
 graph album, I guess and commences turning over 
 the pictures. He stops once for a long while, and goes 
 on turning the pages and stops again, and kept a-setting
 
 JIM HANDS 87 
 
 the black-rimmed eye-glasses back on the red mark on 
 his nose. Then he looks up at Katherine and walks 
 across the room. "I m getting a little mite stiff these 
 days, young lady, just help me with this overcoat. 
 I m going back with you," he says. It was just like 
 some trees that won t blow down unless the wind is just 
 right, and then up they come, roots and all. 
 
 So they come back on the three o clock train. 
 Katherine come after me, and it was near sunset when 
 we climbed up by the factory to Mrs. Riordan s house. 
 The old man had never cracked a smile or said a word 
 all the way. Katherine and the old cuss went in, and 
 I sorter realized that a heap had happened since I left 
 town, and that it was all over but the shouting, and I 
 ain t a great hand to mix up in no way with it. I just 
 sat on a stone across the way with this very pipe I ve 
 got here in my hand now. 
 
 After a while Fred and the old man come out of the 
 door the old cuss a-wiping his specs on a blue ban 
 danna and running his hand up through the places 
 where the hair grew thickest. "The finest I ever see," 
 he says, sitting down on the doorstep slow and careful. 
 
 For a bit the two of em sat there, and it was still 
 and quiet through the valley, with the town down 
 below, and smoke coming out of the chimneys where 
 folks was getting dinner. Then Fred leaned over and 
 says something to the old man, just to try his hand 
 on him, I guess, I couldn t hear what it was. The
 
 88 JIM HANDS 
 
 old feller he give a shout that banged up against the 
 hills and about cracked his old face with laughing, it 
 had been set sour so long, and a-shaking himself and 
 rubbing his knees. All of a sudden he sobered down, 
 and he turned around and looked at Fred. "Never 
 mind," says he, "I was right you re the durndest 
 fool I ever seen." 
 
 And then Katherine came out smiling and happy, and 
 she came over to the rock where I was sitting, and sat 
 down herself and looked off up the valley. 
 
 " Isn t it wonderful?" she says, after a while. And 
 she didn t say anything more for several minutes. 
 
 But finally she put her hand on the edge of my coat 
 and says, "Everything seems different to me after this 
 day," she says. "I guess maybe I ve learned some 
 thing about fathers," she says. 
 
 "I hope," I says, "I ain t got a hawk nose like that 
 one," I says, pointing with my thumb. 
 
 She smiled a little, and then she says: "Don t you 
 worry about me, Dad. If there is badness in me, it s 
 broken to harness," she says. "I ve been thinking 
 just now about the talk you had with me the evening 
 I came back from the fair. I see it different now," 
 she says. "This day has taught me a lot. You should 
 see the baby s hands ! " she says. 
 
 And then again she was looking off up the valley 
 where them blue mountains are. "I guess you oughter 
 know," she says. "It don t seem to be a thing I can
 
 JIM HANDS 89 
 
 help very well," she says, looking at the ground. "I 
 love him," she says. 
 
 "And has the Old Boss been told? " says I, a little 
 shaky. 
 
 "There ain t anything to tell," she says. 
 
 "What! Doesn t the lad love you?" I says, with 
 the words sticking all over my mouth. 
 
 She laughed then. "I wish," says she, "I wish I 
 knew." 
 
 And the funny thing about it was that things shaped 
 up in the week or two right after that so she could find 
 out. It was just as if somebody had overheard what 
 she said, and went to work to bring things around so 
 that, by suffering a lot of pain, she could see.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 I USED to think in them days that Katherine had 
 some queer notions, and her friendship for Tommy 
 Cutts was one of em. The time she was spending in 
 them days to make over that little boy would surprise 
 you. When he came to me, he claimed to be only 
 fourteen years old, and yet he was the toughest piece 
 of animal creation I have ever run across, from a Geor 
 gia wild cat to a Lake-front stevedore. The Old Boss 
 is a big-hearted, steady-eyed business man from Massa 
 chusetts who always takes more on his shoulders and 
 brains than any other three-meal-a-day man can carry, 
 and then always makes a success out of all of it. But 
 when he tried to make a Christian soul out of the Cutts 
 boy, he ran into as sure a failure as if he had tried to 
 tie a pair of white wings on to a snake, and turn it into 
 a love-bird. 
 
 I remember it had been some time that last April 
 when the Boss had called me down into the office to 
 tell me the trouble was coming, and fill my ear with 
 a song and dance about how some city institution was 
 going to send him a boy whose parents were both serv 
 ing long terms on account of what folks call impulsive 
 
 90
 
 JIM HANDS 91 
 
 temperaments, and how he wanted to make a man of 
 him and teach him a trade, and how the first principle 
 was to give him good clothes and clean collars to raise 
 his self-respect, and get him a nice room at Mrs. Rior- 
 dan s. Of course I listened and nodded when he told 
 me that the boy would work in my room ; but I never 
 have acquired much faith in schemes to make a bad 
 egg fresh and sweet again. 
 
 The big thaw had set in, with the snow running down 
 the hills to make the town a wallow of mud, and my 
 disposition was sullen and soggy, like the weather, so, 
 as I said, I just nodded and went back to work. 
 
 It certainly was a surprise to me when I saw the lad ; 
 he was thin and small and white, like a potato plant 
 that has sprouted in the cellar, and had a soft, low 
 voice. His eyes looked straight into yours, but they 
 made you think he was going to cry any minute, until 
 something excited him or caught his attention, and then 
 they always made me think of the eyes of a cat that 
 sees a bird out in the back yard. 
 
 " Tommy," says I, "the Boss is going to give you a 
 snap, and my job is to give you some work. If you do 
 the work I give you, the Boss will keep passing out the 
 snap." 
 
 "Yes, sir," he answers respectfully. "I ll do it, 
 mister." 
 
 "Do you like it here in the country? " says I. 
 
 He looked at me quickly. " Sure," he says. "They
 
 92 JIM HANDS 
 
 had me dead to the world where I was. A feller can t 
 be a sport there. Say, are there any bears in them 
 woods what?" And that s the way he d talk. 
 
 For a week he worked hard, and the Boss was more 
 pleased than if we had been shipping two hundred cases 
 a day. He took the lad aside and told him he would 
 give him a shot-gun and a fishing-rod if he did well. 
 It surprised the old man some when Tommy reached 
 into his hip pocket, pulled out a revolver, and said he 
 thought it was old and didn t shoot straight, and he d 
 rather have a shot-gun, anyhow. The Boss told him 
 to leave the revolver in the office, and to keep off the 
 streets at night. I presume he thought the boy would 
 learn vicious ways in the pool-room and on the street 
 corners. It almost makes me laugh when I think of it, 
 for young Cutts knew more badness than any one of the 
 toughs in town had seen in dreams. 
 
 No one who was in the cutting-room the day that 
 Thomas broke loose for the first time ever forgot it ; as 
 far as any of us are concerned, the boy became what you 
 call immortal. Dave Pierson, who cut vamps, started 
 for the stitching-room with his arms full of scrap pieces, 
 and when he passed Tommy, who was working on a 
 trimming-machine, the boy stepped back with one foot, 
 and Dave sprawled his length on the floor. Some of 
 the men thought it was done intentionally, but I never 
 thought so, because it wasn t like the boy to pass out 
 that kind of meanness. Anyhow, he looked down,
 
 JIM HANDS 93 
 
 kinder surprised, and says, "Gee ! I didn t mean to do 
 that." 
 
 Dave cursed like a jail warden and, before he got 
 up any farther than his knees, you could see he meant 
 to take it out of the boy. I yelled to him to stop, but 
 he was so mad he couldn t see. Then all of a sudden 
 I heard the piping voice of that little puny rascal 
 ringing out and dying back into his throat. 
 
 "I didn t mean to trip you, you dummy! " he says, 
 "and if you touch me it ll be your finish ! " 
 
 Two or three of those who had crowded over the 
 benches laughed, because it was funny to hear such a 
 frail youngster getting such big talk out of his system; 
 then Dave caught Cutts across the face with his open 
 hand, and Cutts went down. He crawled around a 
 pile of skins quicker than a rat, and struck out for 
 Dave s legs like a snake springs. The big man crumpled 
 his body so the thin, reaching arms of the boy couldn t 
 twine around him, and swung heavily with his right 
 arm. The blow landed on the boy s neck, which lay 
 open in a taut, white curve from his flannel shirt to the 
 bristling short hair on the back of his neck, and then 
 we were sure it was all done for Tommy Cutts. He 
 lay over flat, with his arms limp on the boards, and his 
 face all in a twist of pain. 
 
 I never saw a little lad look so much like an old man. 
 "You ve done it now, Dave," says I, with my tongue 
 growing dry. " Somebody get some water. You stand
 
 94 JIM HANDS 
 
 there like a pack of fools. Get water ! " By that time 
 the door of the stitching-room was full of girls, all 
 pushing back and plucking at their lips with their 
 fingers, now that everything had got so still and quiet. 
 Some of the men looked pretty hard at big Pierson, 
 so I grabbed a pattern mallet and motioned them back. 
 Then all of a sudden I heard a yell behind me like the 
 cry of a ferret. 
 
 Tommy Cutts had come up off the floor as if springs 
 were under him, and he had climbed up big Pierson, 
 reaching for his throat with his little hands. I ve never 
 seen fighting that could touch it, and in my young days 
 I ve been in many a teamster s mill myself. It was like 
 the fuss that is let loose when a high-gear belting flies 
 into strips and out of it come rattling growls of pain. 
 We found out, a minute later, when the boy had Dave 
 on the floor with his legs twined around him, and his 
 fingers in the looseness of Dave s neck, which one of 
 them had got the punishment. 
 
 It took three of us to get the boy loose. For a while 
 I thought we d need a derrick, but I had sense enough 
 to reach for a fire-pail and dump the water on the boy. 
 
 It was a bad affair for the boy, for, although neither 
 he nor Dave went to bed for it, yet it tightened up the 
 lad s nerves to a wilder tune, and he got to pay less 
 and less attention to work, and to look out the window 
 more and more. Finally he skipped a day, and came 
 back to town the next morning, wet and silent, like a
 
 JIM HANDS 95 
 
 dog that has spent a rainy night from home. He never 
 said anything to a living soul, except the little gang of 
 the toughest boys who were trying hard to be as tough 
 as he, and he talked to them like a section boss. I used 
 to hear bits of news of what he was doing from the men 
 in my room ; but I never told the Boss, for I had heard 
 him talk about the glory of making a man, and I knew 
 he would know the blood of the boy all in good time. 
 
 There was another person besides the Boss who had a 
 ringer on Tommy, and, as I ve said, that was my girl. 
 
 I never knew just how she got under the lad s hide, 
 but it might have been because she was strong and 
 healthy and liked outdoors and owned the only canoe 
 the town had seen since the Indians, which she bought 
 with money she made embroidering. Still, it would sur 
 prise you to see what kind of things the boy, who was 
 naturally as tough as a man who eats wire nails, would 
 do for her, he d walk right down through the main 
 street in the town with a bunch of some kind of flowers 
 for her, and that was more than any boy I ever knew 
 would do for less than a hundred dollars. Sometimes, 
 on Sunday, that summer, the two of them would go 
 paddling up along the banks in the canoe. I used to 
 wonder, once in a while, how he ever got the courage 
 to do it, until I remembered that no one in forty miles 
 had the courage to make fun of him. 
 
 I often bothered my head, when I was at work, and 
 would look over at the stoop-shouldered rascal, to know
 
 96 JIM HANDS 
 
 how just a girl had so much influence over him. Finally, 
 one day, I asked him. I says to him, "Tommy, I ve 
 treated you pretty square, haven t I ? I d like to have 
 you tell me why you like Katherine." 
 
 He looked at me kind of suspicious and wild, like a 
 bird when you re getting near its nest. 
 
 "What s that to you?" says he. It was the first 
 time he d talked to me that way; but in a minute he 
 turned aside from his work, leaned with his back 
 against the bench, and then passed out more talk than 
 I ever heard him do before, for he was the silent 
 kind. 
 
 "She is the real thing," he says, "and she s on the 
 level. No Sunday-school talk from her. Just straight 
 goods. She listens to what I give her, and hands back 
 a line that s kind of different. Now there s the Boss. 
 He talks to me as if I didn t know twice as much as him, 
 and he makes me tired. He s like them people in the 
 city dreaming. Look at those men around this room. 
 What do they do? Nothing. Seven o clock to work. 
 Six back again sleep and eat, see ? What s that ? 
 I d rather be a crook than that. See this collar I got 
 on ? The Boss makes me wear that, and what use is it ? 
 Ain t no use. I ll never get my face in the papers for 
 wearing it." The lad crossed his thin white arms, and 
 waited for an answer. I knew his mind well enough; 
 it was the kind that grows like a weed grows when you 
 haven t hoed the garden.
 
 JIM HANDS 97 
 
 "She don t pass out no lectures/ he went on. "She 
 tells me things see ? " 
 
 I happened to think of the flowers, and I says, " I saw 
 you Thursday," I says. 
 
 "With a bunch of asters," says he. "Sure! What 
 for ? Suppose you wanted a package of cigarettes, and 
 I says to you, I ll bring you a package when I come in 
 at one ; you says, Thanks. Maybe you wants ciga 
 rettes, so I bring em to you see ? Maybe she wants 
 asters I bring em to her. That s all." 
 
 Still I hadn t found out what I had asked about, so I 
 gave him the question direct enough. "Thomas," 
 says I, "I guess you like Katherine because she treats 
 you like a full-grown man - 
 
 "Forget it ! " says he. "That s the kind of fake the 
 old man puts up to me. Nothing in that." 
 
 "Does she treat you like a kid? " says I. 
 
 "No ! That s what you fellers would like to do. She 
 makes me feel like Thomas Q. Cutts, fourteen years old 
 - myself me ! " 
 
 I saw then, and I saw that my girl had more sense 
 than any of us. There are some women like that - 
 they see things I don t. 
 
 And it was only a few mornings after the Durn Fool s 
 baby was born that the fun began. I ve often wondered 
 whether, if they d left young Cutts alone with Katherine, 
 how he d have come out. I rather think he was doing 
 better already when the trouble came.
 
 98 JIM HANDS 
 
 Monday morning he slinked in, looking tired, like a 
 hound that s been all day on a fox-trail, and with a red 
 welt across his white face. About eleven o clock a 
 horse and buggy came over the hill in a cloud of dust. 
 It was the sheriff, covered with sweat and mud. He 
 came up the stairs two at a time, and into the room with 
 a rush. 
 
 Where s the Cutts boy ? " he yells. 
 
 "Here I am, you shrimp ! " came the same old piping 
 shriek. "Take your hands off that pocket, or I ll blow 
 you open." The lad was backed into a corner, with a 
 big black revolver in his skinny little fist, and his eyes 
 staring. 
 
 "They found out who did it," he says, with a grunt. 
 "Then stand still, you suckers, for I m going to clean 
 out." The little rascal waved his gun around, and I 
 guess we all ducked. His eyes were mighty prompt - 
 looking from one to the other of us, and Gleason, the 
 sheriff, standing with his hands up, in front of the 
 packing-boxes. The lad had nearly got to the door 
 when Dave Pierson saw his chance, and reached out 
 from behind a cutting-block and banged the boy s 
 wrist with a pattern mallet. 
 
 The gun went off as it flew out of his hands, and 
 then there was smoke and yells and the screams of the 
 women in the stitching-room. Tommy Cutts shot 
 like a black shadow between the lines of machines, 
 cursing at the top of his lungs. The sheriff headed him
 
 JIM HANDS 99 
 
 off at the door, and before we could see what he was 
 going to do, he had swung himself out one of the windows 
 above the river, let himself hang for a second, and drop. 
 
 It was three stories to the river, and the water was 
 shallow in places, with brown, slimy rocks poking up. 
 But the boy had the luck of a devil, and when we 
 looked out he was swimming with strong overhand 
 strokes across the still place above the lower dam. 
 
 "Stop, or I ll shoot," yelled Gleason out of the win 
 dow. The boy s voice answered shrill and echoing 
 from the trees. 
 
 "Gwan, you dope!" says he, dripping on the other 
 bank. 
 
 Of course, then we were anxious enough to know 
 what the lad had done, so Gleason sat down in a chair, 
 mopping his fat old face, and told us they wanted the 
 boy for an attempt to murder. He had been partridge 
 shooting on the Knox Farm out on the East Road. It 
 was Sunday, and all the Knox people had driven in to 
 church except Knox himself, who was a hot-tempered 
 old fool, and had caught the lad and cursed him for 
 breaking the game-laws, and had taken him to the barn 
 and horsewhipped him. I didn t blame young Cutts, 
 for I d have done it myself, but the boy had seen his 
 chance, grabbed an axe, and buried it clear through 
 Knox s collar-bone. Then he left Knox the way he 
 somehow managed to leave all others who tried the 
 weight of their hand upon him spread out like an
 
 100 JIM HANDS 
 
 empty meal -sack on the ground. Cutts had thought 
 Knox was done for for good and all, and I believe he 
 came to work confident that no one would ever find 
 it out. But the farmer wasn t so badly hurt, and he 
 came to and whined the whole story into the doctor s 
 ears before the stitches were taken. 
 
 Heaven knows the law was slow enough in this fly 
 bitten settlement, but it was dow r nright funny to see 
 Gleason go out to chase after the little lad it was no 
 more use than setting a mouse-trap to catch mosquitoes. 
 I watched him go over the hill again, and then went 
 back to work. But I didn t feel good. I knew reform 
 was all over for the Cutts boy, and although he was a 
 bad product well, there s no accounting for likes and 
 dislikes, and Tommy had had a poor show from the first 
 inning. 
 
 The Boss came up when the sheriff was gone. He 
 
 was excited and hot. "Jim," says he to me, dodging 
 
 my eyes, "I know now all about the trouble, and the 
 
 boy was fooling me all along. I feel exceedingly bitter 
 
 - exceedingly bitter ! " he says. 
 
 That s what he said, and he had hardly gone when the 
 office telephone rang, and they told me Katherine was 
 waiting for me downstairs. 
 
 "Dad," says she, "what has become of Tommy?" 
 Her eyes was big and earnest. 
 
 "The last I saw of him, he d just landed on the other 
 side of the river," I says.
 
 JIM HANDS 101 
 
 "It s a shame," she says. "If I could only see him ! 
 I heard about it all, and came down here. He acted 
 in self-defence that s the law. If I could speak to 
 him, he would give himself up he would do 
 what I tell him." 
 
 Girl," says I, "it isn t the boy, it s the blood of his 
 mother and his grandmother that s ailing him. Do 
 you mind that ? " 
 
 "Oh, that s an easy way to convict him," she says, 
 with her head thrown back. "You expect to treat the 
 boy as if he were cut out of different material from us. 
 And then, when you fail, you give him up the way you d 
 give away a dog because he s snapped at a neighbor who 
 has kicked him ! " 
 
 Her eyes had fire in em, but it took me several min 
 utes after she d gone to admit to myself she was 
 right. 
 
 And then, during the next few days, came the big 
 fall rainstorm. There were lots of water, and the river 
 swelled fatter and fatter, and Friday morning the dam 
 above the Crocker Mill went out. It was wild weather, 
 and I couldn t help feeling sorry for the little lad who 
 must have been hiding somewhere in the woods, like a 
 beast without a home. 
 
 About the time we were shutting up for the night, on 
 Saturday, Mrs. Barker s little boy came running up 
 along the river-bank, shouting for help. 
 
 "Somebody s drowning," he yells. Most of the men
 
 102 JIM HANDS 
 
 pulled their hats over their ears and went into the teeth 
 of the storm, along the river-bank. 
 
 The rain was cutting down and stinging like a wasp, 
 and filled your eyes so that everything looked like it 
 does when you get a crack on the head. The river was 
 writhing like a snake on a stove ; way out in the middle 
 we could see a white and black patch wedged in between 
 two boulders. It was a human being, all right, but I ll 
 be blest if you could tell whether it was a man, woman, 
 or Baptist, in that storm. 
 
 "Who is it?" says I to the Barker boy, who was 
 standing scared and still at my heels. 
 
 "I don t know," says he. "I seen her fall in when she 
 was trying to catch a canoe that had broke loose." 
 
 "Here, get a rope!" I yells, trying to think what I 
 would do with it when it came, for no man would dare 
 risk his life on a journey out to the middle of that boiling 
 current. The girl out there turned her head once, and 
 gave a scream that you could hear for all the rush of 
 water and wind. "It s all over," thinks I. And then 
 I heard a voice behind me in a high, rattling scream. 
 * Give me that rope, you lobster ! That girl is my pal ! 
 It was Tommy Cutts. 
 
 Before we caught on to the trick, the boy had taken a 
 half hitch beneath his armpits, and was wading out in 
 the broth, a hundred feet up the stream. We held the 
 other end of the rope, more because he had told us to 
 than because of any sense we had. In a couple of
 
 JIM HANDS 103 
 
 seconds the rascal was in the current, with his legs and 
 arms reaching around and clawing the water. 
 
 " He ll miss her," hollers one man. "Sure death!" 
 whispers another. 
 
 "What girl is it? "I says. "She s done for," I says. 
 But the luck of a devil was on the boy he landed 
 against the outside boulder with a crunch, only you 
 couldn t hear it, and he was reaching for the girl with his 
 little hands. There was no use the nerves of a man 
 had to let loose, and we gave a yell when we seen he had 
 made the loose end of the rope fast around her body. 
 We pulled them in, each one of them knowing as much 
 as another nothing ! And the woman was lying face 
 down for a second, all limp like an empty sack, with 
 ""her hair all wet and covering her neck, and trickles of 
 blood on her hands. I turned her over myself, and it 
 was my girl ! 
 
 I could hear the blood pounding in my head as I 
 looked at her. She was so white and lay so still. But 
 it was only a second. Then she opened her eyes and 
 caught up a breath, and I seen her lungs fill, and I 
 knew she was still alive. And then I saw Charlie Ward, 
 the doctor, who had stopped his buggy down there by 
 the bridge and come running, and I heard him say, 
 "Well, is the boy alive, too ? " 
 
 So I looked behind me, and I seen there was a soft, 
 red place on the boy s forehead. The doctor said he 
 might pull through all right. I was told that they
 
 104 JIM HANDS 
 
 carried him, neck and heels, and all sagging between, 
 up to the Thorntons house, and they stretched him out 
 on a sheet no whiter than he, and the doctor says, " He ll 
 be up in a few days. That kind of lad is hard to put 
 away." But the boy went a long way past that. 
 
 Of course I went with my girl. My Annie had come 
 home that day, and it was a shock to her when we 
 brought Katherine up to the back door with the light 
 gone from her skin and them brown eyes turned the color 
 of lead. 
 
 We didn t know then that she would be in a fever 
 before the night was over, and what we would have to 
 bear. I can see her now lying on the bed in the front 
 room. I remember it was still raining, with a lot of 
 wind rattling the blinds, and water slapping on the 
 windows, and Annie holding the lamp and the wet clothes 
 scattered on the floor. But Katherine opened her eyes 
 and give a little smile and says, "I m all right," as if she 
 was waking out of a dream, and then she started up 
 once and says, "Tommy Cutts! How is he?" So I 
 told her he was all right, and she smiled again and says, 
 "Don t let them arrest him," she says, and dropped 
 back sort of weak, the way a toy balloon acts when 
 there s a leak in it. 
 
 It was near nine o clock when the knock came. I 
 knew it weren t the doctor, for I d left him upstairs 
 looking at one of them miserable little thermometers 
 and shaking his head, with my Annie and little Michael
 
 JIM HANDS 105 
 
 watching him with both their eyes as big as buttons on 
 an overcoat. When I opened the front door, there was 
 a young feller dripping with water, and kinder white. 
 And I seen it was Bob Harvey. 
 
 "I just heard about the accident," he says. "How 
 is she, Mr. Hands? I had to come. You don t under 
 stand. Maybe she won t understand, either. I guess 
 she won t. I ve got to see her." 
 
 Right then I heard the doctor s voice as Annie was 
 letting him out the back door on to the driveway. "I ll 
 be back in an hour," says the voice. "You asked if 
 there was danger, and I m going to be honest with 
 you, there is some danger." I remember them 
 words was like hatpins running into a feller s ears, and 
 I found I had my hand grabbing young Harvey s arm, 
 and his hand was on my wrist. I could feel them fingers. 
 He must have had muscles like strips of rawhide. 
 
 "I ve got to see her," he says, breathing hard. "I 
 can t tell you any more. I ve got to see her ! Do you 
 hear me ? " He pulled me over under the light, and 
 moved close to me and looked square into my eyes. 
 
 "Do you understand? " he says. 
 
 "Go on up," says I. 
 
 So I followed him up the stairs, and we went in. He 
 went right over to her. Her eyes were half open, and 
 she smiled again, and her hand kind of crept out, with 
 her fingers moving. 
 
 "Bob ! " she whispers.
 
 106 JIM HANDS 
 
 " You ain t going to die ! " says he. " You listen to 
 me, Katherine," he says. "You will fight! "and he 
 took hold of her hand and bent down and shut his teeth 
 with that same look I seen once before on his face when 
 he was a boy and was hurt playing football and got up 
 and shook his head. 
 
 It was strange. It was just as if he had some kind of 
 strength he could give to her. You could almost think 
 the blood was running through his lips into her hand. 
 You could almost think you saw the color come back 
 into her cheeks. And she even moved and looked at her 
 hand pressed against his cheek, as if it was something 
 she wanted to see. 
 
 "I didn t know you liked me," she whispers, and 
 smiled a little. 
 
 "Like you?" he says, without paying any attention 
 to me. "Like you? Why, girl, I love you," he says. 
 
 And with that she moved her hand and touched his 
 hair, kind of gentle, and then there was a second of 
 woman s devilment in her face, and she said, "I don t 
 know exactly what I m going to do with you," she 
 says ; and she give a happy little sigh and went into a 
 sleep again, with her lips moving, and that dark red hair 
 of hers all around her head on the white pillow, and the 
 wind howling away outside and rattling the blinds. 
 
 The boy got up then. He looked at Annie, who had 
 come in with some medicine on a tray, and he looked at 
 me, but he didn t say anything. He just went away.
 
 JIM HANDS 107 
 
 He just went down the stairs, and I heard the door shut, 
 and I looked out the window and seen the feller rushing 
 out of sight through the storm. 
 
 He came back the next morning. Katherine had been 
 worse. I had figured I ought to go to find out some 
 thing about Tommy Cutts,and I seen Bob Harvey going 
 in as I went out from the barn driveway. I had a heavy 
 lump of feeling in me. Something told me Katherine 
 wasn t going to live. 
 
 When I got down to the Thorntons , where they d 
 taken the Cutts boy, I found the Old Boss was there. 
 Tommy was sitting up on one of them tough elbows of 
 his, and looking at the Boss with eyes shining like rats 
 eyes. 
 
 "I ve been to the bad and I ve just come out of it," 
 he says. "Tell me straight," he says to the Boss, "was 
 it her finish?" 
 
 "No," says the old man. "I guess not." 
 
 "Well, then," says the boy, "why don t you thank 
 me? " he says. "They can go on and maybe get mar 
 ried or something," he says. 
 
 I guess the Boss thought the boy was still out of his 
 head. "Who?" he says, with half a smile. 
 
 "Why, the girl and your son," says Tommy. "It s 
 an awful case," he says. "The lady was a friend of mine, 
 anyway," he says, with a grin, "and your son ain t so 
 bad, and I wouldn t knock him, anyway. I promised 
 her I wouldn t see ? "
 
 108 JIM HANDS 
 
 I seen the surprise in the Boss s eyes. I seen him shut 
 his two fists and kind of bite his lips under that gray 
 mustache of his. But he only said, "I m coming to 
 see you again, young man," he says. "You did some 
 thing mighty good, after all," he says, and smiled at the 
 two of us and went out. 
 
 But he didn t see Tommy Cutts again. For the next 
 morning, when Mrs. Thornton went in to look at him at 
 six o clock, he had gone, and so had ten dollars in the 
 sitting-room desk and a revolver, too. 
 
 The news was around town before breakfast on Sun 
 day, and fifty men and boys went out to look for the 
 lad not so much because of the ten dollars as because 
 the doctor said he would die in the woods. 
 
 It was funny that I should have been the one to have 
 found him. He was sneaking along the stone wall in 
 Parker Dun s pasture. When he saw me, he started 
 for the woods like a trailed fox, and I nearly did my 
 self out of my lungs chasing him. When he had got 
 near the edge of the woods, he turned on me. 
 
 "Come back, you fool," I yelled. 
 
 "You want to put me in the cooler," he screamed. 
 "If you come any nearer, I ll blow your head off." He 
 had the gun well enough, and I still had a good many 
 years to live. 
 
 He turned slowly, looking over his shoulder, 
 and limped into the woods. He was the toughest 
 human creature I ever saw. I remember how blue
 
 JIM HANDS 109 
 
 his eyes looked, and how his thin shoulders slanted 
 down. 
 
 They told me that there were fifty miles of timber 
 land before you get to so much as another lumber 
 camp. They said that no boy or man could get out of 
 the place alive, and yet I d bet my salary and I get 
 a good one now that Tommy Cutts did it. He had 
 more lives than a litter of kittens.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 SOMETIMES a feller don t know how to move, and so he 
 don t move. And in all them days when Katherine was 
 getting well, and the Boss s son was coming to see her, I 
 never told anybody, not even my Annie, that the Boss 
 knew; and he never said anything to me, and it was 
 hanging over us all. 
 
 The Old Boss is pretty human. He has his tender 
 side, so to speak, and his hard side, and in them weeks 
 that followed there was one girl that showed up the first 
 and another showed up the second. 
 
 One day the Boss sent for me to come to his office. 
 He met me just outside with his hand on the knob. 
 He s an ugly, good-hearted old bear in business hours, 
 with his gray hair all mussed up and his clothes all baggy, 
 just as if he was as poor as one of them yellow-headed 
 Finns who tack heels in the basement. 
 
 "Jim," says he, "talk quick! You said you d like 
 to get a girl to paste linings," he says. "Do you still 
 want one?" 
 
 "I do," says I, "if I can get one who won t always be 
 grinning and laughing like the last one," I says "that 
 freckle-faced Casey girl," I says. 
 
 With that the Boss let his face slide to a smile. 
 
 no
 
 JIM HANDS 111 
 
 " Here s one in my office," he says, "that looks as if 
 she wouldn t laugh for a hundred dollars. And she 
 ain t got freckles. Take a look at her and see if she ll 
 suit yer," he says. 
 
 So with that I walked into the office, and at first I 
 scarcely noticed her. She was one of these people that 
 fades into the landscape of a room like them lizards that 
 change color. You ve seen that kind. Tis hard to 
 pay more attention to em than to the gas-bracket 
 on the wall or the pattern on the carpet. 
 
 "Miss Jennie Lyons," says the Boss, and with that I 
 heard one of them little "Oh, my s !" that sounds as if 
 it come out of somebody you d have to see under a 
 microscope, or whatever yer call it. And when I turned 
 I seen she was kinder small. It weren t her size so 
 much, but she made me think of a mouse in a trap, 
 scared and begging on its hind legs, and maybe she was 
 twenty-two years old. 
 
 We d had that stretch of rain, and the little thing was 
 wet, and everything drooped and clung around her, and 
 there was a couple of wet sprouts of hair sticking down 
 on her cheeks kinder like a picture-frame for her solemn, 
 big-eyed little face. 
 
 Something inside of me says, "Jim Hands, she s no 
 good, and you know it, but you ll hire her just the same." 
 
 "Have yer had experience cutting? " I says. 
 
 She looks at me, and her under lip commences to flip- 
 flip like my little John s when I speak cross to him.
 
 112 JIM HANDS 
 
 "Have ye? " says I again. 
 
 "Oh, no, sir ! " says she, so soft yer could hardly know 
 whether she was talking or licking her lips. 
 
 "What s been your experience? " I says. 
 
 "General housework," says she, and I seen the Boss s 
 thick nose wrinkle up like the front of a wash-board. 
 
 "That ll be useful," says I. 
 
 "Yes, sir," she says, with her little mouth open, and 
 them big, round, brown eyes still looking at me as 
 surprised as if my face was a moving-picture show. 
 "Yes, sir," she says, "and I was a waitress over at the 
 summer hotel at the Springs, but I weren t strong enough 
 for the work," she says. "And I wrote a letter to my 
 Aunt Abbie, for she s all the folks I got, and asked her 
 if I might come home ; and she wrote ter me and told 
 me to get a job in a factory." 
 
 I felt then that I had small chance of heaven if I 
 turned her down. But I tried to think of a way to tell 
 her that she wouldn t do. It stuck in my throat like 
 a fishbone. So I says, "Come down here at eight 
 to-morrow," I says, and out she went like somebody 
 who s heard bad news. 
 
 The Boss looks up at me and brings his thick fist down 
 on the papers on his desk. 
 
 "Jim," says he, "I make it a rule to have no senti 
 ment in business," says he. "We didn t want her. I 
 knew she wouldn t do, the moment I laid my eyes on 
 her. She ain t fitted fer industrial life," says he.
 
 JIM HANDS 113 
 
 " Hereafter, follow my rule/ he says: "No sentiment 
 in business. I knew she weren t any good, the minute 
 I seen her." 
 
 "But yer sent for me to talk with her," I says. 
 
 He ran his finger around his collar and got red and 
 coughed and moved his feet. "Did I?" he says. 
 "Well, I thought you d have enough backbone to turn 
 her down," says he. "No sentiment in business," 
 he says. "If she don t make out with the work, fire 
 her," says he, growling. "Send her down to me." 
 
 "All right, sir," says I, not wishing to say more; 
 and the next morning Jennie come in a half hour late. 
 She looks around the room with her big eyes and pretty, 
 pale face, and backed over to a cutting-bench where I 
 had sorted out an armful of the patterns, which took 
 me an hour, and she leans on the board before I could 
 stop her, and the whole business comes down on to the 
 floor, all sizes and shapes mixed up together, and noise 
 enough to make a snail jump through a barrel-hoop. 
 
 "Oh ! " says she, crouching down as if somebody was 
 going to hit her. "Ain t that like me? " she says. 
 
 "I couldn t say," says I. "Not yet. Yer made a 
 good beginning by being late the first morning." 
 
 And with that her lips begins to go flip-flip, and when 
 she d hung up her things in the coat-room and come 
 out, I seen her eyes was red and her little hands was 
 shaking. 
 
 "Your job is simple," says I. "Take these linings,"
 
 114 JIM HANDS 
 
 I says, "and paste glue on one side of em/ I says. 
 "Here s a bell, and the boy will come in from the stitch- 
 ing-room for em when you ve got a lot done," says I. 
 
 It weren t ten minutes after that the bell rang, and 
 when I went to see I finds she s pasted only three ! 
 The next time she d done a case of them, but they were 
 all on the wrong side rights and lefts mixed up. So 
 it went, and when the day come to an end she run like a 
 mouse after her little black coat. But the next morning 
 in comes Jennie Lyons a good hour late again, and with 
 her she brought one of them little white and black cur 
 dogs that yer see hanging around the alley back of the 
 town hall ; and he was so thin you could almost see the 
 grain of the wood through him when he d lie down 
 on the floor, and now and then he d look around the 
 room and let out one of them forsaken yelps of his that 
 sounded like disease and death. 
 
 "Oh, Mr. Hands," says Jennie, with her brown eyes 
 as big as saucers and all out of breath. "He followed 
 me all the way down," she says. "Poor little thing," 
 she says. "Half starved," she says. "Listen to him 
 cry ! And I m going out now to get him something to 
 eat, and bring him and put him under the bench by the 
 glue-heater," says she. "He can come to work with me 
 every day," says she. 
 
 "Dogs ain t allowed in the factory," I says, thinking 
 of the Boss s words. "We want no sentiment in busi 
 ness ! " I says, kinder sharp.
 
 JIM HANDS 115 
 
 With that the dog sticks his pointed face up at me, 
 with his loose, moth-eaten ears drooping over, and lets 
 out one of his whoops. And Jennie looks at me and then 
 at the dog, and I seen her under lip droop down and 
 begin to flip-flip again. It made a man feel kinder like 
 a graveyard in a thunderstorm. I seen her big eyes 
 getting watery, and she drew a breath and let it loose in 
 instalments, like it hurt her chest to let go of it. 
 
 "Oh, well," says I, weak and foolish. "There s a 
 ham sandwich in the paper up there on that shelf," I 
 says-. " Twas intended for me, but give it to the little 
 dog," says I, "and say no more about it," I says. 
 
 I thought to myself that, once fed, the ratty little 
 beast would run away from her; but it weren t so. He 
 stuck to her like a burr on a woollen stocking, with his 
 little sore eyes and his sniffles and scratching himself. 
 She couldn t do her work for watching him and patting 
 his head and throwing everything inter a panic when 
 somebody d trip over him and start him yipping and 
 screaming around the big room till your ear-drums would 
 think that ten fleas was having Virginia reel upon them. 
 
 On Thursday of that week Jennie turned over the 
 whole pot of glue. It was enough to make a saint eat 
 his halo, for of all the sticky, slow-moving stuff, that 
 paste will make an honorable mention and walk away 
 with a prize for smell ! But, as luck would have it, the 
 blooming pup Caesar, she d called him was lying 
 asleep at her feet, and all of the hot stuff spilled on him.
 
 116 JIM HANDS 
 
 He opened his face and let out a yelp that nearly pushed 
 out the winder. And with that he started out of the 
 puddle, streaking it over the piles of sheepskin, with a 
 blanket of glue dragging out as he went, doing damage 
 to leather at the rate of about ten dollars a yard and cut 
 ting his circles around the room in a way to surprise 
 yer for a dog of his size. I ll never ferget seeing the girl 
 watching him go, with never a word, and her soft eyes 
 frightened and staring. 
 
 On the fourth time around Csesar made up his mind it 
 was time to stop and think, and he chose a box of thread 
 belonging to the stitching-room to sit in. With his 
 fore feet he tried to wipe the stuff out of his eyes, and 
 then he looks at me and lets out another sticky yelp. 
 
 "Talk is cheap, old scout," says Dave Pierson, ad 
 dressing the cur. And you d better keep moving while 
 yer can move," he says. "For I m thinking of making 
 a tobacco-pouch of your hide," he says, "ter remind 
 me of what yer just did to the back of my pants legs 
 when yer passed me by," he says. 
 
 And it seemed as if the dog understood him all right, 
 for he started off again, rubbing up against every corner 
 and anything he could lean against to take off the glue. 
 You know how a dog does. And every now and then, 
 even after all this time, I still find sticky places around 
 the room where he scraped himself. 
 
 " Twould be a blessing if he d find the door," says 
 Eddie Murphy, "for, ter tell the truth," says he, "this
 
 JIM HANDS 117 
 
 room, large as it is, seems six feet by six with him in it," 
 he says, and with that the dog goes by him, and he 
 looks up to be sure Jennie didn t see him, and he lifts 
 the beast with his foot out into the hallway. "And 
 now look at them fancy socks of mine ! " says he. 
 
 Well, you that have never been foreman of a room 
 knows nothing of the way a riot like that will break 
 up the work. Glue was everywhere ! Seven men was 
 in the wash-room, scrubbing it off their clothes. Tommy 
 Cutts stepped in a puddle of it and tracked it into the 
 stitching department. The doorway was crowded with 
 the girls that had left their machines to see what was 
 going on. My own fingers was webbed with it like a 
 ^duck s foot. Somehow, it got between the pages of 
 my stock-book, and a week after that I couldn t get 
 to the records with a steel crowbar. So it goes. 
 
 But it didn t take me a week to get mad. I could 
 feel the hair on the back of my neck crawl up and down 
 my collar ! "Ho ! ho ! " says I to myself. " When the 
 whistle blows, Jennie Lyons, big sad eyes or no eyes, 
 -you will get yours all right! You fool," says I to 
 myself, "you oughter been ashamed to hire a girl for 
 pity," says I. "You oughter fired her every day 
 since she s been here. She ain t earned the interest 
 on a shortage," says I. "To-night I ll show her!" 
 I says. "She can look like a lonesome mouse, and no 
 good will it do her," I says. "Chuck ! and out she goes. 
 Business is business," I says.
 
 118 JIM HANDS 
 
 I worked the rest of the afternoon thinking of it. 
 " Don t make any mistakes now/ I says, talking to 
 myself as I cut out a sample vamp. " Don t listen to 
 none of her talk. Fire her and walk away ! " I says. 
 And later on, I remember, I went to the end of the room, 
 and I see the town-hall clock said quarter to five. 
 "Walk right up to her now," I says to myself again. 
 " Don t botch the job," I says, and I went back to wait 
 for the machinery to shut down. 
 
 By and by the whistle blew, and I looked around. 
 I seen Jennie was busy cleaning up, with that slim little 
 body and big, round, scared eyes of hers, and I seen 
 that the others had mostly gone, so I draws myself 
 up and walks over to where she was standing. 
 
 " Jennie," says I, "you needn t come back to-morrow," 
 I says. "I don t think you ll do. Stop in the office 
 and get your pay," I says. 
 
 Well, sir, she never says a word ! She just looks at 
 me, with her face getting whiter and something like the 
 look of an old horse that you ve shot in the forehead. 
 "That s all," says I, and walks away. 
 
 After a bit the power was turned off, and the shafting 
 eases up and stops with a sigh that always makes me 
 think it s glad for the night s rest. It was pretty still 
 in the room, and getting kinder dark. 
 
 I remember I could see the clouds streaked along the 
 ridge across the river where the sky was lightest, and 
 there was frost coming on the winders. I was under
 
 JIM HANDS 119 
 
 a lamp I d lit and checking up the piece-work, and all 
 of a sudden I hears a little noise behind me, way down 
 the room. "Sh-sh-gug-gug-ooh," it sounded. I looks 
 up, and I seen that Jennie hadn t gone yet. I seen her 
 little white face through the dark as if it had been 
 rubbed with phosphorus. 
 
 With that I closed up my bench-desk and walked down 
 toward her. She was sobbing, all right. She shook with 
 em. 
 
 " Whatcher waiting for? " I says. But I made a big 
 mistake by speaking. Not that she answered, for she 
 never peeped, but just flung herself forward on the bench 
 and begins to cry kinder soft ; and every now and then 
 she d catch a breath, and you could see by the raising of 
 her little shoulders when she d caught a long one. 
 
 "Flif-flif-flif," she went. You know how it sounds 
 when a woman s crying. Between you and me, I d 
 rather have em come back at me with a lot of good 
 four-ply, full-mouthed tongue-lashing or fling a flat- 
 iron. This flif-flif-flif business is a foolish sketch. It 
 makes me feel as cheerful as one of them rosettes of 
 black crape they hang on a door. You know how yer 
 shift yer feet and wonder what you re going to do about 
 it, and whether what you ll say will make it worse or 
 better; and your collar shrinks about three sizes, and 
 you ve got your choice whether to rip out a oath or 
 two and make it worse, or whether ter try reason, which 
 you know ain t any good.
 
 120 JIM HANDS 
 
 Well, I stood there, and it was soft at first, but it was 
 getting louder, with a worrying sound in it. 
 
 "Whatcher crying for, Jennie?" I says, soft and 
 pleasant. "Don t cry," I says; "cut it out!" 1 says, 
 getting mad. "What s the matter with yer? " says I. 
 
 With that she raised her head, and I seen them big 
 scared eyes of hers with them long lashes was full of 
 water, and it was dripping from her little chin. 
 
 "I m fired," she says, with some more of them sobs of 
 hers. "0 dear me!" she says, as if I wasn t there. 
 "Mr. Hands has fired me," she says, "and my poor 
 little dog," she says. "I ve been fired!" And then 
 some more of that "flif-flif-flif." 
 
 I looked up at the ceiling and at the floor and out of 
 the winder. "Maybe," I thinks, "I was harsh with 
 her," says I, lying to myself and knowing it. And I 
 looked at her again, and she d spread her face and hands 
 down on the bench again. 
 
 "For the love of peace, shut up!" I says. "Come 
 back to work to-morrow," says I. "I haven t any more 
 time to talk with you," says I, very stern. "Business 
 is business." 
 
 And so it come about that she was back the same 
 as ever, to my shame be it said, and she brought 
 the peaked little dog with her, and a new little red 
 collar on his neck ; and he went smelling around, sus 
 picious and whining, on the trail of the glue, and stop 
 ping now and then to scratch and look up at me with 
 his red, watery eyes.
 
 JIM HANDS 121 
 
 I knew the trouble had got to come again, and I went 
 inter training for it. I don t know what my men 
 thought of me, I was that short with them. I was 
 practising cold blood, though, and every day Jennie 
 was getting worse and worse with her work half 
 done and her pasting clippings of poetry from news 
 papers on the post in front of her bench and talking soft 
 and shy to the dog. We d have been getting out of 
 the deal cheap to have paid her the wages and told her 
 to stay at home and pray for more orders. 
 
 But one morning in walks the Boss. When he comes 
 upstairs like that I can tell in a minute whether he s 
 feeling fine or going to raise a rumpus, for if everything s 
 good he ll stop in the door and scratch his head and 
 look around, but if it s the other way, he ll walk right 
 in, very fast for his age, and with one eye shut and rub 
 bing his ear with his hand. This time I knew something 
 was the matter. 
 
 "Jim," says he, "I see by the report you have a lot 
 of damaged vamps. Who did it ? " says he. 
 
 " Jennie Lyons," says I. 
 
 "That mouse of a girl we hired in November? " says 
 he. "Is she any good?" says he. 
 
 "No," says I. 
 
 "Why don t you fire her? " says he. 
 
 "Oh, well," says I, "I tried it once, and I ll try it 
 again," says I. "She s a little thing," I says. 
 
 The Boss was mad. "Jim," he says, "this ain t your
 
 122 JIM HANDS 
 
 factory to do as yer please with it. Your duty is to 
 see that what s under you is run to the best advantage 
 at most any cost. You know I don t want anybody 
 to do anything dishonest, but duty is duty. And 
 another thing/ he says, "I hate to see a man that s 
 been in factories most of his life get soft and mushy. 
 We ain t running a home for orphans! Remember 
 what I said to yer before," says he. "No sentiment ! " 
 
 "I ll fire her," says I. 
 
 "I wouldn t trust yer to do it," he says. "Send her 
 down to me at the noon hour," he says. "I ll do it 
 myself," he says, and walks away. 
 
 Of course I wasn t going to have any trouble if I could 
 help it. No more of that flif-mf-flif and water for me ! 
 So I planned never to say anything to her until she was 
 ready to go to dinner. But she got away before I knew 
 it, and I just caught her at the entrance to the offices. 
 
 "Jennie," says I, "the Boss wants to see yer in his 
 office." 
 
 "Oh, I know," she says, with her little voice. "He s 
 going to fire me ! " And I thought she was going to 
 start sobbing. 
 
 "Walk right in," says I. "I have nothing to do with 
 it," I says. "Go right in and sit down. He s in the 
 sole-leather room, and he ll be right up," I says. 
 
 Pretty soon the Boss comes up from the basement 
 and sees me. "Jim," says he, "where s that no-good 
 girl that s come down for her time ? "
 
 JIM HANDS 123 
 
 "In there," says I, " sitting in your office." 
 
 "She knows what I m going to say to her, I suppose," 
 he says. 
 
 "From what I can guess, she s next ! " says I. 
 
 With that the Boss leaned forward so s he could look 
 down toward the bookkeeper s desk and into his own 
 office. "Great Scott," says he, "she s got her handker 
 chief out! Confound the luck!" he says. "She s 
 crying ! " he says. 
 
 "Are you sure?" says I, grinning. 
 
 "Thunder yes," he says. "Well, ain t she any good 
 at all ? " says he, pulling at the short hair above his ear. 
 
 "None at all," says I. 
 
 "None at all? " he says. "Well, what should we do 
 in a case like this?" he says. 
 
 I never answered, but just pulled open my knife and 
 whittles a match with it. 
 
 "Oh, well," says he, "I ll just explain to her that we 
 can t use her," he says. "Those that can t earn their 
 pay must go. That answer is easy," says he, and he 
 pulls down his vest and walks in. 
 
 On the way back after dinner, and when I got down 
 by Mrs. Jordan s boarding-house, I was paying a good 
 deal of attention to places to put my feet down, and it 
 weren t till I got to the rise that I looked up, and then, 
 just as sure as I m sitting here, I seen Jennie Lyons 
 carrying the measly dog under her arm and just going 
 in the factory door.
 
 124 JIM HANDS 
 
 She weren t in my room when I got up there, so it 
 was a big load off my chest ; and it weren t till I started 
 down the stairs that night and looked in at the lasters 
 room, where Ben Joline is foreman, that I seen what 
 had become of her. For there she was, cleaning lasts, 
 and the dog at her little feet inter the bargain ! 
 
 Ben Joline is dead now. You never knew him, but 
 it took a big, rough old fellow to handle them Finns 
 and Canucks and jailbirds that we always seemed to 
 get on the lasters bench. He was one of the kind that 
 shaves in the morning and has a bristling beard by 
 noon; and his neck was as big around as a boy s body, 
 and red. Then he was marked with smallpox, and 
 until he got inter this business he had been boss of 
 gangs of longshoremen on the Lakes. And he had a 
 voice that would bust the big pipe on a church organ, 
 and was a very rough talker and strict with his men. 
 When I seen him standing there, and the thin, mousy 
 girl sitting there, too, it made me think of the way 
 they feed live rabbits to the lion in the circus. 
 
 I met the Boss at the foot of the stairs with his hat 
 on, going out. 
 
 "Did yer fire the girl? " I says. 
 
 "Jim," says he, waving his hand, "I m just going 
 out in a big hurry. Unless you want me for something 
 important, you ll have to wait for another time," he 
 says. 
 
 And I guess it was three or four days after that when
 
 JIM HANDS 125 
 
 Jolinc come up at about five and walks up to me, 
 hitching up his trousers front and back, as he learned 
 sailoring. "Jim," says he, with a whisper that sounded 
 like a train going over a bridge, "did that Jennie Lyons 
 work for you? : 
 
 "Yes," I says. 
 
 "Weren t any good, was she?" says he. 
 
 "No," says I. 
 
 "Why didn t you give her the sack? " he says. 
 
 "What s that to you?" says I. 
 
 "Ho ! ho ! " he says, "you old rascal, you ! " he says. 
 "I bet I know." 
 
 "You tried it, too?" I asked. 
 
 "Sh-sh," says he, slapping me on the back with his 
 big hand, " don t say a word ! I ve sacked a couple 
 o thousand men in my day. And the Boss told me if 
 she weren t any good, to tell her to go. Well, she ain t 
 any good you know that," he says. "And that 
 sick pup of hers ! " he says. 
 
 "Well," says I, "you ve fired her? " 
 
 "Sure," he says. "I fired her, and now what s best 
 to do next? " he says. 
 
 I laughed at him and says, says I, "Well, you know 
 she ain t got any folks or anybody to love her but that 
 sore-eyed dog," says I, "and I hardly know what 
 she d do up here in the winter without work," I says. 
 "But then," I says, "we oughter have no sentiment 
 about business matters," says I.
 
 126 JIM HANDS 
 
 " Before you go on trying to throw your joking at 
 me," says he, "wait till I tell yer what I done," he says. 
 "I found out that Joe Bent down in the packing-room 
 was short of somebody to sort sizes, so I offered her to 
 him, and darn me, he took her ! " 
 
 "He didn t know?" says I. 
 
 "Not a word," says he. "She s going to start in 
 to-morrow ;1 and if you say anything to him, I ll choke 
 yer ter death." 
 
 "It s a mean trick," says I. 
 
 "On Joe? "he asks. 
 
 "No, on the little girl," I says. For I was thinking 
 of Bent and his ways. I always kinder disliked Joe. 
 He was one of these young fellers that is tall and so 
 straight it seems to hurt him, and he never makes no 
 mistakes and keeps a diary and thinks he s got trouble 
 with his stomach, and so far as I could see he had about 
 as much feeling for anybody else as I ve got for that 
 board there on the floor. He was always sniffling and 
 sniffling and always done his duty, and had so much 
 modesty that he d try to show how modest he was 
 every chance he got. And cold-blooded ! He was 
 about as human as a plaster-paris model of a cake of ice. 
 
 As I was saying, I says to Ben Joline, "It s a mean 
 trick on the girl." 
 
 "Oh, yes," says he, "but you know Joe. He hates 
 all women-folks, anyway; and when he makes up his 
 mind, he s good for action. He never has any use for
 
 JIM HANDS 127 
 
 girls. He ll get pleasure out of sacking Jennie. The 
 boss knows it, too. She s as good as gone. She could 
 cry aloud on the floor and he d freeze it for her," says 
 he. "He s a woman-hater, he is," and with that he 
 slaps me on the back again as if he d just had money 
 left him, and walks off. 
 
 It was as much as four weeks after that I went down 
 to the office to talk about a new lot of upper leather 
 with the Boss, and we argues for a while, and I remem 
 ber I says to him at last, "Well, anyhow, the cheaper 
 product cuts best for economy," I says. 
 
 "And, by the way," I says, "I understand Jennie 
 Lyons was working for Joe Bent in the packing-room. 
 Of course you know it," I says. 
 
 " Yes, I did," says the Old Boss, looking at me kinder 
 suspicious. 
 
 "She was working for him," says I. 
 
 "Was?" says he. "Did he fire her?" 
 
 " He did," says I, and I pulls a cigar out of my pocket 
 and holds it up. "How s that?" says I. 
 
 " The cigar ? " he says. " Where d you get it ? " 
 
 " You ve just come in," I says, " so you don t know. 
 Joe Bent gave it to me." 
 
 "Great guns!" says the old man. "I never knew 
 Joe ever gave away a cigar in his life." 
 
 " Why," says I, " he passed em around to everybody 
 this morning." 
 
 "For what?" he says.
 
 128 JIM HANDS 
 
 " For discharging Jennie/ says I. " He s fixed it so 
 she won t work here no more." 
 
 "Had the backbone! I knew it," says the Boss. 
 "No sentiment for him! She s through." 
 
 " Yep," says I, " last night he married her." 
 
 "Happy days!" yells the Old Boss, and slid down 
 in his desk chair. "How did it happen?" 
 
 "Well," says I, "they say he told her she wouldn t 
 do, and she began to cry; and by and by he put his 
 arm around them little shoulders of hers, and then, of 
 course 
 
 "Well, I ll be thundered!" says the Boss. "You 
 and Joline, the tough old nut that he is, and cold 
 blooded Joe Bent ! Not one of you with the nerve ! 
 So far as I can find out, a little woman s weeping is an 
 awful weapon," he says. 
 
 "And what about you?" says I. "You tried." 
 
 "Me?" says the old man. "Oh, I don t count. 
 I m a damn fool about those things, anyway." 
 
 And yet it was kinder funny that he looked up at me 
 then for a minute or two and felt around with his 
 fingers until he reached the calendar on his desk with 
 the sheet on it about six or eight weeks behind and 
 tore off a piece of it and crumpled it up and threw it 
 in the waste-basket, but never stopped looking at me. 
 He didn t look very happy, I thought. He looked like 
 somebody going to say good-by to an old friend or the 
 like of that.
 
 JIM HANDS 129 
 
 "Jim," he says, by and by, with a different voice, 
 "I want to see you this noon hour," he says. "I ve 
 got something to talk over with you. Do you go home 
 these days to dinner?" he says. 
 
 " No," says I. " Katherine is on her feet again, and 
 now that we re so loaded up with orders," I says, " and 
 I can t spare the time, she fixes something up for me 
 and brings it down," I says, and he nodded and called 
 the stenographer.
 
 So it was at the noon hour that the business came 
 to a head, and sometimes when I look back on it, it 
 seems to me as if things was falling all together and 
 joining one thing to the other to make a new pattern 
 out of life. 
 
 I suspected what the Old Boss had on his mind, and 
 when I went down into his office, I seen there was still 
 a smile in his eyes, but none on his mouth. 
 
 " Jim," he says, " sit down. You know me," he says. 
 " You ve known me a good many years. Maybe this 
 will be the end of your regard for me. But," he says, 
 with a kind of a begging look in his eyes, "I m going to 
 talk straight. I might say nothing to you, but somehow 
 I d rather empty both barrels right into your face," 
 he says, " and please don t forget that," he says. 
 
 Right then, in spite of his words, I could feel the liking 
 I had for the Old Boss drop down out of my body and 
 kinder leak out at the bottom of my feet. I knew what 
 was coming. I d waited for somebody to take the first 
 move, and I knew he was going to take it. 
 
 "Jim," he says, "you know my boy is attracted by 
 your girl. I guess we ve all known it since the Tommy 
 Cutts business," he says. "Well, Jim," he says, "he s 
 getting along, and in the next year or so he ll be out in 
 
 130
 
 JIM HANDS 131 
 
 the world," he says. Yesterday he come away from 
 college, and last night he told me he had come up to see 
 your girl and was going to ask her to marry him," he 
 says. 
 
 I remember I went to the window and looked out 
 over them piles of snow where the plough had cut 
 through early that morning, and I must say the office 
 seemed kind of hot to me. 
 
 "He was pretty straight with you," I says. 
 
 "Well, I was with him, too," says the Old Boss. 
 " I told him I wouldn t have it. And I m straight with 
 you. I ll tell you the same." His jaw was getting to 
 project the way it does. 
 
 Maybe I was feeling some of it, too. " Well," I says, 
 " if you ve talked to him, there ain t any use of talking 
 to me," I says. 
 
 He gave a grunt then. "I don t dare to say too much 
 to my boy," he explained. "The affections is a queer 
 lot of plants," he says; "the more you abuse em, the 
 better they grow," he says, "like cussed things like 
 poison ivy," he says. "It s you and I that have got to 
 settle this." 
 
 "Go on," says I. 
 
 With that he jumped up and began to walk up and 
 down and kick the corners of the rug, and then he 
 wheeled around on me. " I don t want him to fix any 
 thing up with her," he says, growling. " I don t know 
 how deep the thing has got already. I don t know
 
 132 JIM HANDS 
 
 what has happened. I asked the boy to go back for 
 a week or two and give me a chance to see it his way. 
 And he s gone went on the noon train. Is he under 
 any kind of obligations to your girl?" 
 
 1 Yes/ I says. " I believe she has given up some 
 of her spare hours to him," I says. 
 
 I seen the red come into his face, and then I seen him 
 pull himself together, and he came over and looked 
 at me. He looked as if he liked me. He kinder smiled. 
 
 " Jim," he said, "there ain t anything more hard to 
 say than what I ve said to you. I don t know your 
 girl. I know she is mighty good to look at. But 
 he s my only boy, and I ve always pictured him growing 
 up and marrying a girl who has a little different place 
 than your girl has a little more of everything. It s 
 hard to know just what it is. Maybe a little more 
 money and a little more education and a little more 
 social life and a little more of a lot of things that you 
 couldn t give your girl. It isn t your fault and it isn t 
 hers. But it s something I feel sure would only make 
 unhappiness, Jim. I don t know why, but it would be 
 bad for both of em. They ve known different kind of 
 lives. He wouldn t be satisfied with hers nor she with 
 his. He wouldn t understand her friends and she might 
 not like his. I m trying to play square. I want you 
 to help me to stop it, Jim." 
 
 I suppose I would have answered him somehow, if it 
 hadn t been for what happened. I was standing there
 
 JIM HANDS 133 
 
 and thinking and kinder gagging in my throat, and all 
 of a sudden I seen what I supposed was the right thing. 
 
 " Mr. Harvey," I says, "my girl is outside that door 
 there, waiting for me to come out and get my dinner. 
 Why don t you ask me to send her in and let you talk 
 to her talk alone?" 
 
 " Great Scott !" he says. "That wouldn t do." 
 
 " What s the matter?" I says. " I thought you was 
 going to be square?" 
 
 He shut his fists then, and says, " Send her in." 
 
 So I sent her in she, with her eyes big with sur 
 prise and the color just coming back into her cheeks. 
 And I stood like a man at the door of a jury room. 
 Why, I could paint a picture of the grain in that 
 .^cypress panel right now. 
 
 I don t know to this day what was said inside that 
 room. It isn t anything I ever talked about. But 
 when the door opened, I seen the Boss running his 
 fingers through his hair very fast again and again. 
 And Katherine came out, and she took my hand, and 
 you d never known from her face that anything was 
 wrong, but her hand was like the hand of a stone statue 
 on a drinking fountain, only you could feel the nerves 
 in it. 
 
 "Mr. Harvey has told me many things," she says, in 
 a clear voice and with her head raised. " And maybe 
 you d better hear what I m going to say to him finally, 
 so there won t need to be any misunderstanding,"
 
 134 JIM HANDS 
 
 she says, easy and clear. " Well, Mr. Harvey, maybe 
 you are right. What you have said amounts to one 
 thing. It is that I have too little to give your son," 
 she says. " Maybe you are right, sir," says she. " How 
 can I say ? We are very simple people, and least of all 
 pretentious," she says. " Maybe you know that your 
 son would be unhappy because of me," she says. " It 
 is enough that you think so and have told me," she says. 
 " I will see your son no more. I will tell him that he 
 belongs to a people who are in many ways different from 
 mine different in several ways. You have said 
 different in money and education and manner of life," 
 she says. " Let me add a few more differences," she 
 says, " differences in simplicity and good-heartedness 
 and humble faith," she says. 
 
 And with that she thought a minute and smiled as 
 natural and good-natured as if she was talking of the 
 fall of snow we d had. "Oh, no," she says, "I would 
 not marry your son. You have my word, sir." 
 
 The Boss looked up at her kind of quick. " You 
 love him, don t you?" he said, as if he didn t want her 
 to say "No." 
 
 " Oh !" says she, as if he had struck her square in the 
 face, " I d rather not discuss that, if you please." 
 
 I seen the Boss look up at the ceiling and bite his lips. 
 I remember how the blood was pounding in my forehead 
 till my eyes smarted. 
 
 " Suppose it should turn out "he began.
 
 JIM HANDS 135 
 
 But she stopped him. " Then," she says, " in that 
 case," she says, with a little laugh, " it would be neces 
 sary for his father to come to me when he comes, and 
 ask for me when he asks," she says. 
 
 And she turns around to me and says, " Dad, walk 
 home with me, please," and she bowed to the Old Boss, 
 and we went out the factory door and over the railroad 
 bridge and up Maple Hill. She got whiter and whiter, 
 but never said a word till we were in the front room; 
 then she caught the arm of the big chair and sat down. 
 
 " Don t ever let my mother know," she says, and then 
 all the mask she d been wearing dropped off of her, 
 and she dug her face down into the cushions and you 
 could see the shaking of her body. 
 
 That was a bad day for us a bad day for us all. 
 The girl wrote a letter to Bob Harvey. It was the next 
 day. She gave it to me all sealed and stamped without 
 a word and with the touch of her hand like that other 
 in the Boss s office. But though she never let out so 
 much as a whisper, even to me, of course I had to tell 
 my Annie, and little Mike and his brother John was 
 wondering why Katherine didn t play with them any 
 more, romping and hiding and so on at bedtime. 
 
 " Never you mind," I says to Annie. " It will soon be 
 forgotten. We make a lot of fuss and noise about 
 to-day, and yesterday is all forgotten to-morrow," I 
 says. " And what I want to know now is why in thun 
 der the person that uses the snow-shovel can t bring
 
 136 JIM HANDS 
 
 it back and hang it on this nail," I says. " I drove it 
 here on purpose," says I. 
 
 But the girl went on silent and thinking, and no one 
 knew what she had in her mind when she d look up in 
 the evening from her embroidering and let her work 
 fall in her lap and maybe smile at one of us, kinder 
 patient.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 IT was when there was beginning to be signs of spring 
 coming again that she changed so. It was hard to tell 
 what had come over her. She weren t like herself at all. 
 She began to think of clothes again not the kind 
 she d always liked to wear, but shorter sleeves and 
 bigger hats and the like of that. She didn t talk the 
 same. She had a sort of " what s-the-difference " way 
 with her. I seen Annie with tears in her eyes over it 
 more than once. " I don t know what s the matter with 
 the girl," she says to me. " There s something wild 
 about her," she says. " I hate to tell you, Jim," she 
 says, " but she went sleigh-riding yesterday with Myrick, 
 the bank cashier that s been divorced," she says, "and 
 wears them yellow gloves," says she. 
 
 Of course you can t tell ever how things would have 
 gone if Anne Villet hadn t come. I sometimes think 
 it is only because people feel responsible to other people 
 that they don t fly off the handle, and it was Anne 
 Villet that made the difference to Katherine. And 
 there wouldn t have been any Anne Villet if it hadn t 
 been for old Joe Paul. 
 
 Joe used to work in the factory right there in the 
 basement where the Finns tack heels. It smells damp 
 and cold, and is filled with the kind of sweet smell of 
 
 137
 
 138 JIM HANDS 
 
 sole-leather from them big, flat, creaking skins piled 
 at the other end of the room. He sat there for fifteen 
 years or more. 
 
 A factory like ours can see some strange things, and 
 now and then some strange folks that I don t make out 
 to understand at all. Some of em drift in and some 
 of em drift out. It s them that stay that you get to 
 know, but Joe Paul stayed on a good many years, and 
 from the beginning to the end there was something 
 I didn t know about him, and I never looked at him 
 without feeling like you do when you try to chew up 
 a mouthful of spinach that s full of grit. 
 
 Joe just came from nowhere, as far as anybody could 
 tell, and brought nothing with him. He was old - 
 you couldn t tell how old, and yet it seemed kinder as 
 if somebody d painted him a few days ago and he d 
 just stepped out of the frame with his thin, long neck 
 and its loose skin, and his hands with a couple of twists 
 of rheumatism in em that made em look like hooks, 
 and his old baggy clothes. To be sure, he showed a 
 whole lot of signs of cold water, and his face was pink 
 and scrubbed-looking, even at the bottom of them 
 wrinkles that all ran down one way and give his face a 
 kinder drooped appearance, just like you sec in a piece 
 of wet cloth hanging somewhere. And he had a thin, 
 gray mustache, too and that drooped. And his 
 clothes drooped. But there was a different look in his 
 eyes, though they was always watery, like old people s.
 
 JIM HANDS 139 
 
 And as I say, so far as he gave out any signs, or so far 
 as anybody knew, he turned up from nowhere. 
 
 I can remember him coming to work bent a little, 
 and a hitch and a spring in his step, and regular at the 
 time-clock for all them years, with never a miss. He used 
 ter walk down from that little three-room house he built 
 up there where the road to the lake runs so close to the 
 bank of the river, just above the Canuck settlement. 
 It may be because he built his shack up near them that 
 the story got around that his mother was a French 
 Canadian, and most everybody believed it. It seemed 
 to me he was too regular and too quiet and didn t use 
 his hands enough. Them Canucks always make motions, 
 ( even when they talk to themselves, and this old feller 
 kinder let his arms hang at his sides, and when you d 
 speak to him he would kinder duck as if you d made 
 a pass at him with a closed fist. The fact is, he was a 
 strange old bird, wearing ear-laps and mittens in winter, 
 and in all the years he was here, and with all the old 
 frayed-out black neckties I ve seen on him, for he d 
 wear one tie day after day and Sundays till it fell apart 
 and he had to get a new one, I never yet seen him 
 without a clean collar, low-cut, twice too big for him, 
 and clean. 
 
 He never spoke to nobody. The foreman might tell 
 him to do something, and he d just raise his hands as 
 if he was going to salute like a soldier, and then stop and 
 go off and do what he d been ordered without a word.
 
 140 JIM HANDS 
 
 Men got to letting him go by em without even saying 
 good morning to him. It was natural. And if it was 
 necessary to ask him a question, he d just look up 
 kinder surprised and, no matter what it was, he d say, 
 slow and easy, "Well, now I don t know as I can rightly 
 explain"; and he always said that when he started, 
 even though the answer that came on top of it was just 
 plain yes or no. 
 
 It s funny that we don t know people we see in 
 the factory every day for fifteen years. You d think 
 in that time you d have looked at em, listened to em, 
 and touched ; em enough to know what was inside of 
 em. Of course old Joe Paul didn t say much, but a 
 feller would even get to know a dog in that time, and a 
 dog don t say anything at all. You just get to know a 
 dog by whether his nose is hot or cold, whether he 
 chases sparrers after finding out he can t catch em, 
 and whether he finds out when the feller who feeds him 
 is feeling sick, and comes up and scratches at the bed 
 room door with his paw. But it weren t till the end, 
 when Annie Villet come and got a job in the packing- 
 room, that any of us knew what was wrapped up in his 
 package. 
 
 Why, before that, I can remember how Bent, that thin, 
 pale feller that was boss downstairs there and married 
 Jennie Lyons a feller that must have hed powdered 
 alum thrown on his soul, but had a hawk eye and a long 
 white nose that smelled into everything I can remem-
 
 JIM HANDS 141 
 
 her how he sized up Joe Paul. I can hear him now 
 with that whine of his. 
 
 "He s just learned from experience that everybody s 
 looking out for number one," he says, "and the big 
 Me," he says, "and he don t want nothing to do with 
 nobody. He just draws his dollar and seventy-five 
 a day, and neither that or anything else is anybody s 
 business but his. He s wise. He gets good company 
 outer himself. And he don t talk none because he s 
 learnt that talk don t put any good in the stomach." 
 
 "Huh ! " says Dave Pierson to him, "if it did you d 
 be overcrowding your blooming system all the time," 
 he says. 
 
 But Bent went right on, pretending not to hear. And 
 he says : "Why, he don t even get sociable after the day s 
 work is over. Don t I know? I come by his shack a 
 half-dozen evenings a week. He s always sitting there 
 alone. Looks as if somebody d thrown him up against 
 that door and jammed him down on to the stone steps. 
 I ve seen him breaking up a piece of bakery bread to 
 throw to them darn fool birds. He knows them birds 
 has got more sense than men," he says, "and he s 
 got a long-stem pipe with a bowl on it as big as a drinking- 
 cup. Haven t I seen him puff it up red after dark when 
 I was going by? Cooks his own meals," says Bent. 
 "Ain t that a sign he hasn t any use for people? " 
 
 "It s a wonder you wouldn t cook your meals, too," 
 says Dave, "seeing you kick so much about em. The
 
 142 JIM HANDS 
 
 trouble with old man Paul is quick said. He s got sour. 
 He s what you call turned/ " he says, "and I never see 
 him but what I wish he d get out of my way. He makes 
 me think of a glass of water with a spoonful of milk in it." 
 
 Maybe Joe Paul knew what the fellers and girls thought 
 of him. He never looked at any of em when they was 
 looking at him, and kept his eyes down mostly. It 
 was only when he thought nobody was looking that he d 
 look at people, and then there d be a kinder warm look 
 in his eyes as if he was fond of em. Some of the boys 
 in the village uster throw things at him when he d go 
 and come after the new library was built, and he spent his 
 evenings reading, but he never turned around. He d 
 just pull his collar up, maybe, and duck his head into it 
 kinder like a turtle. 
 
 And speaking of the library makes me think how 
 Fanny Bowles, whose father raises horses, and she s got 
 a job tending the books, says to me one day: "Mr. 
 Hands," she says, "that old man with the faded brown 
 overcoat," she says, "is the most regular man in town 
 here at the library," she says, "and it s funny, because 
 all he ever cares for is books or pictures about war," 
 she says. 
 
 "War? " says I. "That s funny ! " I says. "There 
 ain t anything war about old Joe Paul," I says. 
 
 "Well," she says, "that s what he wants," she says; 
 "and many the evening he sits here looking at them 
 battle pictures in the Universal History of Europe and
 
 JIM HANDS 143 
 
 America/" she says, " and running his crooked finger 
 around between his neck and his collar/ she says. 
 
 And though I thought of it then, I guess it went out 
 of my head, until long after this Anne Villet drifted into 
 town. She came early that spring. 
 
 You couldn t tell, even if you seen her, how old she 
 was. Her face was kinder dry, and yet there was some 
 thing maybe the look about her neck or ears or the 
 way she walked would make you think she weren t 
 so old, after all. Her hair was yellow. It didn t look 
 natural yellow, neither, and her teeth would show gold 
 when she opened her mouth, which weren t often, for she 
 usually kept her lips shut close together like a feller in a 
 twenty-round fight that s getting the worst of it. Maybe 
 she was pretty once. And anyhow, she looked pretty 
 sometimes, even then, though she was thin and quick 
 and nervous like a stable cat. 
 
 It was kinder funny about her. I happened to be 
 downstairs in the office the day she came to town, and it 
 seemed about her, just as it did about the old man, that 
 she come from nowhere, and yet was just loaded and 
 sore with something say, like experience. And I 
 heard her talk to the bookkeeper, who took down her 
 name and job and give her a piece-card, and so on. I 
 heard her short, jerky answers like the cracks of a whip. 
 You d thought she d been pinched for shoplifting to 
 hear her, she was that defensive about the commonest 
 things. It made you think of somebody who d started
 
 144 JIM HANDS 
 
 out to stand against the wallops of the whole world and 
 do it all alone, maybe getting driven back all the 
 time, but fighting all the time, and thinking every bush 
 or tree had somebody hiding behind it with an axe or 
 a life-preserver. That was Anne Villet, and while she 
 lasted she was a good worker. And she had a fierce 
 cough. 
 
 She was about as far away from people as Joe. There 
 was something interfering between him and the rest of 
 us, and there was something between her and the rest 
 of us, too something, whatever it was, that made her 
 say little and brush her yellow hair back with her thin, 
 long-fingered hands, nervous-like. The girls didn t like 
 to be seen talking to her. I can t remember a time when 
 I noticed an}Hbody stop her in the hall. She got a room 
 down at Mrs. Jordan s. It ain t a very nice place, but 
 there weren t any of the other boarding-houses that 
 wanted to take her in. 
 
 I heard my Katherine and Betty Morris, who worked 
 in the stitching-room, talking about her, for Katherine 
 took an interest in all that went on at the factory. 
 
 "Well, Miss Hands," says Betty, "yer can t expect 
 anything different," she says. "For this Villet girl 
 looks different from any of the rest of us," she says, 
 and we know nothing about her. We don t even know 
 where she comes from." 
 
 I thinks to myself, when I heard her say it, that, after 
 all, there is hard and cruel streaks in women as well as
 
 JIM HANDS 145 
 
 men, and maybe even more so, except in a few of em like 
 my Annie. 
 
 "But she must be lonesome," says Katherine. "I 
 know how I d feel if I come here from the city." 
 
 "Ho!" says Betty, "you aren t the same. You 
 aren t young and old looking at the same time," she 
 says, "and your hair is natural, and you don t have them 
 hard eyes. She s tough." 
 
 "Tough? " says Katherine. 
 
 "Yes," says the Morris girl, lifting that pointed chin 
 of hers. "You know a girl like me can t afford to be 
 having to do with Anne Villet." 
 
 I seen Katherine scowl a bit then. Then by and by 
 she said, kinder quick, "Well, there are other girls right 
 in your room that s kind of rough in their manners. 
 Perhaps I am, sometimes." 
 
 "Well," says Betty, "maybe so. But they re tough 
 and don t care and laugh and carry on, but Anne Villet 
 don t laugh or carry on, and is kinder suspicious of every 
 body. There s a lot of difference between them two 
 kinds of toughness." 
 
 I don t doubt she was right. Anyhow, this new girl 
 come and went, and what was inside her nobody knew. 
 Once Joe Bent met her coming down over the hill to the 
 factory, and said a word or two to her. And I can see 
 her yet how she looked up like somebody does to see 
 whether it s going to rain, and then pointed her finger at 
 him sharp and quick and says to him, "Gwan now and
 
 146 JIM HANDS 
 
 sell your papers." So I knew she was from some big 
 city. 
 
 I guess Bent was the last one that tried to say any 
 thing pleasant to her except old Joe Paul. The old 
 man come down one afternoon after noon hour, and 
 before he went down to his work he shuffled into the 
 packing-room where she was marking sizes, and he went 
 up to her and looked at the floor. 
 
 And he says, "I brought yer a book," he says, laying 
 one down on the bench. "It s called Ten American 
 Heroes/ he says, "by a man named Thaddeus B. 
 Wetherby," he says "I thought maybe you had a lot 
 of time alone to yourself," he says. 
 
 Well, you could see in a flash how she kinder stiffened 
 up and got on the defensive just as she always did, and 
 her face looked harder and drier than ever. But when 
 she turned around and seen that old fool with his hat off, 
 looking at the floor and his square-toed boots, and 
 smoothing his gray hair, the look kinder slid off 
 her face, slow, and she reached out as if she was going 
 to touch him on the sleeve of that faded brown 
 overcoat of his. 
 
 "Say," says she, "I m much obliged," she says, and 
 maybe she d have said more if her cough hadn t stopped 
 her, and before she was through coughing old Joe Paul 
 had scuffed his way downstairs. 
 
 I suppose anybody would have known if they had 
 taken notice that she was coughing all the time. I guess
 
 JIM HANDS 147 
 
 she weren t very well. I guess it was mostly her tough 
 ness that she was living on. 
 
 Anyhow, the old man noticed it. He noticed it just the 
 same as he noticed that she didn t go with anybody and 
 never even spoke to anybody. Father Ryan had been 
 to see her, and he had shook his head at me when he told 
 me, and he says, "Jim, she maybe is a Catholic and 
 maybe not. I can t get it out of her," he says, shaking 
 his head and smoothing his chin on the back of his hand, 
 "and," he says, "I despair of leading her," he says. 
 "There is now and then a woman that has had some 
 kinds of leading so much," he says, "that they won t be 
 led no more by nobody," he says, "though I suppose," 
 he says, "that it is out of the way for me to be admitting 
 failure to soften a heart," he says, "be it as hard as your 
 mother-in-law s pie crust," he says, for he was always 
 forgetting the business of life for his little joke. And 
 maybe even Father Ryan, with his blue eye, that had 
 seen many a good sinful old soul come and go, didn t 
 see what old Paul had seen. 
 
 It was one day after work when I went into the 
 wash-room that I caught a bit of it. For I heard 
 voices under the winder, and I knew that the factory had 
 let out half an hour before, and I wondered who it was 
 that was hanging around. So I stuck my head out, and 
 then I seen it was them two just below Anne Villet 
 with her black hat and old Joe Paul. She was sitting 
 on a empty wooden packing-box, and he was trying to
 
 148 JIM HANDS 
 
 look at her with his watery eyes. And they was talking 
 together. 
 
 Of course I couldn t help hearing em, and from what 
 they was talking about you could tell that the girl had 
 just had one of them fits of coughing, and maybe had got 
 a little dizzy and sat down, and old Paul had seen her 
 and had come up. 
 
 " You re sick," he says, fooling with the buttons on his 
 coat. "There ain t any use trying to say you ain t," 
 he says. " You ve been worrying me for weeks. Well, 
 now let me explain," he says. " I ve been noticing. 
 You remember the evening you stopped to rest by my 
 door up there," he says. "I knew you was sick, you 
 was so short-breathed. And I lit a match, pretending 
 it was for my pipe, but it was to see your face, girl," 
 he says. "I m a good deal older than you," he says. 
 "You take my advice, and don t work for a while, and 
 live mostly on milk," he says. 
 
 With that she kinder flattened herself up against the 
 factory wall and steadied herself on it with the flat of her 
 hands. What do you care ? " she says. I ain t your 
 daughter or nothing. What do you care? It s none 
 of your business what s the matter with me. It s 
 nobody s business but mine, and I don t care." And 
 with that she give a laugh. "I guess I am sick. I don t 
 know. Maybe I ll cash in. What do I care ? " 
 
 The old man, I could see, kinder stepped back as if 
 she d hit him in the mouth. He was studying for a
 
 JIM HANDS 149 
 
 minute, and then he says, as if it was the last thing in 
 the world he d believe, " Aren t you afraid of death? " 
 he says. 
 
 "No," she says. "It s all the same to me whether 
 I keep on or stop ; it s all the same to me. I know 
 where I get off ! " she says. 
 
 Old Joe Paul give a little gasp and kinder shook 
 himself, and I heard him say, " It s funny how different 
 people s instincts are," he says. "I guess I ve had a 
 dread of death and injury," he says, "since I was 
 born," he says. "I ve always been afraid. I d give 
 anything in the world not to care." 
 
 She was coughing again, but when she stopped she 
 says, "Nonsense!" she says. "What yer want and 
 what you re afraid of is all an idea, that s all." 
 
 With that he shook his head. "It ain t so," he says. 
 "My fear ain t never been in my mind," he says. "It s 
 been in my body. It s in the body!" says he. "I 
 couldn t never play ball when I was young," he says, 
 "for I never could see anything coming toward me with 
 out dodging," he says. 
 
 "Oh, dodge nothing ! " she says, with her bold voice. 
 
 The old feller looked at her then, and he put his hand 
 out and touched her on the arm. "Girl," he says, 
 "don t be cross with me. I like you. If I d had a 
 daughter - he says, and stopped. I suppose he was 
 lonesome. And he touched her arm again. 
 
 And with that she give a scream and drew her arm
 
 150 JIM HANDS 
 
 back quick snatched it away. I can hear her voice 
 now, rough and angry, like a snapping dog s. "Quit 
 that ! " she says. "If you made me cry, do you know 
 what I d do ? I d kill you ! " she says. 
 
 The old feller kinder staggered back, ducking his 
 head, and he went shuffling along up the path from the 
 boiler-room, with his head bent over as if somebody was 
 going to hit him over the head with the flat of an axe. 
 And the girl stood up below the winder there, breathing 
 hard and holding herself till he was out of sight, and then 
 she turned face to the wall, and she really begun to cry. 
 
 She was sick the next day sick enough so she 
 couldn t get up, they said. I don t believe anybody 
 paid much attention to it. She was out three days, 
 according to Joe Bent, her foreman, and then she come 
 back the middle of a morning, kinder dizzy and un 
 certain on her feet, with her jaw set and the hard look 
 in her eyes. 
 
 "Mr. Bent," she says, speaking rough, "I ain t ready 
 to be fooled with, and I want to know who it was got 
 so smart when I was down and out and sent me things 
 to eat, and milk, and paid the doctor. I didn t know 
 about it till to-day, and I don t want nobody paying 
 anything for me. I ain t asked no favors of anybody," 
 she says, "and I don t want none. Listen to me ! " she 
 says. "If you know who it was, tell em from me to 
 stop it if they don t want trouble in car-load lots," she 
 says, "whether it s a man or a woman," she says.
 
 JIM HANDS 151 
 
 Bent is got a mean streak in him, as I ve already said. 
 " Well/ he says, " I can tell yer who sent them things," 
 says he. " It was Joe Paul," he says. 
 
 She kinder caught her breath then, and looked around 
 to see if anybody d heard him, and a little smile come 
 into her face, and she caught the edge of the bench she 
 was that weak and sick, and she sat down in a chair 
 and stared out the window, just as if she was thinking 
 and didn t see nothing. And she sat there staring and 
 never moving until one of the girls from the packing- 
 room had been ordered down to help her to walk back 
 to Mrs. Jordan s boarding-house. 
 
 She was bad off. It was a week before she was walk 
 ing around again, and I heard from Mrs. Jordan that old 
 * man Paul was paying for the expense, and had made 
 Mrs. Jordan promise not to tell anybody. It was getting 
 dark early them days, for it was before spring had done 
 any more than melt all the snow off and fill the valley 
 with fogs from the thaws and the smell of half-froze mud, 
 and the old man used ter wait till the doctor come in the 
 evening to go up there and see the girl and talk to her 
 and stand her abuse and rough ways. And yet Mrs. Jor 
 dan said the girl had changed some. She let the old man 
 help her out. I couldn t hardly believe it. And she 
 even liked to have him come and talk with her between 
 her fits of coughing not that he said much, but just 
 because it seemed to give her satisfaction to watch him 
 setting by the winder in a rocking-chair, with his old
 
 152 JIM HANDS 
 
 hook-hands hanging by his sides, until the light had 
 all gone, and maybe she d dropped off into a doze. 
 Then he d get up and shuffle out of the room and fill 
 his big pipe going down the stairs. 
 
 After a while we heard from Doc Ward that she was 
 getting better. Not cured but stronger and able to sit 
 up. "Why," says Ward, "it s a marvel what a lot of 
 fight in the mind she has," he says, "and what a lot of 
 strength can be in a poor, thin, worn-out body," he says. 
 
 But at the end of them days it was getting to be warm 
 weather again, and the spring rains had started things 
 growing green and soft once more when she come back 
 to work, though I guess there weren t half a dozen people 
 in the whole factory paid any attention to it. I under 
 stood that Doc Ward and old Joe Paul had done their 
 best to stop her, but she was running herself like some 
 of them who ve had enough of doing things suggested 
 by others. She was back punching the time-clock, 
 and silent as ever. 
 
 She was silent as ever and as much to herself, but there 
 seemed to be a change in her, somehow. Anyhow, 
 Bent told me he thought so. He said she didn t flare up 
 the way she used ter do. "You ve seen a horse, Jim," 
 he says, "that when you rattle the whip in the holder 
 wants to run away or kick out the dasher. That s the 
 way she was," he says ; "but now," he says, "she s like 
 one of them horses that s got over being ugly, and 
 stands the whip and sticks his head and ears down and
 
 JIM HANDS 153 
 
 won t change his pace, no matter what happens," he 
 says. " There s something that ain t quite so tough 
 about her," says he. 
 
 Maybe it was so, for I believe I seen her smile a couple 
 of times myself. A look of it would come over her when 
 she d watch old Joe Paul go up the path toward the 
 Canuck settlement after a working day was over. 
 
 It s strange how things go out of yer mind. I hadn t 
 thought of either of them two strange specimens for a 
 long time till the second Saturday noon when the feller 
 who used to be foreman of the basement room here 
 seen me going out through the office with a handful of re 
 ports for the Old Boss, and hollered out after me. 
 
 I stopped, and he says to me, " Say, Jim," he says, 
 "you ain t seen old man Paul, have yer? He ain t 
 been down to-day." 
 
 I shook my head ; I was thinking of something else, 
 I guess, and it went out of my mind, as I say. Of course 
 if I d stopped I d have remembered. I d have remem 
 bered he never lost an hour before since he come into 
 the factory. But I never thought.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 THE next day was Sunday, and I can draw a picture of 
 it. I never seen such rain ! When I woke up in the 
 morning, it was splashing against my winder, and by 
 noon there was a big cut in the road in front of the house, 
 and we had to put a dish-pan under a place in little 
 Mike s room where the water had come through the 
 ceiling. There was no use of me and Annie and Kather- 
 ine trying to go to the church, and I wondered how 
 Father Ryan would make up his mind to go himself. 
 The water was just splashing down and going slantwise 
 with the wind. 
 
 It had been a dull day, without even a Sunday paper, 
 which is no good anyhow, except that you re always 
 hoping to see something in it the next time you look. 
 It was dark early by the thick clouds and the heavy 
 weather, and all of us was sleepy from doing nothing and 
 eating too much supper. 
 
 Maybe that was the reason it jumped me when there 
 come them sharp raps on the front door. It was a wild 
 night with the howl and yell of the wind, and when I 
 turned the knob a chunk of the wet come in to make me 
 step back, and half filled my face with water. Whoever 
 it was pushed their way in, and then I seen it was Anne 
 
 154
 
 JIM HANDS 155 
 
 Villct. She was out of breath, as though she d been 
 running, and she had no hat, and her umbrella had been 
 blown inside out. Her face was white, too. I ll never 
 forget it. 
 
 " Mercy on us," says Annie, behind me, raising her 
 hands. "How many of yer? What s the matter?" 
 says she. " Have yer seen a ghost ?" she says. 
 
 " No," says the girl, throwing her umbrella into the 
 corner and walking with them quick steps into the 
 parlor, where she squinted with the light. "No," she 
 says, trying to get her breath, and coughing. "Old 
 Joe Paul is dying." 
 
 "What! "says I. 
 
 " You heard what I said," she says, sticking her finger 
 at me. "The doctor was there yesterday. I was up 
 at the old man s shack all last night," she says. "He 
 had a stroke. The doctor said he d cash in the next time 
 he had one," she says, panting, "Do you understand 
 that ? It won t be a couple of hours more before it s all 
 over, and the doctor has gone over to Dayton s Mill," 
 she says. 
 
 "How did you know this?" says Katherine. 
 
 "How did I know?" says she. "You re wasting 
 talk," she says. "I sat up with him since four o clock 
 yesterday afternoon, that s how!" 
 
 You poor girl ! What can we do ?" says Annie, for 
 speech was all knocked out of me. " What did yer come 
 here for?"
 
 156 JIM HANDS 
 
 " I come here," says the girl, leaning up against the 
 table, with her yellow hair hanging in wet strings, " be 
 cause I thought that man," she says, pointing to me, 
 "was straight and had some sense," she says. 
 
 "Jim !" says my Annie to me. "Can t you be alive," 
 she says. " What can we do ? " 
 
 The girl straightened up and her jaw kinder set and 
 she says, "Listen to me," she says. " Get him a band 
 a brass band a band with drums." 
 
 At that I guess the two of us looked at her as if she 
 had been as crazy as a straw in a whirlwind. 
 
 "A band!" says Katherine, with her eyes as big as 
 butter-plates. 
 
 "What s the matter with yer?" says the Villet girl, 
 talking faster and rougher. "Yes, a band!" she says. 
 "You don t know about him. Well, there ain t much 
 time to tell it. Now listen! I know about this just 
 the same as he knows about me, see?" she says, "and 
 he knows it all." 
 
 " There was a war," she says, going on, "a war. It 
 was the Civil War. And this old man was young then," 
 she says. " He was not much more than a boy. Oh, I 
 ain t got time to tell it all." 
 
 "A band?" says my Annie, as if she didn t under 
 stand. That was enough to start the girl on her story 
 again. "My God, yes!" she says. "There was bands 
 playing and men marching, and he was full of it. He 
 went with em. He had to go with em. He joined the
 
 JIM HANDS 157 
 
 army. He s told me about it in pieces. They went to 
 Washington on the train, and marched through the 
 mud days and days, with their guns and bands and all. 
 I can see em just as if I d been there. He didn t mind 
 the being tired or hungry or none of them things. He 
 had grit. I understand him all right, and he knows 
 it." 
 
 "The Civil War?" says I. 
 
 " Yes," she says, " that was it the Civil War. And 
 he got a letter from home, and the next day they come to 
 a place called the something Forks, with pine trees, and 
 over the hill there was guns going off and smoke. An 
 ambulance wagon come by, and there was fellers in it 
 that had been torn up with fighting. It made him sick. 
 It weren t his fault. There was courage in his mind. 
 But his legs wouldn t stand for it. His body and his 
 stomach wouldn t stand for it." 
 
 She had a fit of coughing then, and she stuffed her 
 hand over her mouth. 
 
 "And then," she says, "he sneaked into them pine 
 woods, and he seen a flag waving over the ridge a second, 
 and he sat behind a tree and cried because he couldn t 
 fight because his body wouldn t let him fight. And 
 he went back through the woods. He deserted. He 
 ran away. He went back near his home once, and at 
 night he looked at the house where his folks was. 
 They d found out he d deserted. So he couldn t go in 
 and see any of em. I know how he felt. I ve been in
 
 158 JIM HANDS 
 
 the same fix. He couldn t disgrace em. And he never 
 seen em again. It had bust his spirit," she says. 
 
 " He looks at the ground now/ I says. 
 
 "Yes/ says she, "and you ve seen dogs that will 
 flinch and duck like him. He ain t to blame. It 
 happened in three minutes. He s been trying to repair 
 it for forty-five years. There s some things that ain t 
 never got rid of by men and women/ she says. 
 
 "That s true, I believe," says Katherine, very soft. 
 
 " Sit down," she says. " You re weak with climbing 
 the hill." 
 
 " No," says the girl, shaking her head and shutting 
 her thin hands. " Nothing seems to make up for some 
 things," she says, going on. "It don t seem to make 
 any difference how honest or straight or kind he is, the 
 ducking and flinching follers him just the same. And 
 now," she says, "it s the last chance to wipe it all 
 away," says she, "and I ve got to have a band!" 
 
 "A band!" I says again. 
 
 " Yes !" she says. " Listen to me. I d do anything 
 for a brass band maybe two or three instruments 
 and a drum. Why, look at me. It s a yoke. I ve 
 prayed for a band, Me!" she says. "Don t you see? 
 He s a bit light in the head. And he thinks the com 
 pany of soldiers is coming for him. He thinks there is 
 another war. He thinks they ve got the same flags. 
 He thinks they ve got the same men. My God, he must 
 have that satisfaction ! He must hear a band outside !
 
 JIM HANDS 159 
 
 Don t yer understand? He thinks they re going to 
 take him back let him join again! And he thinks 
 that this time he won t duck or flinch but just fight - 
 fight fight." 
 
 " Mercy on us," says Annie, "won t anything else 
 do?" 
 
 " No," the girl says, " that s the one thing. Just 
 a moment is enough. Don t I know? Don t I get to 
 wishing for one thing I can t have. I don t want pity. 
 It makes me tired. I can t stand it. I don t want 
 people to be sorry for what I ain t. I d like to feel 
 just once for a moment that I was everything to some 
 body I don t care who because of what I am," she 
 says. "Now do you see? Just for one moment. And 
 so he must hear a band coming," she says, breathing 
 hard. 
 
 Yes," says I, speaking, half afraid of her. "We 
 got to have a band," and I started to think. 
 
 Then I seen Katherine was plucking at her dress. 
 "Father," says she, "there is Fred who works at the 
 barber shop. He plays with the Light Guards. He has 
 a cornet," she says, " and old Cady with the drum," she 
 says ; " they don t live far. It s a bad night," she says, 
 " and they ll be in. And Moses Dayton plays the horn, 
 don t he?" she says. "Dad!" she says, opening the 
 closet door and pulling down a rain coat. "It s got 
 to be done ! You go back with the girl to the old man s 
 shack. Twould be a crime if anything happened to
 
 160 JIM HANDS 
 
 him while he was alone. Take the girl and hurry," 
 she says. " I ll do my best/ she says. 
 
 With that she opened the door and was lost in the 
 black as if she d gone behind a curtain. 
 
 "Come you!" says the Villet girl. And so I just 
 grabbed my coat and follered her. 
 
 I ll not forget the slap of the sleet. There was times 
 when I could scarce see the girl, who run along beside 
 me. We went stumbling down the hill to the old covered 
 bridge, where the wind hollered, and up the hill on the 
 other side. And up there, where the road runs close to 
 the edge of the river-bank, I seen the light from the 
 winder in his little shack. It seemed to kinder nicker* 
 there was that much storm. And I thought of the old 
 pipe with the big bowl he uster smoke after supper. 
 
 We pushed in the door, she in front, and I seen over 
 her shoulder that he was lying on the bed, and I thought 
 maybe we was too late. But the rush of air made him 
 move a little, and he opened his eyes once and closed 
 em. And I heard her give a little cry as if she was 
 satisfied. 
 
 There weren t much light just a old kerosene lamp 
 with a dirty chimney. It was enough for me to look 
 around. I d never been in there before. His clothes 
 was hanging to nails on the wall, and in one corner there 
 was a cheap bunting flag hanging down from the ceiling. 
 There was a leak in the back room, and you could hear 
 the drops slap on a tin dish, even and slow and ugly.
 
 JIM HANDS 161 
 
 " Is there anything to do?" I whispers. 
 
 "No," she says, " there ain t." 
 
 So I sat down. 
 
 By and by she pointed at him with her finger, kinder 
 biting her lip, and she says: "It s funny, ain t it, how 
 things happen. He s the only thing I cared anything 
 for," she says. 
 
 And from that on she never said nothing. Once he 
 moved, and she poured some water out of a pitcher into 
 a white cup, but he only looked up at her and nodded 
 and shut his eyes again. I could almost feel my ears 
 stretching open for the sound of something besides the 
 dropping of that water in the back room, or maybe it 
 was for the sound of a drum. 
 
 Then all of a sudden the old man started up. I guess 
 he forgot he was in bed. 
 
 "Listen!" he says. "Are they coming? Anne," 
 he says, " I ve got good news for you. The company 
 is going to take me back. The old town will know there 
 ain t anything the matter with me then," he says. 
 " They ll know I was only a boy. They ll know when 
 men is wanted I ll be ready. It s funny why they don t 
 come," he says, with trouble in his face. "A whole 
 regiment marched through this morning. They was 
 covered with dust. They d been going since daybreak 
 to get to the main line," he says. 
 
 And then for awhile he was quiet, as if he was listening. 
 "They called us deserters, Anne," he says, beginning
 
 162 JIM HANDS 
 
 again. " You and me each in our way. Well, that s 
 all gone by, he says. Listen, " he says ; did you hear 
 music ?" he says. " I don t see why they re late. This 
 time I won t fail em. I expect they ll be here soon. 
 And then I can start," he says, pointing with one of his 
 bent hands. I remember how noisy the wind was. 
 
 Then all of a sudden I seen his eyes open wide and a 
 bit of blood come into his face, and them droopy lines 
 tightened up. "Listen ! " he says. "They re coming ! " 
 
 At that the Villet girl stood up. And in spite of the 
 noise of the rain on the roof and the wind we could hear 
 a drum, and then sometimes it seemed as if there was 
 a cornet with it. And then it stopped. It was just as 
 if ghosts had been playing. 
 
 The old man, though, was all alive. "They ve halted," 
 he says, "they ve halted in front of the Court-house," 
 he says. "They re coming. I m glad I got a pair of 
 shoes that was easy. It makes a heap of difference," 
 he says, and blinks his watery old eyes. 
 
 And then suddenly I heard them boys with a horn 
 and a drum and a cornet there was three of em ! 
 It weren t a hundred yards away and coming nearer 
 through the rain. And the old man commenced to 
 beat time with his hands. 
 
 They re here ! " he says. Now I can start. They re 
 going to take me with em. The same old company - 
 eighty-four men and officers. Well," he says, "it s 
 time to say good-by."
 
 JIM HANDS 163 
 
 He looked at me with his head cocked on one side and 
 his gray hair all mussed up, but didn t seem to see me 
 at all, nor my girl Katherine, who had stepped inside the 
 door. He looked around until he seen Anne Villet. 
 
 "Come here, girl," he says. 
 
 The music was nearer. It was a march and didn t 
 sound very good, but it was a march, and loud and 
 gingery. And then Anne went over to him, and he pulled 
 her down toward him and looked into her face. 
 
 "I ve got to say good-by to you, girl," he says. 
 "It s kinder hard, but then when it s all over and we 
 come marching back with flags waving and everybody 
 cheering, you ll be glad then," he says. "Don t you 
 mind, Anne," he says, "whatever they say to you. 
 You know how I feel. You ve got courage, Anne,"- 
 he says. "You ve got courage and grit enough for two," 
 he says. "Why, I love you just as if you was my 
 daughter. And I m so proud of you," he says, and he 
 tried to bend over toward her. 
 
 The music had come up to the shack, and only the 
 drum was playing then. 
 
 "Well," says he, "they ve come," and he give a sigh 
 as if he was contented. "Come, Anne. Hand me 
 my hat," he says, pointing with his ringer at a cushion 
 in the chair. 
 
 I guess she never heard him. She d kinder buried 
 her face in the bedclothes. So he reached out and 
 caught the cushion in his old fingers, and he tried to
 
 164 JIM HANDS 
 
 put it on his head. It was stuffed with them pine 
 needles. And it kept falling off in spite of all he could 
 do. I almost laughed. 
 
 But when I looked again, I got up and went to the 
 door and says out into the wind and the rain, " That s 
 enough," and the drum stopped. And then I looked 
 back into the room and seen Anne Villet. Come from 
 nowhere ! But right then I seen by the light of that 
 dirty kerosene light that she had got what she wanted 
 as well as him. She stood beside the bed there staring 
 out at nothing, with a smile. You d never have known 
 her.
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 IT was Katherine who first spoke in that room. She 
 had come in, and she went up to the other girl and she 
 took her in her arms as if it was a comfort to her to 
 have something to care for. "Girl," she says, "don t 
 pull yourself away from me like that. You re all tired 
 out all tired out," she says. "So am I," she says. 
 "You re going home with me for a while." 
 
 And Anne Villet looked around at her, and for the 
 first time I seen the moment she weren t suspicious. 
 She looked into Katherine s face as if she was hunting 
 for something there, and then after a minute she says, 
 "You are tired out, aren t you? " she says. "I guess 
 I understand," she says. 
 
 "Katherine!" I says, kind of quick. But my girl 
 stopped me. 
 
 "She s going home with us for a few days," says she 
 over again. "I won t let her go back to that Mrs. 
 Jordan s. And my mother will be glad to have her 
 come," and I seen her chin move out the way my 
 Annie s does when I know I ain t going to have my way. 
 
 That was how Anne Villet came into the house, and 
 Katherine, though she never said anything about it, 
 was trying to make the poor thing all over again. 
 
 165
 
 166 JIM HANDS 
 
 Maybe them things don t seem to some people like they 
 do to me. 
 
 The spring had come then. And in those days, with 
 the sun and the wind kinder soft, and tips of green 
 showing here and there, and maybe birds you haven t 
 seen all winter turning up and sitting on the ridge-pole 
 of the barn, and them insects piping in the marsh, it s 
 a feller s inclination to kinder half shut his eyes and 
 watch what s going on and think about it like them 
 toads that come out and sit on the gravel walk do. 
 
 I used to watch Annie how she didn t like to have 
 the strange girl in the home, and yet wouldn t see her 
 go away while she was still weak and sick. And I used 
 to watch Katherine how she d never let Anne Villet 
 into her life, but how she tried to squeeze herself into 
 the life of the other girl and kind of soften her and make 
 her different. And I used to watch Anne Villet when 
 she would follow my girl around with her eyes. But 
 most of all I seen that it weren t so much that Katherine 
 was getting ahead any as it was that she was, without 
 knowing it, changing herself. She was more like her 
 self in them days more the old look in her eyes. 
 
 Of course I wondered sometimes about Bob Harvey. 
 I d got to like him, and I wondered if he still wanted 
 Katherine and thought of her. Once that June a letter 
 came from him to her ; there was only one word on the 
 sheet, and the next day I heard Katherine sing again 
 the way she used to. I told her that night that I
 
 JIM HANDS 167 
 
 noticed it. She only shook her head and showed me 
 the letter. The word was " Katherine." No name signed 
 or anything. Just something like a voice calling, and 
 that was all. But she shook her head and sang no 
 more. 
 
 Then we heard he had come home. His college was 
 through for that year. I thought I seen him walk by 
 the house one evening, and then I heard he d gone 
 away again, and it was said he d gone because his old 
 est sister had come up with her husband the little 
 New York broker that Bob didn t like. 
 
 The Boss s oldest daughter isn t liked very well her 
 self in this town. But after all, people is mostly alike. 
 We re always saying how they re different. But they 
 ain t. Maybe their clothes is different. It s the crease 
 in the pants or the bird on the hat that makes it. Under 
 neath they is all cut out of the same piece of leather, 
 just like the tips on a case of shoes that we turn out 
 down there at the shop. Maybe some tips is plain, 
 maybe some is scalloped, and maybe some is punched 
 with fancy holes it s the same leather. Ben Joline 
 was big-hearted, but he was a good deal like Dave 
 Pierson, who s got a soul about the size of an earth 
 worm s tooth. And my wife Annie, who I wouldn t 
 swap for a pick of all the women on the map, is, after 
 all, considerable like round-faced Bessie Eastman, who 
 works on the books at the office, and would be swapped 
 by her husband poor devil for a box of safety
 
 168 JIM HANDS 
 
 matches. At the bottom they re the same animals. 
 And then the Boss s oldest daughter was like Carrie 
 Pierson Dave s wife ! There was a contrast for yer. 
 You d say those two was about as alike as a fire-escape 
 is like a rowboat, putting aside the fact that both of 
 em is pretty women. 
 
 I never knew much about the Boss s oldest daughter, 
 except what I seen of her. Her name s Marian Mrs. 
 Elmore. I guess her husband don t satisfy the Boss 
 very much, for the Boss wears baggy trousers week-days 
 and makes a lot of money, and this other feller carries 
 a handkerchief with a colored border and has money 
 and spends a lot. 
 
 Mrs. Elmore and her husband, with his high chin and 
 a cold in the head and rings under his eyes, didn t make 
 a hit with us at the factory. They never bowed to 
 none of us, and they was a lot more exclusive than the 
 Boss s younger girl and the Boss. The Boss wouldn t 
 think of acting fancy any more n I d think of wearing 
 corsets! But Marian, when she came back after all 
 them years she d been married, got the name of it. 
 It used to bother her to see the old man walk up the hill 
 from the factory and pick up a kid that was playing in 
 front of one of those shacks down here, and maybe 
 get molasses on his collar from the kid s fingers. 
 
 I heard her once. "It ain t dignified," says she. 
 
 The old man laughed and says, "Why, what s dig 
 nity ? " And I, who was walking along behind em,
 
 JIM HANDS 169 
 
 am old enough to know that when people get to talk 
 ing about dignity, they re more sure to go wrong than 
 them who never think of it. 
 
 And this girl, well, she really weren t a girl, for 
 there was some gray in her black hair that was always 
 done up so neat and city-looking, and I guess a wrinkle 
 or two had come by the time she was thirty, in spite of 
 this massage I see advertised in the Sunday papers, - 
 well, this girl had the wrong manners all right. Some 
 how her dresses fitted her too tight, though she had a 
 good figure; and she d get out of her husband s big 
 automobile down there in the town and go into a store 
 and give directions just as if she d hired the store 
 keeper say, a feller like John Bethime to be on 
 hand there to wait on her, which weren t so. 
 
 I used to be amused by her, and that was before that 
 evening when the worst thing happened that could 
 make Katherine more miserable than ever, and as it 
 turned out turn everything around again. 
 
 I ve just mentioned Carrie Pierson. She had it in 
 for Mrs. Elmore, and it was surprising how well she 
 could imitate her. 
 
 Carrie was a blonde, and had been married two years 
 or so. She was just a factory girl, and the Boss s 
 oldest daughter was a society woman, they said. 
 Carrie ain t got much education, but Mrs. Elmore 
 speaks French to the hired girl that travels around with 
 her to crinkle her hair every morning. Mrs. Elmore
 
 170 JIM HANDS 
 
 didn t know any more about Carrie than I know about 
 my great-grandfather, but to hear Carrie talk, you d 
 think she knew all about Mrs. Elmore. 
 
 The girl had a sharp tongue. She was the best- 
 looking girl in the factory once, and she could keep the 
 boys guessing what she d say next, and she was full of 
 the devil, though there was nothing bad in her, and 
 you could hear her singing when she d be coming down 
 to the shop of an early morning. A happy girl with fine 
 blue eyes and no one knew what she married Dave for. 
 
 But she did, and you d not have known her for the 
 same. She was still pretty, but the change was in her 
 mind. Her mother the widder who used to be a 
 forewoman down in Coleman s factory died about 
 that time, but it weren t that. It was just because 
 all days were alike to Carrie after she d been married. 
 Up at six to get breakfast and wash up the dishes and 
 follow along with Dave down to the factory, with him 
 saying nothing to her, being a man who don t think 
 there s any use to talk to a woman when you re married 
 to her; and then the day at the factory, and go home 
 at night to get supper, and sit and read a ten-cent book 
 in the evening, with Dave playing pool down ter Charlie s 
 place, and go to bed and get up in the morning to 
 get breakfast and wash the dishes and follow Dave. 
 What s the use ? It went round and round, like a belt 
 on a shafting, which tickles some women ter death 
 and kills others.
 
 JIM HANDS 171 
 
 Dave s wife weren t no fool. She got sour, and 
 knocked all them that had what she hadn t. She got 
 to wishing she had money. She d come over some 
 times to see my Annie and tell what she d hoped ter 
 have once what she d planned. And then she d 
 laugh without any fun in it, and tell how she d got to 
 sew a yard of velvet around her summer hat now it 
 was coming on cold weather. But she weren t no fool. 
 She was just tired and sour with days that was all alike. 
 There was something else the matter with her, the 
 real thing, as you ll see later when I tell yer. Women 
 is funny, anyhow, as you know, being a man. 
 
 Then Mrs. Elmore came to town, with her tight 
 dresses and her hair so slick that it looked as if it had 
 been whittled out of graphite, and her automobile, and 
 her fuzzy dog with its homely face, and her hus 
 band with his. 
 
 Great guns, as the Boss says, didn t it make Carrie 
 mad ! She picked up all her sourness and collected it 
 into a bunch and added a little more to it and plastered 
 the Boss s daughter with it whenever she got a chance 
 sometimes before the other factory girls, as she was 
 working pasting upper leather in the stitching-rooms ; 
 and sometimes she d come over to see my wife Annie 
 in the evening to get rid of it. I don t know as Annie 
 ever put the brakes on it. Part of what she said you 
 could say weren t so, and the other part looked as if it 
 might be so on a pinch. Carrie weren t no fool, and
 
 172 JIM HANDS 
 
 we listened. I can hear Katherine now, the way she d 
 laugh at Carrie s imitations. 
 
 She d come up that little gravel walk there the other 
 side of where you re standing, swishing her calico 
 skirts around, with her nose up in the air ; and holding 
 her hands kind of fancy. It was good on Mrs. Elmore, 
 all right. 
 
 "Women gets the worst of it in this world," says 
 Carrie I remember just how she d talk. "Here 
 I ve been getting good money by piece-work for seven 
 years. And she ain t never done no work. Men gets 
 what is coming to em, mostly, but women is born to it 
 or married to it. Women is all luck there ain t 
 any way out." 
 
 "And," she says, "her stuck-up ways make me so 
 tired I can hardly walk ter the factory and back. 
 What s she ever done to stick her powdered chin into 
 the air? Who s she that she can come down with the 
 Boss to see the factory and talk with the girls, and then 
 forget to see em in the post-office ? She ain t an actress 
 or a book writer or nothing like that. She never earned 
 nothing. She s about as deserving as that dog of yours, 
 Mr. Hands," she says, "who gets fed twice a day free, 
 and then bites the heads off my two best chickens," 
 she says. "Working in a factory s awful. There ain t 
 any variety. What s she know about that? Just a 
 cold-natured woman inside of fancy clothes, driving 
 around cities in carriages and going to theatres the
 
 JIM HANDS 173 
 
 silly thing! Where d she get her rights? Who says 
 there s any fairness in the world for girls and women?" 
 
 "Not me," I says. "God Almighty may be kind, 
 but it seems like He does a poor job taking care of 
 women," I says. 
 
 "Wouldn t it drive you crazy," she says, "to be wish 
 ing you was her, and then the next minute be seeing 
 what a stuck-up thing she is? She s comfortable, and 
 that s all she cares. What difference do the girls in the 
 factory make to her?" she says. "Does she know that 
 Jennie Hemphill has got consumption so her neck s 
 so thin you can put your finger around it and that 
 the Boss is going to pay her way to an asylum or some 
 thing ? Not on your life ! No, she s off trying to buy 
 mahogany furniture from the farmers wives for less 
 than it s worth. Didn t May Coffin tell me ? Does she 
 know that May had to leave her mother because she 
 drank ? I guess not ! What does she care about people, 
 anyhow ? She has what she wants and she never 
 earned it, either. And who did May Coffin go to see 
 when she got in trouble by running off with the clerk 
 of the hotel? The Boss s youngest daughter. How 
 about her going to see the oldest daughter this Marian 
 Elmore? That s funny now, ain t it? That would 
 make you laugh, wouldn t it?" 
 
 That s the way she d talk, and I d be sitting smoking 
 my pipe on the steps for it was summer then, and 
 the kids would be off to bed.
 
 174 JIM HANDS 
 
 Annie d say, "Probably she is better than you think." 
 
 Twas said for the sake of kindness, which is like her, 
 and gets more so as she grows older, and you could tell 
 it weren t said for truth. 
 
 "She smokes cigarettes," says Carrie Pierson, acting 
 kind of tired and leaning up against that tree there, 
 and dropping her hands. "But," she says, "if / 
 smoked cigarettes, she d be the first to call me a bad 
 woman a factory hand." 
 
 "The rest of the Boss s family is all right," says Annie. 
 
 "Maybe I guess they is," Carrie says. "But 
 dear, there s few of them ! Sometimes I think tis only 
 them that s good who is fools and unhappy." 
 
 "So does everybody sometimes," says I. 
 
 Then off she d go home to read more paper books 
 under a kerosene lamp in the kitchen and wait for Dave 
 ter come back from down on Main Street and say noth 
 ing to her and go ter bed. And I never liked Dave so 
 well as I like my gate-post, anyhow.
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 I HAVE cause to remember the night Carrie broke 
 loose. It had been one of them still spring days, and 
 there was no staying in the house in the evening, it 
 was that close, and I could hear little Mike threshing 
 back and forth on his bed upstairs long after his mother 
 had leaned over him with a blessing for him and had gone 
 to bathe her face and hands in a dipper of well-water. 
 
 All of a sudden I hears somebody coming down over 
 the hill. Our hedge by the fence is all thick with leaves, 
 and though there was plenty of noise from the crickets 
 in the grass, I could hear whoever it was breathing fast 
 behind it, and it sounded like trouble of some kind to 
 me. 
 
 It was Carrie, and when she finally made up her mind 
 to come in, and got to where the light from the moon 
 shined on her face, I knew I was right. She d been 
 crying, and she was biting her lips, and she had a little 
 bag with her, and she was shaking like a horse that 
 feels the jockey trying the saddle. 
 
 I knew it weren t me she wanted to see, and by the 
 looks of things I didn t want to mix in very thick with 
 the fuss, whatever it was. So I calls to Annie, and she 
 
 175
 
 176 JIM HANDS 
 
 comes out the screen door, and held it open with one 
 hand, letting in the mosquitoes, and looked kind of 
 scared the minute she set eyes on Carrie. 
 
 "God save us! What s the matter? What s hap 
 pened?" says she. 
 
 Carrie pulls in her breath and says, choking, "I m 
 going away, Annie dear. You mustn t tell anybody. 
 Nobody knows it but you. I couldn t bear not to say 
 good-by." 
 
 "When will you be back?" says Annie. 
 
 "I won t come back," says the girl. "I can t stand 
 it any more. It s all the same. And oh, I could stand 
 it if he was different ! But it s just the same thing 
 over and over again. I ain t married like I thought it 
 would be. He don t never show me no affection. He 
 don t love me. I m just a hired girl. And you mustn t 
 tell Dave, Mr. Hands," says she to me, "for I hardly 
 know what I m saying, and I m going away." 
 
 "You re going right back home," says Annie. 
 But Carrie shook her head. "I m going on the nine- 
 fifteen down train," says she. "There ain t anything 
 can make me stay." And she set down on the bench 
 and pushed her face -down on to the back of it, and, 
 though I d heard somebody whistling, it weren t till 
 then, when all was still, that I looks up and sees Mrs. 
 Elmore the Boss s oldest daughter, standing there 
 in the gateway. 
 
 "Has my dog been here, people?" she says, and her
 
 JIM HANDS 177 
 
 voice was soft and pretty, and kind of sad. "For he s 
 run away, and Mr. Elmore went up into the fields look 
 ing for him, and I ve come down this way into the village 
 to look. He s been gone since dinner." 
 
 It took us by surprise, and I guess Carrie Pierson 
 didn t hear her at all, for, just after I d said I hadn t 
 seen nothing of the dog, she caught her breath and 
 began to gulp the way a woman does when something 
 real is the matter. Mrs. Elmore the broker s wife - 
 she seen it. 
 
 And you can knock me down if she didn t come in, 
 and before we knew it she touched the girl on the shoul 
 der. "What s the matter?" she says, turning to my 
 wife. "Is this young woman in trouble?" she says. 
 
 Annie didn t answer, but the girl herself looked up, 
 kinder surprised, like somebody that s been waked up 
 to get off at the next station. And when she seen who 
 it was, her jaw kinder set. 
 
 "What s that to you?" she says. "Do I cut any 
 figure with you ?" she says. "You talked to me one 
 day and forgot to see me on Main Street the next. 
 How do my troubles hurt you?" And she stood up 
 and looked the other woman straight in the eye. "Is 
 there any difference between you and me except you ve 
 got money and I ain t?" 
 
 "Don t talk foolish," says my Annie. 
 
 But it was just the wrong word. It seemed to be like 
 throwing kerosene on hot coals. You know how it
 
 178 JIM HANDS 
 
 comes up like a white vapor and then goes off with a 
 bang. 
 
 Well, Carrie threw her hands back, and she says, 
 beginning kind of whispering and slow, "You are that 
 kind of woman that don t know what people are," 
 she says. "How are you to know, with the life you 
 lead? Well, I ll tell yer!" She reached out and 
 grabbed one of the other woman s hands. "Do you 
 feel that hand of mine? It s rough, and yours is soft," 
 she says. "It s rough because I wash dishes twice a 
 day and peel potatoes and work over the glue-pots," 
 she says, "and yours is smooth because you don t. 
 And you and I," she says, "are near of an age, and 
 you ve got wrinkles worrying because you don t know 
 what pleasure to have next, and I got mine wondering 
 where I d ever get any. You don t know," she says, 
 still talking kind of slow, "what it is to have every 
 day like the next and the other one before it, up here 
 in this muddy factory town. And so you don t under 
 stand. You re too much society," she says, "to have 
 it make any difference to you that I can t stand it any 
 more, that I ve got to go away or die," says she, "and 
 I m going on the down train to-night, and it was seeing 
 you in your automobile," she busts out loud, "with 
 the life you lead, that waked me up to it. You who 
 don t care I m much obliged to yer!" 
 
 And she stood there with her jaw set, reaching be 
 hind her for her little bag on the bench, and breathing
 
 JIM HANDS 179 
 
 like she d been running four miles. And the other 
 woman this Mrs. Elmore she was breathing, too. 
 
 After a second, though, she looked up and took a step 
 forward and caught at Carrie s sleeve and says, whisper 
 ing, "For God s sake, forgive me, woman," says she. 
 "I m not different from any other, as you think," she 
 says, soft. "I d not make you unhappy for all the 
 world!" And right there, in spite of the powder and 
 slick hair and tight-fitting dress and the smell of per 
 fume in the air, as she stood in the moonlight, any fool 
 could see we d made a mistake about her when you d 
 really got to the bottom of her. And Carrie looks up 
 into her eyes a second, and then she sat down on the 
 bench, sitting up very straight and still, looking like 
 she d seen something queer, and reaching out for the 
 other woman s hand. 
 
 "And you ll not go away?" says Mrs. Elmore, begging. 
 
 "Yes," says Carrie. "I m going," and she puts her 
 face in her hands, and the Boss s daughter sits down 
 beside her and says, easy but anxious, "Tell me why." 
 
 "I ve told yer," says Carrie. "These people know. 
 It s awful. I used to dream about what it would be. 
 But it s awful. And he never takes my hand in his, 
 and he never tells me anything, and he don t say he 
 loves me till I ask him. I m nothing to him, and I m 
 going away. I could stand it if - And there she 
 
 stops. I can remember it well. 
 
 And the Boss s daughter says, after a minute, "Do
 
 180 JIM HANDS 
 
 you think that you are the only woman that s hungry 
 for love?" she says. 
 
 But Carrie jumped up as if she d not heard. "I m 
 going away," she says. "None of you can stop me. 
 It s too late," she says, with a voice as hard as a frog s 
 croak. "I ve left a note for him, and my wedding- 
 ring. They re under the lamp in the kitchen." And 
 with that she started away from us. 
 
 "Wait," says the Elmore woman, and her voice was 
 so clear and true that Carrie stopped. 
 
 "Have you thought of the other women yet?" asks 
 the Boss s daughter, facing her. 
 
 "What other women?" says Carrie. 
 
 "Oh," says Mrs. Elmore, kinder careless, "the other 
 married women that want to be loved those that is 
 brave enough to bear it all the neglect and all of it. 
 And have you thought of them others that is tempted 
 to run away them poor, desperate women per 
 haps factory people and perhaps women who ride in 
 motor-cars that are tempted^ always tempted to 
 give it up ? What will they say when you have gone ? " 
 
 "What are they to me?" says Carrie, staring hard 
 in the moonlight. 
 
 "Good God!" says the Boss s daughter, "they 
 should be much to both of us, shouldn t they?" 
 
 And at that Carrie s bag slid out of her fingers on to 
 that gravel walk there, and she kept on staring without 
 trying to pick it up.
 
 JIM HANDS 181 
 
 "I m only what did you say? a pleasure-lover, 
 a society woman, "says the Boss s daughter, with a ketch 
 in her throat, which was bare and white against the 
 lilac bush, "and I think of those women very often." 
 
 It was then that Carrie caught hold of the tree, and 
 you could see her shoulders moving, and you knew she d 
 not go away. You knew that Mrs. Elmore, who come 
 into it by chance, had won. And there weren t a sound 
 but the noise of the crickets and the little tinkle of the 
 beads that hung down from her neck when she d breathe. 
 
 And then, after a minute, Carrie came back and sat 
 down, and looked up at the other woman and smiled. 
 And Annie smiled, too, and I knocked the ashes out 
 of my pipe to make a noise of some kind. And my feet 
 seemed to ache from standing. 
 
 " I guess I d better be going home," says Carrie by 
 and by. 
 
 " Of course you had," Annie says. 
 
 Mrs. Elmore started up as if she d been in a dream. 
 "Not alone?" she says. "Wouldn t it be best if we 
 all walked with her by those cottages?" she says. " If 
 people see her alone with the hat and bag - " she says. 
 
 "They d talk till Christmas," says my Annie, "in 
 this town," she says. 
 
 And somehow the women-folks fixed it so s they go 
 off across that field that s so white this morning that you 
 can t hardly look at it, to that last house on Maple 
 Street, that red one-story cottage you can just see, -
 
 182 JIM HANDS 
 
 and I was to go up by the road to stop Dave if he was 
 on his way home, and keep him talking awhile and 
 meet em up at his house. 
 
 And when I went out the gate, there was a man stand 
 ing in the shadow behind the hedge ! 
 
 It was just luck I seen him. He didn t move none, 
 and I guess he thought I hadn t spotted him. A quick 
 suspicion comes to me, and I reaches quick around 
 to my hip pocket and says, " Helloa," kinder soft. 
 
 "Quiet!" he says, coming up to me. And it was 
 Carter Elmore ! 
 
 He was kinder white and excited. " I was looking 
 for my wife," he says. "We was out trying to find her 
 dog," he says, chopping his words. " I heard voices 
 I stopped I heard it all," he says, "and was trying 
 to get away when you come out. You re one of the 
 men at the factory? Don t, for God s sake, let her 
 know I was standing here," he says. " I heard her say, 
 the other married women that wants to be loved. 
 Don t tell her I heard it. Do you see ? I don t want 
 her to know," he says. And then he puts his thin 
 hand on my shoulder and brings his white face up near 
 me like this, and says, like a panhandler asking for a 
 handout, "Don t let her know I heard it, will you?" 
 
 " No," says I, and we left each other, and I went on 
 up to Maple Street. 
 
 But I didn t run into Dave. I heard the train go out 
 of the station as I got to the corner of the road. It
 
 JIM HANDS 183 
 
 makes a fierce noise on a still night getting up the grade 
 to the bridge. 
 
 Then I went along Maple Street, and the women was 
 just coming out on to the walk through a break in the 
 stone wall. I shook my head to show I hadn t seen 
 Dave, and we went on to the house. 
 
 The door into the kitchen was open, and the kerosene 
 lamp was burning on the table, and from outside you 
 could see the wedding-ring shining bright and promi 
 nent on the bare wood. And there on his knees 
 beside the table was that son of a gun with the sheet of 
 white paper crunched up in his hand ; and, by thunder, 
 he was crying like a baby ! He was crying, with his 
 derby hat pressed up against his face. 
 
 But it pleased the girl. She seen that Dave loved her, 
 after all. And I guess he did. And when we d said 
 good night to the Boss s daughter a little later, and she d 
 started up over Maple Hill, something made me look 
 back at her. And right up there in the middle of the 
 road on the ridge, so any one could have seen it in the 
 moonlight for twenty miles around, stood Elmore, - 
 the little broker, waiting for her. 
 
 So when Annie and I walked home, she put her hand 
 on my arm the way she hadn t done for a long time. 
 " Jim," she says, " we ve been pretty happy you and 
 I," she says. " I think I got a good husband," she says, 
 with a little laugh, " though not above the average in 
 appearance speaking with great charity," she says.
 
 184 JIM HANDS 
 
 And somehow I was happy and satisfied myself when 
 I got in between the clean sheets that night, even 
 though I could hear Katherine in the next room 
 tossing around and very restless. 
 
 It was the next morning at breakfast, when the sun 
 was coming in the window and the ceiling was all spotted 
 with lights from the coffee dancing in my cup, that 
 Anne Villet came in, and we seen some change had come 
 to her. 
 
 She looked as if she hadn t slept, and there was a wild 
 look in her eyes, and her clothes was put on the way she 
 used to put em on before she came to live with us and 
 Katherine had been a friend to her. There was a dog 
 look in her face, and the skin around her eyes was all 
 dark and pulled, as if she had been up and walking the 
 whole night. 
 
 She had her jaw shut hard, and never said a word 
 until she had swallowed her oatmeal in gulps and she 
 seen Katherine was looking at her. 
 
 "I m going away," she says, all of a sudden, and 
 dropped her spoon on the floor. " You ve been pretty 
 good to me," she says, looking at us, "but I have work 
 to do," she says, with an ugly voice. " I ll get what s 
 due me, or I ll kill somebody," she says. "I won t 
 wait. It will be to-day;" and her voice was hard and 
 cracked and like it was when she first came to the 
 factory. It scared little Michael. His eyes was as 
 round as the bottoms of two butter dishes.
 
 JIM HANDS 185 
 
 "Anne!" says Katherine, with her voice shaking, 
 and the girl looked up at her. " Why, Anne ! " she says 
 again, "what is the matter?" 
 
 But there was no control to be had of her. " Why 
 shouldn t I tell?" she says in answer. "Let this be 
 enough for you all. Ask me no more questions. Some 
 women have a memory of some man they can t forget," 
 she says with a growling in the back of her throat. 
 "Them who has lost everything by him is ready to 
 render him a statement, as the grocer says. Well, 
 listen," says she. "Last night," she says, "after all 
 this time months and years, I seen him ! I looked 
 out my window and I seen him, standing in the road 
 beyond the gate !" she says. 
 
 "Who? "says I. 
 
 The rat look was in her eyes and she stood up. 
 
 " In front of the gate ?" says Katherine, and she was 
 as white as a starched collar. 
 
 But Anne Villet only stiffened her body. " I ve said 
 too much to you," she says. " It was him who squeezed 
 the best out of me, as you d wring a cloth," she says. 
 "And it s him I ll have it over with and not you," she 
 says, with a snap of her teeth like a wild animal, and 
 she ran upstairs and I heard her door slam. 
 
 "Annie," I says to my wife, "I ve got to go. But 
 this ain t a laughing matter," I says. "There s a 
 volcano under this roof," I says. "You must find out 
 who the feller is," says I, and I remember how, when I
 
 186 JIM HANDS 
 
 left the room, I seen Katherine still sitting over her plate 
 that she hadn t touched, with her red lips half open 
 and staring out at nothing. 
 
 But her mother didn t find out anything. She met 
 me when I came home that night outside the house. 
 " Jim," she says, " there was no talking to Anne Villet," 
 she says. "She was in her room all day and the door 
 locked. Just now, when I was in the kitchen and it was 
 getting dark, she went out," she says. 
 
 "Where is Katherine?" I says, and I seen the 
 worried look in her face. 
 
 "I can t understand," she says. " Katherine has 
 tried a dozen times to get Anne to unlock her door," she 
 says. " Katherine acts so funny ! " says she, plucking at 
 her apron. "She s gone to the barn just now." 
 
 I never answered her, but I walked around the house. 
 I could feel the evil in the air, and there weren t anything 
 cheerful in the rustling of that corn that was turning 
 yellow beyond the chicken houses. 
 
 It was true. Katherine was there. She was sitting 
 on the feed box inside the door and bent over with her 
 head in her hands. 
 
 "Girl! "I says. 
 
 "Oh," she says, "I ve been waiting for you," she says, 
 with the words coming hard. 
 
 "What s the matter now?" I says, harsh and stern. 
 
 She kinder shivered from the cold, and came over and 
 buried her face in my coat, and I could feel her hair
 
 JIM HANDS 187 
 
 against my cheek and her lungs filling when she tried 
 to catch a breath. 
 
 "Tell me!" I says. 
 
 "Last night," she says, never moving her head, 
 "last night I saw him for the first time in all these 
 months. He must have come back to town. He 
 came and stood in front of the house. I was in the 
 parlor. I was in the shadow behind the curtain. I 
 watched him. He had been going by, probably, and 
 stopped. It was Bob Harvey. And Anne Villet - 
 she says, and stopped and dropped her head. "It was 
 him she meant ! "
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 I MUST have stepped back, for I remember when I 
 realized I was a couple of paces away from her. "Then, 
 thank God," I says. "The miserable cuss! We ve 
 been saved from him ! " I says, and went to her and put 
 my arms around the girl, and she never seemed so much 
 to me before. 
 
 "But it isn t true," she says, starting away from me 
 again. " I know ! " she says. "He would never harm 
 anybody he would never harm a woman," she says, 
 "and if he did, he was young, and it was long ago," 
 she says. "But it isn t true ! " 
 
 I caught her arm then and went with her to the back 
 door. 
 
 "Don t tell anybody," she says. "It isn t true. 
 Why, God wouldn t let it be true ! " 
 
 "Wait," I says, and my hand was shaking around the 
 cold door-knob. "Wait till we know. Wait till Anne 
 Villet comes back. Trust me," I says. 
 
 But Anne Villet didn t come back. That midnight 
 came, and there was no sign of her. I remember of 
 waking a dozen times and turning over in bed and 
 listening to the trees rocking with a big wind and wait 
 ing to hear the sound of a key in the front door. 
 
 188
 
 JIM HANDS 189 
 
 That next day was one of the brightest I ever seen, 
 with the sun lighting up the hills, and the air as clear as 
 new eye-glasses. When I got on my clothes, the first 
 thing I did was to walk to the stranger girl s room. 
 It come to me all of a sudden that though day after 
 day had gone by with her in the house sick and coughing, 
 she was a stranger. There wasn t one of us not even 
 Katherine who knew anything about her, after all. 
 
 Her room was empty; she hadn t slept there. Some 
 of her clothes was scattered over the bed, and on the floor 
 was an old blue necktie that used to belong to old Joe 
 Paul, and near the door on a corner of the matting there 
 was a little photograph lying face up and looking as if 
 somebody had dropped it in a hurry on the way out. 
 I leaned over and looked at it. It was old, and taken by 
 some photograph parlor in Chicago. It weren t Robert 
 Harvey, and yet it looked a lot like somebody I d seen 
 before. I remember how I shut my eyes and tried to 
 place the face in the picture, and how I gave it up and 
 noticed the empty chair drawn up to the window where 
 she d sat and watched the feller who had come and stood 
 before our gate. "Little the scoundrel thought he was 
 within thirty feet of his past," I says to myself. 
 
 Then I looked in the closet. Her little satchel was 
 gone, and I was sure then we wouldn t ever see Anne 
 Villet again. I told my Annie and Katherine when I d 
 come in from feeding the horse. None of us said much. 
 There wasn t much to say. But I seen that Katherine
 
 190 JIM HANDS 
 
 had learned a lot that night. I seen there was a differ 
 ent look about her mouth. The softness had gone from 
 it. When she came into the hall to see me off to the 
 factory, she didn t say but one thing, and somehow it 
 didn t sound like anything but a talking-machine. 
 "It isn t true," she says, and the words kept repeating 
 themselves to me like a tune you get in your head and 
 hum over without knowing what you re doing. 
 
 I was going down the hill and kicking up the dust in 
 clouds ; it was that day when I heard somebody holler 
 from behind, and I looked back and seen it was Joe Bent. 
 He was almost running, and I could tell by the grin on his 
 nosey face that he had some news. 
 
 "I suppose you re sorry you took her in now," he 
 says, with a cigarette bobbing up and down in his lips. 
 
 "Who? "I says. 
 
 "The invalid," he says, with a mean twist of his 
 mouth and roll of his eye. "Anne Villet," he says. 
 "There ain t many who know about it," he says, "but 
 enough to make it bad," he says. "My wife was told 
 by Mary Birch, the girl who works at the Boss s house," 
 he says. 
 
 "What is it?" says I. "Speak up, man," says I. 
 "What s happened?" 
 
 "A black bird has roosted on the Boss s front porch," 
 he says. "I thought you d know about it. Perhaps 
 I oughter say nothing," he says. 
 
 "Joe," I says, taking hold of his elbow and turning him
 
 JIM HANDS 191 
 
 up against that fence this side of the bridge where all 
 them tin signs is tacked, "I don t know anything," 
 I says, " except the girl left our house last night before 
 supper and hasn t come home since. What do you 
 know? Speak up," I says. 
 
 He may have seen the look on my face, for he told 
 me then. "Why," he says, "it was this way. The 
 door-bell at the Boss s house rang last night, and Mrs. 
 Elmore, the boss s married daughter, was near the door, 
 and she opened it before the hired girl got there. And 
 there stood Anne Villet," he says. " Who do you want 
 to see ? she says, seeing the ugly look on the girl s face. 
 I want to see him, says the Villet woman. 
 
 " Who ? " says Mrs. Elmore. 
 
 " Oh, I don t know what he calls himself now, she 
 says; but he will remember me. These muscles and 
 bones has come back to him, she says. We ll have a 
 pretty little scene, she says." 
 
 And says Joe, "Then Mrs. Elmore asks again who the 
 girl meant, but never got a chance to hear the answer, 
 for Bob Harvey, the Boss s son, stepped up from behind. 
 He was red and dizzy, they say. But he says, I ll talk 
 to her, he says. Don t have any noise about this, 
 for God s sake ! he says. Go in the house, sister, he 
 says to Mrs. Elmore, and he walked off down across the 
 lawn there and stood a long while talking to the woman 
 under the trees." 
 
 And says Joe, "There they talked, and when Bob
 
 192 JIM HANDS 
 
 Harvey came back into the house and his sister asked 
 him questions. He was excited, but wouldn t answer any 
 thing ; and the Old Boss come out from the dining room 
 where he d been smoking his cigar the way he does, and 
 he asked his girl, Mrs. Elmore, what was happening, and 
 she told him, and when the boy started to go out the 
 door again, the Old Boss grabbed him and asked him 
 who the woman was that he could see standing out there 
 under those horse-chestnut trees, and the boy said that 
 didn t mean anything dishonorable to him, and that was 
 all he would tell, and bust away and went out." 
 
 " Great Scott!" says I. "Where is Anne Villet 
 now? " I says. 
 
 "Oh, she s gone!" says Joe. "The station-master 
 told me she went on the first train this morning. Bob 
 Harvey telegraphed last night to some feller to send 
 five hundred dollars by telegraph, and an answer came 
 with an order, and the operator gave Harvey a statement 
 showing it was coming, and the boy wrote an order on 
 the telegraph company and gave it to Myrick at the 
 Phenix Hotel, and Myrick cashed it for him." 
 
 "Well," says I, "he gave her the money, that s 
 plain," I says. 
 
 " Of course," says Joe, "that s plain; and if you don t 
 want me to get docked for being late this morning at 
 the time-clock, it s plain I ve got to hurry." 
 
 So we walked on to the door together. I had a mix 
 ture in my feelings right then. I was glad my Katherine
 
 JIM HANDS 193 
 
 had escaped the feller, and yet I remembered her voice 
 saying, "It isn t true!" and I hated to have to tell 
 her that it was. I wondered what the Old Boss was 
 feeling, and as sure as the world I forgot how I d been 
 learning to dislike him since he interfered with my 
 girl s happiness, and I kinder felt sorry for him. And I 
 looked in the office as I went toward them bare wooden 
 stairs, and I seen he weren t there. 
 
 It wasn t till noon he came down, and then he sent for 
 me. I never seen so much pain on a human face. He 
 was like a man who has been sent up for a thirty-year 
 term. He never raised his eyes at all. 
 
 "I suppose you know what I want to see you about," 
 he says, playing with his ringers on the back of his gold 
 watch. 
 
 "Yes," I says. 
 
 "Who was that woman? " he says. And I told him 
 all I knew. "Does your daughter know anything of 
 this? " he says. 
 
 "Only what I know," says I, "and not so much, for she 
 don t know anything about what Joe told me," I says. 
 "She don t believe it against your son," I says. "It s 
 going to be hard to tell her to tell her that it s a 
 fact." 
 
 He looked up at me with a quick shoot of his eyes. 
 " You don t mean - " he begins. 
 
 "Yes," I says. "She hasn t seen him, but she still 
 loves him," I says.
 
 194 JIM HANDS 
 
 " You don t mean it ! " says he, and for a long time 
 he was thinking. Then he draws a long breath and pulls 
 down his vest and sits down. Jim/ he says, "I ve got 
 two daughters myself. For their sake I d like to keep 
 this thing quiet. You ll help me?" he says. "Well, 
 you better know it all," he says. "I ve told my boy 
 that he could tell me the truth or not call on me to pay 
 his bills. I couldn t get a word out of him except that 
 there was nothing dishonorable to him. Of course he 
 lied to me. I told him so. I told him we were 
 through," he says. "He only said he was sorry I 
 hadn t learned to know him, being that he was my own 
 son. But finally he said that he had borrowed five 
 hundred dollars from his room-mate in college. 
 
 "The five hundred he gave to the girl ? " I says. 
 
 "Yes," says the Boss, biting his lip. "The young 
 fools. His room-mate signed a post-dated check, and 
 hasn t got the money to make good. The boy said that 
 would get his room-mate in trouble. He said of course 
 it would be known among his friends in college, and that 
 it meant he couldn t go back there. He tried to weaken 
 me by telling me that ! And we had hot words, and I 
 stood out," he says. "And, Jim," he says, all hunched 
 up in the leather chair, "I guess my boy and me is 
 through," he says. 
 
 "I m sorry," says I; "and I ll try to shut up the 
 talk," I says. 
 
 "A rascal and a coward," says he, as I was going out
 
 JIM HANDS 195 
 
 the door. He acted like a man talking to himself . "A 
 rascal and liar," he says, " my son." 
 
 So that was the story I had to tell my girl that night, 
 and I can see them big eyes of hers looking at me, and 
 I remember how she opened and shut her hands and 
 pressed em together and against her throat. She went 
 upstairs when I was through, and she brought down one 
 of them tickets with a string in it that they put in your 
 buttonhole at these country fairs, and I seen that on 
 the back of it was his handwriting, and it said, "For a 
 good girl," like it says on the china mugs they give 
 children. I just caught a look at it. She tore the paste 
 board into little bits of pieces and dropped em into the 
 waste-basket. And after a while she gave a laugh the 
 kind of laugh I don t like much. 
 
 I heard it more than once in those next days. Only 
 once she spoke of Bob Harvey. She had come out to 
 the barn and was patting the horse s nose; and all of a 
 sudden she turned quick to me and said, "If it hadn t 
 been true," she says, "he would have come and told 
 me," she says. 
 
 "Yes," I says. 
 
 "But if he didn t care for me any more," she says, 
 "he might not care what I thought," she says, and she 
 looked up at me again. "Do you think it was that? " 
 she says. 
 
 " You can search me," says I, and I watched her go 
 into the house, where I knew she d sit over some book
 
 196 JIM HANDS 
 
 she was reading. She was always a great one for books, 
 books, books, books, and in them days she ate em 
 up one after another, and would sometimes stop and 
 look out the window an hour at a time, or maybe go up 
 to walk in Turner s Woods, where the leaves had begun 
 to shake down from the trees. I remember I followed 
 her into the front room. 
 
 "Girl," I says, "you don t still have any feelings for 
 him ? " I says. 
 
 "No ! " she says, clear and strong, and I felt a heap 
 better to hear her say it. 
 
 Annie was pretty sure of it, too. She had packed 
 up all the Villet girl s things and put em in the attic, 
 and it seemed as if, when that was done, we had a clean 
 slate. It only goes to show that a feller can t tell. 
 
 It was the Boss who told me a week or two after 
 that, and I couldn t keep it. I told right out, when I 
 got home, that when Bob Harvey had gone away he 
 hadn t gone back to finish his college. 
 
 "Where did he go?" says Katherine and Annie. 
 
 "Nobody knows," says I. "He just disappeared." 
 
 "Nobody knows?" says Annie. 
 
 "No," says I. "He s dropped out of sight like a rat 
 gone into a hole," I says. "I guess we ve all seen the 
 last of him," I says; "and little I knew we would/ I 
 says, "when he stopped me last week and asked me if 
 Katherine had heard about the trouble and whether 
 she believed it."
 
 JIM HANDS 197 
 
 "What did you tell him?" says the girl, with the 
 words in her throat and coming out very slow. 
 
 "Why, I told him the truth," I says. "I said you not 
 only believed it, but, more than that, you knew it, and 
 I said he probably knew that once his father had told me 
 that my daughter weren t good enough for him, and that 
 now it had turned out that he weren t good enough for 
 you, or any other girl ; and I thought he was going to 
 make a bluff at hitting me with his closed fist, but he 
 only said, It s a big farce to believe in anybody/ just 
 as if he was the one who d been injured, and he walked 
 away. It was that day he left town," I says. 
 
 "You told him that !" says Katherinc. 
 
 "Yes," I says. "What s the matter? Wasn t it 
 true?" 
 
 But she only nodded, and covered her face with her 
 hands. It is strange how hard it is for some women to 
 root up things out of their hearts. By and by she 
 raised her head and says, " Nobody stood by him - 
 not one," she says, and Annie and I looked at each 
 other.
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 THEN the letter came. It was that very night that 
 the Argus was near sudden death. 
 
 I was a stockholder in the Argus then, though it 
 makes me laugh when I think of myself as a publisher. 
 It was The Imperial Press and Printing Company. It s 
 the Harden County Argus right here in this little 
 factory town. It has a printing-press with the hip dis 
 ease or something like that, eight shelves of old adver 
 tising cuts, a stack of cardboard, and an inch and a half 
 of gray, mossy-looking dust over everything, and over 
 the files of the paper in particular. 
 
 Old Edward Knowles is the editor, and I guess about 
 the sole asset. He has got a kind of a pursy look to his 
 mouth from blowing dust off things. I don t know how 
 old he is, but he can sit on a box and blink his old eyes 
 at the dirty ceiling and talk kinder personal about the 
 election of Lincoln, though he was a journeyman 
 printer then, and tell what the platforms and major 
 ities were for every year, I don t know how far back. 
 And then he ll go down to the station with his big 
 trousers flapping on his little legs to see who come in on 
 the train, and maybe get a couple of items, as he always 
 
 198
 
 JIM HANDS 199 
 
 calls em, for the "Local News" and "Personal Men 
 tion." 
 
 Somehow I never think of the old man without think 
 ing of Mazie Marcou and her smile and her high-heel 
 shoes and her yeller hair. It s that easy to be fooled 
 about people ! And it come to me as I was going down 
 from the noon meal at home to-day how I got into the 
 scrape with them two myself. 
 
 I remember well enough what a time I had waiting 
 for my money. I d sold the old man a lot of land up on 
 Maple Street for two hundred and fifty dollars, and he 
 paid me along two or three dollars at a time, and then 
 wait and then fifty cents. You know there s some folks 
 ain t got enough money sense to buy a nickle cigar and 
 come away with the right change. They ain t to blame, 
 and I couldn t take the land away from him. I couldn t 
 find the courage. The old man had built a cottage on 
 it, and he and his old lady lived there and liked to sit on 
 the steps evenings in summer and bow to folks, and in 
 a case like that I guess I ain t got a lot of money sense 
 either, mortgage or no mortgage. 
 
 He says to me : " Jim, I ll tell you the truth. I never 
 had subscribers so hard to collect from as this summer," 
 he says. " They ve never been so complimentary about 
 the paper before," he says, "and that s a bad sign sure," 
 he says. " I took twenty of em out on the Camden 
 Road for potatoes and wood, and even them is slow. 
 You know I d like to pay you, but somehow I guess you
 
 200 JIM HANDS 
 
 better take a couple of thousand shares of stock in The 
 Imperial Company," he says. " I own the whole thing 
 now/ he says, " and never did understand much about 
 corporation finance, anyhow, though enough to know 
 how bad Joe Burton rolled me out when I bought the 
 company." 
 
 " How much is a share worth ?" I says. 
 
 "I ll tell you the truth, Jim," says he. "I don t 
 know. I never give it no study, like I give the railroad 
 company s figures. I got my suspicions," he says, " and 
 I ve had em for twenty years," he says, "but I ain t 
 done nothing to confirm em, for the paper is an old 
 friend and I love it, and I ain t going to do nothing to 
 reflect on it no way." 
 
 Well, of course I had to laugh. It was worth stand 
 ing a loss to see the wrinkles on the old man s face 
 and his fingers scratching in his gray hair, and find an 
 honest feller like him, who meant to pay his bills and 
 almost never got around to it. 
 
 You know how them things work in your mind. Why, 
 I thought of fifty things in a minute. I remembered how 
 my Annie had noticed a picture of the old man s son 
 hanging over his desk in the printing-shop a picture 
 of a young feller with a big tie and a sheepish smile and 
 hair all brushed up and greased, maybe. And how she d 
 found out that the boy was drowned when he was 
 twenty-one. And I remembered them editorials I d 
 read in the Argus sometimes. They had a lot of long
 
 JIM HANDS 201 
 
 words, but even some of the men at the factory read 
 cm and would say, "That s right!" or "That s going 
 some!" or "That s slinging the words all right!" 
 And I thinks to myself how the old man was always 
 writing hardest for the under dog, and how he must have 
 put himself to it. There was sweat in them editorials 
 - especially when he was writing about some man in 
 town who died. It didn t make any difference who, 
 either. You could see that the old man felt as if every 
 feller who died had been just as straight and good and 
 smart as the greatest man that ever lived. And he d 
 make you half believe it, too, even if it was a feller like 
 Dave Pierson. 
 
 So, as I say, I looked at old Ed and remembered how 
 he used to talk about the power of the press, as he 
 called it, and the sphere of a writer s influence and the 
 like of that, and go without a summer suit of clothes just 
 so s he could see his way clear to buy a new set of type 
 which he never paid for. So I come to the conclusion 
 that I d take the stock, and even if the Argus weren t 
 a money-maker, there d be some satisfaction being 
 connected with a "moulder of public opinion," as old 
 Knowles used to say. And that was the way I got into 
 it. 
 
 There was a lot of guying here at the factory when the 
 boys found it out. "Don t forget the Sunday edition 
 with the colored pictures," says Ben; and Nellie Conroy 
 in the st itching-room was always stopping me to say,
 
 202 JIM HANDS 
 
 "Mr. Hands, I hear you have a new correspondent at 
 Turner s Four Corners, where the sawmill is closed 
 down"; or maybe Joe Bent, who s boss of the packing- 
 room and mean as burnt rubber, would yell at me: 
 "They say you ve got a new subscriber, Jim. That 
 ought to double your advertising rates, old man"; 
 and the like of that. 
 
 But I didn t care. The old man was happy, and the 
 paper was coming out and had a circulation of seven or 
 eight hundred or something around there, and the folks 
 that got it in and around this muddy little factory town 
 used to read it right through, including cards of thanks 
 and "in memorium" notices, and the plate matter inside 
 that come from Chicago all set up with blurred pictures, 
 and the medicine testimonials, and the stories written by 
 women with names like actresses. And they read the 
 "Personal Mention" first and old Knowles s editorials 
 afterward, and they bowed to him a little lower than they 
 would to most folks because he seemed to know some 
 thing about almost everything. 
 
 It was that summer the Argus had a close call the 
 same summer I m telling about, and the one when my 
 little Mike got dogwood poison, and they had the big 
 election and row over the railroad in this State. We 
 expect to be getting cool weather up in the hills here by 
 that time, and sometimes the frost has turned them 
 maples over there across the river fifty-seven different 
 colors and there s a kind of snap in the air that gets
 
 JIM HANDS 203 
 
 into the balls of your feet. But that year it was hot ! 
 I can just see the heat rising off them railroad tracks ! 
 Saturday afternoon you could hear em cheering up at 
 the field where our boys was playing the team of college 
 fellers from a camp over at the lake. 
 
 I forgot to tell you that I d bought a chair from a mail 
 order house. It was one my Annie had picked out from 
 a catalogue, and we was waiting for it and wondering how 
 well it would be made and how it was going to look in 
 our sitting-room, and having all them feelings about 
 owning something new that I sometimes think them who 
 is rich don t know anything about. I d gone down to the 
 station to see if it had come on the noon freight, and being 
 as it was late and the four-ten train coming up from 
 the Junction most due, I met old Knowles tightening up 
 his old blue necktie, as he always did whenever he was 
 going to speak to strangers or meet a train for " Items." 
 
 He had a way when anything was on his mind of never 
 saying, "How are you?" or nothing, but just walking 
 up to you and looking at you from under them gray, 
 bushy eyebrows, and then firing off almost like a gun. 
 And that day he walks up, mopping his forehead with a 
 big silk handkerchief, and he hauls a folded paper out of 
 his pocket from among the bunch of bills and receipts 
 and fire-alarm cards and advertising copy, and he shook 
 it out and says : "There ! I ve got something to say in 
 the paper that comes out to-day about that !" 
 
 "What s the matter?" I says. "It ain t anything
 
 204 JIM HANDS 
 
 but a poster for a theatrical troupe," I says, grinning. 
 "And, I says, pointing with my finger, "it says the 
 Mazie Marcou Company presents Mazie Marcou, the 
 Kohinoor Soubrette, together with eight high-class 
 acts, including the New York Comedy Four in the 
 screaming farce, The Door with the Keyhole. 7 And 
 here s a picture of Mazie herself, looking happy and 
 well set up, if I do say it. Ain t it proper," says I, " con 
 sidering the age we live in?" I says. 
 
 "It s proper enough," he says. "That ain t what I m 
 talking about. But these shows come here to town 
 and they ain t any good and they pervert the people s 
 taste and haven t got any dramatic merit. Now I can 
 remember seeing Booth and anyhow, I saw this 
 Marcou show down at the Junction when I went last 
 Wednesday. It s awful poor. A woman like that ought 
 to be ashamed. Her voice is awful. She ain t so graceful 
 a dancer as Jenny Wilder, who sorts the mail at the post- 
 office, and Jenny s the worst I ever see to step on men s 
 feet and wrestle with wall chairs or tip over the lemonade. 
 We re moulding public opinion," he says. "And the 
 power of the press ain t got the backbone of a tomato- 
 worm," he says, "if it can t speak out what / think. 
 So I ve wrote an editorial and told our people what 
 they re getting. I ve run it right under a red-hot one 
 about the way the M. U. and R. Railroad is trying to 
 own this State and corrupt our representative form of 
 republican government," he says. "We ll have a great
 
 JIM HANDS 205 
 
 issue this time!" he says. "It ll be out in half an 
 hour," he says, "in time to catch the R.F.D.," and 
 with that he pulled out one of them slips he called 
 galley proof. "I always write best under pressure," 
 he says. "Read that !" 
 
 Well, I oughter remember that editorial from beginning 
 to end, hide, hair, and shoe leather. It s funny how little 
 things will raise a big stew that you never expect. But 
 I can t think of it all just as it was written. It said that 
 there was plenty of reasons why people ought not to go 
 to these cheap one-night-stand shows, but the chief of all 
 was that it lowered the standard of the drama, and if 
 any proof was wanting of the fact, all you had to do was 
 to go to " Uncle Tom s Cabin" and see how it was growing 
 poorer and poorer every year. And then it sailed off 
 and turned a couple of big circles like a hawk and then 
 it dived down on to Mazie Marcou. And them words I 
 remember as plain as if I had em before me. I ve 
 learned em since. 
 
 Let s see. "The piece de resistance of this grotesque 
 aggregation," it says, "which for the foolish mortals 
 whose vapid tastes are so whetted by tawdry posters 
 that they would pay out their inheritance for tickets 
 (which are not freshly printed, but used over and over 
 again, carrying germs of disease from hand to hand 
 nay, from city to city) is Miss Marcou," it says, or some 
 thing like that. "We are well informed," it says, 
 "that dramatic criticism is not libel or actionable at the
 
 206 JIM HANDS 
 
 bar of justice, but even were it so, we would not hesitate 
 to say that we would hate to have been hanging since 
 Miss Marcou come of age. Her claims to art," it says, 
 "are as false as her multitudinous and poorly concealed 
 aids to beauty. The modest peacock, who never ad 
 vanced a boast of sweet voice, produces by comparison 
 with this songstress a heavenly melody, and the dancing 
 which attends the outburst resembles the antics a hen 
 makes dancing on asphalt when it s soft, sticky, and 
 maybe hot. Of course some may like to see this. 
 We don t ! We never attend such exhibitions. Non 
 est de gustibus disputantum ! " it says. 
 
 "I thought you said you seen the show," I says. 
 
 "Oh," he says, " twas only as a dramatic critic," he 
 says. 
 
 "And are you going to show this to the lady when the 
 train comes in?" says I, hearing the engine whistle 
 at the covered bridge. And with that a funny smile 
 come on to his face and he says, "No," he says. "But 
 it s not because I m discreet or cautious or nothing," 
 he says. "To tell you the whole truth, Jim," he says, 
 "I m sorry that editorial is in the Argus. Maybe she s 
 bold. Maybe she s bleached her hair. Maybe all I ve 
 said is true. But the Argus hasn t never attacked the 
 gentle sex before, whether they were gentle or not," he 
 says. "I guess I must have been inspired," he says. 
 "Inspiration is the big danger in being literary," says he. 
 
 And yet when I first set eyes on Mazie as she got down
 
 JIM HANDS 207 
 
 from the train, I didn t think he d done her any injustice 
 or nothing. You could tell she was leader. The other 
 members of the troupe seemed like last-year s bird-nests, 
 but she looked like one of them lace valentines. She had 
 a dress covered with ribbons and this and that and a 
 pink umbrella and a smile that was fixed like the look 
 on the face of one of them bold figures in the window 
 of a department store. Her expression was kinder hard, 
 I thought. And as I say, she had that faded daisy 
 appearance. I thought there wouldn t be no sympathy 
 lost between me and her unless she lost it. And that 
 goes to show how much you can tell. 
 
 I suppose I d noticed more about her if it hadn t been 
 for a feller that got off the smoker. Sometimes I think 
 the way things is fixed in this world is like it is on a real 
 stage with somebody you don t see thinking up them 
 plots and making us jump through the hoops or anything 
 that comes into the plot-feller s head, though I d not 
 like to have you tell Father Ryan I said so. 
 
 This new feller weren t no ordinary specimen to get 
 off the train at this town. If the Old Boss hadn t 
 left the factory for a few days for a trip with his youngest 
 daughter, I d have thought it was somebody come up to 
 see him. You know how it is this feller was maybe 
 thirty-five or forty, and his hair was brushed just so and 
 a little gray at the comers, and he had a kind expression, 
 and his clothes weren t flashy none, but they fitted him 
 good-natured, and his travelling-bag was the kind that
 
 208 . JIM HANDS 
 
 cost money. You ve seen them mustaches cropped oft 
 - he had one of em. Nobody knew him, either. Old 
 Ed Knowles asked everybody at the station. He was 
 crazy for an "item." 
 
 " Well," says the old man at last, "I guess I ve got to 
 give it up. He certainly looks like a Congressman, and 
 I ain t sure I ain t done him an injustice even then. 
 He s going to the Phenix Hotel, anyhow. This is vege 
 table-hash and batter-cakes night there," he says. 
 "I d have a good mind to eat there and set at his table. 
 The only trouble is that I have to go to the shop to 
 night and knock down the forms," he says. Little he 
 knew what was in the air when he said it. 
 
 I didn t know myself, of course. I didn t know when 
 I come down on to Main Sreet after supper. I remember 
 the stores were all lit up, and a new display in the window 
 of the New York Emporium, and wagons in from the 
 country drawn by horses with their heads bowed down, 
 and thunder sounding off in the hills up the valley, and 
 boys shouting and people saying, "Ain t it hot ? " to each 
 other, and the fans going in the ceiling of the barber 
 shop. I remember that night. 
 
 And I seen a light in the shop of The Imperial Press 
 and Printing Company, and so I dropped in. I had a sort 
 of sense of ownership on account of them two thousand 
 shares of stock. If you ve ever been in there, you know 
 there s an outer office a kind of waiting-room with an 
 old station bench in it and a round stove that hasn t
 
 JIM HANDS 209 
 
 known a fire since anybody can remember, and colored 
 pictures of steamboats with advertising frames. Then 
 there s a thin partition of wood and a door. Well, the 
 door goes into what old Ed used to call his sanctum. 
 There s an old brass lamp that hangs down from a beam 
 over the table, and a steel engraving of Abraham 
 Lincoln, and a desk with agricultural reports on the top, 
 and papers piled on it so s nobody could ever write 
 there without using a rake and a shovel first. And when 
 I opened the door, there sat the slick-looking feller with 
 the cropped mustache that we saw get off the train. 
 
 The minute he heard the door he got up as if he d 
 been caught shaking money out of a child s bank, and 
 he looked at me, sizing me up in his sharp-eyed way. 
 
 "Jim," says old Ed, "come right in," he says. " You 
 own a part of this paper, and there ain t any reason why 
 you shouldn t sit down. This gentleman is Mr. Paul R. 
 Otis, and he represents the M. & U. Railroad," he says. 
 
 Before I could say a word, the feller s face bust into a 
 smile. He seemed to have sized me up as if I weren t 
 nothing to be afraid of. And he stuck out a warm fist 
 and was very hearty. 
 
 "Yes, yes," he says, finally, "this is very pleasant. 
 And I suppose I ought to explain to you, Mr. Hands, 
 that I m in a sort of confidential capacity, and act for the 
 management of the road in a general way. Yes, yes," 
 he says, for it seemed to be a habit with him when he 
 was trying to be agreeable. "Yes, yes," he says, "I
 
 210 JIM HANDS 
 
 come up to this town especially to see the owner of the 
 Argus and Mr. Knowles, the able editor of the paper." 
 
 Ed kinder smiled at that. He was pleased. "Why, 
 we don t have a very large circulation," he says. 
 
 "No?" says Otis, plucking at his mustache. "But 
 apparently the little paper has some influence a great 
 deal of influence; and the political situation is such 
 that we are especially anxious that no mistake be made 
 in sending the right representative from this district. 
 These editorials I ve been reading in the Argus are 
 pretty severe," he says, and touched all the finger-tips of 
 one hand with all those of the other. "Yes, yes," he 
 says, "I know that there have been some things to 
 criticise in corporation management in the past. I m 
 the first to admit it," he says, "but on the other hand, 
 too much agitation," he says, "especially when founded 
 upon a misrepresentation of the facts - Yes, yes," 
 he says. "And I don t like to see you making mistakes, 
 Mr. Knowles," he says. "I thought we could talk it 
 over," he says. 
 
 The old man took his glasses out of his case with its 
 purple lining, and he wiped em on his ink-spotted silk 
 handkerchief, and he set em on his nose and kinder bent 
 down under the old brass lamp to look at the other 
 feller. 
 
 "Go on," he says. 
 
 "Yes, yes," says Otis, "it pains us very much to 
 have you adopt the policy you have written into your
 
 JIM HANDS 211 
 
 editorials, Mr. Knowles. It makes us feel that perhaps 
 we haven t carried enough advertising in your paper," 
 he says. "It makes us feel that we ought to come to 
 some business arrangement, perhaps. Couldn t you 
 see your way clear to give us a chance to show you that 
 your editorials are not only hostile and dangerous to our 
 welfare, but also unjust ? " he says. 
 
 He was a slick-talking feller. His voice was soft and 
 sweet, like water running over pebbles, and he had a 
 smile that looked as real as Father Ryan s. Old Ed 
 leaned forward again and he smiled, too, but I seen his 
 hand on the table shut so hard the veins stood out, and all 
 the old rheumatism joints were shiny, and I knew what it 
 meant. 
 
 "I believe we could come to some kind of an under 
 standing," he says, kinder whispering. 
 
 "Oh, yes, yes," says Otis, letting his finger-tips slide 
 out and rubbing his hands together. "We would not 
 expect a hostile attitude from the Argus," he says, "and 
 we would expect to pay fifty dollars a month for a year, 
 and you could give us any space that was convenient. 
 Naturally enough we wouldn t want to do this with a 
 hostile agitating paper," he says. "You would under 
 stand that," he says. "We d rely on a verbal agree 
 ment. Fifty dollars a month." 
 
 At that old man Knowles let out a kind of a sigh, and 
 he leaned back in his chair till it creaked, and he began 
 to rub the arms of it.
 
 212 JIM HANDS 
 
 Finally, he says, beginning in a kind of a whisper, 
 "Mr. Otis," he says, "I ain t a young man, and I ve 
 been editor of this paper for a good many years. I never 
 had no such advertising contract as that before. It 
 would almost double the income of the Argus," he says. 
 "Yes, Jim," he says, looking at me, "that s what it 
 would do, sure," he says. "But," he says, standing up 
 and putting his hands behind him, "there ain t been a 
 word I ve ever written for the Argus that didn t come 
 from my heart. If anybody seen it there, they might 
 not believe it, but, by Jingo, they knew I believed it ! 
 They knew I wouldn t drive up to their door and lie to 
 em in the face, and they knew I wouldn t do it in the 
 Argus. The paper ain t made any money," he says. 
 "Neither have I. My wife s had to get along sometimes 
 without a dress to go to the strawberry festivals or the 
 like of that," he says. "She didn t mind, I guess/ he 
 says, thoughtful, and putting his hands in his pockets. 
 "Anyhow," he says, "I ve run this paper, and if I did it 
 for money, I ain t got any. I ain t got much of any 
 thing except the influence the Argus has. I ain t even 
 got any children now, except the Argus. It ain t 
 much. It ain t large. But it s a virtuous daughter, Mr. 
 Otis, and I ain t going to sell her. I love this paper." 
 
 And with that he brought his finger down as if he had 
 a charge of powder and shot loaded in it. "Mr. Otis," he 
 says, "I know you. You are one of these accelerators 
 one of these public-opinion agents. You re somebody s
 
 JIM HANDS 213 
 
 dog. You smile. But it s a fake," he says. "There 
 ain t any smile in your soul," he says. " You re bought 
 by somebody. I ain t bought by nobody," he says, 
 making his finger. And I seen right then that old 
 Ed weren t short and bowlegged and bothered with 
 bills. I seen he was the goods. 
 
 "So," he says, "there s some distinctions," he says, 
 "even in a democracy," he says. "Mr. Otis, this is my 
 sanctum. There ain t a piece of mahogany or ten 
 dollars worth of furniture in it. But it s my sanctum, 
 and you ain t welcome in it. Your profession is corrup 
 tion ! " he says. 
 
 The feller must have had a hide like an oak-tanned 
 engine belt. He got kinder red, and his smile kinder 
 turned on to one side of his face as if it hurt him and he 
 was trying to get rid of it. Perhaps he was used to 
 taking slaps in spite of his fine clothes and nice-parted 
 hair. It ain t necessary for a slave to go barefoot in 
 these days. He stuck his hand into his pocket and 
 pulled out a fountain-pen and twirled it in his fingers, and 
 when he spoke it was just as soft as ever. 
 
 "I m sorry you take that attitude," he says, "es 
 pecially as you re fond of the Argus. Maybe I can make 
 you see the matter in a different light, Mr. Knowles. 
 I don t want to do anything that would cause you or 
 Mr. Hands any hardship. But as you know, you put 
 up your stock in the Argus at the bank last April. You 
 indorsed it over and gave a contract for a forfeiture of
 
 214 JIM HANDS 
 
 your equity in case you failed to pay for four hundred 
 dollars of notes when they came due. And they re 
 due before noon to-morrow. In this State the forfeiture 
 is good," he says. 
 
 "Well, the boys at the bank will renew for me/ says 
 old Ed. 
 
 The Otis feller grinned. "Yes, yes," he said, "the 
 boys, as you call em, have been pretty nice to you, 
 haven t they? But you see the railroad has some in 
 fluence, too. We do a lot of business with this little 
 bank here, and I just bought your notes, and I ve got the 
 majority of your stock in my valise at the hotel. And 
 I ain t going to renew the contract. I guess you ve got 
 the last of your credit," he says. "You might get the 
 money," he says, "if it weren t for the fact that 
 the average man would advance you more sympathy 
 than money," he says. "Perhaps I ll own the Argus 
 to-morrow," says he, slow and smiling.
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 I TELL you I never see such a look as come into old 
 Ed s face. The paper was the only thing he had in the 
 world. He was rooted right into it. And what he 
 heard turned him white as your collar. 
 
 "Well," says Paul R. Otis, "can t you see your way 
 clear to a change in policy, Mr. Knowles? Of course, 
 in that case, we d let the little debt go for a while." 
 
 I seen the old man open and shut his hands. He 
 kinder looked around the office as though he was seeing 
 it for the last time, and he picked up a copy of the 
 paper and looked at one side and turned it over and 
 looked at the other. 
 
 "No," he says, "you can buy the press and the 
 name and the files," he says, "and you can kill the 
 Argus. You can bury it. But you can t buy the Argus. 
 For the Argus is me," he says, and put his head in his 
 hands. 
 
 "Is that the way you feel, Mr. Hands?" says the 
 other feller, turning to me. 
 
 "No, it ain t," I says. "My feeling is different. His 
 is mental. But my feeling is all in my body," I says. 
 "I m itching," I says, "I m itching to wipe the floor 
 with you." 
 
 I think I frightened the feller. He got up, and just as 
 
 215
 
 216 JIM HANDS 
 
 he took a step, the door from the outer office opened and 
 in come a flash of blue ribbons and pink hat. It was 
 Mazie Marcou, as sure as you re a foot high ! 
 
 "Well," she says, smoothing her yeller hair with one 
 hand, "I m a lady," she says, "but you can tie a can to 
 me if I ever saw anything to beat this," she says. "It s 
 funny what you can see when you ain t got a gun/ 
 she says, "even in a little burg like this," she says. 
 "You re Mr. Knowles, the editor and dramatic critic? " 
 she says. 
 
 The old man looked up and nodded. 
 
 "Well, say," she says, "when I come in and heard 
 voices and sat down outside, I was loaded with some emo 
 tional acting. I had a speech," she says, "with class 
 to it. You roasted our show. I ain t fussing about 
 that. We like that talk about our not being a high-brow 
 show. It draws the crowd. We ve sold out the whole 
 house to-night on what you wrote," she says. "It s 
 something more personal," she says, "and I want you 
 to know I don t care whether I sing like a peacock or 
 dance like a hen on hot tar. Them things is nothing to 
 me. I ve been been married twice and I ve heard em 
 before, especially from the last one. But there s one 
 thing," she says, "that troubles me," she says, "and it 
 ain t the peacock business. No," she says, "I come in 
 for an explanation. You called me something that 
 don t sound good to me. It sounds like an insult, 
 and I don t stand for insults from no dramatic critic."
 
 JIM HANDS 217 
 
 " What was it ? " says old Ed, looking like a man who 
 has been shot full of trouble from first one barrel and 
 then the other; "what was it? " he says. 
 
 "De gustibus," says Mazie, flushing red. "The 
 orchestra leader s an Eyetalian, but even he, who has 
 got an awful long string of them abusives, couldn t 
 answer for this gustibus, " she says. 
 
 I saw old Ed reach for a book as if he was going to 
 show her, but she stopped him. 
 
 "Some other time, old man," she says. "I ll take 
 your word for it. And from what I could hear sitting 
 outside, you ve got a swell lot of trouble already," 
 she says. "I heard this gent here, I heard what he 
 said," she says, giving Otis a look, and turning up her 
 nose full of contempt. "I heard him blackmailing 
 you," she says. And then she turned again to Otis, and 
 says, "Do you think you can get away with it? " she 
 says. 
 
 Otis puts his thumbs in his vest pockets and whistled. 
 "Well," he says, "I can t understand how you can take 
 that view of it," he says. "My dear madam," he says, 
 "do you want to advance the four hundred dollars? " 
 he says. 
 
 "Do you think I d be working on this circuit if I had 
 four hundred dollars? " she says. "Oh, no," she says. 
 "Not this particular Mazie Marcou. But," she says, 
 looking toward old Knowles, "seeing you say there 
 ain t no harm in this gustibus, let bygones be bygones,"
 
 218 JIM HANDS 
 
 she says. "I like you, Mr. Knowles," she says. "I 
 think you re on the level, and anybody that s on the 
 level these days has got me pushing a button on their 
 time-clock. So enter Mazie Marcou, playing title part 
 in the Power of the Press. 7 Villain thwarted by harm 
 less hands of womankind. There s the scenario." 
 
 " The what? "I says. 
 
 "Scenario plot," says she. "Come with me," 
 she says, pointing to me. "I m late now. My show 
 goes on at eight-thirty. Don t pass off into a dream, 
 mister," she says. "You and I are going to pull off 
 a sketch. We re going to show this feller Otis that this 
 squeeze-out business won t go in a good old U. S. 
 town." 
 
 "What are you going to do ? " I says, half getting up. 
 
 "Ask no questions and follow the old breeze," she 
 says, in a queenly fashion, and rustled out the door 
 with her blue ribbons flying, and her hands at work un 
 hooking the buttons at the back. 
 
 She said something to the man at the door of the 
 Opera House, and he says, looking at me: "It ll be all 
 right. Just speak to me when you come back, mister. 
 The show starts in a few minutes, and we ve got a swell 
 act for an opener." "I ll be back in time," I says. 
 "I only want to tell a feller to let my wife know where 
 I ve gone," I says, and ran across the street. It was 
 just in front of the post-office I met Katherine. You d 
 have thought she had been walking into paradise.
 
 JIM HANDS 219 
 
 11 Oh ! " she says when she saw me. " Look ! Look ! " 
 and she held out a piece of paper. 
 
 I took it and I seen it was like the other. No date, 
 no place nothing but his handwriting and the one 
 word "Katherine " ! 
 
 I looked her square in the eyes. They were shining 
 and wet. I could see em in the light from the store 
 windows. 
 
 "Girl!" I says. "You don t still love him?" 
 
 She never flinched. "Yes," she says, kinder defiant, 
 "I do." 
 
 "After all those things?" I says. 
 
 "Yes," she says, "and more." 
 
 "Katherine ! " I says. 
 
 "What is it, father?" she says, very quiet. I was 
 choking. "Nothing!" I says. "Tell your mother I 
 can t be home till after ten," I says, and I walked back 
 to the Opera House steps. 
 
 The feller there pushed me in and says, "Sit down 
 anywhere, old scout." He talked to me the way a 
 fight promoter talks to the chief of police. 
 
 The hall was full, just as she said, and everybody was 
 hot and fanning themselves with hats or programs. I 
 seen Dave Pierson and his wife in the front row, for he 
 is the kind that always comes an hour beforehand with a 
 newspaper and a package of chewing-gum so s he can 
 get the best seat and read and chew and watch the hall 
 fill up. There was a feller on the stage juggling with
 
 220 JIM HANDS 
 
 Indian clubs, all covered with tinsel, while the musicians 
 were keeping time with him playing the "Anvil Chorus." 
 And the next feller to me a feller that works in the 
 packing-room was saying in a loud whisper: " That s 
 all right. That s a good one. My brother-in-law used 
 to be a juggler for a living, and I know what I m talking 
 about." And then finally the feller on the stage runs 
 off light and easy and graceful on his toes, and when they 
 clapped, he come out again and bowed this way and 
 that, just as if he really cared, and maybe he did. And 
 then they turned the lights out and threw a calcium 
 circle on the curtain the way they do when it s going 
 to be a woman in a swell dress. 
 
 I kinder knew it would be Mazie, and it was. She 
 didn t look half so tired, and she looked a heap younger. 
 She had on a costume about the shade of them Balti 
 more orioles you see in summer a kind of an orange 
 and black, and a diamond necklace which explained 
 the calcium light, I guess. It made em look real. She 
 certainly looked fine. And she sang a song about a 
 picture on the mantelpiece or over the parlor stove or 
 something. That was sad and dragged, you understand. 
 And then back she come, walking on springs and bounc 
 ing around and snapping her fingers and singing a song 
 with lots of ginger called "Aviating Anna," about a 
 black girl who wanted to fly, till you was moving your 
 feet in time to it, and every hair on your head was a 
 jew s-harp. Maybe she was better than usual. Maybe
 
 JIM HANDS 221 
 
 her heart was light, so to speak. Anyhow, she got the 
 factory boys. They seemed to catch her feeling, and 
 they just hollered for more. 
 
 And she comes out smiling the same as ever, and she 
 put up her hand for quiet, and her face changed and you 
 could see she weren t an actress any more, but just a 
 woman. And she began to tell em the story of old 
 Ed Knowles, and I hung over the back of the chair in 
 front of me just listening and listening. 
 
 She told it good how the old man had always 
 been working to make the paper go, and writing what he 
 believed was true, and sitting up late, maybe, to turn out 
 something the best he could do, and how he was on the 
 level. I couldn t see how she knew so much about old 
 Ed. And she couldn t. It was just that she knew things, 
 like my Annie does. And she told em of how she d 
 gone to the Argus office ; and she told right out about 
 this feller from the railroad, and how he weren t satis 
 fied with corrupting politics, but wanted to make public 
 opinion rotten, too ; and she told about how he threat 
 ened to take the paper for a debt of four hundred dol 
 lars, and how it would leave the old man without 
 anything to do ; and she said the paper was his baby, 
 and he d always brought it up and nursed it and 
 sweated for it and got wrinkled for it. 
 
 She certainly handed it out, and she didn t seem 
 to be much educated, either. It was a surprise to me. 
 I guess it don t take education. At first, of course,
 
 222 JIM HANDS 
 
 everybody thought it was going to end in a joke 
 something funny. But by and by, when she had come 
 forward and was talking strong and hard and worked 
 up, you could see the wet places in the corners of her 
 eyes, and in the calcium light they was just like them 
 glass diamonds, only real. So everybody was still, 
 like the woods is at night. They listened to beat the 
 band. 
 
 "Well," she says finally, with a kind of a laugh, "you 
 wonder what I m talking for. I ll tell you," says she. 
 "I m betting on you," she says, "you who sit out there 
 everyone of you. I m betting that men and women ll 
 do the right thing. The ticket man counted you when 
 you come in. There s four hundred and seventy-five 
 of you, and I want four hundred and seventy-five 
 new subscriptions to the Argus ! " she says. 
 
 She waited a minute, and then she walks to the front 
 of the stage and pointed to a boy, and smiled enough 
 to take the chill off Joe Bent, who s the meanest man in 
 the factory. "Do you want to help me? " she says. 
 
 "Sure," says the boy, and everybody seemed kinder 
 glad to stamp and whistle. 
 
 And then she picked out Dave Pierson, and then an 
 old man whose name I forgot, but he lives out on the 
 road to Turner s Corner. 
 
 "Boys," she says to em, "the people here is going 
 to write their names and address on a piece of paper 
 and hand em in with the money. Nothing but cash
 
 JIM HANDS 223 
 
 goes to-night. Them that ain t got it can borrow. 
 And now, boys, do you see this rose I ve got here? 
 The one that brings in the biggest list gets that rose. 
 Go to it ! " she says. 
 
 Well, the funny part of it was that that rose was made 
 of tissue-paper. You could have bought ten of em 
 for a quarter, and yet Dave Pierson and the boy and 
 the old man was all sweating when they got through 
 and outer breath, and red and anxious and trying to 
 separate money from paper and looking sheepish. The 
 rose weren t worth anything. It only goes to show, 
 don t it ! 
 
 And finally they were through, and Mazie told em 
 Dave had won, and she leaned down and pinned the 
 rose on him and put her arms around his neck and made 
 everybody laugh except Dave s wife, who was mad. 
 And Mazie asked the people if Dave was to be trusted 
 to give the money to old Ed, and they laughed some 
 more, and so she gave the cash and the pieces of paper 
 to Dave. Everybody just let loose, laughing and happy 
 and noisy like people get once in a long while. 
 
 And then she come forward again, and she couldn t 
 seem to speak so loud or steady. She just said, "I m 
 much obliged. This is the best sketch I ever put on," 
 she says. "You see I was right," she says, "about 
 people," she says. "They re the goods!" says she. 
 "I like you all," she says, and them words gagged 
 her. So she ran out. And the man had thrown the
 
 224 JIM HANDS 
 
 circled of light on again. Great Guns ! didn t it look 
 empty ! 
 
 Well, sir, Dave come over to the Argus office with the 
 money. And there was four hundred and seven names 
 and addresses and four hundred and eighteen dollars ! 
 
 We counted it out on the old table, and had to begin 
 all over again two or three times, for Dave was always 
 trying to tell old man Knowles how it happened, and 
 old Ed was asking questions and staring like he couldn t 
 believe much of it, and then Dave would tell it all over 
 again, and tell about how he won the rose, and lie 
 very strong about how pretty this Mazie Marcou was. 
 When he d told it enough to us, he run out to tell it 
 and show his paper rose at the barber shop, where they 
 was just closing up. 
 
 And after awhile he comeback. "Well," he says, with 
 a kind of a sigh, "the train s gone. She s left town." 
 
 That seemed to wake up old Ed. "Gone ! " he says. 
 "Ain t I going to see her? " 
 
 "No," says Dave, "I guess not. They re going clear 
 through to New York, I hear." 
 
 Old Ed studied for a while. "My God!" he says. 
 "If she died, what a chance I d have for an obituary ! " 
 he says. 
 
 But he didn t say any more for a long time, and when 
 he spoke again, Dave had looked at his watch and gone 
 out. So the old man put his hand on mine, across the 
 table, and he says, "If we can elect Barnes instead of
 
 JIM HANDS 225 
 
 the railroad candidate, it will be the Argus that done 
 it the power of the press, eh ? " 
 
 "It will not," says I. "It will be gustibus. " 
 
 The old man laughed, but he didn t say anything. 
 After a while he got up and looked at the engraving of 
 Lincoln and straightened it on the wall, and blew the 
 dust off some old books, and walked around the room 
 looking at everything as if he d been away for ten years 
 and just got back. And finally he sat down at the 
 table and gave a sigh, the way a kid does when he s 
 put to bed, and he kinder leaned forward with his head 
 on his arms. That s the way I left him leaning over 
 the table under the old brass lamp in the sanctum. 
 
 As I walked home a cold wind was blowing down 
 from them mountains way up the valley. The weather 
 had changed in an hour. I could see my breath on the 
 air, and the leaves made a dry noise on the trees. I 
 knew it meant autumn was coming over the ridge up 
 there in the north. Many is the time I ve seen it 
 come, and there s a smell in the wind that tells you - 
 just the way you know a parade is coming by the sound 
 of music and the mumble of the people on the curb. 
 
 I thought all the lights in the house would be out 
 before I got home, except for the one the wife always 
 leaves in the hall when I m away, but when I d walked 
 by the edge of Jerry Pollock s boundary wall I seen 
 the front room was lit and I could see somebody s 
 shadow moving back and forth across the curtain.
 
 226 JIM HANDS 
 
 When Annie met me at the door she explained in a 
 whisper. "It s the Boss," she says. 
 
 "At this time of night? " I says. 
 
 "Yes," says she, "he just come. He says he must 
 see Katherine," she says. "I didn t know what to do, 
 Jim. The girl had gone up to her room. I told him 
 to wait a minute and you d be back. And oh, Jim, 
 what do you suppose has happened now ? " she says. 
 
 "I don t know," I says, and walked through the door 
 into the light. 
 
 The old man s hair was in a thousand tangles where 
 he d run his fingers through it. 
 
 "Jim," he says, "I can rely on you and your wife 
 to say nothing about this. It would get the post 
 master into a lot of trouble. But he knows my boy s 
 handwriting," he says, "and when the office closed to 
 night he stopped in and told me your girl had got a 
 letter from him. He never noticed the writing till 
 he handed it through the window to her." 
 
 Somehow I could feel the back of my neck getting hot. 
 "I don t like the methods you use," I says, forgetting 
 everything. "Why don t you hire a detective to 
 watch us ? " I says. 
 
 "I have hired one to find out where my boy has 
 gone, and he gave it up," says he. "Jim," he says, "I 
 don t want to watch you or anybody in your family," 
 he says. "I wouldn t take my boy back if I knew 
 where he was. I just want to know so as to know,
 
 JIM HANDS 227 
 
 that s all," says he; "and I came here to-night in a 
 hurry because I want to see that envelope/ he says. 
 "I was afraid it might get destroyed before I could get 
 a look at the postmark." 
 
 "The letter wasn t addressed to us," says my Annie 
 with a toss of her head; "I will call my daughter. It 
 was her letter, and you can ask her." 
 
 He looked from me to Annie and back again. A 
 little smile came into his face. "I m sorry," he says. 
 "Would it be too much trouble? " 
 
 At that Annie went out for the girl, and I can see 
 Katherine now as she came in that door. She had put 
 on one of them things the women call house dresses that 
 are soft and hang in folds and have ribbons tacked on 
 here and there like tails at a donkey-party but one 
 of them light-colored things and soft. It fell apart at 
 the neck and showed her bare throat, and slipped back 
 from her wrists and showed her arms. There was a 
 happy look in her eyes and a smile on her mouth, and 
 you d never known she d had a evil day in her life. 
 
 He looked at her, and after a minute he moved his 
 foot and says, "The letter!" 
 
 "Good evening, Mr. Harvey," she says, and smiled. 
 I guess he seen his mistake, because he blinked his eyes 
 a couple of times the way he does when somebody gets 
 the best of him, and he kind of bowed. 
 
 "You spoke of this letter," she says, holding it up. 
 "As you know, sir, I didn t encourage him to write it.
 
 228 JIM HANDS 
 
 It s not very long, anyway/ she says, "but I think you 
 would be interested. See!" she says, "it s just one 
 word. It s my name." 
 
 She held it out to him, and I was kind of surprised 
 that he looked at it. "It s like somebody calling, 
 isn t it?" she says. 
 
 "The envelope is what I want to see," says he, with 
 a growl. "What was the postmark?" 
 
 "Mr. Harvey," she says, "now you are speaking ofi 
 another thing entirely!" 
 
 I seen him raise his eyebrows, but she just leaned back 
 against the door-post. "Before I show you that," 
 she says, "I d like to ask you a question. We are very 
 simple people and we reason in simple ways," she says. 
 "Suppose you see that postmark, for that s all there 
 is left to see besides my name and address, what will 
 you do?" 
 
 "I don t understand," he says, looking nervous. 
 
 "Will you try to find him?" says she. "Will you 
 give him the money to clear himself with his friends?" 
 she says. "Will you make him go back to college and 
 face the stories they may tell about him or believe about 
 him? Will you make him act like a man? Will you 
 find out what he owes to Anne Villet and make him 
 pay that, too, in whatever way it can be done ? Will 
 you tell him that now is the time he needs you most, 
 and that you will stand behind him? " she says. "Will 
 you tell him you are sorry you didn t stand behind
 
 JIM HANDS 229 
 
 from the beginning and all through to the end?" she 
 says. 
 
 "No!" says he, brushing the air with his hand and 
 settling his neck in his collar. "No, I won t! Nor 
 would anybody else." 
 
 She gave a little laugh. "I would," she says, very 
 soft. 
 
 I suppose Annie and I both moved, but the Old Boss 
 spoke first. "After you know all you know?" he says. 
 
 "Yes," she says. I remember then we could hear 
 the clock in the Opera House striking the hour, and 
 when it was through we heard the tick of the clock on 
 our wall. 
 
 "Yes," she says, as if she was thinking aloud, "it s 
 easy to stick to those you ought to stick to while 
 it s easy. There may be lots of pretty things in affec 
 tion," she says; "it s only love that s brave," she 
 says. 
 
 The Old Boss acted as if he hadn t heard right. 
 "You mean that after all this time, and in spite of 
 everything, you love him?" he says. 
 
 She smiled and says, "I m not sure it is in spite of 
 everything," she says. "It may be because of every 
 thing," she says, and marked a place on the carpet with 
 the toe of one of her slippers. 
 
 "Well," she says, finally, looking up with them big 
 clear eyes, "either you or I have got to stand by him 
 now. He needs one of us. You ve said you won t.
 
 230 JIM HANDS 
 
 Well, Mr. Harvey, once you told me I had too little to 
 give him. And yet- " she says, and stopped. "And 
 yet," she says again, "now," she says, "I m the only 
 one that can or will give him all. And so," she says, 
 "although the envelope with the postmark is of no 
 value to most people, I will keep it," she says, and she 
 bowed her head and went out the door, and not a stair 
 creaked as she went up.
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 THE Boss looked at me and he looked at Annie. He 
 never said anything he put his hat on and walked out. 
 I seen his back as it turned the gate-post, and I seen he 
 had his head bent over like a man who s thinking as he 
 walks. 
 
 A long talk we had when he was gone, and Annie and 
 I made up our minds that we had a fight on our hands 
 to prevent Katherine from carrying out any of her 
 notions and wasting herself on such a feller as the Boss s 
 son. 
 
 "An awful cost!" says my Annie, with tears in her 
 eyes. "It mustn t be! She must forget him! I m 
 going to send down and have my mother come up 
 again," she says. "Not to tell her," she says, "but 
 just to have her here. And you and I must be firm 
 with Katherine," she says. 
 
 But when either of us tried to make any progress in 
 those next few days, there was nothing accomplished. 
 Katherine would only say, "I m so tired with all the 
 talk about it," or "Why do you worry about me?" 
 or the like of that, and then maybe would sing a bit of 
 a tune. 
 
 The Boss was worrying himself. He told me. "By 
 
 231
 
 232 JIM HANDS 
 
 thunder, Jim," he says, " watch your girl," he says. 
 "I m not talking for myself now, the way I did once. 
 I m talking for you and your wife and her." And he 
 used to go by the house sometimes as if it was just by 
 accident, and stop a minute. He seemed to want to 
 keep his eye on our family. Somehow Katherine would 
 always manage to dodge him, but it was his coming 
 there that got him acquainted with old Mrs. Byrnes, 
 and I m not sure it didn t teach something, too. 
 
 My mother-in-law s father was a stone-mason most 
 of his life, as I ve told you, and he had an arm like a 
 piece of tarred tow-line. But it weren t anything so 
 hard and gristly and snappy as what was in my mother- 
 in-law s head. What she don t know is a plenty, for 
 she never had no schooling, lived out in service, and 
 come over here as a girl, with one dress and a basket 
 of seed potatoes. But what she don t know leaves 
 a whole lot of room for her to do her thinking in, and 
 sometimes a mind like that will shoot a good deal 
 straighter, not being confused with too many targets. 
 
 The crust of her pies, however, would have made a 
 goat wish for oyster-shells, and there was often enough 
 salt on the fried eggs she cooked to give yer a big sur 
 prise. And the way she will dress when she goes to 
 church ! It is all in black, with a big rustle, and looks 
 uncomfortable on her two hundred pounds. It makes 
 you feel as if you d eaten too big a dinner just to look 
 at her. And she has a heavy foot around the house,
 
 JIM HANDS 233 
 
 but there is a hand on her that kinder tells the story 
 of lifting thousands of brooms and kettles and pans and 
 smoothing many a pillow for young ones that was sleepy 
 or maybe had the measles. It has scrubbed floors 
 and raised seven babies. And I m telling you it has 
 the Grand Army beaten fifty-seven ways. It knows 
 something of fighting, too, but in that way it has nothing 
 on her tongue. So much for her. 
 
 The old boss had been taking a hand in politics that 
 summer. The men at the factory didn t like it much 
 when he began to hand over his money and his time 
 to help lick Judson, who was running again for governor. 
 Judson was supposed to be helping the railroad to own 
 this State. At the same time he was mighty popular 
 with workingmen, for he stood in well with the union 
 leaders, and though there wasn t any union in the 
 factory then, yet you know how the rank and file 
 of the boys feel. Besides, we was full of orders and 
 working overtime, and the boss would be away, down 
 the State, half the time, and cross and overworked and 
 ugly when he was here, things had gone so wrong with 
 him. He was fighting Judson because he didn t be 
 lieve in the railroad crowd behind him, and free passes 
 given to anybody who had a little pull here and there, 
 and the ownership of the State, and the like of that, 
 any more than old Ed Knowles believes in it. There 
 weren t anything in it for the Old Boss. An honest 
 feller can sometimes work his head off for unselfish
 
 234 JIM HANDS 
 
 reasons and never get a cheer. He can listen to them 
 that howl against him ; and find out that all that is bad 
 is mighty well organized, but that goodness bunches 
 its hits very seldom and grows slow. Besides, there s 
 always a lot of cranks running on in front of a straight 
 feller, saying and doing the wrong thing, and while he 
 is attending to them the crooks is creeping up behind 
 with the sand-bags. Perhaps we oughter have got 
 together and cheered the old man every time he come 
 into the upper-leather room, but we didn t. We just 
 didn t. 
 
 It was one of those times he dropped in on us near 
 election that the Old Boss first met my mother-in-law. 
 Saturday afternoons, except in winter, the factory is 
 always closed down whether the goods get out or not - 
 and I remember the very day, for the Camdenville ball 
 team had come to over lick our boys and had brought 
 a professional pitcher on the quiet for the last game 
 of the season, and were betting with anybody they 
 could find and trying not to seem too sure for fear of 
 spoiling the odds. Their pitcher got thirty-five dollars 
 from them and sold out to Fred, our barber, for fifty. 
 So we won. It s funny, ain t it, why fellers slap them 
 selves on the leg and are tickled when they hear a thing 
 like that. 
 
 But, as I say, it was Saturday afternoon, and one of 
 those days that come very hot way along in the fall. 
 There was some breeze coming down the valley, and
 
 JIM HANDS 235 
 
 that was hot, too. You could see the cattle up in the 
 pasture there all lying down under the biggest of them 
 chestnut trees in the shade, and you could hear the 
 crowd hollering down to the ball field and tell that 
 we was at bat and was knocking out the base hits. 
 
 Annie weren t feeling well and was somewhere in 
 the house and the children were away. But Mrs. 
 Byrnes was sitting out on the step with me, red in the 
 face, and squatting like a busted bag of oats and swing 
 ing a palm-leaf fan and singing one of them old, up-and- 
 down-hill Irish tunes that anybody can make up as they 
 go along. And she was the first to see the Old Boss 
 coming. He had been taking a walk. It was his 
 habit. And here he was coming down across the fields 
 from Wilder s Woods, with baggy trousers, and hat 
 pulled down over his eyes, and his smile. 
 
 And the old lady says to me, "Jim, me bye," she 
 says, "here comes the man who gives you a position," 
 she says, "as my daughter Annie calls it," she says, 
 "though I m a plain-speaking woman and call it a job," 
 says she. "And I think he s coming here," she says, 
 "which is a good thing, for I want to see him a bit 
 closer," she says. "I understand he has snubbed our 
 family," she says. "I ll show him something about 
 family, whoever he is," she says. "And yet," says 
 she, "he looks like one of them rich men who don t 
 smoke cigarettes or say my good man to a laborer, and 
 hasn t never got a divorce," she says. "I think him
 
 236 JIM HANDS 
 
 and me has something in common/ she says, "and I 
 don t know how to praise him higher, in spite of Annie s 
 feeling against him," says she. 
 
 "Say no more," says I, seeing that it was true that he 
 would stop to swop a word with us. 
 
 He had the troubled look he had taken to wearing, but 
 a smile was shining through it, and he pulled off his hat 
 to the old lady. "How are yer all? And this is Mrs. 
 Byrnes?" he says. "It s a hot day, Mrs. Byrnes." 
 
 "Sure, sir," says she, dropping him a courtesy; "ye 
 are right about it, I have no doubt. I got so hot 
 fanning myself I had to stop," says she. "It was like 
 a man in the old country that planted six potatoes and 
 got six from the crop," she says. 
 
 "So the world goes," says the Old Boss, laughing. 
 And he pumped a glass of water and drank it and wiped 
 his mouth and looked up at me. I knew what he was 
 thinking about those days. 
 
 "Well, sir," I says, "you was down to the Capital 
 yesterday. How goes everything?" 
 
 The old man shook his head. "I don t like it, Jim," 
 he says. "The fact is that Lounsbury, the lawyer, is 
 back with the railroad crowd. He can swing the 
 election." 
 
 "And he ll want something for doing it, maybe," I 
 says. 
 
 "What makes you think it?" says the old man. 
 "Lounsbury is said to be the ablest man in the State,
 
 JIM HANDS 237 
 
 and one of the best constitutional lawyers in the coun 
 try," he says. "He holds himself very respectable," 
 says he, "and has money and all kinds of honors every 
 where, and there ain t anything he says that ain t care 
 ful weighed and measured. Where did you get the idea 
 he wanted anything? But you re right. He s fifty- 
 seven years old, and he wants the vacancy left on the 
 Supreme Court by Matthews s death." 
 
 "And Judson will appoint him?" I says. "Well," 
 I says, "I think I would myself, maybe. He s got a 
 fine head on him a wonderful head." 
 
 I seen the old man catch his breath as if he was going 
 to let me have one of them storms of his. But instead 
 he let the breath go again, handed me a cigar, bit one 
 himself, and looked up at the sky. 
 
 "Jim," he says after a while, "we Americans is 
 getting like the Greeks," he says. 
 
 "Mercy on us, then!" says Mrs. Byrnes, "for it s 
 all I can do to tell em from the Eyetalians," she 
 says. 
 
 "It s the ancient Greeks, I mean," he says; "there 
 was too much head and too little heart about em. 
 They had the brains, but they was treacherous and 
 deceitful. They was always selling out and going over 
 to the other side if there was anything in it for them. 
 They was good fighters and builders like we are," he 
 says, "and maybe better than us someways, but," he 
 says, "they was double-cross artists," he says. "If
 
 238 JIM HANDS 
 
 it was only brains that was worth counting, maybe 
 Lounsbury would be the best judge in the country." 
 
 "But you re afraid of his honesty on the bench?" 
 I says. 
 
 "No," says the Old Boss, shaking his head. " Tis 
 a funny thing about that. He is a sample of a lot of 
 our men. They serve them who employs em. Many 
 a crooked business man will make a straight public 
 officer, many a crooked lawyer will make an honest 
 judge." 
 
 "Oh! ho!" says the old lady, with a laugh. "Tis 
 fussy ye are. Yer not only want a man to leave a public 
 office clean, but you want to have him clean when he 
 comes there." 
 
 "I do," says he, shutting his thick fist. "And why 
 not ? Would you have your grandchildren Jim s 
 Mike, for instance think he could be crooked all his 
 life, and finally get a public honor because he was smart 
 and promised to reform?" 
 
 "Ye have me there," says she, making him a drop of 
 her apron. "And I ll ask yer, sir, what is this Louns 
 bury s name?" 
 
 "Ogden G.," I says. 
 
 "The hell you say!" says she, forgetting herself, for 
 her husband had been a hard-talking man. 
 
 "You know him !" we says. And I think both of us 
 felt that it was something important. 
 
 The old lady screwed up her nose and stuck her
 
 JIM HANDS 239 
 
 tongue into her cheek and bent her head one side as 
 if she was thinking. 
 
 "Have ye had a talk with Governor Judson?" she 
 says to the Old Boss. 
 
 "No," he says, looking at her, surprised. 
 
 "Say what you have in mind/ I says to her. "Do 
 you know this Lounsbury?" 
 
 "I do," says she, "seeing you re in such a hurry, and 
 talk to me as if I was working for yer by the week. 
 And furthermore, I wish I had a chance to talk with the 
 governor." 
 
 At that we both laughed. And the Old Boss put his 
 head back with a grin and says, "Do you think you 
 could influence him?" he says. 
 
 "Where would yer begin, Mrs. Byrnes?" I says, re 
 spectful, and remembering the wash-board she broke 
 over my head. "You talk as if Lounsbury was an old 
 friend of yours." 
 
 "I knew him well," says she. 
 
 "Maybe," says I, "he proposed marriage to yer." 
 
 She gave me a black look, and says, "You re very 
 funny for a son-in-law at your time of life," she says. 
 "Smarter men than ye have had something bounced on 
 em for less than your sauce. If we were alone, I have 
 other things to say to yer that ye don t see often in 
 books," she says. "And as for this thin-nosed, cold- 
 handed Lounsbury, he never said a word to me in his 
 life."
 
 240 JIM HANDS 
 
 "I thought you said you knew him!" says the Old 
 Boss, with his hand on the gate. 
 
 "I did," she says. "I was in his office many a time, 
 when it was Emmet & Lounsbury on the door." 
 
 "What doing?" I says. 
 
 " Scrubbing the floor," says she. 
 
 With that the Old Boss gave a chuckle, and took off 
 his hat and walked off over the gravel down Maple 
 Street. The old lady stood on the step watching him 
 go. There was a fly buzzing around her forehead, 
 and I could tell by the way she slapped at it she 
 was feeling the blood of them who dug in the peat 
 bogs. 
 
 "Jim," she says to me, "where is this man, Judson?" 
 
 "The governor, you mean," I says. 
 
 "The devil with yer titles," says she. "Do you 
 know where he is?" 
 
 "I do," says I. "He comes up to spend Saturdays 
 and Sundays at the lake," I says. "He has a cottage 
 there." 
 
 "Go harness the horse," says she. "And don t 
 stand there with your mouth open as if your brains 
 were out of breath." 
 
 "What s all this?" I says. 
 
 She give me a sniff. "Well," she says, "if you must 
 know, little boy, you ll go without your supper to-night. 
 Tis ten miles to the lake, and I m going to see the 
 governor," she says, "to show yer what an old-fashioned
 
 JIM HANDS 241 
 
 woman can do," she says. " Don t cross me," she says, 
 "or ye ll wish you d never married into my family," 
 she says. 
 
 Well, of course I tried to hold back. The old woman 
 had raised a lot of children, though. She d taught em 
 to fear sin, but they had learned that sin weren t even 
 a poor second to the old lady herself when she set her 
 jaw and got a kinder cold and hot look in her blue eye. 
 The umpire s face when he says, "Didn t yer hear me 
 say you was out?" ain t nothing to it. So she went 
 upstairs to change her dress, and I harnessed up the 
 horse, that horse named Frank I bought from the 
 Phenix Hotel. He d been in pasture for a whole sum 
 mer. I can remember now how I swore a couple of 
 times, and maybe I took the old lady s name in vain, 
 as they say. And maybe when old Frank seen me get 
 down the harness he done the same. Them animals is 
 more intelligent than you d think. 
 
 It was no afternoon for a drive, anyhow. There d 
 been no rain for a week, and even the bushes beside the 
 road was white with the dust. Many a butterfly would 
 turn up his nose at em. And furthermore, I looked 
 up the valley, and there was one of them black hunks 
 of thunder-clouds rolling up between the hills. It 
 was a poor day for a drive, and I was mad. 
 
 There was something about it that made me madder 
 yet when I seen the old lady. She was dressed up like 
 two Sundays, a funeral, and christening. Well can I
 
 242 JIM HANDS 
 
 remember the bonnet with the black ribbons setting 
 business-like on her white head and the starchy look 
 of her black silk dress. And I looked at the seat of 
 the buggy, and I looked at the width of her, and I wiped 
 my forehead with my sleeve and wished there d been 
 no half holiday at the factory and that I was doing a 
 hard day s work for honest wages. 
 
 I says to her, says I, "I believe when I told yer I d 
 go with yer I was crazy with the heat," I says. "Look 
 at the thunder-cloud," I says. "A regular dog-day 
 shower left over from the summer to scare off winter 
 with," I says. " Look at it!" 
 
 " And keep an eye on me," she says, shooting a look at 
 me and patting a pocket-book she carried in one hand. 
 "Hello, Frank," she says to the horse, and I seen the 
 sheepish look on his face as she said it. So with that 
 she climbed into the buggy and bent the step on the 
 way. "I ve told Annie," she says. "But what s the 
 matter here?" she says. "Move over! Do you want 
 the whole of the seat?" she says. 
 
 Anything for peace, with me. "You seem cross," 
 I says. 
 
 "I ain t cross, Jim," she says, as we went over the top 
 of the hill. "But if I m going to see the governor, 
 tis necessary for me to be what will ye call it a 
 very wilful woman," she says. "I m not so crazy 
 as ye think, Jim. Do you see this pocket-book ? Well, 
 me bye, I have a paper in there I ve had these fifteen
 
 JIM HANDS 243 
 
 years," says she. "And in this match that s going to 
 come off it maybe will play a part." 
 
 "What is it?" I says, switching the flies off Frank. 
 
 "You ll know later," she says. "For if I see this 
 man Judson I ll leave ye near at hand," says she, "to 
 listen," she says, "and if ye hear me going too far with 
 his Honor, or whatever you call him," she says, "you 
 must say, It s time we was going, " she says. "Don t 
 forget them words. For ye know, Jim," she says, 
 "that in the bottom of my heart I have little use for 
 bold ladies," she says, "and I ve made one break already 
 this day," she says. 
 
 "And do you expect me to play a fool before the 
 governor?" I says. "No," says I, "I m fool enough to 
 go this far with yer. And though I m curious to know 
 what you, who are a strange woman he never seen before, 
 will say to him, and what you expect to do with him, 
 I ll be the background of this picture," I says, "and 
 maybe out of focus altogether," I says. 
 
 With that she give me a scornful look, ana I could 
 hear her mumbling to herself as if she was rehearsing 
 something. And it weren t till we got to Hampton s 
 Mill, where the trees hang overhead and make it cool, 
 and yer smell that kinder moist smell of the woods, 
 that she put her hand on my arm and says to me again, 
 with a sort of scared look on her face, "Don t forget 
 to help me," she says. 
 
 But I wasn t thinking of helping her. "What a fine
 
 244 JIM HANDS 
 
 trip!" I says to myself. "A goose chase!" I says. 
 And the first big splashing drops of rain, each one with 
 a half a glass of water in it, slapped us as we come out 
 into the open and seen the light from the sunset on 
 the yellow fields, running away in front of them shadows 
 of the clouds. We was up on a ridge, and could look 
 down to the lake a good four miles away. I took out 
 my watch, and it was half-past six already. I knew it 
 would soon be dark, and the rain had begun to jump 
 up and down on the buggy top as if it was being spilled 
 out of a tub. It was so thick you could scarce see the 
 road. 
 
 "Frank," I says, "old horse," I says, "turn your ears 
 down," I says, "or they ll fill with water," I says, "and 
 ye ll not be able to hear what I d say if I could talk 
 with freedom." With that I turned around and 
 grinned at the old lady. She had her best clothes on. 
 Both them and her bonnet was hanging this way and 
 that, and the black ribbon on the hat was dripping fast 
 dye on to the white lace around her neck. She looked 
 like a bird that has been in the mucilage bottle, and to 
 tell the truth, I was sorry for her. I believe she knew it, 
 for I seen her jaw set, and her two fists was closed and 
 resting on her knees, very ugly.
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 AT the edge of the slope down to Jones s Landing, where 
 the summer hotel was, where the boarders sit out on the 
 piazza in the summer, it stopped raining. It was grow 
 ing dark and cool again, and more like late fall, and the 
 fog was hanging over the lake. You could see the stars, 
 too, and the moon. And I remember there was one of 
 them herons flapping across the lake and squawking as 
 it flew. 
 
 " That s a female," says I, "if I m any judge of noise 
 and disposition," I says to the old lady. 
 
 "Ye ought to know," says she, sarcastic, "for ye 
 have much in common wid the lower animals." 
 
 "Go on, Frank," says I to the horse, and we turned 
 down on to the shore road, and I remember when the 
 beast kicked a pebble over the edge of the bank you 
 could hear em drop into the black, greasy-looking 
 water. The moon had come up big and round, and I 
 tell yer it was mighty still on the lake. It was some 
 night ! It was the kind that makes yer feel that things 
 ain t wrong, after all. 
 
 I come near forgetting and driving past the governor s 
 cottage. The old lady hadn t said a word. She hadn t 
 even made a noise except to lick her lips now and then, 
 
 245
 
 246 JIM HANDS 
 
 and I guess it made her jump when I pulled up old Frank 
 in a dark place by a gate and says to her, "Here it is." 
 
 There was a hedge there, and somebody standing on 
 the other side of it some woman maybe his wife. 
 It was so still that when she got up, like a ghost showing 
 over the top of the hedge, it woke up a couple of little 
 birds asleep in the maple tree. 
 
 "Is the governor here?" I says, and I could feel 
 Mrs. Byrnes sitting herself up straighter beside me, and 
 I remember her black silk dress give out a very strange, 
 wet noise as she moved. 
 
 "Oh, he hasn t gone far," says the woman. I didn t 
 know who she was, but the air was that still you could 
 smell the perfume on her. He just walked down to the 
 old boat landing there; and if it s important, just drive 
 right out on to the landing itself," she says; "the floor 
 is all solid," she says, "and I guess you can talk with 
 him." 
 
 "Thank ye, ma am," says my mother-in-law, "we will 
 do so," she says, very polite, as Frank started up again. 
 
 It wasn t a hundred yards before we turned down on to 
 the old landing and come out from the shadow of the 
 trees. There was a big, tall, heavy-shouldered man walk 
 ing up and down, and there was so much shine on the 
 water that, being on the edge of the beams, he looked as if 
 he was cut out of black paper. He was walking back 
 and forward like a polar bear with a summer circus. 
 You could almost see him duck his head when he turned
 
 JIM HANDS 247 
 
 like the beast that don t quite bump against the wall 
 of the cage. It was Judson. 
 
 I guess the old lady knew it, too. For when I stopped 
 the horse, she got out of the buggy backwards, feeling 
 around with her foot for the step and standing up 
 straight when she was on the ground, smoothing down 
 her wet dress. " Don t forget," says she, "to stop me if 
 I go too fast with him," she says. "Fm not educated," 
 she whispers to me very solemn, "and sometimes I have 
 to make up for it with something strong," she says, "and 
 ungentlemanly," she says. "Just say to me that it s 
 time to be going, or words like them," she says. 
 
 The governor had stopped pacing up and down by 
 that time, for he seen she was coming to speak with him. 
 He had no hat on, even though it was very sharp, and 
 you could see the shine where there was a little bald spot 
 on the top of his head, but he made a bow with his hand 
 and says, "Did you want to see me?" 
 
 "I do that, your Honor," says she, "and furthermore, 
 I ll tell yer who I am," she says. "My name is Mary 
 Byrnes, and spare worry," she says, "for I care nothing 
 about votes for women," she says. 
 
 With that he gave a kinder rumbling chuckle as if he 
 was well pleased, and he bowed again and says, " Well ?" 
 
 "Have no fear," she says, "I have a better hand for 
 stating what I want than for always getting it. But be 
 that as it may, as my husband uster say," she says, 
 "I ve come to ask yer about this judge business, what
 
 248 JIM HANDS 
 
 is it they call it ? this Supreme Court business, and 
 I want to tell yer that yer mustn t appoint Lounsbury. 
 And there, now," she says, "the cat is out of the bag 
 and climbing up her lef," she says. 
 
 Perhaps we oughter to be going now," says I, getting 
 frightened, when I seen the governor turn quick toward 
 her, as if she d taken his breath from him. But neither 
 of em heard me. 
 
 "It s funny you come just now," he says, slow enough, 
 "just when matters of that kind was on my mind," 
 he says, and looked off across the water and ran his hand 
 down the edge of his coat. Then he laughed again. 
 "Well," he says, "what reason have yer for asking me 
 to leave Mr. Lounsbury out of it ?" he says, as if he 
 was talking to a child. 
 
 "That s easy told, too," says she. "Once I was 
 scrub woman," she says, "in the building where he had 
 his office, and," she says, "sometimes after hours 
 when I d be on my knees on the floor earning my pay, 
 I d hear him and his partner Emmet talking together," 
 she says. "Yer can get to know men surprising with 
 no acquaintance whatever," she says, "being a scrub 
 woman," she says, "or a scrub lady, as them who have 
 hotel jobs call it," she says. "It was the winter when 
 my husband crushed his hand," she says, "and the 
 family was on me," she says. 
 
 The governor shifted his feet as if he wanted to hurry 
 her.
 
 JIM HANDS 249 
 
 And with that she says to him, " Don t be uneasy," she 
 says. " Tis quick said. There weren t anything alike 
 between Mr. Emmet, with his big round head, and this 
 Lounsbury feller," she says, " though both of them was 
 smart. For," she says, "I heard them one night 
 talking together after the clerks had gone, and I was 
 pushing the soapy water over the boards. They paid 
 no attention to me at all. It was the day they split," 
 she says. "They were hot and angry wid each other 
 and paying no attention to me. And Mr. Emmet told 
 Lounsbury, just as clear as I m talking to you now," 
 she says, "that he wouldn t have nothing to do with a 
 deal that was going through. And Mr. Lounsbury says 
 to Mr. Emmet that he was a fool, and that there was no 
 need to be more fussy about doing a law business than 
 other lawyers. It was something about the selling 
 of one company to another," she says. "And," she 
 says, " Mr Emmet weren t a fool. He said he knew that 
 he was throwing away a big thing to refuse it, but that, as 
 for him, he was a lawyer that wouldn t sit up nights 
 trying to beat the law by smart tricks. He said he d 
 rather look up titles first, whatever he meant by that," 
 she says. It seems to me as if I could remember every 
 thing he said, he was that mad and stiff and sneering. 
 And Lounsbury was sneering, too. And he said to 
 Emmet, I ll take this letter I ve written em on the 
 firm paper and tear it up ! And he crumpled it up in his 
 hand in a rage and threw it into the waste-basket, like
 
 250 JIM HANDS 
 
 an actor does. And he said that he wouldn t ever sign 
 his name for the firm of Emmet & Lounsbury again. 
 He was through!" she says. And she stopped, out of 
 breath. 
 
 "Well?" said the governor, kinder short of his words. 
 
 "Well," says she, "it showed me the kind of man he 
 was this Lounsbury. And I ve heard since that he 
 was that kind of man, sir," says she. 
 
 With that Judson waved his arm at her the way you 
 brush a fly off your other hand. "My good lady," says 
 he, like that, "how can I listen to these rumors ? " 
 
 "Ho, ho ! " says she, making a move at him, "rumors, 
 is it ? There was men who took his advice then who 
 came near going to jail for the taking of his advice. 
 And I know what it was, because that night when he 
 left it was me Mrs. Byrnes that took the letter, 
 all crumpled up and in anger forgotten, out of the 
 waste-basket. Rumor, is it? Well, I had the letter," 
 she says, "and I ve got it yet !" 
 
 The governor turned on her as if he would have 
 pushed her off into the water. He seen she had a piece 
 of paper in her hand, and he started to speak once or 
 twice, and then he says, "Let me read it." 
 
 And I remember how he turned his back to the moon 
 and held the paper near his eyes. I was half stiff with 
 watching him, and all I could hear was the horse breath 
 ing in front of me. It was when he was through with it 
 and handed it back that he give a ugly laugh, and he
 
 JIM HANDS 251 
 
 says, "Who sent you to me," he says, "with this piece 
 of blackmail ? " he says, "this letter that helps to tie up 
 Lounsbury with that old quarry and mining case?" 
 he says. "So they re trying to force me, are they?" 
 
 "Nobody sent me," says the old lady, mad as a hen in 
 a blizzard, "and I give ye the friendly advice to talk 
 civil to me, whoever and whatever ye be," she says. 
 "I m a taxpayer and employ ye," she says, "and I 
 want some etiquette from ye," she says. 
 
 "We oughter be going," says I, calling to her. 
 
 She never heard me that time, either. She just went 
 on in a hurry. "Blackmail," she says, "is a different 
 matter," she says. "Do you think a poor woman, like 
 I was then, with three young ones sleeping in one bed 
 for the want of blankets, didn t think of selling that 
 letter back to Lounsbury? I ask yer," she says. 
 
 "Why not?" says the governor, sudden and sharp. 
 
 "Why not yourself?" she says, shaking the paper at 
 him. Because I was what Lounsbury might call a fool 
 one of them honest fools. Bad enough to take a drop 
 of whiskey now and then and not bad enough to be rich. 
 You ve had an introduction to me now, Mr. Governor," 
 she says, "and I ll make ye even better acquainted with 
 me !" And before his very eyes she tore the paper up 
 and threw the little bits into the lake. I remember 
 how white they looked, fluttering down. "Now," she 
 says, do you know better what sent me ? " And I seen 
 her jaw go out.
 
 252 JIM HANDS 
 
 At that Judson drew a big breath, and kinder 
 leaned forward to look at her. 
 
 "What interest can yer have in this?" he said, slow 
 and cold. 
 
 She went nearer to him, and then she says: "Do yer 
 see this dress wet with the storm," she says, "that cost 
 me twenty-six dollars and ninety-five cents? Do you 
 see I m stout and suffer with the heat and have driven 
 eight miles here with my son-in-law, who s in a bad tem 
 per?" she says. "Do yer see me a woman that ain t in 
 politics? Well, then, what the divil!" says she. "To 
 say nothing of my hat !" she says. 
 
 "No, Mr. Governor," she says, going on, "I raised 
 seven children," she says, "and have eighteen grand 
 children now," she says, "some of them screaming for 
 milk and others wearing holes in stockings," she says, 
 "and as for me, I hope the best for all of them. I don t 
 want none of them, be they boys," she says, "to think 
 they can be one of these Lounsbury fellers, smooth and 
 slick and successful and wid plenty of money and brains 
 and the like of that, and then think they can go to some 
 governor and get appointed a judge," she says. 
 
 It was then Judson turned around so the moon hit 
 upon his face, with its lines and shadows. I remember 
 it well. And he kinder hunched up his shoulders as if 
 his coat didn t fit him, and once he wiped his mouth 
 with his hand. 
 
 "Have you ever thought," he says, "that some men
 
 JIM HANDS 253 
 
 with the kind of ability we want in office," he says, 
 "haven t just the record we d like em to have, because 
 they are always fighting for one side or the other? 
 They ve served them who has employed em with all 
 their strength, and they will serve us, if we employ em, 
 with all their strength, too. I ve been thinking about 
 that," he says. 
 
 The old lady put both her hands up before her and 
 waved them at him. Ho, ho ! " says she, with a whistle, 
 " tis second-hand goods, then, we want the kind 
 that was sold to some one else first?" she says. "Let 
 them with mud on their feet come in to sweep out the 
 parlor. Is that it, eh?" she says. "Call for the man 
 who has been putting ground glass in your food to be the 
 doctor. Let the slick feller play the devil, and then take 
 off your hat to him and say; Come to dinner with me. 
 I m going to pin a medal on ye and show my oldest boy 
 how to be a Success/ " she says, "with a big S on the 
 beginning and end," she says. "Is it that, governor? 
 Answer me, and I ll go back to the grandchildren and 
 tell em just what they re up against." 
 
 "Wait," says he. "I m just as interested in those 
 youngsters of yours as you are," he says. "But Louns- 
 bury sees things differently now than he uster." 
 
 "After he s made his money," she says. 
 
 The governor laughed a bit. "Suppose he feels 
 sorry?" he said. 
 
 "Let him," says she. "If he d been a poor man who
 
 254 JIM HANDS 
 
 stole a watch for a starving family or to buy a half a 
 pint of whiskey or the like of that, he d been breaking 
 rock long ago. Tis well he feels something ! " 
 
 "Well," says he, and I remember his very words as he 
 spoke em ; he was walking toward her, over the boards. 
 "Well," he says, "then you ll not forgive him?" 
 
 "Hivin bless ye!" says she. "Just say you ll not 
 make him judge; and I ll join wid ye in a forgiveness 
 that ll make his head swim," she says. 
 
 With that he laughed again very short it was, and 
 he looked again over the lake. And he looked for a 
 long time, big and still. And after a bit he turned 
 around again. 
 
 "Mrs. Byrnes," he says, "you have been a good 
 mother and grandmother I have no doubt at all," 
 he says. "And when you go back you needn t say 
 who told yer, but you can tell them grandchildren of 
 yours that if they want to be appointed judges by me 
 that they have got to show up better than Lounsbury 
 has," he says. "It will cost me something to tell you 
 that," he says, "but there it is. You have my word," 
 he says. "And I m not so sure, Mrs. Byrnes," he says, 
 with the serious look going from him, "that you can t 
 say to them that if Judson was king instead of a common 
 or garden governor, their grandmother wouldn t have 
 to ask twice to be prime minister," he says. 
 
 And he took her hand. 
 
 "Ye have a sterling silver tongue on ye," says the old
 
 JIM HANDS 255 
 
 lady. " Whisper!" and she pulled him down and said 
 something close to his ear and "Good-by," she says. 
 
 I thought she would talk to me when we started back 
 along the road, but she didn t. I looked over my shoul 
 der, and seen the governor as we found him in the moon 
 light, throwing a long shadow as he walked. She 
 looked back, too, but she didn t say nothing. We had 
 eight miles before us. 
 
 Why, it weren t till we got into that stretch of woods 
 below the last hill that she said a word. 
 
 II Jim," she says, "I guess my clothes are wet, and I m 
 awful cold, Jim," she says. 
 
 "We ll be home soon," says I. 
 
 It was at the top of the hill I first seen her face, and 
 I seen her eyes were wet. 
 
 " What s the matter?" says I, easy. 
 
 And with that she stuck her old head down on to my 
 shoulder and shook and shook. " Jim," she says, crying 
 soft, "put your arm about me, bye. I m only a woman, 
 after all." 
 
 Somehow the Old Boss heard of that night. The gov 
 ernor must have let it out, I suppose, for after the Boss 
 went that Sunday to beg him not to appoint Lounsbury, 
 he knew how the old lady had been there before him. 
 It wasn t till Tuesday after we had been looking over a 
 new eyeleting machine in the office with the foreman 
 of the stitching-room that he mentioned it to me. 
 
 "Jim," he says, when he had told me, "I m coming by
 
 256 JIM HANDS 
 
 your house to-night. I want to tell Mrs. Byrnes what 
 a fine piece of work she has done ;" and he laughed as if he 
 not only was pleased, but thought it a good joke, into 
 the bargain. 
 
 "Well," I says, " you ll not see her. She went down 
 on the train yesterday," I says. 
 
 "You don t say so?" he says, and stopped and 
 thought a minute. "Is your family all well?" he 
 says. 
 
 "Why, yes," says I, "except for a welt over little 
 John s eye," I says. 
 
 "Is your daughter well?" he says. 
 
 "Why, yes," says I, wondering. 
 
 "She s at home?" says he. 
 
 I was frightened then. "She was when I left this 
 morning," says I. "Why do you ask ? " I says. 
 
 Nothing, says he . "Only you know the employees 
 savings account for the benefit of the men and their 
 families. Of course," he says, "I look over the deposits, 
 and balance now and then. You knew your daughter 
 Katherine had a pretty good balance, didn t you ? " he 
 says. 
 
 " She has saved up money from doing embroideries 
 and the like of that now and then," I says. 
 
 "Well, I didn t know but what- he says and 
 stopped. Then he looked up at me. "The truth of 
 the matter, Jim," he says, "is this yesterday she 
 drew out the whole deposit," he says.
 
 JIM HANDS 257 
 
 I looked at him, and he turned around in his desk 
 chair and began to clear away the paper. 
 
 "I guess we don t need to discuss it any more/ says 
 he. "It s nearly noon," says he, "and I suppose you re 
 ready to go home to dinner," he says. 
 
 I knew what he meant, all right, and it s true I almost 
 ran the whole way, and it was one of them hot days again, 
 too. And I went into the kitchen, and I looked around, 
 and my Annie says: "What s the matter, Jim? What 
 ails you ? What are you looking for ? " 
 
 "Where s Katherine? " says I. 
 
 "Upstairs," she says, "altering her gray dress," says 
 she. "I thought you d seen a ghost, and a very homely 
 ghost at that," she says, "by the way you look." 
 
 I didn t answer her; I sat down in the kitchen chair 
 by the window, and my legs felt as if they were made of 
 macaroni. " Tell her I want to speak with her," I says 
 after a minute, "and I want you to hear, too," I says. 
 "Don t stop. Let s have it over," I says. She must 
 have seen I meant business, for she wiped her hands 
 on her apron and never stopped to close the oven door. 
 
 I can remember now how Katherine looked. I think 
 she knew the time had come for a reckoning with us. 
 There was a shine in her eyes, and her nose moved when 
 she breathed like the nose of a fine horse when the 
 jockey is being weighed in. 
 
 "You drew out the money you ve been saving?" 
 I says.
 
 258 JIM HANDS 
 
 "Yes," she says. 
 
 " What for?" I says. 
 
 "For him," says she " for Bob." 
 
 " You re going to send the money to him that 
 wretch ! " says my Annie. 
 
 "No, mother," says she, "not send it. I don t know 
 where he is exactly. I m going to find him." 
 
 "Oh, Katherine ! " says her mother, with a voice that 
 made the girl look around and press her hands on the 
 lungs as if her wind had been cut off. 
 
 "You mean that you would disgrace us all? " I says. 
 
 "It is no disgrace," she says. "I will tell you," she 
 says. "He came to me before he went. He didn t 
 ask me to go with him. He didn t ask me anything. 
 He just waited for me to say something maybe 
 to say good-by. But I sent him away," she says. 
 "I turned my back on him. I told him he was dif 
 ferent than I thought. I told him I wrote to him 
 the first time not to see me any more for his sake, 
 but that the second time I was through with all of it 
 for my own. I told him I didn t care for him any more, 
 and " says she, " now I know it was a lie. And I know 
 it was for me to stick to him, no matter what it cost. 
 He can have me and my help, and I m going to find him 
 make him go back to his college and come back to this 
 town, no matter what he has done or who knows it." 
 
 And with that she brushed some of her hair back from 
 her face. I remember how I thought her forehead was a
 
 JIM HANDS 259 
 
 good deal like Annie s, for it is at them times you see 
 little things. And then I guess I gave a sneer. 
 
 It s funny how a sneer will make all the difference in 
 the world. Families is wrecked by em, and they stick 
 in the mind when a lot of profanity and even a smash on 
 the nose is long ago forgotten. 
 
 She seen it, and the blood come into her face as if 
 somebody had slapped it, and she bit her lips and shut 
 her hands. But when she spoke, you would have thought 
 she was as calm as milk set for cream. 
 
 "It s no disgrace ! " she says. "The neighbors talk 
 don t make it so. It s no disgrace if I love him. And 
 even if I gave him all a woman has and charged nothing 
 up against it, it would be no disgrace," she says. " God 
 didn t make me what I am, to make me reckon with 
 him for being what I am," she says. "And if there s 
 no disgrace, as you call it," she says, "it will not be 
 because I m afraid of it," she says. 
 
 I heard her and I stood up. I put my bare fists on 
 the table. "That s enough," I says, with my head 
 swimming. "Go up to your room," I says, roaring at 
 her. "I ll see you dead before you leave this house," 
 I says. 
 
 She turned to her mother then, and my Annie shook 
 her head and looked away. I seen the tears come into 
 the girl s eyes. For that moment had brought the first 
 of many things, I guess. And then she went out. 
 
 It was the next day that I will remember a long time.
 
 260 JIM HANDS 
 
 Annie had been down on Main Street on one errand and 
 another for three or four hours, and went home to be 
 there when little John and Michael came from school, 
 and I was on the door-step a bit early from the factory, 
 waiting for her. 
 
 "A nice wife you are," I says, "to leave your hus 
 band like a dead geranium in a broken pot locked 
 out/ I says. 
 
 "Locked out!" she says; "that s strange," says she. 
 "I suppose Katherine has gone to Nellie Conroy s. 
 Here s the key under the mat," she says, "though it 
 takes almost an average intelligence to find it and walk 
 in," she says. 
 
 "Don t be cross," I says. 
 
 "I m not," she says, opening the door. "I m just 
 tired," she says. "I worried all yesterday afternoon 
 and was awake most of the night about Katherine," 
 she says. "It will never do to go rushing at her waving 
 your arms any more than it pays to try to catch a horse 
 in the pasture that way," she says. 
 
 "I suppose you think I should have gone up to her 
 shaking oats around in a quart measure ? " I says. 
 
 "No," says she. "But I have made up my mind to 
 have a talk with her this afternoon. Don t worry, Jim," 
 she says. "I will do what only a mother can do for 
 her," she says. 
 
 And then, just as if her words had flown on to paper, I 
 looked up and seen a little card pinned to the hand-
 
 JIM HANDS 261 
 
 rail of the stairs. It was in my girl s handwriting. 
 " Don t worry," it says, like something mocking us. 
 
 Annie saw it, too. "Go and look ! " she says, and I 
 ran up the stairs and went from room to room, and in the 
 hall on the sewing-machine was a time-table open and 
 lying there with the blue paper and the little figures 
 staring up at me. Somehow it told me as if it was 
 screaming in a hoarse voice.
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 I HARDLY had grit enough in me to go down and face 
 Annie. I could see when I met her at the bottom of the 
 stairs that she knew. She was holding on to the post. 
 
 "She must have gone on the nine-thirty," says she. 
 "Can there be any mistake?" she says, wringing her 
 hands. 
 
 But I pointed to the card. "I wish she was dead ! " 
 I says. "It would be better," I says. 
 
 "Hush!" says she. "How can you judge of it?" 
 she says. "Oh, Jim," says she, "will we ever see her 
 back ? Can t it ever be the same ? " 
 
 I must have shook my head. I was thinking a hun 
 dred things how to follow her, when I knew we didn t 
 have any way to] do it, and whether to tell the Boss, 
 when I knew we must never let anybody know. It 
 came to me then that we had nothing to do but wait - 
 wait and lie to everybody. And in all the talks we had 
 my Annie and me that was all that was ever decided. 
 It was as bad as them dreams that make people scream 
 and throw off the bedclothes at night. Sometimes Annie 
 would put down her work in the evening and go out of 
 the room into the kitchen, and I d find her looking out 
 across the field back of the barn and wiping her eyes. 
 And I would sit sometimes and go back to the beginning, 
 
 262
 
 JIM HANDS 263 
 
 and remember the girl from the time I first seen her, 
 when she was no bigger than a summer squash, but pink 
 and new, and trying within three hours of the time she 
 came to kick her poor mother out of bed, and so on, un 
 til I could see that card and them words, " Don t worry," 
 or maybe I could hear her voice talking those things 
 that seemed to me so crazy and desperate and wild. 
 
 I suppose troubles never play a solo except to tune 
 up. Most always one thing after another comes in until 
 there s a full brass band of it. And that October it was 
 giving me plenty of concerts. 
 
 Somehow a good many years had rocked along before 
 the boys in the factory thought they had to have a 
 labor-union. It was one of them necessities that every 
 body had overlooked, and as a matter of fact, now that I 
 look back on it, I remember it wasn t anyone of us in the 
 factory that discovered it. An organizer sent up by the 
 Central Union down at the Capital was the feller. I 
 have nothing to say against the union, for I ve worked 
 in places where it was the only thing that gave me a 
 chance to sleep under blankets in the winter-time. 
 
 It was just the week or two before the girl left that 
 this organizer came. It wasn t two days before he had 
 all of the boys on edge to get together and elect officers, 
 and inside of two weeks he had showed them all their 
 grievances, and they were wearing celluloid buttons on 
 their vests and had hired Masonic Hall for Friday even 
 ings, so s they could have hot shot from hot authors,
 
 264 JIM HANDS 
 
 and plain talk from plain people. And they had it, too ! 
 What they didn t know about collective bargaining and 
 closed shops and the piece system was the kind of knowl 
 edge that hadn t been found out ! 
 
 That was the funny part of it. I joined the game, and 
 so did every worker in the factory to a man. 
 
 Dave Kennedy was president. I guess you never saw 
 Dave. He was one of those fellers with a yeller mus 
 tache and a big blue eye that likes to see his name in 
 print, and had talked so much in forty-five years that 
 he was a regular artist. He used to make more speeches 
 in one year in this little town than the President of 
 the country made all over the United States. If the 
 Hawk Falls base-ball team licked our local team, after 
 we had hired a college pitcher and thought we had a sure 
 thing, Dave would climb up on a barrel and explain it in 
 words of eight syllables ; and when the town company 
 came back from fighting the Spaniards at Camp Alger, 
 although the " Committee on Welcome" purposely 
 didn t invite Dave to the turkey supper in the town- 
 hall, you bet your life Dave fooled em and stood on a 
 barrel in front of the station and sailed in, mouth and 
 fist, to tell the soldier lads what heroes they were, 
 while the "Committee on Welcome" were up to the hall 
 watching the ice-cream melt. Dave was a smart, 
 bright feller, with a desire to shine, and he took the union 
 very serious and gave it his best efforts, as they say in 
 an obituary.
 
 JIM HANDS 265 
 
 All of us took the union serious, and some of the men 
 were pretty hot about things. The Boss was prosperous, 
 and had a spanking, bright red, new automobile, and was 
 building a new house, and a good many of us could tell 
 a good deal better than he that we were having a hard 
 time to buy phonographs. The boys knew what it was 
 to have wages trusteed for a grocer s bill that six hun 
 gers had run up, and have to tell a wife that Sadie 
 couldn t have a new dress to go to school in, and have to 
 see her sitting up with a kerosene lamp to turn Harry s 
 old overcoat into little Eddie s new pants. Then there 
 was a good deal of discussion about how the Boss made 
 his money, because he wasn t paying the wages they paid 
 in the cities down the State ; and I guess that we forgot 
 that living expenses were cheaper in this town, and that 
 we had steady jobs all the year round, but that down the 
 State they were liable to be laid off for six or eight 
 weeks at a clip. Then there got to be the feeling that the 
 Boss was an old bear who was out for his own pocket and 
 didn t care how any of us got along, anyhow. He had a 
 sort of sand-bag voice when he said no, and we d 
 heard it when we asked for higher pay for overtime ; and 
 when we asked for a closed shop, we heard it with trim 
 mings on it. I often thought since that what really was 
 troubling me and making me hot and full of prejudice 
 was something different the trouble he and his had 
 brought to me and mine. He and I had grown apart, I 
 guess. In those days we didn t trust each other much,
 
 266 JIM HANDS 
 
 and I was on the committee that asked him for a closed 
 shop. 
 
 I was spokesman for the committee that asked the 
 Boss for a closed shop, and I started in and told the Boss 
 fourteen reasons that was suggested to us by the cen 
 tral union why an employer shouldn t hire non-union 
 help. The old man listened to me through, and then 
 moved his desk chair back with a mean, squeaking 
 sound. "No ! " says he. "There are three reasons why 
 I won t because there isn t any use of your labor- 
 union in this factory, anyway; because if I recognized 
 your union, I might do something unfair to a good man 
 who don t belong to it, and the third reason is just 
 no!" 
 
 "Well," says I, thinking it was up to me to show what 
 the union amounted to, "we have two hundred men 
 in this factory behind us. Now, do I understand that 
 you refuse ? " 
 
 "Stuff ! " says he, and that was all the good I got out 
 of him. 
 
 That night we had a meeting of the union, and a dele 
 gate named Cole came up from the Capital to advise us. 
 He and Dave and Terence Burns made speeches, and 
 they all said the crisis had come, and banged on the 
 table so s the water-pitcher danced. We fought a good 
 deal about what we had better make the issue, and the 
 hall got so hot three times that they had to open the win 
 dows, but finally those who pointed out that the wage
 
 JIM HANDS 267 
 
 scale was lower than in any other town in the State 
 won out, and we voted fifty-seven to twenty-eight to get 
 higher pay or strike. Then Dave said : " Gentlemen, we 
 are now setting out together on a stormy sea on the cause 
 of labor and humanity. We cannot fail, for we have 
 embarked on a righteous cause, but we must stick to 
 each other to the end"; or something like that, and it 
 made us feel kinder full and gulping, as if it was so seri 
 ous we would never see our families or friends again. 
 
 The demand was made on the old man the next 
 morning by the delegate who said he would act for us. 
 Some of us stood in the packing-room just outside the 
 office door, we were so anxious to see how the trouble 
 would come out. The first thing I heard was the Boss. 
 
 "Who are you, anyhow?" says he. "If my men 
 have a grievance, why don t they talk it out? They 
 know me and I know them. We are acquainted we 
 are ! But who are you ? Why should I talk to you ? 
 Why should you ask to have me pay higher wages ? " 
 
 "I ll tell you who I am," says the delegate, speaking 
 up snappy. "I m Peter J. Cole, from the central 
 union. I guess you ve heard of me, all right, all right, 
 and the reason I am asking you to raise the wages 
 according to this scale we ve prepared is because I m 
 paid with a salary of two thousand dollars per year by 
 the different local unions to do just this thing ! " 
 
 "I wouldn t employ you at two thousand cents. 
 You re bleeding the union with that salary of yours
 
 268 JIM HANDS 
 
 about seven hundred times more than you re worth to 
 em." 
 
 We could hear every word, and we knew well enough 
 that Peter J. Cole wouldn t stand for that. And he 
 didn t. He just come back at the Boss with a regular 
 pirate s prayer, and then the chairs began turning over, 
 and we were trying to remember just how much bigger 
 Cole was than the Boss, when we heard the front door 
 open and something bumping down the steps. What 
 bumped was Cole. 
 
 Fifteen minutes later there came word through the 
 factory that the Boss wanted to see every man and 
 woman in the outer office. There s quite a lot of room 
 in there, but a good many of us had to stand outside the 
 doors; Cole had gone up over the hill, looking mad 
 all the way up and down the back of his coat, and we 
 weren t in the mood for any love-feast, either. None 
 of us looked at each other, but we were sort of quiet, 
 except for the squeaks of boots where those who were 
 way back stood up on tiptoe to get a look at the Boss 
 leaning up against a desk in the farthest corner. The 
 old man didn t say anything for several minutes, but 
 shifted his eyes from one to another of us until I guess 
 he d looked each one straight in the face. 
 
 "I haven t got much to speak about," says he at last. 
 "It s just this that if any person or persons, whether 
 it s one or all of you, have any complaint to make about 
 your employment here, you can come to me, and we ll
 
 JIM HANDS 269 
 
 talk it over. But when a labor-union, or any of its 
 officers, come to me, I m going to be too busy to talk or 
 consider, because there isn t any need of a labor-union in 
 this factory, and when a labor-union gets a man who 
 never worked for me and never saw me before to do the 
 talking, I m going to kick him down the steps. That s all." 
 
 Some of the women up front were looking kinder 
 scared, and leaned up against those back of em, but 
 Dave Kennedy took a step forward, and I guess all of 
 us moved forward with him just one step. "The 
 labor-union wants to know," says Dave, with his voice 
 kinder jiggled, "whether you will grant the proposed 
 higher scale of wages, such as are in force in the southern 
 part of the State." 
 
 The Boss smiled a little, and Dave stood up very stiff 
 and straight, with his fingers trembling along the seams 
 of his overalls. As I said, the Boss smiled and he says : 
 "I m not going to answer you as president of the union; 
 but as plain Dave Kennedy I ll tell you that I m not 
 going to raise your wages, Dave, because you re not 
 earning any more than you re getting. My job is to 
 make this business a success by keeping loaded down 
 with orders and shaving off a small profit by running 
 this factory where living is cheap, so labor will be 
 cheaper, and by paying wages and shipping goods 
 fifty-two weeks a year. If I sweetened the pay-roll, 
 there wouldn t be any excuse for running at all. That s 
 all there is to it."
 
 270 JIM HANDS 
 
 Dave wheeled around, turning his back on the Boss 
 and facing us, and he threw one hand up in the air like 
 an actor, and says in a firm voice, Strike ! " And some 
 body else says, " Strike ! " under his breath like that, 
 until most of us had said, "Strike ! " backing away out of 
 the room, leaving the Boss all alone, standing in front of 
 the desk, looking at the floor. 
 
 It was most noon, and the day before had been pay 
 day, so we quit right there all of us except eighteen 
 Poles who couldn t speak English, and didn t know 
 what was doing, and four Canucks who were getting 
 higher pay than they ever had hoped for. Everybody 
 was excited, and wanted to use the soap in the wash 
 rooms first, and talked about how it would be a fight to 
 the bitter end, and went down the stairs jawing and 
 forgetting to fill up their pipes, the way they generally 
 did at noon hour. When you d see the men crowding 
 out the doors of the rooms, pulling on their coats, and 
 behind them the empty spaces with long rows of ma 
 chines all dead and quiet except for the shafting, which 
 was still running, it seemed sort of like a scene in a play 
 that makes you lean forward and keeps you there, even 
 though your collar cuts into your neck. And I can re 
 member how my Annie met me at the door, wiping her 
 hands on her apron, and asked whether it was true the 
 men had gone out, and I said, " Yes," and how she looked 
 at me and says, "Ain t it dreadful, Jim? These are 
 evil times for us, dear ! "
 
 JIM HANDS 271 
 
 The next few days it was kinder pleasant to be strik 
 ing, because, for one thing, it was the most exciting 
 business that had ever happened in town, and being a 
 striker made the fellers feel sort of important and anxious 
 to see what the big dailies down the State were saying 
 about em. And then, again, if it was a cold morning 
 with one of those slashing winds blowing down the valley, 
 you didn t have to jump out of bed at half-past six, 
 but could lie there and think of your breakfast, and how 
 you could sit in the sunlight at the south window in the 
 kitchen, and fool with the kids, and how, later, you could 
 walk down into the town, and watch the boys play pool 
 in the back of the barber shop and talk about how 
 we d make the Boss come to terms. 
 
 The Boss used to go down to the factory every day, 
 and he had the Canucks and Poles pack up the finished 
 goods there weren t more than twelve cases and cart 
 em to the station, while everybody who saw em would 
 hoot and yell at ; em, and the boys would throw handfuls 
 of mud at the team and make it splash up against the 
 white sides of the boxes. They hooted at the Boss, too, 
 but he would just look kinder solemn, and go on down to 
 the office, and you could see him dictating letters to the 
 stenographer, and it kinder made a feller feel sorry for 
 him to see how the windows were getting all dusty, 
 and there was no water running through the penstock, 
 and everything was going to thunder. And then I d 
 think of how he had taken my girl away, and I d feel
 
 272 JIM HANDS 
 
 a good deal hotter, and grin when some other union 
 man would let out a few curses, and say he d like to 
 chuck a rock through the front door. 
 
 Everybody expected the Boss would cave in pretty 
 quick when we put him right up against it, but after 
 five days he hadn t showed any signs of it, and it kept 
 a feller uneasy, because there weren t going to be a pay 
 envelope, and although the tradespeople in town were 
 giving us what support they could, of course they 
 couldn t run their business on nothing. After a week 
 there was a good deal more coffee than steak on the table. 
 Some of the boys were driven pretty hard. About 
 twenty men slid out of town during the next ten days 
 to look for jobs somewhere else, but every one of those 
 were young fellers who weren t married, and didn t have 
 a house here with a vegetable patch in the back yard, 
 and furniture bought on the instalment plan and almost 
 paid for. 
 
 Being a striker weren t any fun the second week, when 
 you had to toss up a nickel to see whether you d spend it 
 on a plug of tobacco for yourself or a pound of sugar for 
 the house. It made the men feel hot and bad-hearted 
 to think the Boss was trying to drive us to the wall and 
 kinder starve us back to work it made me fill up clean 
 full of feelings that would make me speak cross to the 
 kids and slam the front door hard when I came in or 
 went out, and got me to feeling sour until I knew I d 
 make the Boss sweat and go to the ropes before I d 
 ever give in. Some of the men got drunk, and maybe
 
 JIM HANDS 273 
 
 you d see a feller whooping it along Main Street at noon, 
 cursing at everybody and people cursing at him, and it 
 seemed as if everybody who got to hating the Boss 
 got to hating each other, too. 
 
 Somehow it seemed that I was picked to learn the 
 whole story about discontent in those days after Kathe- 
 rine had gone, and when every hour we didn t hear from 
 her seemed longer than the last, and the strike had made 
 me idle, with nothing to do but get sullen, like a machine 
 that ain t used and rusts and goes out of gear. 
 
 But I suppose it was because we ve got that un 
 finished attic over the kitchen that I learned the last 
 lesson I need about envy and hate and ill-will. Annie 
 thought we ought to rent it, being the strike was going 
 on, and we had to begin to use the money she had laid 
 away in the bank. 
 
 " A nice time you ll have renting it, "I says, "and avery 
 exciting time collecting any rent in these days," I says. 
 
 " There are some new men at the mirror factory," 
 she says. 
 
 "They are Poles and the like of them," I says. 
 
 "Oh, well," she says, "they are human beings," she 
 says, "with the same stomach-aches and vanity as the 
 rest of us," she says. "I intend to ask. A dollar is 
 rounder now than a few weeks ago," she says. "I may 
 have luck in getting some man who is agreeable," she 
 says. I have to laugh now when I think of her words, for 
 she drew a strange prize.
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 WE called him Pete Sotus. He was a Russian, I used 
 to think, and that weren t his name. But the nearest I 
 ever come to it is just Pete Sotus. 
 
 He was the kind you remember a young feller, too, 
 six feet four, and shoulders like a beef and muscles like 
 an ox. There s some kinds of people built like carriage 
 horses and some like racing ponies, fine and limber, 
 
 and some are built to pull, like Pete Sotus a dray- 
 horse of a man. They d bred him to it. It was in 
 his blood. There was veins red and swollen in his bulgy 
 forehead that showed the work he d done. They 
 showed the work his great-grandfather had done, too. 
 His shoulders were stooped and his hair was bleached out 
 by the sun and his eyes were stupid! Twas the 
 hardest kind of work for that feller to think, and he 
 was always at it ; and when he thought it weren t cool, 
 like a machine that s oiled, but it was hot, and every 
 time he d get to thinking, the muscles would stand out all 
 over his jaw, as if it hurt him ! 
 
 He had come from somewhere down the State to 
 get a job in our town. He needed the work all right 
 
 from his looks. I saw him first at the station. 
 He didn t have a collar. His neck looked so big it 
 
 274
 
 JIM HANDS 275 
 
 seemed as if no collar would fit it. I found out later 
 he had lived on hot coffee longer than a body of his 
 size ought to stick to that kind of nourishment. 
 
 He got a job at the mirror factory and then he 
 came looking for rooms. Annie took him in that s 
 her way. 
 
 "He ll rock the floors till the ceiling is down," says 
 I. " Listen ! " I says. " There is a pile driver up 
 stairs," I says, hearing him walking above us. 
 
 "Oh, well," says Annie, philosophizing the way she 
 docs. " It s better than having some skinny little 
 sawed-off man that slips his feet along the floor like a 
 cat," she says. " I must say I have a great distrust 
 of noiseless men," she says. "Go and say a cheerful 
 word to him," she says. So I went out to the front 
 room and nodded to him to come in. 
 
 "You re taking life hard, Swanson," says I, thinking 
 he was a Swede, and meaning to jolly him a bit. 
 
 "I haf more work to do dan dis," says he, tying knots 
 in his words and talking like them foreigners go on. 
 And he put one of his hands as big as the two of mine, 
 and every finger the size of a child s arm on my 
 shoulder and says, "There ain t no rest for us till ve is 
 all free," he says. 
 
 "Free of what?" I says. 
 
 "Listen," says he, "you belief in der brodderhood of 
 mans, eh ? By Gott, der day of light is come the 
 time ven ve should haf equvalities. You is a stranger
 
 276 JIM HANDS 
 
 to me, but der is dor broddcrhood of work between us. 
 I see it in dese hands of yours ; look at mine, eh ? Dey 
 is hard, eh ? Vat is it what makes us to vork always 
 to vork ? It is der slafery of der existing order of dings ? " 
 he says, and, anyhow, it was something like that ; I ve 
 heard them fellers go on so much I know it backwards. 
 
 So I says, " When did you hear of this railroad 
 wreck ? " and laughed. 
 
 "Brodder," he says, " belief me, I vould gif my life to 
 make some men vid riches gif back to some different 
 men vat is slaves dat makes vork and labor vid der 
 blind hands to gif to dese vat Gott haf given to us in 
 der first place," he says, and his eyes went a-swimming 
 like they was running tears, and his forehead was in 
 bunches where it hurt him to think. But the feller 
 meant what he said ! 
 
 And he says, "Vat difference makes it about me? 
 I am nobody I haf left my vife and house vat is in der 
 country down der State ver der rent I pay is eat all der 
 vork I do vid my hands. Vat of it ? I ask. No, I haf 
 gif my life to der making of equvality. And if ve don t 
 haf it van vay," he says, shutting his paws into a fist, " ve 
 must make it to come," he says. 
 
 Then he points out the window, and there was the Boss 
 going by in his shiny automobile. "Look," he says, "see 
 dis man vat is. He makes a ride in vat makes to him 
 a big cost ; dis cost is more dan vould buy me a place 
 to live vid for all der life," he says, and he got red in the
 
 JIM HANDS 277 
 
 face, and I thought his yellow hair would get red, too. 
 And he says, "I hate dis man. Der light is broke on 
 der vorld, and I haf lef my vife and everytink. Yah, I 
 vould gif my life for der equ vality . Till dis spring vas I a 
 fool. I did not know," he says, and handed me a worn- 
 out old printed newspaper. I remember it well. Twas 
 called the Light of Man. And he says, "Please to 
 look. Dis is it wroted by der Mister Blacksong. 
 Read, please." 
 
 Who is this Blacksong ? " I says. 
 
 And then he explained to me that Blacksong was an 
 anarchist or socialist or the like of that, whatever it 
 was, who held meetings down at the Capital in the room 
 of some Pole who was the janitor of one of them red 
 burlap tenements. 
 
 And Pete Sotus came to room with us. Annie bought 
 a second-hand cot from Mrs. Riordan, who was out of 
 business because of the strike, and put in a day s Work 
 cleaning it with gasolene and other poison, and Pete was 
 such a big bruiser that she had to put a chair at the 
 bottom of it to hold his feet. It wasn t bad to have 
 him. He d work all day, and at night he d be out 
 walking and thinking and bending his face. He was 
 quiet enough, but it was like a funeral to see him sitting 
 around with that scowl. You could see without asking 
 he was hating the rich and all that kind of business. 
 
 Yes, sometimes he d walk up and down in the kitchen 
 with his stupid eyes a-shining and his big hands out like
 
 278 JIM HANDS 
 
 he was seeing a picture full of angels and them things. 
 And then again maybe he d throw his hulk of a body into 
 one of the wooden chairs and look down into the empty 
 coal-hod, and grind his teeth together and rub his red 
 forehead with his fingers. I ve known lots of laborers 
 in my time, but I never knew a feller to have a doctrine 
 worse. 
 
 He d talk, too. "Mr. Jim/ he d say, "vonce vas I an 
 animal. Vas it fault from me ? No ! Look at dese 
 arms," he d say, and pull his shirt back so s you could 
 see his wrists, as round and hard as a die mallet, and 
 covered with yeller hair, like a peroxide gorilla. Yah," 
 he d say, "my fadder vas like it, and his fadder vas like 
 it. Animals ! Vy ? Gott in he fen know it vas by 
 reason dat all of us liffed under der slafery. Ve should 
 be men, not animals. Der rights should come vid us, 
 and ve should haf der equvality and men be. So vill it 
 come now." 
 
 And the poor devil thought so. He felt so bad 
 about it he d sit there and look into the coal-hod 
 and then perhaps jump up and be off, knocking 
 over the mops and things that used to stand in the 
 hall. 
 
 My Annie didn t laugh at him, like me. "Poor feller," 
 she d say. "He don t get a happy moment, and he d 
 lay down and die for his foolishness, and that s some 
 thing you oughter not forget, Jim." 
 
 And I remember one night when Pete come home
 
 JIM HANDS 279 
 
 with a sheet of paper and poetry written on it. He 
 was that excited he hadn t had no supper, and sick- 
 looking, big as he was and crazy to read us this rhyme 
 business that Blacksong had sent him. Annie was 
 washing up the dishes over the sink, and there was a 
 rattle of em and so on. But she stopped and says, 
 "Let him alone, Jim; let him read it to you." 
 
 " PI ease listen by dis," he says. And he puts his 
 thick finger on the words and begun to spell em out. 
 "Der Man vid a Hoe," he says. I remember it well, 
 he read it so slow. It seems like this the poetry told 
 about a feller who d been bred up to work like a son of 
 a gun a feller who was a farm-hand. And he was 
 something like this Pete Sotus didn t know nothing, 
 except how to dig and the like of that, and was kinder 
 like an animal, just as Pete had said, and didn t have no 
 chance nor nothing like a truck-horse. It kinder 
 made you think, with this foreign feller reading it aloud 
 so slow, and running his finger along kinder trembling 
 on the paper, like he was reading a letter that said some 
 body was dead. 
 
 And when it was finished, Annie she looked at me and 
 plucked at her apron, and Pete Sotus threw his big body 
 over on the table and puts his head down in his arms 
 and says, "I vas it. I vas a man vid a hoe." And 
 you d think the honest work he d done would like to 
 break his heart. It made me think some then. I 
 thought about it right heavy till I went to bed, and then
 
 280 JIM HANDS 
 
 I remember, as I was hanging my coat over a chair, I 
 says to my Annie, " Are you awake ? " 
 
 "Yes," she says. 
 
 "I ve been thinking about that work business, and it 
 seems as if there weren t a fair show for everybody." 
 
 "Of course there ain t," she says, "but, Jim, it can t 
 be had in a minute. Them poems is all right, but tis a 
 shame to let anybody read em who will be worse off for 
 it and not better. Pete was happy till somebody began 
 telling him he weren t. And he had a wife and a place 
 and enough to eat, and if he didn t get very far, perhaps 
 his kids would what ? " 
 
 And she kinder smiled, sadlike, and says: "I m sorry 
 for the woman, Jim; for perhaps she w r as plenty con 
 tented, just with him like me," she says, " as we 
 used to be." So I began to wonder then about her, 
 the woman, and whether she was back on the little 
 truck-farm, and how she was getting on by herself, and 
 so on. And the next day, when Pete Sotus was hating 
 the rich with his bulgy forehead, I spoke to him about it. 
 
 "Where s your wife, Pete ? " says I. "Why don t you 
 send for her ? " 
 
 He kinder waked up, smiling for a second, like he was 
 going to say something nice about her, and then there 
 he stood, the big hunk of sco\vls and misery and hate 
 again. "Poof ! " says he, just like a potato busting its 
 skin. "She don t know it der equvality. Vas is 
 she know of der brodderhood of mans? She vill not
 
 JIM HANDS 281 
 
 listen to der light. She is happy vid slafery like 
 vonce vas I. By Gott no ! In der social organisms, 
 vat is she ? Vat am I ? Poof ! It is to me to vork and 
 der vages save to go vid Chicago and spread der vord of 
 Mister Blacksong. Me? I will be an apostle. A vife 
 is nodding. You and I is noddings. Der doctrines is 
 everytink." 
 
 "She may starve," says I; "and if she does, I ll fill 
 your face with this fist full of fingers," I says, "you big 
 fool," I says. 
 
 "Starve? " he says. "So vill I. Vat is der differ 
 ence ? I starve der to-day ven for der light and brodder- 
 hood of mans goes it to-morrow. It vas like dis vid 
 me," he says, "I vas bring der load of celery into 
 der wholesale houses. Say a man vat is friend to 
 Mister Blacksong, Come vid me to der meetings! 
 So vas I made der light to see. Gott ! Equavlity ! 
 Happiness for all mans! It is der same vedder I 
 starve or not ! " he says, just like that. 
 
 And he went on talking about right to so many acres 
 of land, and telling how this Blacksong feller had come 
 out to see him on his little truck-farm, and told him what 
 rights had been handed down to him because he was a 
 man, and not a horse; and how Blacksong was in the 
 business of the brotherhood of man for the good of all 
 the people alive or that would be alive. And he told 
 how he woke up to the light, as he called it, and didn t 
 go out and dig cabbages, but chewed the rag back and
 
 282 JIM HANDS 
 
 forth with his wife for a good many days. And it 
 seemed that Blacksong thought it was no use to try to 
 make her see she was that stubborn ; and it seemed 
 that by and by Blacksong tells Pete to give his life to 
 the cause and learn to preach, and all like that. And 
 Pete came away. 
 
 It was all this Blacksong feller s scheme, and let me 
 tell you, Blacksong was all right ! He was an educated 
 feller, and could repeat words from books he d read, 
 and he d written some himself, too, Pete said. Seemed 
 he d gone and lived with the coal-miners, or something. 
 Yes, he was smart, I guess, and he had plenty to eat, all 
 right. He had money enough to buy meals in one of 
 them cheap wine restaurants. I guess he was different 
 from Pete Sotus. I guess he didn t have to go hungry 
 and leave his wife, if he had one, to be whatever he was ; 
 he didn t look to me like a man who d suffered very much 
 for his doctrines and propaganda, as they called em. 
 
 He was a healthy loafer, making a living out of telling 
 people what he knew. Pete had his picture. He wore 
 long hair, like one of these imitation football players, and 
 a big black necktie, like a woman s, and he used to tell 
 Pete he was glad he come from common people. His 
 face looked it ! But I found out since that his father 
 owned a soap factory in Brusselsville, Indiana ; and they 
 tell me this great Blacksong afterward lost all the money 
 he d made writing for the magazines by getting an 
 inside tip of the stock of a pineapple farm.
 
 JIM HANDS 283 
 
 It s funny, too, but I kinder believe he thought he 
 was real goods himself. He meant what he said, and I 
 guess he thought he d done Pete Sotus a good turn and 
 made a man out of an animal, and he wanted to have it 
 get into the papers, and he preached so much about the 
 brotherhood of man that he made Pete hate every 
 body. 
 
 And I guess Pete got to hating himself. I never seen 
 so miserable a feller. Couldn t sleep nights, and kept 
 us awake walking up and down his little room, and 
 he d go to work next morning black under the eyes, like 
 he was one of these rich boys and not a two-fifty-pound 
 laborer with a chest as big as a horse s and an appetite. 
 
 Pete was getting worse and more miserable all the 
 time. And one night he stayed up in the kitchen till 
 daylight come, trying to write something on the back 
 of a time slip, and burning up ten cents worth of oil. 
 My girl Annie thought he was trying to write to his wife. 
 But it was no go. He could read if he took time to it, 
 but there weren t any penmanship, or whatever they 
 call it, belonging to them big bologny fingers ! 
 
 "He d better go back to her," says Annie to me, 
 "or he ll get so unhappy he ll kill somebody himself, 
 maybe. And ain t it awful to see the misery on such a 
 stupid face ? " she says. 
 
 " He ll not go back to her for any talking I can do now," 
 I says. "Maybe you don t know it," I says, "but this 
 Blacksong feller has been in town two days already,
 
 "284 JIM HANDS 
 
 talking his ideas to the Canucks and Poles/ I says. 
 "And," I says r "I m not sure I wouldn t agree with 
 some of em/ I says. "Damn the Boss/ I says. 
 
 But she stopped me with a move of her hand, and I 
 went off wondering, and not knowing how sudden we 
 were going to lose our lodger. 
 
 That Monday evening Annie was sewing, and I was 
 reading in the parlor, when we heard steps outside. 
 You d thought it was Pete himself, big and clumsy. 
 
 "Poor feller," says Annie. But it weren t him! 
 No, it was a woman. It was his wife. We knew it the 
 minute we seen her. She was near as big as him, and 
 wore men s shoes and had a blue dress made out of 
 overall cloth and big red wrists sticking out, and working 
 the farm in the sun had made her red all over her face, 
 and she wore an apron like them dago women when they 
 go anywhere, just the way anybody else would put on a 
 hat. She was so big she looked like a man. 
 
 But my Annie knew. All women know each other: 
 And she says, says she, "For the love of Heaven, sit- 
 down, you poor thing ! " like that. It was just as if this 
 other woman, with her flat, stupid face, had told her 
 the whole story about how she d worked the farm alone 
 and been lonely and followed Blacksong up to one town 
 because she thought she d find her man, and tramped 
 around till she d found where Pete worked and where 
 he lived, and how tired she was and all that. And there 
 she sat staring around with her big blue eyes.
 
 JIM HANDS 285 
 
 There was an awful lot of difference between my wife 
 there and his. But Annie well, she s a woman, and 
 she put her arms around this foreigner and touched her 
 on the hair, see? And I forgot to say you never seen 
 such hair ! Kind of gold hair it was, and it was worth 
 looking at. There weren t no bonnet over it. And 
 before she d said a word, she looked up at my Annie 
 like a half-frozen dog when you let it into the house. 
 And I guess she knew more about the sisterhood of 
 women right then than Blacksong ever preached to 
 Pete about the brotherhood of man. Annie she stood 
 beside this big freight-handler of a woman and I sat 
 across the table and waited for her to tell it. 
 
 "I vant my mans," says she, by and by. "I vant my 
 mans." 
 
 "He lives here," says Annie, "but he s out." And 
 with that she looked at the clock and says, "But don t 
 you worry; he ll be back." 
 
 Well, it took this foreigner woman near as long as it 
 takes to boil an egg to get this into her head, but then 
 you could see it was a comfort to her to know she d 
 made home plate. I could see she was thinking again, 
 and when she bust out talking it was worse than Pete 
 ever thought of. He couldn t have done so bad if he 
 tried, and if we all had to talk English like hers we d go 
 back to the deaf and dumb alphabet. 
 
 And she didn t hold none of her business back. "I 
 vant my mans," she says, as she starts off. " Ve to this
 
 286 JIM HANDS 
 
 country came by four years vat is." Her talk was some 
 thing like that. And she says, pulling her big red fingers, 
 "To him by vife made and lif in small place and there 
 is vat is digging and make grow vat is cabbages, celery, 
 and such. Dis is your vife," she says to me, pointing 
 to Annie. "Yes to you both vill I speak. A man 
 vat is has come to see my man and tell it to him many 
 things vat is." 
 
 "Blacksong?" says I, and she hoisted up her round, 
 thick head and give me a nod. 
 
 "And, ah, Gott ! " she says, looking into the light of 
 the lamp, and enough to make a sweatshop foreman sorry 
 for her. "Oh, Gott," she says, "it has without him 
 much unhappy been." 
 
 Annie kinder looked at the floor, and I says, for vant 
 of better, says I, "He ll be in presently." 
 
 She didn t seem to hear me none. Just like somebody 
 asleep, and she shut her eyes just like she was down and 
 out. 
 
 "Ve vas happy by dese times vat was," says she, 
 and she put her arms down on the table and her head 
 went down after em, and there she lay with the light 
 on that hair of hers. Not crying see just DONE 
 a big, thick-headed foreigner woman that didn t know 
 nothing ! 
 
 "Let her be," says Annie, and I nodded, and we sat 
 down and waited for Pete to come home from his meet 
 ing.
 
 JIM HANDS 287 
 
 I guess it must have been near to eleven o clock when 
 we heard him on the walk. And he had Blacksong with 
 him the feller he called his only friend on earth. 
 
 And they was talking as they come up, and the 
 foreigner woman woke up. She d heard his voice, see ? 
 And she sits up straight and smooths down her apron and 
 says, "My man ! " like that, sorter proud. Yes, proud ! 
 
 It was a surprise to him all right when he opened the 
 door and seen her. Blacksong, and I remember now 
 his first name was Edgar, he kinder started guessing 
 himself. Pete just stood looking and looking back to his 
 wife, and took his hat off and pulled his yellow hair 
 with his fingers ; but the other feller fixed up his big 
 bow necktie and says, "You, sister?" And opened 
 his white hands forward like this, see ? 
 
 Why, she never paid no attention to him ! No, sir ! 
 She just looked at Pete and got up, and her big red hands 
 hung down at her side, and she kinder caught her breath 
 and then tried again. I was kinder afraid she d talk her 
 foreign lingo, but she didn t. 
 
 "Der dog is dead," she says, "vich bad is. But der 
 is many shickens." 
 
 Pete, he still give her his stupid stare. 
 
 "I make der plenty celery to grow vid vork," she 
 says. 
 
 "Vid vork?" says he, kinder like it was a dream. 
 
 "Please make der listen," says she. "I haf pay der 
 rent."
 
 288 JIM HANDS 
 
 With that I seen Blacksong give a sniff and look at 
 Pete, but the foreigner just stared and stared, and 
 finally he says, looking at her, "Vat is it you vant? " 
 
 "I vant you vid me to go," she says. 
 
 "And give up the cause, brother? ;; puts in the 
 equality feller, "and be an animal the man with the 
 hoe ? " he says, paying no more attention to Annie and 
 me than if we was chairs. 
 
 "Please do not telled it like that vonce more," says 
 she, turning to Blacksong. "No, please, I vant my 
 man. By and by, vcn der little ones come has, vant I 
 him." You d thought she was asking the feller to give 
 her back a handful of nickels or something. 
 
 And Pete got red and bulgy on the forehead and 
 looked at me and Annie, and we never says a word. 
 
 "Mister Blacksong please," says the woman. "You 
 haf not good made. Ven my man vas happy and made 
 it not to hate nobody, and ven everybody and every 
 little thing, like der dog vas is dead, vas by him love 
 gave. Please, Mister Blacksong, I tell it to you. Me 
 he loved also." 
 
 She kinder looked at the floor and then looked up 
 again. Pete, he was redder than ever, trying to figure 
 out something, and he says, as if he was thinking, 
 "Equvality ! Der animals vat I was." 
 
 "Exactly," says Blacksong, kinder frightened. 
 
 "And der rent is payid. Please come back, and 
 happiness be like it vas before," says the woman.
 
 JIM HANDS 289 
 
 "Please, Mister Blacksong, to him no more tell it. 
 He loves little things, and dis is better than is it to 
 make no love for nothing/ she says. 
 
 Well, you d thought she d struck Pete with a welting- 
 needle ! He kinder stiffened up, and I remember the 
 stare went out of his eyes, and Annie give a little cry, 
 being a woman and afraid. 
 
 "Mister Blacksong," says Pete, very quiet in his 
 voice and with his big shoulders rolling. "For you I 
 from dis voman avay vent. I haf made it hungry, 
 and I haf been exactly sadness. Der truth is it vat you 
 haf made me to learn, perhaps. By Gott, I vas happy ! 
 I loved every little fly vat made himself to sit down on 
 der floor in der sunlight. By Gott, Mister Blacksong, I 
 do not love dem now ! Der is somethings vat is bad to 
 haf men tell it to peoples. Vy should I not go on to 
 vork vid happiness and not this equvality learn?" he 
 says. "By Gott, Mister Blacksong, do you know vat 
 you haf done ? No ! Vat is der difference to you vid 
 your teachings der propaganda and doctrines, eh? 
 By Gott, Mister Blacksong, you haf made me to see," 
 he says, working his fingers in the air. "And you haf 
 made me learn it to hate ! " 
 
 And he stopped a minute, and his eyes were round and 
 his big chest was moving. 
 
 And he says very soft, says he, "And so, Mister 
 Blacksong, I must to kill you ! " 
 
 And before I could stop him, he d reached out with
 
 290 JIM HANDS 
 
 them big arms of his and his body went over after em. 
 And he caught Blacksong by the throat with his thick, 
 yellow-haired fingers, and kneeled upon his chest, and 
 the poor cuss squealed like a burnt pig. 
 
 The foreign woman helped me to pull at Pete Sotus. 
 Blacksong s face got white and then gray. Great Guns ! 
 it looked different from them red fingers of Pete Sotus. 
 I thought we d be too late the big foreigner was that 
 strong I couldn t tear him off. But finally we pried him 
 loose and got the preaching feller on to his feet, and 
 Annie picked up his hat, and I grabbed him by the collar 
 and shoved him out the door, while the foreigner woman 
 held on to the big one. 
 
 Blacksong got himself together outside. He could 
 hardly speak. It sounded like a voice through a parti 
 tion. "I ll send him to the jail for this!" he says, 
 croaking it out. 
 
 "Gwan," says I, "before I kick you down the steps," 
 says I ; " you and your man with a hoe," says I. 
 
 And when I turns to go back into the room, if there 
 weren t the foreigner woman sitting in a chair, and 
 Pete Sotus down on his knees with his yellcr hair laid 
 down in her checkered apron. She, with her red, 
 stupid face, was talking her lingo kinder soft, but all he 
 would say was : "Like it vas once ! Like it vas once ! 
 I vant der slafery ! I vant der slafery ! I vant der 
 slafery ! " and he said it over and over like a fool. 
 
 Well, my Annie she pulled me out of the room,
 
 JIM HANDS 291 
 
 and when we didn t hear no more noise, I looked in 
 again. It was an hour or so, but they was gone both 
 of em. Pete left a dollar for rent under the lamp 
 bright green-looking it w T as on the wooden top. Pete 
 loved that woman. She was big and red and homely, 
 but thunder ! she was his wife. They d gone they d 
 gone together. 
 
 I went out to the back door then and opened it. 
 The air felt good. There was the sky just peppered with 
 stars. The horse out in the barn heard me, I guess, 
 because he stamped in his stall once or tw T ice, as if he 
 would like to have me go out and speak to him ; and the 
 last crickets were singing in the grass. I looked up at the 
 big space overhead and over the fields at the mist that 
 was hanging above em, and somehow I felt as if I was 
 the only human being ever made, and that the One that 
 made me was looking down at me and studying me to see 
 what He had turned out. And standing there, it come 
 to me as if He had whispered in my ear. And I knew 
 there wasn t nothing in the world worth having but 
 good-will to every feller and woman and mosquito and 
 rock and twigs on trees and everything. I just stood 
 there, half scared and half happy. 
 
 And for the first time in twenty years tears I thought 
 had long ago dried up, come back, and I kinder jumped 
 when I felt the wet in the corner of my eye, and I looked 
 out across them fields and I says to Him, " Don t worry 
 about me," I says. "I won t hold nothing against any-
 
 292 JIM HANDS 
 
 body any more. Look out for my girl," I says, "wher 
 ever she may be, and keep her from any harm," I says; 
 and I went back into the house, and I looked into the 
 door of the room where little John and Michael was sleep 
 ing, and I says to myself that it would pay a man to go 
 out every night in the air like that, and there hasn t been 
 a night since that I haven t done it. And then I went 
 to bed.
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 
 MAYBE some people will think it strange, but I half 
 expected it. It weren t three evenings after that I 
 laid down my pipe and the newspaper that had some 
 reports about the strike and people leaving town, and I 
 felt a restless feeling come over me. So I got up and 
 turned up my collar, for it was one of them sharp even 
 ings that smell like winter, and went out on to the front 
 door-step. I seen it wouldn t be long before we would 
 have snow, and the ice would be booming in the river 
 again, and the white hills would shine Sunday mornings 
 so you could hardly see for the water the cold had 
 brought into your eyes. And I was thinking so when I 
 heard the gate click. 
 
 She came out of the dark the way a camera picture 
 comes out on a plate. I thought a second that she 
 weren t real, and then I saw her eyes, so clear and 
 round. 
 
 "Did I surprise you?" she says, in a voice that shook 
 a bit. "Aren t you glad to see me?" 
 
 I could hardly speak. I grabbed her. " Katherine ! " 
 I says, "my girl my little girl !" 
 
 She wriggled a little and put her bag on the ground 
 and her arms around my neck. 
 
 And after a minute she says, "My mother?" she says. 
 
 293
 
 294 JIM HANDS 
 
 Of course I wanted to ask her questions, but I could 
 see she was crazy to rush inside. 
 
 " Wait a second," says I, very serious. " Your mother 
 is in the parlor. Be patient with what she may say 
 to you. She may be very slow to forgive you," I says; 
 "and say nothing about how your father welcomed you, 
 for it was different from what I had planned," I says. 
 "Be careful now, Katherine," I says. "She is your 
 mother, and has a right to be very stern with you," 
 says I. 
 
 And with that we pushed open the door a little way, 
 and I whispers to the girl, "Remember, Katherine," 
 I says, "that you have made your mother more angry 
 and more bitter and unforgiving than I ever saw her 
 before." And then Katherine went in alone. 
 
 I was just outside. I never seen my Annie so active. 
 She just seemed to leap out of her chair and over the 
 edge of the table. 
 
 "Katherine !" she screams. "You re back, dearest ! 
 Oh, my ! Oh, my !" she cries. "Come to your mother," 
 she says, and put her hand on the girl s shoulders and 
 held her off and looked at her face that was so happy and 
 excited. And then she stopped her chuckling and little 
 words and looked serious. " I fear to have you meet 
 your father," she says. "He will never forgive your 
 going away. He s like a raging fire," she says. 
 
 And so it was the girl came back. She took off her 
 coat, and my Annie went to her again, and I seen her look
 
 JIM HANDS 295 
 
 her in the eyes, asking questions without words, the way 
 a mother will. But Katherine only smiled back at her, 
 and I came in, and then after Annie and I seen how we 
 stood, we started to ask her questions. 
 
 " Katherine, dear, you had a fool s errand. I don t 
 like to hear about it," says my Annie. "But tell me," 
 she says, "have you seen him?" 
 
 "Yes," says Katherine, so soft you could hardly hear 
 her. 
 
 "And what then?" says I. 
 
 She looked up at me. "And then," she says, "he 
 went back to college, and when he has arranged things 
 there, he is coming back to show he isn t afraid of this 
 town, either," she says, and I could see in her eye the look 
 of fight. "He promised we," she says, and her rounded 
 chin kinder squared up. 
 
 "Have you anything else to tell us?" says Annie, 
 very slow, as if it was hard to say. 
 
 Then the look on the girl s face changed. You could 
 see the shadow come over it. "No," she says; "I 
 found him in Richmond," she says. "He had a job 
 with contractors there, and a pair of blue overalls and a 
 streak of machine grease on his face. It seemed so 
 funny ! And I told him what he must do. I got there 
 about the time the whistle blew, and we got nothing to 
 eat that night, for sitting on the Capitol steps and walk 
 ing around the grounds with the city below us and the 
 puffing of trains," she says.
 
 296 JIM HANDS 
 
 "I know I know," I says, very impatient. "But 
 did he ask you to forgive him ? What did he say about 
 the Villet girl?" I says. 
 
 With that Katherine kinder bent her head till the 
 back of her neck was tight and glistening in the lamp 
 light below the line of that copper-colored hair of hers. 
 And she looked at the floor and whispers, "What we 
 thought about him must be true/ she says, and swal 
 lowed as if there was a fish-bone in her throat. "But 
 he asked me again if I believed it," she says, "and I 
 said yes, and asked him to explain, but he only said 
 he couldn t explain anything, that I was like his father 
 - without faith," she says. 
 
 "Oh !" cries my Annie. "This miserable coward ! " 
 she says. "He could at least have been straight 
 enough to admit it, like a man," she says, "to you who 
 had done so much for him." 
 
 "He was silent as a stone," says Katherine, thinking. 
 "He only said that he would never say any more - 
 that what he owed to Anne Villet was for her to say." 
 
 "And we will never see her again," says I. 
 
 "Maybe we will," says Katherine. "I found out 
 where she is. I ve sent for her. It was hard for him 
 to go back to his friends ; it will be hard for him to come 
 to this town, not knowing whether he can go under the 
 roof of his father s house or not ; but he must do some 
 thing more!" she says. "He must pay his debt to 
 her!"
 
 JIM HANDS 297 
 
 I seen Annie s eyes grow big with her thoughts, and 
 her hands went playing along her dress for a minute. 
 * You love him ? " she says. 
 
 "Yes," says Katherine, "I guess I must. I guess 
 it was intended to have me." 
 
 " And you told him so ?" I says. 
 
 "No," she says. "It was pride for you and mother 
 and all of us. I told his father once he must come with 
 Bob if they wanted to know. And that s the way it 
 will have to be," she says. 
 
 With that I seen Annie s eyes redden up, and she half 
 went down on her knees beside Katherine s chair, and 
 took her hands, and the next minute she looked up at 
 me and says, "Jim, Jim, it s our own girl, dear. She 
 belongs to us! Don t you see, Jim! She is such a 
 woman!"
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 AND in those next few days I made up my mind her 
 mother hadn t praised her too high. I knew what was in 
 the girl s heart and how she had to keep it there and not 
 let it out. And I remembered how I read in a book that 
 these fellers that go hunting for lions often find em 
 travelling in pairs and always get the lioness out of the 
 way first, because if the other is wounded she ll fight 
 like hell for him. I knew Katherine was like that, and 
 yet I could see how gentle she could be. 
 
 The strike had made a lot of misery in the town, and it 
 seemed as if everybody was getting sick, and there was a 
 lot of the little money that was left spent for pool-playing 
 and excursions and betting on ball-games and drink. 
 The idleness was awful. And the cost of it was awful 
 in a dozen ways, and ever since then I ve known that 
 work and labor and plugging at it day after day is the 
 sweetest thing in the world. 
 
 But Katherine was always doing something. There 
 was a lot of people needing help maybe a woman with 
 the pneumonia and no one to cook the meals for the 
 children, or a feller that was begging the grocer to wait a 
 bit for his money, and so many kinds of troubles that 
 a man couldn t ever believe that trouble could have so 
 
 298
 
 JIM HANDS 299 
 
 many shapes. And the way the girl worked to set things 
 straight reminded me of the way one of them mud-wasps 
 works all the time and patient, putting on a little 
 here and a little there to the nest, and never dissatisfied 
 because one day wouldn t make much of a showing. 
 There was a kind of a reflection of my Annie in the girl. 
 I learned a new kind of love of her. 
 
 It was right at that time that the Talker came to this 
 town. The autumn had about given its last gasp, like 
 a fish dying in the bottom of a boat, and the valley was 
 all lit up with the colors of the trees, and the marshes was 
 brown and spitting up them sounds of guns and white 
 smoke where the idle fellers was out shooting partridges 
 and watching for the first snow so they could go out after 
 them hares. I never knew a fall when hunting-dogs was 
 in such demand. 
 
 I remember I seen him come over the rise at the top of 
 Maple Hill, and I didn t know then that he was a talker 
 that could take first, second, and third and honorable 
 mention, barring women. 
 
 I remember it was in the morning. And somehow I 
 happened to look up and I seen his queer wagon just 
 starting down the hill for the bridge, with the brakes 
 scraping, and the old white horse with his ears down and 
 watching for round stones. 
 
 The wagon was a color that would frighten the in 
 surance companies, and on the sides of it was painted 
 a question-mark most as tall as a man. That was all
 
 300 JIM HANDS 
 
 except for him. He sat on the seat under a big cotton 
 umbrella. I could see his eye-glasses flashing in the 
 sunlight. 
 
 But it weren t till noon that I got a close look at him. 
 I was going up over the road home, and I seen his wagon 
 out in front of Dunham s livery stable that used to be 
 facing the old village common under them big elm trees 
 on Main Street. I d loaned Birch Dunham my harness, 
 and I thought it would be a good time to run across 
 and get it, and I found this red-wagon feller setting in the 
 doorway where the flies that is most froze to death at 
 night buzzes in the daytimes. There didn t seem to be 
 nobody there except him and them flies. You know 
 how still a livery stable can be. He was polishing his 
 glasses on a silk handkerchief about as big as a table- 
 cover. 
 
 I remember he was setting under one of them pictures 
 of Doctor Vetter, the horse s friend, because those 
 liniment advertisements show that Vetter is happy and 
 fat, and this feller that sat under the picture was so 
 thin he seemed to take a lot of comfort in winding his 
 legs around each other when he got into a chair; and 
 he had a solemn white face with sleepy eyes that when 
 they opened would bore through the side of a house, and 
 a mustache that went right on after it had stopped 
 being a mustache and followed his jaws right up close 
 until it ran into his slick black hair. There weren t 
 nothing about him that would tell that he was old,
 
 JIM HANDS 301 
 
 but somehow you knew he was. He was kinder pale, 
 too. Afterward, when I found out he d been in jail, 
 I wondered why I hadn t known of it to look at him. It 
 won t wash off a man and don t wear off easy. 
 
 "There ain t nobody here," he says, "but me," he says, 
 in a kind of a singsong. "But the gentleman for whose 
 kindly offices them horses is stamping will be back in a 
 few minutes," says he. 
 
 So with that I sat down in the sun, too, and looked at 
 the feller and he looked at me. 
 
 "I suppose you live in this town?" says he. 
 
 "Yes," I says. "I m foreman in the factory when 
 there ain t a strike. I seen your wagon coming down 
 over the hill this morning. What are them question- 
 marks ? " says I. 
 
 "Them," he says, "represents the human mind. 
 Everybody asks the same question. That s what 
 they re meant for. If all human minds weren t so much 
 alike, a lot of folks wouldn t care what them question- 
 marks were. But everybody asks ! You ask ! " says he, 
 in his singsong. A question-mark asks. It asks you to 
 ask. And when anybody asks, I tell em." 
 
 "Tell em what?" I says. 
 
 He leaned forward toward me and looked me square 
 in the eye and laughed, and pulled out of his pocket a 
 little file and commenced filing one of his long white 
 finger-nails. 
 
 "Tell em what?" I says, again.
 
 302 JIM HANDS 
 
 "Well, I say to cm something like this," he says, 
 not looking up. " When youse is asleep in your bed, you 
 do not dream that a band of Indians wise to nature s 
 everlasting laws and the secrets of the great Man too 
 is roaming the hills, valleys, woodlands, mountains, 
 plains, plateaus, peaks, and marshes gathering sprouts, 
 buds, flowers, roots, twigs, bark, stems, leaves, seeds, 
 and bulbs from which is distilled a soothing, healing, 
 comforting, pain-killing, disease-conquering, death-defy 
 ing, remedy now represented in this bottle I hold in 
 my hand open to inspection and plain to your naked 
 eyes 
 
 "What bottle?" says I, kinder lost in the up and 
 down pumping sound of his voice. 
 
 "Don t bother," says he. "I m supposed to have a 
 bottle in this hand, see ? And to continue which 
 remedy is good for aches, pains, bruises, sprains, sore 
 back, tender feet, falling of the hair also for insom 
 nia, the disease that doctors often calls sleeplessness, 
 and malaria, rheumatism and gout, indigestion, and all 
 such kindred ailments. The price of this remedy is not 
 ten dollars, not five dollars, not even one dollar, gentle 
 men. The few left are sold to-night for fifty cents, half 
 a dollar, five dimes ! And with each and every bottle 
 we give away one of the combination pens, corkscrews, 
 glass-cutters, and can-openers ! " 
 
 "I see," says I. "You re a travelling doctor." 
 
 "Perfesser," he says, correcting me. "And as a
 
 JIM HANDS 303 
 
 matter of fact, I ve given up that Piute Remedy line. 
 This summer I m carrying soaps, hair tonics, clothes 
 hangers, and Smith s wart and blemish remover," says 
 he, working away with his little nail-file. "For when 
 you re carrying Indian remedies you have to have an 
 Indian. They re all alike. The last one I had was a 
 Baltimore nigger," he says, "and once I had a real In 
 dian, but he used to get homesick and cry. I was 
 disgusted." 
 
 With that he held up his long white finger in the 
 sunlight and looked at it as if he d just made it himself. 
 "Yep," says he, "I m perfesser. I guess I m a per- 
 fesser of talking that s me. That s all I am and all 
 I ll ever be good for," he says. "Once I thought 
 but that s gone long ago, and awful long ago at that. 
 But I m an artist in my line. I make a pretty good 
 thing of it, and my stuff s good, honest stuff, too, except 
 the wart remover. Even that kinder bleaches em. 
 But when I get going I can talk a bird out of a tree. Yes, 
 sir. I can talk a man s head out from under his hat. 
 It s too bad it couldn t never been turned to good ac 
 count. Good talkers oughter be careful not to do any 
 harm." 
 
 And I knew he was right. He sat there watching the 
 stream of men and women going in and out of the post- 
 office, walking slow, and seemed to be studying each one 
 of em just as if he was used to studying everybody he 
 saw. Now and then he d wrinkle his nose to let
 
 304 JIM HANDS 
 
 his spectacles fall down into place, but all the time he 
 talked I had to look at him. I had to listen. I suppose 
 it s a good deal in practice, but maybe people is born 
 talkers. 
 
 I says to him, "Have you got eye trouble ? " 
 
 "No," he says, "these glasses is just plain glass. 
 But," he says, as if he thought I was a fool, "what s a 
 perfesser without glasses ? I wear glasses for the same 
 reason I wear this tall celluloid collar that cuts my neck, 
 and this black necktie," he says. "It s a fake. But I 
 don t know nobody that ain t a faker one way or an 
 other," says he. "Most of their faking is funny. It 
 don t do no harm. It s like an old dog without teeth 
 making a lot of noise. That s me," he says. 
 
 And then all of a sudden he leaned forward, and the 
 front legs of his chair come down with a bang that started 
 up all them flies. 
 
 "Who s that?" he yells to me in a kinder whisper. 
 I seen his long fingers press on his nail-file till it bust with 
 a snap, and the two pieces fell on the floor. I seen he was 
 looking across the road, and he was pointing with one 
 hand. 
 
 There was a lot of folks on the other side of the street, 
 and I couldn t tell who he meant. 
 
 "Which is who?" I says. 
 
 "The one with a little mustache," he says, choking 
 and red, and his fingers feeling along his coat buttons. 
 
 "That s Carter Elmore, the Boss s son-in-law," says I,
 
 JIM HANDS 305 
 
 kinder excited, for you catch them feelings like a disease. 
 And he jumped as if I d stuck a hat pin into his 
 leg. 
 
 He stood there looking, and by and by he let out a 
 breath as if it hurt him, and he says, "It s him. It s 
 him!" and he kinder whistled it between his thin lips. 
 And then he sits down in the chair again and takes off 
 his big black hat and smoothed it out on his knee and 
 kept snapping dust specks off it with his long, pointed 
 finger-nails. "And after all this time, too," he says. 
 
 "Is he married?" he says, wetting his lips. 
 
 "Yes," I says, "he married the Boss s daughter. 
 They live in New York. He s just been visiting here 
 this summer with his wife." 
 
 "How s she?" he says, looking at the floor. 
 
 "Who s that?" I says. 
 
 "The wife his wife," he says. "Does she still 
 have that little laugh ? " he says. And her black hair ? 
 Or maybe she s bleached it now," he says. 
 
 "No," I says, "you ve got the wrong people," I 
 says. "His wife ain t like the woman you describe," 
 I says. "Did you think you knew him?" says I. 
 
 "Oh, no!" he says, looking up quick. "I was just 
 joking." 
 
 With that he got up and began walking up and down 
 the floor, and after a while he looks at me over his 
 glasses and says, "I don t suppose a bookkeeper can 
 make enough to take care of a big family."
 
 306 JIM HANDS 
 
 "Why, he ain t a bookkeeper/ I says. "He s a 
 a broker in New York. He makes a lot of money." 
 
 "Is his wife small?" he says, plucking his fingers 
 with his other hand. 
 
 "No," I says, "she stands as tall as I do," I says. 
 
 "No children?" he says. 
 
 "No," says I, "just them two;" and I was watching 
 Carter Elmore walking along on the other side of the 
 street, swinging a cane as he went. 
 
 No children ? " the Talker says, kinder soft. Well, 
 that s different ; " and he wipes his mouth with the back 
 of his hand. 
 
 And when I looked up again he was standing there 
 on the stable floor with a revolver in his hand. He 
 kinder patted it with his other fingers and he says: 
 "Now there s a good weapon," he says. "I bought that 
 seven years ago. I thought maybe I d have some use 
 for it," he says. "Ain t it funny how you plan things, 
 and how you picture em over and over again, and when 
 the time comes everything is different? Ain t it 
 strange ? " 
 
 "And it s funny, too," he says, "how people change, 
 and how you will be sure you ll know people you haven t 
 seen for fifteen years, and when you meet em again 
 you can t be sure. And yet a little thing like a wart or a 
 birthmark or a tattoo on the skin would be enough, 
 if you can only see it, to tell the story, even though 
 names and everything else has changed." And he
 
 JIM HANDS 307 
 
 looked at the revolver again and put it back in his hip 
 pocket. 
 
 " I suppose you need that," I says, speaking up, " trav 
 elling as you do from town to town alone on the road." 
 
 "No, I guess not," he says. "I didn t buy it for that. 
 I bought it to shoot a man when I found him." And 
 with that he laughed and wrinkled his nose again to let 
 his eye-glasses drop into place. " Ain t it a funny 
 world ? " he says. "I bust my nail-file," he says, stoop 
 ing down and picking up one piece of it. "Ain t that 
 too bad?" 
 
 "Look here," I says, for I d been thinking, "you 
 don t mean Carter Elmore is the feller you ve been look 
 ing for?" 
 
 "No," he says, "I guess he ain t the one. But 
 you won t say nothing about it, anyhow, will you?" 
 
 "I won t," I says, and Birch Dunham come in just 
 then and I had to talk with him; and when I looked 
 back over my shoulder, I seen the perfesser had gone 
 back to sit in his chair, just as I first seen him in the 
 sunlight, with the flies buzzing around and with his big 
 black hat setting on his gray head again, and the little 
 piece of nail-file turning around and around in his 
 fingers, and his sleepy eyes looking way off on to that 
 ridge of pines there where the crows is always flying in 
 circles.
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 IT weren t till that night I seen him again. And I 
 won t forget it, neither. 
 
 I remember I went down to the village that evening. 
 I told my Annie that I d be right back, but going down 
 Maple Street I met Father Ryan. He s an artist for 
 passing the time of day, and it s fine to see the smile on 
 that red face of his. 
 
 We walked along down toward the stores, up by the 
 drinking fountain, and when we turned the corner we see 
 the perfessor s wagon backed up against the side of the 
 Odd Fellows building. There was a couple of gasoline 
 lights flaming and blazing away on each side of it, and it 
 was a sight to see how, when that wagon had opened up, 
 it was changed into a regular travelling store, with a 
 counter out front and shelves behind and a platform 
 for the perfessor to stand on. 
 
 And the perfesser was there himself, standing with a 
 cornet in one hand, playing it, and a big drum-beater, 
 or whatever you call em, whacking at a bass drum with 
 the other hand, all at the same time. I thought to 
 myself, "You may be talented in one direction, but it 
 ain t in music." But of course that didn t make any 
 difference. The idea was to make noise. 
 
 308
 
 JIM HANDS 309 
 
 Then, besides, whenever the gasoline flared up good 
 you could see a big snake wound around the perfessor s 
 neck and swinging his head back and forth. 
 
 " Jim," says Father Ryan to me, " those are bad men 
 - those like him selling worthless stuff to the poor. 
 You may expect to see em in the summer, but seldom 
 so late as this when winter is nearly on us and a strike 
 in the town, too," he says. "Just see how everybody 
 is running. I don t approve of it not a bit," he says. 
 " Tis a bad influence, and I m surprised to see men like 
 Pierson and Joline and Henry Morse is open to such 
 curiosity," he says. " What s that the rascal has 
 around his neck ?" he says. 
 
 11 A snake," says I. 
 
 "A real snake?" says he. "And see him now. 
 He s blind-folding himself. What do you suppose he s 
 going to do?" 
 
 "I don t know," says I. 
 
 "I wish I did," he says. "Do you suppose it would 
 do any harm if we drew nearer?" he says. 
 
 "Your Reverence shouldn t be a party to this 
 proceeding," I says, "even as a spectator," I says. 
 "Maybe," says I, "I offer it for a suggestion," I says, 
 with a grin. 
 
 "Look there," he says, "he s doing a trick with a man s 
 hat," he says. "Did you ever see the like of that 
 crowd ? If we re going to see anything, we must go as 
 fast as our two legs will carry us."
 
 310 JIM HANDS 
 
 "We have four legs between us," says I. 
 
 "I wish I had a hundred/ he says, almost running. 
 "I m fond of hearing them rascals talk," he says. 
 "Come on," he says. " Twill be sad for you when 
 you re less of a boy than me, Jim, though don t say I 
 said it, or folks will find out I have no respect for own my 
 white hair," he says, puffing and blowing and keeping in 
 the shadows of the bare elm trees where nobody d see him. 
 
 The crowd was all pressing and pushing and pulling, 
 old and young, around the cart. You could see the 
 faces turned up and shining red and yellow in the light 
 of the gasoline torches. And even all the old fellers eyes 
 were glistening, and right then anybody could tell that 
 men grow up a little in a lifetime, but the oldest man 
 in the world dies young. I guess I was like the others, 
 anxious to hear and see, though I never suspected what 
 would turn up. And I looks around beside me and 
 Father Ryan s mouth was open as wide as temptation, 
 and while the perfesser talked in his singsong way, his 
 Reverence beat time with his finger just as if he was 
 teaching poetry to the kids at the parochial school. 
 
 "Move up closer there in front, please," says the per 
 fesser, "for I see there s more coming, and them who is 
 standing back there," he says, pointing with his long 
 finger and winking, "is the most curious. And now, 
 brothers," he says, "if you will give me your attention 
 for a moment or two, I ll present to your notice a mar 
 vellous new discovery. In the meantime I ll wash my
 
 JIM HANDS 311 
 
 hands in this here basin, using, as you see, ordinary 
 water just as it runs from a pump, a faucet, water spigot, 
 or garden hose. And from this here tin with patent 
 perforated top you can see, Clarence, without climbing 
 on to my wagon from this here tin I shake a couple of 
 flakes of this here substance on to the palm of my hand," 
 he says. 
 
 "And," he says, dipping his hands into the water, 
 "here is where the rub comes," he says. "When I was 
 in Catacomb, Ohio, a year ago, a little boy in the crowd 
 says to me, Doc Smith, do my hands need washing? 
 I says, They certainly do, young man. Well/ he says, 
 you oughter see mother s face." : 
 
 And as he was talking he rubbed up a big lather that 
 stood half a foot high, and then he told how that lather 
 weren t like ordinary soap, but how it went into the 
 pores of the skin and killed the germs; and then he 
 went on talking and rubbing until the lather was all 
 gone and his hands was dry and he d wiped em on a 
 towel. But then he d pour some more clean water 
 over em, and the same lather would work right up 
 again just as white and frothy as ever, and I guess 
 he did it four times. 
 
 The crowd was listening and looking at him every 
 second, and finally an old feller from one of the farms 
 out on the Dalton Road snorted out and says, "Doc, 
 that s great stuff, that soap, but how in blazes do you 
 ever get shed of it?"
 
 312 JIM HANDS 
 
 Everybody laughed and shifted their feet and thought 
 the joke was on the perfesser, but it didn t bother him 
 any. He looks up over his glasses and says: "I m sur 
 prised you didn t know," he says. "When you ve 
 got a good lather worked up, just hang it up on a hook 
 and use it when you come back," he says. 
 
 "Now this marvellous antiseptic, cleansing, purifying, 
 germ-destroying, strictly scientific preparation," he 
 says, leaning forward till I thought he d fall over, 
 "is known to the wide world as Smith s Twelve-Horse- 
 Power Magic Flake. It is good for hands, face, bath, 
 hair, dandruff, and all skin troubles ; for man and beast, 
 horse, dog, and cat, and may be used to wash woollens, 
 laces, silk ; will remove the stains from clothing, includ 
 ing the most delicate fabrics; will clean silver, china, 
 brass, and porcelain, varnish, furniture, spots on wall 
 paper and plaster-paris statuary; soothing and allaying 
 irritation after shaving. With each and every can of 
 this powder which I sell here to-night I give away one 
 of these here Swiss metal watch-charms. Not only 
 that, but I add to it one of these here sets of open-eye 
 needles that will save the fingers and eyesight of your 
 old mother, grandmother, or wife, sister, aunt, or daugh 
 ter, equally as well," he says. "The price of this giant 
 household combination is three dollars and ninety 
 cents." 
 
 "Gee!" says three or four in the crowd, and with 
 that the perfesser looked up at the swinging branches of
 
 JIM HANDS 313 
 
 the tree that hung down beside him, where the leaves 
 kinder took the light from the gasoline. 
 
 "Well," he says, "who s the first?" he says, holding 
 out the articles. "Nobody?" he says. "Oh, well," 
 he says, "I forgot to mention that three dollars and 
 ninety cents, or thirty-nine dimes, was the original price 
 of this outfit, but to introduce these here articles quick 
 on the market, I m going to sell em off to-night at a 
 different price. Not a dollar, not a half, quarter, or 
 eighth of a dollar, but one dime, ten cents, the tenth 
 part of a dollar. Let them gentlemen come close, 
 please," he says. "One right here. I ve got your 
 change right there. And the next one here. A few 
 more left now. One here to this gentleman. Don t 
 crowd. Another here. Wait a bit ; you ll get yours in 
 a minute, brother." 
 
 And on he went selling em right and left, swaying his 
 body from side to side, and keeping on talking with a 
 voice that sounded up and down, and pumping and 
 running all the words together. And just the second 
 he seen the sales was going slow he stopped and wiped off 
 all the packages left on his stand into a box with his 
 arm, and reaches down as quick as a wink and pulls out 
 the snake again and holds it up. 
 
 "Now," he says, "we will do an act to conclude the 
 performance. I want to entertain you a minute with a 
 description of this monster captured in the wilds of 
 Florida. This snake is the alligator or spotted snake,
 
 314 JIM HANDS 
 
 from which the native Indians distil the oil that goes 
 into a little preparation I have here to-night. Now 
 my contention is that every man alive has got on him 
 somewhere a mole or blemish of the skin. I ll go farther 
 than this, brothers. I ll prove it right here before you 
 without any attempt to conceal, or other deception." 
 
 11 Ain t he the rascal!" says Father Ryan in my 
 ear. "Just look at him now!" 
 
 I seen then the perfesser had stopped and was looking 
 around in the crowd. He looked kinder worn and old 
 and tired, too, and I seen his hand go up to his collar 
 and pull at it as if to let in more air. He finally pointed 
 to a long, tall feller that works on the railroad. 
 
 " You ve got one," he says, "you with the gray 
 felt hat," he says. "But you ain t never seen it. 
 And yet you know you ve got it. It s on the back of 
 your neck." 
 
 The feller opened his eyes as wide as water crackers, 
 and before he could stop, he says, "How did you 
 know?" 
 
 "Easy, my friend," says the perfesser. "When I first 
 spoke you felt to see if it was still there." 
 
 And he says, pointing to another feller by the name of 
 Osborn, "You ve got one on your left shoulder." 
 
 "No, I ain t, "says the feller. 
 
 But he didn t say it loud, and so the perfesser went 
 pointing around the crowd, saying, "You got one," and 
 "You got one," and nobody could see who he was point-
 
 JIM HANDS 315 
 
 ing at, so nobody denied it, and everybody laughed and 
 whispered as if the perfesser was doing something 
 wonderful, sure. 
 
 But when he come to one man on his way around, I 
 noticed he stopped a minute and coughed, and I seen the 
 man was Carter Elmore. And then the Talker says, 
 kinder laughing: " There s a gentleman there with a 
 pearl -gray felt hat on. And he s got a mole on the top 
 side of his left wrist," he says, and he rested one hand on 
 the stand and leaned forward. How is that, brother ? " 
 he says, showing his teeth as he spoke. 
 
 I seen Elmore course I ain t giving his real name 
 I seen Elmore jump a little. He d been looking at the 
 perfesser pretty steady, for I watched him, but he kinder 
 looked away then and at the ground, and I seen him 
 reach out and grab Dave Pierson s arm as if he was 
 going to fall. Everybody was anxious to know if the 
 perfesser had hit it right again, and so it was still, even 
 the crowd was still, and you couldn t hear nothing 
 but the warm wind in them trees and a train whistling 
 way off somewhere down the line. 
 
 And finally the Boss s son-in-law straightened up and 
 looked straight at the perfesser and nodded.
 
 CHAPTER XXV 
 
 THE perfesser stepped back a little and took off his 
 black hat and snapped at the dust on it with his finger. 
 It seemed to me he was shaking a little, but nobody 
 seemed to notice it, and he laughed and went on pointing 
 out a couple more, cracking a joke for each, and telling 
 how he knew a man that used a mole on the back of his 
 hand to remember things by instead of tying a piece of 
 string around his finger. 
 
 "And," he says, "now I ve proved everything, I m 
 going to present to your notice and attention this little 
 box of salve composed and made up of natural oils of 
 the famous Suwanee alligator, or spotted snake, known 
 for centuries to Indians and explorers of that death-deal 
 ing swamp for their curative properties. Every box 
 of this salve represents a daring capture perpetrated, 
 maybe, at the cost of a human life, and is going to be 
 sold to-night at the red-letter-day price of ten cents, 
 together with a written and signed guarantee that the 
 salve will remove any blemish or disfigurement in 
 twenty-four hours, if used according to direction thereby 
 given. Who ll be first here? A genuine four-carat 
 California diamond scarf-pin is given away with each 
 box, providing no question is asked and nothing is said 
 
 316
 
 JIM HANDS 317 
 
 about where you bought it. If this scarf-pin ain t worth 
 at any jeweller s nine times what you pay me for it, 
 bring it back to me, and I ll gladly hand you back the 
 price. Who s next here ? One dime, " he says. Your 
 Canadian quarter is all right, young man. Another here. 
 Here they come. Another here. Full directions given 
 - the genuine Suwanee Snake Salve, as used by the 
 court beauties of France for over a century. Thank 
 you. Stand back there, please, after completing your 
 purchase," he says. You know how them fellers go on. 
 
 But all of a sudden he stopped and looked up m the 
 air and whistled. It seemed just as if he d been think 
 ing and suddenly hit upon just what he wanted to plan. 
 
 "Gents," he says, "we ll stop right here a moment. 
 I m going to tell you a story, gents," says he, keeping 
 right on with his singsong voice "a story that is all 
 wool, a yard wide, and contains no shoddy or adultera 
 tion whatever," he says. 
 
 Of course I didn t know his story was going to affect 
 me any. 
 
 "And now, gents," he says, "there was a feller fifteen 
 years ago had a house just outside of Chicago one of 
 these little houses painted white and a picket fence 
 around it," he says, "where the cat used to lie out in the 
 sun on warm days in springs, and inside the fence was 
 some flowers planted. And when the feller used to 
 come home at night, his wife and she was a pretty 
 woman used to pull off her apron and come out and
 
 318 JIM HANDS 
 
 meet him. This here feller didn t amount to much as 
 men go. He was a drummer, selling a line of bicycle 
 bells and lamps, see ? He weren t making much money, 
 and he liked good clothes, and there weren t a great deal 
 in his favor except his talking. He was a natural-born 
 talker. He d talk a man right out from under his hat." 
 
 With that the perfesser stopped and coughed and 
 laid his black felt hat down on a pile of salve boxes and 
 played with the buttons on his coat. 
 
 " Yes," he says, "there weren t much to him, I guess, 
 except talk. And then maybe, besides, that he was fond 
 of her of that little woman. She was kinder pink, and 
 she had the finest little laugh you ever listened to, and he 
 carried her picture pasted in the front of his order-book 
 so s every time he wrote an order he d see her and think 
 how he was earning a living for em both," he says. 
 
 "I ain t going to tell it long," says he. "I ve got to 
 sell some of these here goods, but this feller had a friend, 
 a feller, we ll say, named Rayworth. He weren t an old 
 friend nor nothing like that. He was a bookkeeper in a 
 big hotel, and was a good deal younger than the husband, 
 but he come from a first-rate family, and these two others 
 let him have a room and board out in their house tc help 
 out expenses. The first feller was a fool. He was only 
 a talker, and he didn t ever see during them months 
 that Rayworth was making such good friends with the 
 little woman. But Rayworth was a pretty good talker, 
 too.
 
 JIM HANDS 319 
 
 "Well," says the perfesser, wiping his forehead, 
 "Rayworth used to say that anybody who couldn t 
 make money and own a big house and carriages was a 
 fool ; and he told how all the big fellers had got rich first 
 by selling nothing for something, and he explained about 
 stock companies and how many suckers there was, and 
 he said if he was as good a talker as this first feller 
 he would go into it quick. 
 
 "The first feller didn t know much about them things, 
 but by and by it seemed just common business to fix 
 up a company of some kind and sell stock and take 
 the money and use it. It seemed just like what the big 
 fellers did. And so then, gents, Rayworth taught this 
 first feller how to do it, and all Rayworth asked for that 
 teaching was a note promising so much money on a 
 certain date out of the profits. That s all Rayworth did. 
 He was scared to have anything to do with the real 
 business. Then one morning, when they was all sitting 
 down to breakfast and everything was going fine and 
 a whole lot of money had come in already, a ring came 
 on the electric bell, and two big fellers walked straight in 
 past the woman, for she had answered the bell, and they 
 stood there looking at Rayworth and the coffee and eggs 
 and bacon and muffins, and the talking feller still sitting 
 there holding the blue coffee-cup his wife had bought 
 for him when they first went to housekeeping. Yes, 
 gents," says the perfesser, "they stood there and 
 laughed, and one of em says, This is a pretty little nest,
 
 320 JIM HANDS 
 
 ain t it ? and the other hands the talking feller a warrant 
 and says, It s embezzlement, my friend, and we got the 
 case tacked down in fifty places. Get your hat and coat 
 and don t say nothing we can use against you. 
 
 "Well, gents, the first thing the feller thought of was 
 Rayworth and how, maybe, if that note could be de 
 stroyed, there wouldn t be nothing against him, and it 
 just happened that the feller knew that the note was in 
 Rayworth s overcoat pocket. And so the feller went 
 out into the kitchen and put on Rayworth s coat instead 
 of his own, and when he got a chance and the big inspec 
 tor wasn t looking, he took all the papers out of the in 
 side pocket and put em through a crack in the stove. 
 And he did it to save Rayworth, and of course when that 
 note was gone Rayworth was all clear." 
 
 The perfesser stopped again and turned one of them 
 knobs on the gasoline torch so the light come up again 
 good and bright, but you could see how white his face 
 looked against the shadow of the tree on the wall behind. 
 You could hear one feller trying to screw on a cover to 
 his salve box. 
 
 "And then," says the perfesser, "the feller looked all 
 around and smelled the nice warm smell inside the house 
 she used to keep so clean, and then he looked at her. 
 And when he seen she wasn t crying or nothing, he was 
 frightened^ She was standing there looking at him 
 just as if she d never seen him before. And he says, 
 Ain t you going to say nothing? And she says, No.
 
 JIM HANDS 321 
 
 Mr. Rayworth told me two months ago that he was 
 afraid you was in some dirty work and would get into 
 trouble. But I only half believed him then. And 
 Rayworth stood behind her and said, That s so, Ed, but 
 I hope I won t be asked to testify against you/ and then 
 the feller knew that Rayworth had tricked him, and that 
 anyhow he no longer had any home. 
 
 "And, gents, they sent that feller up for seven years, 
 and the feller served six of it. It was really a hundred 
 and eighty-two years. And she got a divorce from him. 
 He couldn t do nothing about it. And Rayworth took 
 the girl away and maybe he married her, though maybe 
 he didn t. Anyhow, she belonged to him. 
 
 "So when the feller got out," says he, "it was just be 
 fore Christmas, and he shook hands with the warden, and 
 the warden says, Ed, keep out of trouble. Don t 
 forget that you still wear that tattoo mark and picture 
 of a ship on your forearm that was put there when you 
 was almost a boy. It s still with you, and so s your rec 
 ord. Keep out of trouble. And the feller walked out 
 where there was the noise of trucks and mud in the 
 streets and electric lights in the store windows, and he 
 walked as far as a pawnshop. And the man there says, 
 You look kinder sick. But all the feller did was to buy 
 a revolver, and then he started out to look for Rayworth. 
 He d found out already that Rayworth had got fright 
 ened, not knowing the note had been burned up, and was 
 afraid that the feller would come out of prison and tell
 
 322 JIM HANDS 
 
 on him or kill him; and so he d changed his name, prob 
 ably, and disappeared. But the feller was going to be 
 patient, and something told him that he d find Ray- 
 worth some day, and then he d kill him. There weren t 
 any real life of any kind left for him. He didn t know 
 anybody or any place. He went back to look at the 
 little house once, but they d built a big apartment 
 building there. And the main thing to do was to kill 
 Rayworth when he found him. And he hunted for 
 seven years." 
 
 Then the perfesser wiped his forehead again, for his 
 face was all wet, and he pulled out the revolver he d 
 showed me and pointed it up in the air, and looked at it. 
 
 And he says, Gents, suppose I said I was that feller. 
 And suppose I said this was the revolver. And suppose 
 I said that Rayworth was standing right down there 
 among you and I could drop him like a dog." 
 
 At that the crowd kinder moved and there was a 
 kinder rustle of whispers, and everybody watched him. 
 And then after a minute I seen em all looking at each 
 other. But the perfesser laid the gun down, and several 
 of em gave a sigh. I could hear em. 
 
 "But suppose," says the perfesser, "I could do 
 something worse than shooting him. Suppose he was 
 known in this town. Suppose he was respected, and 
 folks seen he was prosperous and come from good people 
 and went with good people. Suppose he had left this 
 first woman, perhaps, and married a second one, who
 
 JIM HANDS 323 
 
 believed he was all right. Then suppose I took this long 
 finger and pointed it at him now, as he stands down there 
 with you and says, That s him ! He d have to go away 
 from this town, wouldn t he? He d have to have his 
 wife know what he was. He wouldn t ever know when I 
 was going to turn up again. And suppose I followed 
 him wherever he went and waited till he got settled and 
 then pointed at him again and told it all over to folks 
 the way I ve told it to you. He couldn t stand that 
 story, could he? I could break him in two just like he 
 broke me in two. I could give him back them kind of 
 days that I had when I used to set and bite my nails 
 down, thinking I didn t have her any more or nothing, 
 and feeling of the woollen in a striped suit and walking 
 lockstep with a tin cup in my hand, and dreaming at 
 night of that cat that used to set on the fence on spring 
 days, and thinking I smelled the perfume that woman 
 used. 
 
 "Well, gents," he says, after a minute, waiting and 
 looking around on all sides of the red wagon, " what 11 it 
 be ? I ve waited seven years for this. What ll it be 
 the gun or the finger? Which?" 
 
 Everybody kinder looked back at him for a minute. 
 The crowd moved a little this side and that like butter 
 beans boiling in a kettle. I don t suppose anybody d 
 dared to go away. It would looked like they was the 
 man who was guilty. I couldn t see Carter Elmore s 
 face. He d turned his back.
 
 324 JIM HANDS 
 
 "Well, gents," says the perfesser, "I ain t anybody 
 much just a talker. But I can give up the gun and 
 this here finger and point it and wreck him. And I 
 want to know what s right. I always thought I d know 
 when the time had come, but I ve got to ask now. 
 Shall I take this here finger," he says, "and point it, 
 or shall I shut my mouth ? I m asking, gents," he says. 
 
 "Point him out!" yells Dave Pierson. "Point him 
 out ! We ll run him outer this -town." And it seemed 
 like it started everybody. You could hear em growling 
 kinder soft and mean, like ugly collie dogs, and even 
 Father Ryan beside me kinder choked in his throat, 
 and I seen a look on his face I ain t ever seen but twice. 
 
 "Of course, the only trouble," says the perfesser, 
 playing with his coat buttons, "is that none of you 
 fellers knew him or the little woman that ran away from 
 her husband. I guess I d answer the way you do if I 
 hadn t been a part of this. But," he says, just as if he 
 was talking to himself, "it s funny how little things come 
 back now, ain t it? I used to be mighty fond of that 
 Rayworth. Once he and I went off shooting together, 
 and we used to take lunches together days when I could 
 get around to it. And of course you have to like a 
 man pretty well to see him at breakfast and dinner and 
 then go to lunch with him, too. I remember he bought 
 me a box of cigars one time. I kinder knew it was a 
 question whether he should spend the money on himself 
 or me, and I was tickled to death with em. I liked him.
 
 JIM HANDS 325 
 
 He was always talking about what we oughter do and 
 how in years to come we d take a trip to Europe together. 
 He s right there amongst you now. He knows it s true. 
 Of course, it ain t saying much, but I guess he was the 
 best friend I ever had. 
 
 " And then there was her, wherever she may be now," 
 he says. "I remember how much she cared about my 
 orders. Why, she used to take my order-book and 
 look it over, and when I d made a big sale, she was just 
 as glad as if she d done it herself. And I remember 
 how her laugh used to sound. And I ve always 
 wondered if it sounds the same now. You see, gents, 
 she had a nice way about her, and tried so hard to help 
 me different ways and plan so we could save money. 
 I guess I never loved anybody much but her. I know I 
 used to tell her I d sacrifice anything for her sake. I 
 guess I was mighty fond of her," says he. 
 
 With that he run his hand down into his collar again. 
 And then he commenced to play with the boxes of salve 
 just as if he was kinder embarrassed and ashamed. And 
 by and by he looked up again, and everybody was 
 watching him till their eyes hurt em and burned with 
 staring. 
 
 "Well, gents," says he, "I guess you must be right. 
 I oughter point my finger and wreck him. It s justice, 
 I guess. But I ain t never been anything but a talker. 
 Perhaps if I was different, I d do what- 1 planned. But 
 I ve always been kinder easy about things, and I was
 
 326 JIM HANDS 
 
 fond of her and him, and I guess anybody d say I was 
 weak and foolish now. By and by he will go home with 
 the rest of you. I ain t going to point him out. Maybe 
 that girl that ran away with him wouldn t want me to 
 do it. It might bring shame on her, too. I can t tell. 
 Anyhow, I kinder like to think of her the way it used 
 to be, and if I did her any harm now I wouldn t want to 
 think of it any more," he says. 
 
 With that he put his hat on, kinder slow, and wrinkled 
 his nose again and let them eye-glasses drop into place on 
 his nose. Then all of a sudden, while the crowd was so 
 still, he went back to his singsong voice. 
 
 " Gents," he says, "how s that fora story told for 
 a little fun and amusement about an average man?" 
 he says. "And now," he says, dipping his hands into 
 the basin of water, "if you ll give me your kind atten 
 tion, I ll show you a marvellous new discovery. I m 
 about to wash my hands in this here basin, using ordi 
 nary water just as it runs out from your faucet, water 
 spigot, or garden hose at home, gents. Move up here 
 a little closer, and before I give my second demonstra 
 tion of Smith s Twelve-Horse-Power Flake I ll offer a 
 few more of the Suwanee Snake Salve, used by the court 
 beauties of France for over a century, together with a 
 genuine California diamond scarf-pin. This here salve 
 removes blemishes of each and every kind. All you 
 have to do is expose the surface of the skin, just like I do 
 now by drawing back my sleeve, and take a little salve
 
 JIM HANDS 327 
 
 on your fingers and rub it on the spot. So simple 
 that a mere child can use it." 
 
 Right then I felt Father Ryan s hand grab my sleeve. 
 
 "What is it?" says I. 
 
 "Look at his arm," says the old man, kinder husky. 
 "There s a tattoo on it a picture of a ship," he says, 
 and pulled at my sleeve again. "He was the boy that 
 went to jail." 
 
 And so we walks away. 
 
 Father Ryan and I went down toward the south end 
 of Main Street, and it was a long time before he said 
 anything. There was just the sound of our feet. 
 
 "Well," he says at last, "winter s coming fast," he 
 says, "and though the trouble between the men and 
 Harvey has driven a lot of them away, there ll be suffer 
 ing here among them who is left," he says. "It will 
 be hard on the girls them who has no one to take 
 care of them or homes to go back to," he says. 
 
 "So it will," I says. "But there ain t a great many 
 of them." 
 
 "Like that Villet girl I once tried to reason with," 
 he says. "Do you know, Jim," he says, "I heard there 
 was some trouble about her. I heard she had left 
 town." 
 
 "She did," I says, "and didn t take but few of her 
 things with her, for, as you know, she was living at my 
 house, and she must have been ashamed to face us for 
 some reason or other," I says, looking at his face in the
 
 328 JIM HANDS 
 
 light from one of the street-lamps. I wanted to see if 
 he knew anything about the matter. 
 
 But he only cleared his throat, for the air was kinder 
 sharp, and says, "Why, I d forgotten. She was at your 
 house for a while, wasn t she?" he says. "She s come 
 back, I see," he says.
 
 CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 "ANNE VILLET!" I says, roaring out the name, 
 "come back!" 
 
 What s the matter with you ? " he says. Certainly 
 I seen her. I seen her yesterday. And to-night she 
 was standing just outside the crowd we were in. She 
 must be no better in health," he says. "She was there, 
 and her face was the color of lemon sherbet," he says, 
 "and her eyes was very wild, I thought, and she seemed 
 ^ ck and very weak," says he. "She looked like one of 
 the dead that had come back to make trouble for the 
 living," he says. 
 
 It was on my tongue then to say something that 
 would have given him the whole story, but I shut my 
 teeth on the words and swallowed em and says, "I m 
 surprised to hear it," I says. "And I think I ll leave 
 you now, for I must be getting home," I says. 
 
 "You may be going home," he says, "but you act as if 
 you was going because the house was on fire," he says. 
 "Good night," he says, "anyhow." 
 
 I hadn t gone many steps before I felt one of them 
 occasions had come for oaths, and I ripped out a few 
 round, full-grown ones beneath my breath. I had 
 
 329
 
 330 JIM HANDS 
 
 misjudged the distance. Father Ryan heard me, and 
 he called to me. 
 
 "Come back a minute," he says. 
 
 "I m sorry you heard them words/ I says. "I was 
 thinking evil and trying to expel it from my system," 
 says I, with a grin. 
 
 But he was scowling and looked stern. "Jim," he 
 says, very solemn, "I can t forbear to censure you," 
 says he. You may need that stuff sometime/ he says, 
 "and it s a shame to waste it now," and with that he 
 laughed one of them laughs of his and says, "I guess I 
 was never born to be a priest," he says. "Go on with 
 you ! And good night again," he says. 
 
 I hurried back to the house. "This time it s me that 
 has the news," I kept saying to myself, and climbing 
 Maple Street I took most of my breath and was puffing 
 and blowing when I got to the door-step. 
 
 Annie must have heard my foot on the gravel, for she 
 opened the door for me. 
 
 "Have you heard the news?" I says. 
 
 "Oh, Jim, dear!" she says, having the advantage of 
 breath over me. "I don t want to hear any small 
 gossip," she says. "I must tell you/ she says, "Anne 
 Villet is back in town." 
 
 "When did you hear it?" I says. 
 
 "To-night," says she. "And nothing would do for 
 Katherine but to go out and look for her," she says. 
 
 "To bring her here ? " I asks.
 
 JIM HANDS 331 
 
 "Katherine would have it no other way," says she. 
 "We must have no scene, Jim/ she says, hanging up 
 my coat. 
 
 But there was no chance for one. I remember how 
 plain it appeared when the daughter came in with that 
 other woman. Katherine was almost holding Anne up. 
 She was thinner and whiter and I thought harder than 
 ever. But she was weak, like a grape-vine when you take 
 its trellis away. Katherine is strong, but she could 
 hardly keep the poor thing from falling over. And my 
 Annie ran to get the whiskey from the top shelf of the 
 medicine closet. 
 
 Once or twice Anne Villet tried to speak, and Kather 
 ine whispered to me that if we didn t take her upstairs 
 and put her to bed, she might die. "I found her at 
 Mrs. Riordan s," says she, "and she acts like some one 
 in a trance," says she. 
 
 And so we took her to a bed, and Annie and Katherine 
 came down after they had undressed her and she had 
 turned over to lie face downward on the pillow. And 
 the three of us looked at each other. And maybe we 
 wondered at life. 
 
 It couldn t have been much after six o clock that 
 morning when I heard the Villet woman call Katherine. 
 The day hadn t any more than broke, and it was cold 
 enough to make me hurry into my clothes and go down 
 to build a fire. Annie and Katherine had come down, 
 too, shivering around the stove before it had any more
 
 332 JIM HANDS 
 
 warmth in it than you could imagine by just hearing the 
 snapping of the wood and smelling the burning news 
 paper. And then we heard her call Katherine again, 
 and we all went upstairs. 
 
 She had the same wild look in her eyes, and she was 
 leaning up on one of her thin elbows. When she saw the 
 three of us in the door, she says, with a rough laugh : 
 "I must get up. I ve got to go. Oh, you re all good 
 to me," she says. "I couldn t think last night," she 
 says. "But now I ve got to go !" 
 
 "Go?" says Katherine, as if she would stop her. 
 "Go where?" 
 
 "Go to him," says she. "Go and throw myself in the 
 dirt in front of where he stands," she says, pulling at the 
 blankets with her bony hands. 
 
 "To Robert Harvey?" asks my Annie, in a frightened 
 voice. 
 
 "What! that young fool?" says the Villet girl. 
 "No, to my husband," she says. 
 
 "Husband!" cries Katherine, "husband!" 
 
 "Yes," says Anne, with her mouth working. "You 
 seen him, " she says, turning to me. Say so ! Say you 
 seen him! It weren t a dream. Say you seen him!" 
 
 "Who? " says I, being afraid of her. 
 
 "The professor!" she screams. "My God, it was 
 him ! Whoever would think the three of us would come 
 together again ? The Lord has played a trick on us," she 
 says.
 
 JIM HANDS 333 
 
 "And you was the woman ! " I says. 
 
 "Yes," she says. "What am I saying? It s out 
 now. Yes, that was me. And to hear him tell about 
 the picket fence out there in Chicago - Tell me I ain t 
 crazy/ she says, holding out one hand to me. "You 
 heard him ? You saw him ? " 
 
 But I only gave a yell. "Then it wasn t Harvey?" 
 I roars at her. "It was Carter Elmore?" 
 
 The ratty look came into her eyes again the old 
 suspicious look, and she turned it on me and then on 
 Katherine and then on Annie. 
 
 What s that to you ? " she says, looking at me again. 
 "To-day I ll be gone, whatever happens," she says, "and 
 you ll never see me again," says she, with her teeth 
 shut. "It ain t anything to you !" she says. 
 
 It was then Katherine went over to the bed and 
 caught hold of the Villet woman s trembling hand. 
 "Listen," she says, in a soft voice, and plucking at the 
 neck of her dress as if it choked her. "Listen, Anne," 
 she says. "It s everything to me." 
 
 The other woman turned sort of slow and looked up at 
 her. Maybe she read the whole thing in Katherine s 
 face, for all of a sudden she caught the girl s dress and 
 says: "It can t be true. You mean that you and Bob 
 Harvey - Then she stopped and looked up at 
 Katherine again, and Katherine nodded. 
 
 I seen a look of fright come into the Villet woman s 
 face. I d never seen it before. I d never seen her
 
 334 JIM HANDS 
 
 frightened at anything. And then I seen her fall back 
 on the bed and bury her face, and she says, "I wish I d 
 never been born," and she cried. And that was another 
 thing I d never seen her do. 
 
 When she got up on to her elbow again, she took 
 Katherine s hand and pressed it against her cheek. 
 "I never meant to do any harm to you," she says. 
 "I never knew. You believe it, Katherine? I never 
 knew," she says. 
 
 "Then tell me!" cries my girl. "Tell me! It 
 wasn t him?" 
 
 "No," says Anne Villet. "It wasn t him. It was 
 Carter Elmore." 
 
 And I ve had to laugh about it since, for Katherine 
 turned on her mother and me like a wild thing. 
 "There !" she says. "I ve told you all along it wasn t 
 so!" 
 
 "Wait, Katherine," Anne says, and her voice was very 
 tired; "I ll tell you," and she sat up in bed. 
 
 "But it was Bob you saw out the window that night." 
 
 "No!" I says. "Why didn t I think of it before? 
 It was the Boss s son-in-law she saw," I says. "He had 
 come up to find his wife," I says. "It was the night 
 Carrie Pierson was going to run away," I says. 
 
 "Oh," says Anne Villet, "it is very simple," she says. 
 "I had to have something money or something. I 
 was restless here. I couldn t stand it!" she says. 
 And then a fit of coughing caught her, and she pressed 
 her hand against her chest.
 
 JIM HANDS 335 
 
 " Yes," she says, "I went down there to cause trouble. 
 It was his wife who met me at the door. And then this 
 other came out the Boss s son. I guess he seen 
 what I d come for. He took me out under the trees on 
 the lawn," she says. "I guess I talked pretty excited 
 and straight to him, and he pointed back to the house 
 and told me that the woman I d seen was his sister, and 
 that if I made trouble it would ruin her life," she says. 
 
 "Oh!" says Katherine, with a little cry like women 
 make. 
 
 The Villet girl smiled then a sort of a sour smile. 
 "Well," says she, "I asked him what it was worth to 
 have me go away, and I watched his face in the moon 
 light. And he said he d do anything to protect his 
 sister," she says, "and I told him it was money, that 
 was all, money, money or some trouble. He was 
 young, and I knew I could frighten him." 
 
 "So he agreed? " says my Annie, with her eyes and 
 mouth open. 
 
 "Yes," says the Villet woman. "He wanted me to 
 wait a day. He was all excited. But I was afraid of 
 a trick. I told him it would have to be a cash trade," 
 she says, "that night. And he asked what people 
 would think, and I told him he might have to take the 
 blame some day for just such another as me, and the 
 practice would do him good, and I laughed at him," 
 she says. 
 
 I seen Katherine draw her hand away then and look
 
 336 JIM HANDS 
 
 at Anne Villet the way I d look at a rattlesnake, and 
 then I seen her face change and I seen her put her hand 
 back in the other woman s. 
 
 "That was all," says Anne Villet. "He was bun 
 gling the way he went at it," she says, "but he got the 
 money by telegraph, trying to keep the thing quiet. 
 So I didn t care. He hadn t any wife, and I supposed 
 that he would tell his father the secret and square him 
 self," she says. "And may I be struck dead, Katherine, 
 if I knew that I was doing harm to you," she says. 
 
 After a minute she looked up at my girl again and 
 seen her thinking. "What s the matter?" she says. 
 "Don t you believe me ? Mr. Hands," she says, turning 
 to me, "did anybody find a little picture I dropped 
 when I left here?" 
 
 I remembered it in a second, and I went up the ladder 
 into the attic and opened the bag she had left, and there 
 was the picture looking up at me again. So I took it 
 down and gave it to her and she gave it to Katherine. 
 And my girl cried right out, "It s Elmore! It is! 
 It is!" 
 
 "Turn it over," says Anne Villet, in her croaking 
 voice. 
 
 So Katherine turned it over, and there was the 
 words, "To Anne from C. E., April fifth," in a fine 
 hand on the back. 
 
 And she looked at the front of it and at the back of it, 
 and says to Anne, "Don t worry," the same as she wrote
 
 JIM HANDS 337 
 
 it for us once on a card and she went across the 
 hall with never a word, and me and my Annie watching 
 her, and went into her room and shut the door. 
 
 I guess it must have been an hour later that Anne 
 Villet came down. I never thought anything of it when 
 she kind of strolled out the door. I don t suppose I d 
 ever have known what had happened to her if I hadn t 
 gone out to close the hay door in the loft of the barn. 
 And just as I was going to pull it in I seen the question- 
 mark the question-mark on the wagon. 
 
 I hadn t thought of the perfesser. But there was his 
 old white horse with his ears still hanging down, dragging 
 the red wagon up the hill. And I seen Anne Villet walk 
 out from the patch of bushes halfway up to the top. 
 She must have been on the watch for him waiting. 
 
 I just barely heard his voice when he said "Whoa " to 
 the old horse, and the creak of the wheels stopped. The 
 two of em was a long way off. They looked like a man 
 and woman talking about the price of a dozen eggs. 
 But finally he moved over, and she climbed up and sat 
 down beside him just like somebody who has been given 
 a lift on a butcher cart. 
 
 And then I seen her and the perfesser for the last time. 
 
 He pushed down the big cotton umbrella and stood up 
 
 on the seat, with the sun shining on his fake eye-glasses, 
 
 until the outfit had dropped outer sight over the ridge 
 
 - looking back at the town. 
 
 Katherine came down from her room long after her
 
 338 JIM HANDS 
 
 breakfast was cold on the table and after little Michael 
 and John had gone to school. Her mother had said it 
 was best to leave the girl alone, and that she would keep 
 the coffee, and tell her, after she had had some food and a 
 hot cup, how Anne Villet had gone away. 
 
 When I came in, Katherine looked up at me, and her 
 eyes was all alive. 
 
 "We re going on a walk together," she says to me. 
 
 "Where? "says I. 
 
 "To the Boss s house," she says. "I have a few 
 things to tell him," she says, "and I want my father 
 with me," she says, putting her hand on mine. It was 
 as warm as the bowl of my pipe. 
 
 "No !" says I, very firm. "If the Boss wants any 
 thing from us, let him come here to my house and 
 ask for it," I says. "It s different now," I says. "We 
 can be aristocratic with him," I says. 
 
 A funny little smile came into her face, and I seen 
 them two corners of her pretty mouth twitch. "Oh, 
 let s be nice to him," says she, pulling at my coat. 
 "It s only the real aristocrats that can afford not to act 
 so," she says. 
 
 "Well," says I, "there s no use arguing with you," I 
 says. "I ll go up and change my clothes," I says. 
 
 "Oh, no," she says. "Wear what you have. There 
 is no need of being particular," she says, laughing. 
 So I put on my hat and we walked down to Main Street 
 and across the Common.
 
 JIM HANDS 339 
 
 We met him, as luck would have it, on the driveway, 
 and you could tell by the look that came into his face 
 that he knew she had some real thing to tell him, even 
 before she said so. I can remember now how the two 
 of them walked back and forth under them horse- 
 chestnut trees that had shed all the leaves. 
 
 It had grown very cold, and the sky was clouded over, 
 and I had to stamp my feet to keep them warm. And I 
 watched my girl with her clear eyes and soft skin and the 
 old man with his baggy trousers and gray hair. After 
 a while I seen him stop and wave his hand as if he 
 weren t satisfied, and then I seen her hand him the little 
 picture with the words on the back of it. 
 
 When that happened, he went up to one of the trees 
 and begun picking off pieces of bark, and then he 
 looked up and down the trunk as if he was trying to 
 count up the board feet in it. And then he took off his 
 hat and ran his fingers through his hair, and after a 
 minute he said, so I could hear him, "By George ! I ll 
 go and telegraph for my boy !" 
 
 He was walking toward me then, and I saw him turn 
 and look at the girl beside him. After a while he spoke 
 again. 
 
 "Miss Hands," he said, "I guess I rather guess, 
 my boy and I owe you a great deal. You have put 
 him back in his place. You have preserved his friends 
 and his reputation for him and some of his self- 
 respect, maybe. You have restored him to me," he
 
 340 JIM HANDS 
 
 says, speaking like a man who forgets that anybody is 
 listening to him. "You have taught us something of 
 loyalty and a hell of a lot about womanhood." 
 
 And then it was that Katherine gave a little laugh, 
 "Oh, thank you," she says. "You are very kind," 
 she says. 
 
 "Well," says he, "come to think of it, that s a pretty 
 good boy!" 
 
 "It s true!" says Katherine. "Of course," she says, 
 "I come from very simple people," she says, with her 
 eyes dancing, "but I ve thought so for a long time," she 
 says. And she bowed to him and came to me, leaving 
 him there following her with his eyes, and I seen a funny 
 kind of smile slide down over his face.
 
 CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 THAT was on Tuesday. On Wednesday there was a 
 meeting of the labor-union that everybody will remem 
 ber. There wasn t so much talking, but everybody 
 looked a heap. Dave Kennedy read a letter from the 
 central union saying how they d found it impossible to 
 add anything to our strike fund, but how we ought to 
 stick it out and have courage, and another from the 
 owner of Masonic Hall, saying how the rent due from 
 our union for the use of the hall hadn t been paid. We 
 took a vote, and you could tell how bull-dog the men felt 
 because two hundred of em were for holding out against 
 the Boss, when every man of em had already been up 
 against being busted and hungry. 
 
 And then Bill Gaylor came in, looking red and out of 
 breath. Seems to me I can see him now as he stood 
 there in the door, and says in a kind of dull voice, but 
 so s everybody could hear, "The factory s for sale ! " 
 
 Dave caught the edges of the table. "What?" says 
 he. 
 
 "The factory s for sale," says Bill, pushing his way up 
 through the men some of em had jumped up and 
 were standing, and some of em had kind of slumped 
 back on the settees " there s a big white sign on the 
 side next the railroad!" 
 
 341
 
 342 JIM HANDS 
 
 A good many of us pushed each other for a place at the 
 back windows, where you get could a look at the tracks 
 and the covered bridge, and I tell you I never felt so 
 curious as when I seen that sign smashing me between 
 the eyes. It looked like the finish of my little home and 
 the whole business, and I felt like a feller that gets 
 thrown overboard in the middle of the ocean, and has 
 his woman and kids thrown overboard, too. You 
 could tell by the look of the others that it weren t any 
 different with them. 
 
 " Gentlemen," says Dave, "we are up against the 
 real thing now. Of course we don t know what the Boss 
 is going to do, but I suggest that we send a committee 
 to him to find out. Then if we we are up against the 
 finish of this fight now if we have to compromise " 
 
 At that Bill Gaynor came up like the fur on a mad 
 cat s tail. Compromise nothing ! " he yells, his eyes red 
 with liquor or fever or something. "I ll not compro 
 mise ! We can beat him out if we have to cut our own 
 throats to do it. We can burn the factory ! " 
 
 A feller next to me, whose wife was sick, kind of 
 tightened his hands and leaned forward, looking into the 
 air, and says, "Yes," and two or three others yelled, 
 "You re right !" but the rest of us jumped up, yelling, 
 "No, no, none of that !" and three of us were appointed 
 to go and see the Boss and report that evening. I was 
 one of em. 
 
 We went straight up there and rang the bell on the big
 
 JIM HANDS 343 
 
 front door, and the Boss s pretty daughter opened it. 
 "Tell him there are three of his hands that want to see 
 him, miss," says I. 
 
 "Why," says she, "he told me to say that he can t 
 see the use of talk, since you have your minds made up." 
 
 I caught sight of two trunks in the hall that looked as 
 if they was ready to go somewhere, and it was a jar 
 like the sign on the factory ! 
 
 "Please, miss, tell him we want to see him bad," 
 says Henderson, who stood back of me. 
 
 "Step in," says she; "he s in there in the library." 
 
 The Boss was sitting in an arm-chair reading a book, 
 and he looks up and smiles. Howdy do, Jim ? Howdy 
 do, Joe?" and then he scowls and says, "I thought I d 
 never be bothered about this factory business any more." 
 
 "Have you shut it down for good?" says I. 
 
 "Yes," says he, kinder thoughtful ; "the business was 
 a habit with me, I guess, and I don t know but what it 
 was a poor habit. I got so into the habit of running that 
 business that when you fellers forced me to quit I felt 
 for a few days like an old smoker who has run out of 
 tobacco on a desert island. I d thought of quitting long 
 ago, but habit kept me going. But that s all over now 
 -all the worry and the care and fret and fuss. The 
 load is off my mind now ! " 
 
 Well, you d be surprised to see the way Henderson s 
 jaw dropped till his under lip looked like a hammock, 
 and I guess Joe and I had the pop eyes.
 
 344 JIM HANDS 
 
 " Yes," says the Boss, motioning for us to sit down in 
 a kind of careless way. "There s been a clover patch 
 waiting for me, and I never saw it till a week ago. I ve 
 run this factory now for a good many years, and I ve 
 got a nice roly-poly little income, so what s the use of 
 my slaving away in this muddy little one-horse town 
 till I slam the door of this life behind me ? I haven t 
 much money to leave to my boy, and I consider that s 
 lucky for him ; and my youngest daughter will probably 
 marry a man who is smart enough always to make it 
 comfortable for her. So now I ve come to a breathing 
 spell. I m going to Europe for a good rest, and when I 
 get back I m going to settle down in the city where I 
 can rub elbows with something else besides a lot of 
 jobbers, buyers, and supply salesmen." 
 
 The Boss didn t seem to be talking to us at all, but 
 just to himself, but I was thinking some, and everything 
 looked pretty black. 
 
 "What ll become of the men?" says I, like that. 
 "For God s sake, what ll we do we that has got homes 
 here and kids ? What ll happen to this town ? " 
 
 "I d thought of that," says the Boss, "and you can 
 believe me or not, I m mighty sorry for the men. An 
 industry like that factory isn t run for the man that owns 
 it altogether. It s run for the laborers, too, and the 
 town, and, in fact, if it s a good industry, it s run for the 
 good of the whole country. Yes, I ve realized that all 
 along. But I m selfish now. I m out for a soft snap -
 
 JIM HANDS 345 
 
 Henderson looked kind of scared, but he stopped twirl 
 ing his hat and got up out of his chair. 
 
 " Excuse me," says he, "and don t understand that 
 there are many of us feel any sympathy with it, but 
 there are a few hot-headed ones who have suffered more 
 than the rest of us who say if you don t do something 
 they ll burn the factory." 
 
 The Boss looked up, kind of squinting, and then he 
 brought his hand down on his knee with a big slap. 
 
 "Good!" says he. "I don t know whether the in 
 surance would cover that case or not, but I don t care - 
 I d be glad to have the old factory out of the way. 
 It s a darned old monument to every trouble and worry 
 I ever had, and if it was wiped away I d never have any 
 temptation to come back to it !" 
 
 To hear the Boss talk that way made me feel sicker and 
 sicker, and I could see my finish just as plain as I can see 
 you. I was looking down on the floor, and I can remem 
 ber the pattern on that carpet just as well as I can re 
 member the color of the paint on my father s house, and 
 when I looked up the Boss had his keen blue eyes on me. 
 
 He shook his head: "Poor fellers, poor fellers," says 
 he to himself, and then, all of a sudden, he jumped up 
 straight. "Say, Jim," says he, "when does your labor- 
 union have its next meeting?" 
 
 "To-night," says I. 
 
 "Jim," says he, "you fellers know me. You know 
 I tell the truth from one to ten, and A to Z. And what
 
 346 JIM HANDS 
 
 I ve said to you to-day is true. You go back and tell 
 em what I said, and tell em that if they want, I ll speak 
 to em to-night. Tell em that ! " 
 
 "Yes, sir," says I. 
 
 " Thanks," Henderson says, having no idea what he 
 was thanking for, and he and Joe and I went out. 
 
 "It is all over but the shouting, I guess," says Joe, in 
 the driveway. But I was too sore and hard-pressed to 
 pass words with him. 
 
 A good many of the men knew how we came out with 
 the Boss before the meeting that night, and I guess a lot 
 of em were figuring just how hard it would hit em to pull 
 up and get out of town and look for a job. A good 
 many of em, like me, had grown pretty deep roots here, 
 and it seemed as if there d be a good deal of wilting 
 before we could get set into a new flower-bed. 
 
 It made your feet heavy to think about it, and you d 
 see many a husky-looking feller who would scuffle along 
 without the heart to lift his shoes off the ground. Be 
 sides, it had clouded up to snow, and everything was 
 dismal awful dismal ! It didn t make much differ 
 ence that the papers said we d forced the Boss into a 
 corner we d got it! That s what had happened to 
 us! 
 
 There was a sorry-looking gang that came to the 
 meeting, but it looked like the last round, and pretty 
 near everybody came, to be in at the wind-up ! We d 
 begun together, and I guess the men felt as if we
 
 JIM HANDS 347 
 
 might as well end up together. And besides, there was 
 a good deal of curiosity to know what the Boss would say 
 if he got the chance. 
 
 Dave Kennedy told em all what I had reported, and 
 asked for a show of hands to see if the union wanted to 
 send for the old man. You oughter seen the hands 
 come up just like a field of wheat; even the fellers 
 who looked soggy with liquor stuck up their fists. Dave 
 grinned kinder sour and says, " Henderson you re near 
 the door the Boss is downstairs in the drug store."
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII 
 
 IT was a sight to see that hall crowded full of men, 
 with their faces kinder glued on the doorway, and never 
 making hardly the sound of a breath when the Boss 
 came in and walked through em up to the table, but 
 just following him with their eyes. 
 
 The Boss stood up there, straight and stiff, with his 
 overcoat on, and little specks of snow that hadn t melted 
 all over it, and sort of give a sigh which sounded like a 
 shout, the hall was so still. 
 
 "When I built my factory in this town," says he 
 slowly, and I can remember every word, he spoke so 
 slow, "I did it because living was cheaper here than in 
 other places where they are making my class of goods, 
 and because, for that reason, it would be fair to pay 
 lower wages than they pay farther down the State. It 
 was my policy to make a lot of goods on small profits, 
 and never shut down except on Sundays. It worked. 
 It made me as much money as I ever will want to spend, 
 it built up this town, it gave what I believed was good, 
 fair wages and employment to over three hundred men ; 
 it sent out an honest lot of goods. That s what goes to 
 show that an industry is a good thing for the man who 
 owns it, the men who work in it, the town where it is 
 run, and the people who buy its product - 
 
 348
 
 JIM HANDS 349 
 
 He sorter stopped and listened as if he expected some 
 body to call him a liar. 
 
 "Now, you can believe it or not," says he, "but if I 
 paid higher wages to-day, it would knock out the whole 
 foundation of the industry. Instead of being a blessing 
 to this town and this country, it would be a mighty bad 
 thing. It would cut my share of the profits way down 
 below what I ought to get for the skill I put into the 
 business ; it would tempt me to make a dishonest line of 
 goods ; it would tend to raise the wages of the factories 
 down the State, and if they raised their wages, they d 
 have to run on a little fine strip of profit that would 
 break and make em fail in hard times ; it would drive 
 men of brains, who expect to have their brains pay divi 
 dends, out of the business. That s what it would do." 
 
 Some of the men shifted their feet, and a good many 
 were leaning forward to listen, and the Boss went on : 
 "There were two things that made me keep on with this 
 factory after it had made me enough money so s I 
 could always have a nice comfortable income one 
 thing was the habit of making money, and it s a good 
 deal stronger habit than liquor, and I m just as fond of 
 money as anybody ; and the other was a kind of sneak 
 ing feeling that it was my duty to keep on. I ve been 
 thinkingof it since I stopped, and I seen now that as long 
 as an industry is a good one, there are a dozen reasons, 
 and unselfish reasons, too, why it shouldn t ever be 
 allowed to stop. If I had stopped on my own account,
 
 350 JIM HANDS 
 
 I would have deserved to be hanged. Just think what 
 misery it would have caused to the men who worked for 
 me, and who had settled with families in this town !" 
 
 Some of the men muttered, and one feller in the back 
 of the hall, said, "You ve stopped, haven t you?" 
 
 "No !" yells the Boss, so everybody jumped. "You 
 stopped ! You stopped and that s why I m going to 
 have a soft snap, that s why I m going to Europe, and 
 wash my hands of this," says he. " If it hadn t been for 
 you, I would have stopped long ago. If you would have 
 given me my fair profit and taken yours, we d been run 
 ning to-day ; and if we were running, it would be because 
 you wanted to run, not because I wanted to run ! You re 
 the ones who stopped ! " 
 
 " No ! " yells several of the men, standing up. "We 
 want to run, "and then everybody scrambles up between 
 the settees, yelling: " Yes ! Yes ! We want to run ! " 
 and the feller next to me a great big strapping six- 
 feet-four bellows out, " The old way ! the old way I " 
 and tears ran down his cheeks. 
 
 "Oh, you want to run? In the old way? With the 
 old wages?" cries the Boss, with a smile looking like the 
 sunshine on a patch of meadow. 
 
 "With the Old Boss the Old Boss!" shouts Dave, 
 and every man of em takes up the yell, and hands was 
 stuck up in the air with fingers stretching. And then, 
 all of a sudden, it got so quiet you d think you were alone 
 there, and the Boss looks around with his eyes kinder
 
 JIM HANDS 351 
 
 glistening like I never seen em before, and he says, 
 talking kinder as if he d just run a mile: "No more 
 strikes we don t need em when we can well, we 
 don t need em. The factory will start running Monday." 
 
 At those words every man there sorter dropped his 
 shoulders with the joy of it, and turned his head down a 
 mite. 
 
 "And," says the Boss, "any man that has a family, or 
 anybody that s sick, just come to me, will you ? We ve 
 got to patch up this hole that has been punched in us." 
 
 The men started to yell out what they had bottled up 
 in the way of feelings for the last week, and the Boss 
 grabbed his hat off the table and started for the door. 
 Then all of a sudden he stopped. The fire-bell was boom 
 ing out in the tower of the Opera House next door, 
 and you could hear people hollering along the street 
 outside. 
 
 "It s the factory !" yells a feller, and we could see the 
 red glow out the back windows of the hall. Somebody 
 near the door cries out, "The storage shed is what s 
 going!" and the Boss jumps up on a chair. "Jim!" 
 he yells, "pick out seven men to help get the apparatus 
 down there; the rest of you men come with me." 
 
 I ll not quickly forget that night. Most anybody in 
 town is always ready to tell about it. It was raining, and 
 freezing where it dropped, and except for the red of the 
 blaze it was so dark that a white cat looked black. 
 Among the three hundred of us that fought the fire back
 
 352 JIM HANDS 
 
 from the factory it would surprise you how many got 
 jambed hands and burnt ears and cuts on the head. 
 See that middle finger? That was that night. But 
 we were fighting for the factory, and I guess every man 
 felt it was his factory ; and my Annie and Katherine and 
 the Boss s daughter and a lot of the women-folks come 
 down with cans and bottles of hot coffee. The women 
 who stayed at home, I guess, were praying when the 
 blaze gave one of them devilish leaps and roars, but the 
 men would yell back at it and fight it again right up to 
 the place where a feller could smell his own hair singe 
 ing! 
 
 It was three o clock before we had saved the main 
 building, and I crawled home up over the hill, and my 
 Annie met me at the door with a lamp and put her arms 
 around my neck and says, "My boy, my boy," like she 
 hadn t said since a long time before we got gray hairs, 
 and little Michael came in and tried to climb up my leg, 
 and Katherine came and knocked off a little red cinder 
 that was still eating its way into my coat. 
 
 "By the way, Katherine," I says, hardly able to speak, 
 I was so hoarse, "he is back." 
 
 "Here in town?" she cries out. 
 
 "Yes," I says, "he was the feller you saw on the 
 roof the feller that went up and opened the valve 
 on the second water-tank," I says. "Everybody was 
 asking. It was young Harvey," I says. 
 
 She turned a bit white. "Is he safe?" she says.
 
 JIM HANDS 353 
 
 "I come from very simple people," says I, mocking 
 her, "but I couldn t see anything the matter with him," 
 I says, laughing. And yet my head was swimming 
 with being tired out. 
 
 And that night two clean sheets was the best thing I 
 ever felt.
 
 CHAPTER XXIX 
 
 I SUPPOSE when the boys are away at school and 
 Katherine isn t with us, and evening has come and I 
 have read my paper and the wife s eyes is smarting from 
 too much sewing, and maybe the wind of night is singing 
 outside, that my Annie and I will never get tired of 
 speaking of that next day. 
 
 I well remember of how black and charred the factory 
 looked from the front window against the white of that 
 night s snowfall on the hills. Then I went back to bed, 
 and they didn t wake me at all at the ordinary time, and 
 I slept until eleven o clock, and when I got up it seemed 
 as if I d never seen so much sunlight before. It was 
 melting the snow away, and birds was picking in the bare 
 places on the road, and there was a warm and pleasant 
 smell inside the house. 
 
 When I went downstairs I found that little Michael, 
 and John with his books and slate, had come home from 
 school, and Katherine had put on a new dress she d 
 been making, and Annie was keeping an eye on some 
 thing on the kitchen stove. 
 
 I felt like a king of some big place, though every muscle 
 in my body was sore. "Come here," I says, "every 
 one of you," I says. "Sit here at the table," I says, 
 
 354
 
 JIM HANDS 355 
 
 "and see your husband and old man eat his breakfast 
 at noon," I says. "Because this is a sight you may 
 never have the chance to see again/ I says. 
 
 "You re leading the life of an Italian duke," says my 
 Annie, with a laugh. 
 
 " It pains me to hear you say so," I says, "with a dish 
 of oatmeal as dry as this before me," I says, "and the 
 coal-bill not paid," says I. "You d better let me enter 
 as an American," I says. 
 
 "With a dash of Irish," says Katherine, filling my pipe 
 for me. 
 
 But the breakfast was never finished. There came a 
 knock on the door. "It s two men," says Michael, 
 running back to tell us. And when Annie opened the 
 door there was the Old Boss and his boy. 
 
 "We didn t ask to see the whole family," says the old 
 man, patting little John on the cheek. "We told you 
 we were calling on Miss Hands," he says, "on a matter 
 of business," says he. 
 
 Perhaps he would have said more, but Katherine 
 came into the room and looked around. "Bob!" she 
 says, "Bob!" 
 
 But the young feller only straightened up his big 
 frame and bit his lip and made a move with his hand 
 toward his father. Katherine looked at him a minute, 
 and he looked at the floor very indifferent, and I seen the 
 tears come into her eyes. 
 
 "We have a matter to settle with you, Miss Hands,"
 
 356 JIM HANDS 
 
 says the Old Boss. " Perhaps it is better for me to speak 
 of this than my son," he says. "I ll try to be brief," 
 he says. 
 
 I seen the scared look on Annie s face, and I felt then 
 as if another trouble, the biggest of all, was coming to us. 
 
 "Run along, John, and take your brother out to play," 
 I says. "And now let us sit down," says I. 
 
 To this day I can see Katherine on that sofa. What a 
 figure she had ! And there she sat alone by herself with 
 her arms by her side, and her dress moving with the 
 length of breaths she was taking. 
 
 "Katherine," says the Old Boss, "perhaps I could tell 
 you this better if we were alone. I used to think it was 
 an advantage years ago not to have anybody around on 
 an occasion like this," he says, and then he stopped and 
 looked around at the boy. "It s no use, Bob," he said, 
 "I m no good at this," he says, and looked sheepish. 
 
 But just the same he moved his chair around where 
 he could face her. 
 
 "Katherine," he says again, "you once told me that 
 when my boy wanted you, I was to come and ask for 
 you," he says. "Well," he says, "here I am. Don t 
 speak!" he says. "Wait." 
 
 With that he looked at her a moment and his face got 
 serious and he ran his fingers through his gray hair till it 
 was all in a tangle. 
 
 "Here I am," he says again. "I ve come to ask you 
 to love my son a little. He doesn t want any other
 
 JIM HANDS 357 
 
 woman. He wants you. Probably he always will," he 
 says. "If I was in his place I would be almost afraid to 
 ask for you," he says, " for as much as I respect him, I m 
 not sure he has enough to give you," he says. "Of 
 course with me it s a little different," he says. "I will 
 tell you straight that I wish I could make you love me 
 a little the way you must love your own father. I m 
 willing to try. I ll do what I can. But you have said 
 that I must speak for him, too," he says. "So here I 
 am," he says, and looked at the floor. "My boy wants 
 you to be his wife," he says, so low you could hardly 
 hear him. "He wants you to be the mother of his 
 children." 
 
 Katherine shut her eyes. I seen her. I seen them 
 long lashes. And then she opened them again and stood 
 up and looked at the old man and then at Bob, who was 
 holding on to the chair arms so hard they cracked. 
 Her voice was clear, too clear and strong. 
 
 "I will be his wife," she says. 
 
 "Katherine !" says the boy, and jumped up. 
 
 "There !" says the Old Boss over his shoulder to his 
 son. "You see all your worry was for nothing." And 
 he turned back to her then. "Will you let the old 
 man kiss you?" he says. 
 
 "Why, yes," says my girl, with the color coming up to 
 the surface of her skin. "Only nobody has ever asked 
 me before," she says, like a little girl, "and I d rather 
 Bob would have the first," she says.
 
 358 JIM HANDS 
 
 I looked up then at my Annie. And our eyes met. 
 And I knew then that she and I both saw as clear as day 
 everything that was to be. I think we even saw the 
 youngster that came to be our grandson, just as if he was 
 already living. And though the world will never hear 
 of us, I guess we knew that she and I had seen and felt 
 and loved about all there was to see and feel and love 
 in life.
 
 follow 
 ing pages 
 contain adver 
 tisements of a 
 few of the 
 M a c m i 1 1 a n 
 novels.
 
 MR. WINSTON CHURCHILL S NOVELS 
 
 Each, cloth, gilt tops and titles, $1.50 
 
 A Modern Chronicle Illustrated 
 
 This, Mr. Churchill s first great presentation of the Eternal Feminine, is 
 throughout a profound study of a fascinating young American woman. 
 It is frankly a modern love story. 
 
 "The most thorough and artistic work the author has yet turned out. A 
 very interesting story and a faithful picture of character . . . one that 
 will give rise to much discussion." JVezv York Sun. 
 
 Mr. Crewel Career Illustrated 
 
 " It is an honest and fair story. ... It is very interesting ; and the 
 heroine is a type of woman as fresh, original, and captivating as any that 
 has appeared in American novels for a long time past." The Outlook. 
 
 The Celebrity An Episode 
 
 "No such piece of inimitable comedy in a literary way has appeared for 
 years. ... It is the purest, keenest fun." Chicago Inter- Ocean, 
 
 Richard Carvel Illustrated 
 
 " In breadth, massing of dramatic effect, depth of feeling, and rare whole- 
 !~ someness of spirit, it has seldom, if ever, been surpassed by an American 
 romance." Chicago Tribune. 
 
 The Crossing Illustrated 
 
 "A thoroughly interesting book, packed with exciting adventure and 
 sentimental incident, yet faithful to historical fact both in detail and in 
 spirit." The Dial. 
 
 The Crisis Illustrated 
 
 "A charming love story that never loses its interest. . . . The intense 
 political bitterness, the intense patriotism of both parties, are shown 
 understandingly." Evening Telegraph, Philadelphia. 
 
 Coniston Illustrated 
 
 "A lighter, gayer spirit and a deeper, tenderer touch than Mr. Churchill 
 has ever achieved before. . . . One of the truest and finest transcripts 
 of modern American life thus far achieved in our fiction." Chicago 
 Record- Her aid. 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York
 
 MR. ROBERT HERRICK S NOVELS 
 
 Cloth, extra, gilt tops, each, $1.50 
 
 A Life for a Life 
 
 " It is fairly safe to prophesy that it will in time take its place among the 
 books that have influenced national thought and sentiment." Living Age. 
 
 Together 
 
 " An able book, remarkably so, and one which should find a place in the 
 library of any woman who is not a fool." Editorial in The New York 
 American. 
 
 The Gospel of Freedom 
 
 " A novel that may be truly called the greatest study of social life, in a 
 broad and very much up-to-date sense, that has ever been contributed to 
 American fiction." Chicago Inter- Ocean. 
 
 The Web of Life 
 
 " It is strong in that it faithfully depicts many phases of American life, 
 and uses them to strengthen a web of fiction, which is most artistically 
 wrought out." - Buffalo Express. 
 
 Jock o* Dreams; or, The Real World 
 
 "The title of the book has a subtle intention. It indicates, and is true 
 to the verities in doing so, the strange dreamlike quality of life to the 
 man who has not yet fought his own battles, or come into conscious pos 
 session of his will only such battles bite into the consciousness." 
 Chicago Tribune. 
 
 The Common Lot 
 
 " It grips the reader tremendously. ... It is the drama of a human 
 soul the reader watches . . . the finest study of human motive that has 
 appeared for many a day." The World To-day. 
 
 The Memoirs of an American Citizen 
 
 Illustrated with about fifty drawings by F. B. Masters 
 
 " Intensely absorbing as a story, it is also a crisp, vigorous document of 
 startling significance. More than any other writer to-day he is giving us 
 the American novel." New York Globe. 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York
 
 NOVELS, ETC., BY "BARBARA" 
 
 (MABEL OSGOOD WRIGHT) 
 
 Each, in decorated cloth binding, 
 
 The Garden of a Commuter s Wife Illustrated 
 
 " Reading it is like having the entry into a home of the class that is the proud 
 est product of our land, a home where love of books and love of nature go 
 hand in hand with hearty, simple love of folks. ... It is a charming book." 
 The Interior, 
 
 People of the Whirlpool Illustrated 
 
 " The whole book is delicious, with its wise and kindly humor, its just perspec 
 tive of the true values of things, its clever pen pictures of people and customs, 
 and its healthy optimism for the great world in general." Philadelphia Even 
 ing Telegraph. 
 
 The Woman Errant 
 
 " The book is worth reading. It will cause discussion. It is an interesting 
 fictional presentation of an important modern question, treated with fascinating 
 feminine adroitness." Miss JEANNETTE GILDER in the Chicago Tribune. 
 
 At the Sign of the Fox 
 
 " Her little pictures of country life are fragrant with a genuine love of nature, 
 and there is fun as genuine in her notes on rural character." New York 
 Tribune. 
 
 The Garden, You and I 
 
 "This volume is simply the best she has yet put forth, and quite too deliciously 
 torturing to the reviewer, whose only garden is in Spain. . . . The delightful 
 humor which pervaded the earlier books, and without which Barbara would 
 not be Barbara, has lost nothing of its poignancy." Congregationalist. 
 
 The Open Window* Tales of the Months. 
 
 " A little vacation from the sophistication of the commonplace." Argonaut. 
 
 Poppea of the Post-Office 
 
 " A rainbow romance, . . . tender yet bracing, cheerily stimulating ... its 
 genial entirety refreshes like a cooling shower." Chicago Record-Herald. 
 
 Princess Flower Hat just Ready 
 
 A Comedy from the Perplexity Book of Barbara the Commuter s Wife. 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York

 
 A 000127989 2