nia 
 1
 
 A *J
 
 UNIV. OF CALIF. LIBRARY, LOS ANGELES 
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES
 
 BY THE SAME AUTHOR: 
 Home 
 
 Through Stained Glass 
 John Bogarduf 
 White Man
 
 NOT ALL 
 THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 A NOVEL 
 
 By 
 GEORGE AGNEW CHAMBERLAIN 
 
 INDIANAPOLIS 
 
 THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY 
 PUBLISHERS
 
 COPYRIGHT 1919 
 
 BY 
 
 GEORGE AGNEW CHAMBERLAIN 
 
 Printed in the United States of America 
 
 PffCM OF 
 
 AUWWORTH ft CO. 
 
 BOOK MANUFACTURERS 
 
 BROOKLYN. N. V.
 
 THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO THE MEXI 
 CAN PEOPLES, TO THE INARTICULATE, 
 TO THE MILLIONS WHO WERE STRUCK 
 DOWN BY THE HOOF OF THE CONQUEROR 
 AND FOR FOUR CENTURIES HAVE FED 
 BLEEDING CARRION TO AN ALIEN VUL 
 TURE HOST 
 
 
 2126137
 
 "My son, here is the task; choose thou the tools." 
 
 "Father, I have no tools. Let me make a pool of 
 heart's blood wherein men may read." 
 
 "It is well; if so be it thy heart break not when men 
 cry thy truth to be upon a gibbet."
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES
 
 "My son, write me a name that liveth on running 
 water, -wind-swept plain, changing sands and in the 
 untraveled depths of the primeval forest" 
 
 "There is but one such name, Father. Men know 
 it as Pioneer."
 
 Not All The King's Horses 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE CITY OF PALACES lies cupped in the 
 depths of a limited plain; north, south, east 
 and west are equal before the eye accustomed to 
 determining direction by a single outstanding land 
 mark or the sudden void of a far horizon, vision 
 meets a unique definition in the unbroken girdle of 
 a mountainous rim. This encircling boundary though 
 indivisible in its symbolic whole, piled high by the 
 gods to form a cauldron wherein men may sweat 
 and stew through the ages in lesser pottering, is 
 yet not without intrinsic variety. 
 
 To one view its line rises in denuded hills, bare, 
 pointed, brown and soft against the azure sky as the 
 young breasts of native women ; to another, it pre 
 sents the upward sweep of a pine-clad ridge, lying 
 black like a shadow fixed for all time upon the 
 mountainside, cut sharply along its upper edge as 
 though from that high battlement one might leap 
 
 13
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 to the fathomless beginning and end of all things. 
 Farther along the wide arc the sharp tooth of 
 Ajusco stands like a finger starting to point the 
 way to God but discouraged, blunted, sunken and 
 sprawled at its base, shamed by the aspiring summits 
 of those two snow-hooded peaks which confront it 
 and winter and summer ravish the tried heart with 
 an intangible but ever-present illusion of purity and 
 peace. 
 
 They too are an integral part of the encircling 
 barrier for there is a mean to human vision beyond 
 which perspective gives way to the hunger of the eye 
 to crowd all it can embrace along the even limit of 
 its reach. Beneath their snowy heights there is a 
 saddle, a gap, almost a break in the mountainous 
 rim and toward this pass a highway shoots straight 
 as an arrow along the level plain only to twist and 
 turn and writhe as it strikes the ramp and rises 
 steep and steeper for the leap that will carry it up, 
 over and down. 
 
 The traveler who follows its tortuous way is 
 doomed to the disappointment of fulfillment de 
 ferred ; no precipitous drop marks its crest, no violent 
 broadening of an outlook too long inexorably con- 
 
 14
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 fined. Its downward course is first laid along the 
 gentle slope of an apparently interminable plateau 
 and meanders around knolls, over gullies and 
 through sleepy villages crowding in to form a double 
 wall as though huddling away from the immensity 
 of spaces within easy reach, their houses mean, sor 
 did, yet like the thronging children, smiling through 
 their grime. 
 
 The road is old, older than the Conquest; for 
 many centuries the feet of Latins have rediscovered 
 it anew. Like ancient families it has known genera 
 tions; dig beneath its present surface and you will 
 find its forebears in an almost human succession of 
 rebirth from widely spaced obliterations, yet to-day 
 as at the dawn of history it holds at its end an inex 
 tinguishable glory. 
 
 Richard Digby found it for himself twenty years 
 ago. He was on his way to examine and report on 
 certain old mine workings, his mind was full of 
 thoughts of tailing dumps, of abandoned shafts, 
 caved levels, transportation and costs as his horse 
 carried him through the cobbled street of the village 
 of Huichilac and brought him to the sudden turn 
 marked by the sharp angle of a high wall which cu 4 - 
 
 15
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 the world away and left him suspended, breathless 
 before a revelation of splendour so present yet so 
 ephemeral and distant as to defy forever complete 
 absorption. 
 
 Beneath his feet the road dropped away- with a 
 sheerness beyond all expectation after the dulling 
 suspense of the wide plateau and like many another 
 consummation long delayed became a thing too 
 trivial for notice. His eyes were held aloft yet not 
 aloft, plunged in the depths of a vision, a memory of 
 his boyhood's conception of the Vale of Cashmere 
 as that place where beauty lies closest to the bosom 
 of the earth, blanketed by wraithing mists, warmed 
 by a lazy sun and stirring perpetually on the rosy 
 verge between awakening and slumber. 
 
 Two thousand feet below yet near as the hand of 
 a child laid upon the breast stretched the valley of 
 his dreams. Pale, golden undulations rolled their 
 still waves against the sloping shores of scattered 
 hills, divided to the thin gleam of silver water and 
 laughed at the frown of a single buttressed crag 
 which towered from their very midst in startling 
 .semblance to the imagined giant's castle of long- 
 forgotten fairy tales. Beyond the crag, softening 
 its stark lines, making naught of its chained and 
 
 16
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 earth-bound terror, rose great Popo in an even cone 
 of snow which drew the eye to its dazzling pinnacle 
 as to the concentration of a light too deeply fused 
 for human penetration yet soft, lucent, embracing, 
 like sunshine under shelter from the wind on a 
 winter day. 
 
 Here and there hanging in the profound scallop 
 were wisps of cloud, patches of dissolving and re 
 forming mist, ghosts caught still at play by dawn 
 and seen through a haze shot with an amber glow 
 so pale that it seemed made up of infinitesimal par 
 ticles of gold held in warm and gently breathing 
 suspension. 
 
 There is no telling how long Digby would have 
 remained spellbound before that scene, all the more 
 wonderful in that it gripped him after wide wander 
 ings and acquaintance with many marvels of the 
 earth, had not Mauricio, his guide, completed the 
 rolling of a cigarette and spoken. 
 
 "From here on, I lead, master," he murmured 
 softly as though in instinctive deference to one en 
 gaged in worship. "The trail we must find is a 
 hidden and forgotten thing but I shall smell it out 
 for you. Have no fear of that." 
 
 He dug heels into the fat sides of his lazy mule 
 17
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 and forced her to begin the descent with mincing 
 steps, neck outstretched, ears pricked forward and 
 nostrils working like the attense of some monstrous 
 insect in feigned alarm. The horse followed easily 
 with that quick shifting of responsibility so marked 
 among animals willing to grant the lead to another. 
 Digby took a fresh knee-grip on his mount's 
 sunken withers and sat at a sharp slant, one hand 
 resting heavily on the haunches raised so abruptly 
 as almost to touch the rider's shoulders. 
 
 So steep was the winding way that he would have 
 had to look directly down to see the guide ; he could 
 still give himself to the view which at each curve 
 broke upon him with entrancing changes yet always 
 holding its promise of enduring and inexhaustible 
 
 charm. Presently he distinguished with a ravishing 
 i 
 
 clearness the outlines of the town in the valley 
 which had so far appeared merely as a blotch of 
 richer colours on the palette of the Master Painter. 
 The red-browns of its roofs, the white gleam of 
 its cobbled streets, the multi-tinted walls of its 
 squat houses and, above all, the scintillating bril 
 liancy of the bright tiles which encrusted the half- 
 Moorish towers of its churches, catching the sun 
 
 18
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 on a thousand facets and scattering the rays like 
 arrows softened by their fleeting imprisonment from 
 harm to the eye, all welded into the black-green of 
 its summer gardens and seemed to warn the lover 
 of beauty against a too-near approach. 
 
 It was almost with a sigh of relief that Digby 
 welcomed a sudden halt on the part of the guide 
 and watched him draw aside with a self-satisfied 
 grin the matted growth which masked the entrance 
 to a narrow bridle-path, long disused. 
 
 "It is here," said Mauricio, letting go the branches 
 and settling back to the business of rolling a fresh 
 cigarette as though the mere finding of the trail 
 had brought a final period to all endeavour. 
 
 There is no limit to the consideration, the pa 
 tience, of one smoker toward another, leading 
 almost invariably to emulation. Digby was in a 
 hurry but he hung his knee on the pummel of his 
 saddle, drew out his pipe, filled and lit it and 
 smoked as placidly as the guide who sat looking 
 out over the valley in a dreamy-eyed enjoyment of 
 a sensual well-being too vague and elusive for 
 naming by his dull mind but which held him none 
 the less to that moment of time as to an incident 
 
 19
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 worthy of prolongation simply because it was pleas 
 urable. Not even Digby could have seen in this 
 conscious immobility the symbol of a racial motto 
 which clutches at the little things of to-day to the 
 detriment of the weighty affairs of the morrow. 
 
 Reluctantly Mauricio flicked away the butt of 
 his cigarette and with heels and abjurations drove 
 his mule into the fronded trail; Digby followed 
 closely, catching the switching branches on his 
 upheld arms. Presently he had no need to defend 
 his face; the trail widened as is the way of aban 
 doned roads once rediscovered and here and there 
 showed the markings of heavy wooden wheels, long 
 since rotted while their sign-manual yet lived to 
 guide the feet of men. 
 
 The way still descended but very gradually. It 
 clung to the side of the mountain, now following 
 deep indentations into sudden dark gullies, now 
 pushing boldly around some exposed shoulder 
 which brought a recurring and ever-breathless 
 view of the golden valley. At one spot it crossed 
 a flat, level as the floor of a house, sparsely covered 
 with second-growth trees and hanging like a gal- 
 
 20
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 lery above the lazy and untroubled town which had 
 dreamed its way surprisingly near to the foothills. 
 
 Dig-by brought his horse to a stand-still and 
 stared at the last crumbling ruins of a dwelling. 
 "Is this place near the mine ?" he asked, wondering 
 at the impulse that drove him to ask the question. 
 
 "It is so near," replied Mauricio, "that we may 
 say that we are there. But one more turn, one little 
 turn." 
 
 Just beyond the flat protruded a mighty rib of 
 the mountain range; it presented to the elements a 
 saw-like edge, roughened against the winds, stand 
 ing out and climbing up against the far sky as though 
 its mission were to cut the world in two. The trail 
 crept around its bold nose and then led in a back 
 ward sweep which left the valley far behind to an 
 exposed water-shed where ill-defined mounds and 
 gaping caverns proclaimed journey's end to Digby's 
 practised eye. 
 
 He dismounted in surroundings so uncompro 
 misingly and suddenly bleak that the flat with its 
 sheltered peace and broad outlook became almost 
 immediately a memory; not even a small tree to 
 which he might tether his horse broke the uneven 
 
 21
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 Barrenness of old workings too deep in shale to 
 harbour vegetation. He glanced around to see just 
 what he would need to supplement the meagre 
 equipment he had brought with him, returned to the 
 flat, despatched Mauricio to the town below and 
 himself prepared to set a primitive camp. 
 
 For three days he burrowed, panned, sounded 
 and took samples ; for three nights he and his guide 
 rolled each in a single poncho slept under the open 
 sky on the edge of the world, tucked in a pool of 
 stars, and awaked to a dawn like a tepid bath of 
 floating gold inviting them to plunge and forever 
 forget. From that scene Digby turned away with 
 a well-defined pang of regret; he had small hopes 
 that the powerful company by which he was em 
 ployed would be interested in his modest findings, 
 he felt in his heart that this moment of departure 
 was one of long farewell to a spot that already 
 had wrapped its tendrils firmly to memory. 
 
 His premonition was correct to a certain point; 
 his company examined his report, complimented 
 him on its thoroughness, laid it aside and in due 
 course proposed the abandonment of its option to 
 what were known as the Pico workings. It was at 
 
 22
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 this stage of the proceedings that fate was given 
 an unforseen turn by the impulsive action of the 
 youngest of the local directors, a man of moderate 
 purse, long vision and unlimited daring, Roxon 
 Ellerton by name. 
 
 "It appears from the preliminary survey," he 
 said, "that the material in sight would justify a 
 private enterprise. I request that the board make 
 a further inspection at my expense for our mutual 
 protection and if the result confirms Digby's find 
 ings as we all know it will, I would like to have 
 the option transferred to my name subject to the 
 original payment." 
 
 Xo objection was offered to this procedure and 
 at the break-up of the meeting comment was limited 
 to chaffing Ellerton on his ambition to rid himself 
 of what money he possessed. He made no reply 
 but sought out Digby and led him off for a walk out 
 of the range of the din of the rumbling batteries. 
 When they had found a nook sheltered from sound 
 and the winds that swept the barren hills, he went 
 straight to the point with a leading question. 
 
 "Dick, how much money have you got laid by 
 and how much can you reach ?" 
 
 23
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 After a pause Digby named two modest sums 
 and asked in his turn, "What's the idea, Rox?" 
 
 "I haven't been able to forget," answered Eller- 
 ton, "what you told me about your trip to the Pico. 
 Not the stuff covered in the report; that's all down 
 in black and white, but about the flat and the valley 
 and the view. Think of those things getting under 
 your shell-back crust!" 
 
 Digby said nothing; he picked up a bit of schist 
 and began crumbling it between his strong fingers. 
 
 "Dick," continued Ellerton, "I've taken over the 
 Pico option for our joint account. I've asked the 
 local board for an independent inspection to con 
 firm your report and let everybody off with a clean 
 start and now I want you to think the whole thing 
 out and talk it over with Mary. What could we 
 do with a ten-stamp mill and what would it cost us 
 to put it there? What if we made it five stamps 
 to begin with and grew to ten if the game showed 
 colour?" 
 
 He watched Digby's deep-set eyes catch fire and 
 burn in an intensity of concentration which made 
 further speech unnecessary. The two men sat in 
 silence for a long time ; then Digby arose and walk- 
 
 24
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 ing still in a trance made his way back to the camp 
 and to his own modest dwelling, a bare shack as 
 comfortable as money and circumstances would 
 permit but standing like a sister to dust, without 
 outlook, a clapboarded alien shell in a land of thick 
 mud walls. 
 
 As he climbed the steps to the hollow-sounding 
 veranda his wife, Mary, opened the front door and 
 welcomed him with a quick, intimate smile, such a 
 smile as a woman of deep reserves keeps for the 
 one man while he holds her and at his passing 
 buries forever with crushed ribbons, crisped rose- 
 leaves and the memories of that youth which once 
 released knows no returning. 
 
 "You're early, Dick," she said in a voice as con 
 tained but as warm with promise as her smile. 
 
 "Not too early to find you dressed," replied 
 Digby, laying his hands on her shoulders and hold 
 ing her at arms' length while he studied her. 
 
 She was not dressed in the full social sense of 
 the term ; what he meant was that she had changed 
 in the late afternoon as was her custom to a formal 
 gown. It was of dark ribbed silk, transparent 
 above a fitted white bodice and white underskirt, 
 
 25
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 relieved by strips of ribbon from which, below the 
 knees, were suspended two flounces of black net 
 enveloping in veiling clouds ankles and even feet 
 in a chaste modesty forgotten by a later day. 
 Around her neck and waist were bands of white 
 and at her throat was a bit of lawn like a flurry of 
 snow. Her soft hair, divided in the middle, swept 
 down low over her ears but was carried up at the 
 back in a twisted knot that peeped over her head 
 with an air of imprisoned impertinence. 
 
 "You've got something you want to talk about," 
 she stated in answer to his long look, "and, oh, 
 dear, here they come !" 
 
 Three voices, one in a shout, one in hysterical 
 laughter and one a mere squeal from a very young 
 person, heralded the onslaught of Digby's children. 
 First came Richard, Junior, a boy of five, round- 
 cheeked and round-eyed, seriously intent on giving 
 his father a rough handling; close behind him fol 
 lowed Laura, older by a year but never in the lead, 
 laughing excitedly. Trailing in their wake, Made 
 leine, the baby, emitted young animal grunts of de 
 termination as she propelled herself in an inexpert, 
 short-legged zigzag across the floor. 
 
 Digby sat down in a big chair and gathered them 
 26
 
 up, one after the other, until his arms were full of 
 a soft, palpitating mass that with many rustlings 
 of fresh garments and prolonged wriggling finally 
 subsided to comparative rest in his lap. He buried 
 his nose in their hair, in the baby's neck and against 
 Laura's cool cheek. "They smell of soap," he mur 
 mured as he raised grateful eyes to his wife's face. 
 
 He was not at this stage of his development an 
 especially articulate person but he had a way of 
 saying many things with a single look; so now he 
 thanked Mary with a glance for her continuing en 
 deavour toward cleanliness in an atmosphere of 
 general relaxation, told her he knew what it cost in 
 labour but that the effort was well spent if it could 
 add enchantment to orthodox affection. 
 
 "Clean children," he whispered as though in ex 
 planation to himself as he raised the baby bodily 
 in one hand to tickle with his moustache its fat 
 bare leg, so incredibly smooth, soft and pliant yet 
 so undeniably a living and active substance as he 
 presently learned by a kick from the knee that 
 brought tears to his eyes. 
 
 That evening when the children were asleep, 
 each in a separate crib, Digby returned to the big 
 
 27
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 chair, lit his pipe and drew his wife to a seat 
 against his shoulder. The windows which had been 
 closed throughout the day to exclude the dust were 
 now open but through them came no fragrance; 
 instead the odour of damp dumps, bare of plants 
 and foliage, lay heavy upon the air. 
 
 "Mary," he asked, "do you like it here?" 
 
 At the question his wife's body slowly straight 
 ened. "Do you have to be here, Dick?" she asked 
 in return. 
 
 He laughed aloud, his arm tightening about her 
 waist. "If I do, why you'll continue to like it!" 
 His face sobered. "We don't have to stay here," 
 he continued. "Ellerton put a proposition to me 
 this afternoon; it will take every cent of our sav 
 ings. I want to talk it over with you." 
 
 "Mr. Ellerton," said Mary slowly, "is a gam 
 bler, a nice, lovable gambler." She arose and took 
 another chair from which she could watch her hus 
 band's face, gathered in a frown not of impatience 
 but of concentration. 
 
 "Yes; perhaps," said Digby, "but listen to me 
 for a while. You're too close to the big mine here 
 to see something a whole lot bigger if I don't show 
 
 28
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 it to you. The world has never known better min 
 ers in the rough than the Spaniards; they were 
 thorough, persistent, insatiable. They clawed the 
 Americas, North, Middle and South, with their fin 
 ger-nails and few were the chances they missed. 
 Grinding away with their arrastras, using beds of 
 stone for their amalgamation, making the best of 
 the materials at hand, they took everything there 
 was to take in their day. Where they passed, 
 scarcely a single new field of importance has been 
 opened since. But in 1890, not ten years ago, 
 something happened." 
 
 "What?" asked Mary, breaking into Digby's si 
 lence of absorption. 
 
 "MacArthur and Forrest patented the commer 
 cial process of potassium cyanide," he replied. 
 "That doesn't mean anything to you, does it? But 
 on that event hang a number of tales. We tech 
 nical men came into our own. If you want to man 
 age a gold mine to-day, it isn't enough to have a 
 nose for the run of a reef or to be a master at 
 underground work or a financier at flotations or an 
 alchemist come to flesh. You've got to be them 
 all. Even that's a mere incident. You didn't know 
 
 29
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 you were living in the midst of a miracle, a resur 
 rection." 
 
 Mary glanced out of the darkened windows and 
 smiled. "No," she answered, "I hadn't felt that." 
 
 "Perhaps I've put it a bit strong," said Digby 
 thoughtfully, "but anyway, it's a mighty progres 
 sion. The Spaniards with their old arrastras had 
 the right idea; gold is recovered to the extent of 
 its pulverization, its infinitesimal subdivision. They 
 pounded their ores as fine as they knew how and 
 left the tailings and the bodies too deep or too low- 
 grade for profit to the day of cyanide, our day." 
 
 Mary shook her head from side to side. "I don't 
 see what that has to do with it," she confessed, the 
 corners of her mouth drooping. 
 
 "You will," said Digby quickly, "when I tell you 
 that cyanide goes beyond subdivisions; it reduces 
 gold to a solution, practically to a liquid. Think 
 of oil and water; call the water gold in suspension 
 and the rest of the mess you've seen in the tanks 
 the oil. How easy to run one off from the other 
 and how cheap! The recovery of gold isn't quite 
 so simple as all that but I just want you to see." 
 
 "And I do," said Mary. "Couldn't you have 
 told me sooner and come to Mr. Ellerton?" 
 
 30
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 "Not one word sooner," said Digby. "An ounce 
 of solid conviction is worth a pound of easy con 
 version. I wanted you to see that when Ellerton 
 and I take over old mine workings with an estab 
 lished tonnage of dumps in sight, we aren't gam 
 bling; we're simply riding the wave of the mathe 
 matical progression that I called a resurrection. 
 Listen." 
 
 He reached to his desk, drew out a printed re 
 port and turned to a much-thumbed table of figures. 
 "In 1893 this whole country produced just over 
 sixty-three thousand ounces of gold. We and the 
 English came in here with brains, cyanide and a 
 little money to buy what others couldn't use, and 
 in 1894 the production jumped to two hundred and 
 eighteen thousand ounces. This year it will pass 
 four hundred thousand; ten years hence I'm as 
 sure as flowers in spring that it will go over the 
 million. Is that a resurrection, girl, or isn't it?" 
 "It is, Dick," answered Mary. "I'm with you; 
 what you believe, I believe. I I have to. You 
 know that." 
 
 He reached over to lay a hand on her knee. "You 
 women," he said wonderingly, "have to believe with 
 heart and head. There's no good telling you things 
 
 31
 
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 for the sheer truth in them; unless your heart's in 
 it, they pass over." 
 
 "Why, Dick!" cried Mary, a faint flush in her 
 usually pale cheeks and a gleam of amusement in 
 her eyes. "You're becoming a philosopher or at 
 least an analyst." 
 
 "I've been an analyst by inclination ever since I 
 can remember," said Digby soberly, "and by profes 
 sion for six years, with you. Talking of gold as a 
 soluble in cyanide made me think of a woman's 
 heart and head in the same terms. I guess we're 
 all like that; apt to measure life with the yardstick 
 we know best." 
 
 Mary arose, came to him and knelt between his 
 knees. "Take me in your arms for a minute," she 
 said, laying her face fleetingly against his cheek. 
 
 She was of those women who are like walled 
 gardens, presenting to the world unbroken fronts, 
 misers in demonstration of affection, deep wells of 
 emotion held in reserve and rarely stirred by the 
 dip of a drinking cup. The slightest giving of self 
 from such a source attains a significance far beyond 
 the easy, total surrender of lesser personalities and 
 moves man to unimagined depths of sensation. 
 
 32
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 Digby wrapped his arms about his wife and crushed 
 her to him. 
 
 "Oh, Dick," she whispered, "don't be rough."
 
 "Recite to me, my son, the rule of beginnings." 
 
 "As the tuig is set, the blade sprung, the seed dis 
 posed, so shall the plant be." 
 
 "Ho^v short is the reach of thy wisdom! Add thou, 
 'Until the hurricane' "
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 DIGBY quickly obtained his release together 
 with a bonus and a hearty God-speed-you 
 from the monster concern he had served during 
 six years. The generous treatment meted out to 
 him brought with it a pang almost of regret for 
 the parting but the wound, such as it was, soon 
 healed under the unfailing elixir of independence 
 which since the birth of time has inspired man with 
 the belief that only he who is his own master can 
 stand quite erect. 
 
 Accompanied by Ellerton he revisited the scene 
 of what soon was to be known as the Pico mine. 
 They merely glanced at the old workings and the 
 tailing dumps, returning on a common impulse to 
 the flat as a center from which they might best 
 obtain a broad survey of their entire enterprise. 
 
 Ellerton became enthusiastic to the verge of ex 
 citement as he inspected the level ground. "Dick," 
 he said, "there's an acre of it; good loam, too, silted 
 
 35
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 down thick and deep. You can grow anything, 
 anything there's room for." 
 
 He moved to the precipitous edge. "Look here," 
 he continued. "You can bring in a driveway along 
 the trail from the main road and we won't think 
 of using it for the mine traffic. No sir. We'll 
 swing a cable straight down the mountain for that. 
 It's the sensible thing anyway, for by the time 
 we're ready Hanley's railway will be through to 
 the town. A bit of luck, that ; a great bit of luck." 
 
 "There are a lot of bits of luck around here," 
 said Digby thoughtfully. He glanced up at the 
 mighty rib of rock which walled the farther limit 
 of the flat. "Take that, now. Sound can't come 
 through it nor wind." 
 
 Ellerton nodded. "Power, too," he said, con 
 tinuing his own train of thought. "We're within 
 easy tapping distance of the city plant." Then he 
 added more eagerly, "I'll tell you what let's do, 
 Dick. Let's get busy on the driveway and the 
 house; we've got to have them anyway and Mary 
 hates the City. Let's build the whole thing pronto, 
 name it Mountain Acre and spring it on her." 
 
 Digby smiled a slow smile. "The name's all 
 right," he said, "she'll love it because it's the only 
 
 36
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 possible; the driveway, too. We could get away 
 with that. But as to deliberately building Mary 
 or any other true woman a house, sight unseen, 
 why, you're just not married, that's all." 
 
 "Are they like that?" asked Ellerton meekly. 
 "Well, couldn't you get her to O. K. the plans?" 
 
 "I'll try," said Digby. 
 
 The remainder of their visit was devoted to strict 
 technicalities of scientific mining; they studied an 
 chorages, foundations and equipment space, mapped 
 out rights of way for immediate purchase, specu 
 lated on their resources in the face of their needs and 
 finally explored water sources and a supplementary 
 trail direct from the mine to the town beneath. 
 
 Upon returning to the City they effected a divi 
 sion of labour; Ellerton was to busy himself with 
 the securing of all necessary titles, to Digby fell the 
 work of placing orders immediately for a ten-stamp 
 mill and accessories. As soon as that was off his 
 hands he was to go ahead with the building of his 
 house, an occupation which would form the strong 
 est possible palliative for natural impatience during 
 the long interims between ordering and consignment 
 and actual delivery. 
 
 His conscience would not let him even broach the 
 37
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 subject of their new house to his wife until he had 
 sent off the last of his carefully prepared specifica 
 tion sheets but, that done, he provided himself with 
 a large pad and pencil, drew her aside in the quiet 
 of the late evening and asked her the great question. 
 
 "Mary," he said, "I guess every woman who has 
 had to put up with ready-made surroundings has a 
 dream-house in the back of her head. I don't mean 
 a castle in Spain, but a genuine home for every-day 
 wear. Have you got one handy so that you could 
 put it down here?" He pushed the pad of paper 
 toward her. 
 
 She took it and fingered it absent-mindedly. Her 
 eyes grew large and absorbed in concentration, her 
 li'ps moved softly in unspoken meditations. "Dick," 
 she said finally, "you're a dear boy, a thoughtful 
 boy. Here; write it down. I want a low house 
 without stairs, but high ceilings; thick, adobe walls, 
 a house four-square with a patio in the center. Will 
 vines grow where we're going and plants?" 
 
 "Every single thing under the sun," answered 
 Digby, glancing up to smile at the wistfulness in her 
 tone. 
 
 "Then along the whole front a tiled pergola in- 
 38
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 stead of a veranda and from each room at least one 
 French window opening all the way down." 
 
 "Picnickers," murmured Digby. 
 
 "What did you say?" asked Mary, impatient at 
 the interruption. 
 
 "Nothing," answered Digby hastily. "Why not 
 have them all that way except at the back of the 
 house. There will be no mosquitoes." 
 
 "All right," she agreed. "I don't want tiles in the 
 house ; they are chilly, not really pleasantly cool and 
 they tire one. Could we have waxed floors ?" 
 
 "Of course," said Digby without looking up. 
 
 "Well, hardwood floors, then," continued Mary, 
 "and only two big rooms at the front, one on each 
 side of the doorway and hall, a dining-room and a 
 living-room. One side of the house will be bedrooms 
 and bath; the kitchen will have a corner, but the 
 backmost corner. Do you understand that?" 
 
 "Surely," said Digby. "In the back wing with 
 the kitchen, a pantry, washhouse and servants' quar 
 ters. Is that right?" 
 
 "Yes," said Mary, "and opposite the bedrooms, 
 That's all we have left, isn't it?" 
 
 He nodded. 
 
 39
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 "Well, opposite the bedrooms a guest-chamber 
 and bath and a den for you." 
 
 "Is that all ? Are you sure ?" he asked. 
 
 "No, not all," said Mary. "There's this." She 
 took his face in her hands, kissed him full on the 
 lips, dropped her head to his shoulder, relaxed her 
 body against him and began to cry softly. 
 
 He patted her on the back, a smile of understand 
 ing in his gray eyes. 
 
 The next three months were among the happiest 
 in Digby's life, for excitement added its fillip to con 
 tent. He worked like a Trojan and as all the mate 
 rials and labour for the sort of house Mary had 
 chosen were ready to hand, its construction pro 
 ceeded at a speed seldom achieved in that land of 
 many morrows. He was often away for a week at 
 a time, sleeping by night under the stars as on the 
 occasion of his first visit with Mauricio and by day 
 urging the peons and carpenters good-naturedly but 
 effectively to a bare continuity of endeavour which 
 in itself became a sure measure of pace toward com 
 pletion of their task. 
 
 These absences awoke his wonder at the fulness 
 of his happiness ; he had been away from Mary be- 
 
 40
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 fore but never with this frequency of interim and 
 return leading to increasing satisfaction at every 
 meeting. Puzzling over the problem, he strove to 
 put it in terms of professional technic and speculated 
 as to whether the spirit of absolute communion is 
 not an alternating current. 
 
 Many were the strange thoughts that came to his 
 brain, grown suddenly to a new activity as though 
 from a fresh birth, during the long hours of idle 
 supervision. He stared out over the valley time and 
 again, frowned and questioned it as if in its deep 
 cup of beauty were held a meaning just beyond the 
 reach of his development, a significance that steadily 
 pursued would some day burst upon him in an illum 
 ination which might envelop the whole earth, seen 
 now but dimly and blurred as through a mottled 
 glass. 
 
 In such moods he had a feeling not of impotence 
 but of attainment deferred. He and Mary were 
 young, they had not the security which comes to 
 appetites dulled by age, they were exiles, far from 
 their native land and all the implications of support 
 which kindred and old associations bestow, but to 
 their uncertainty and the apparent precariousness of
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 their footing had come a great compensation, a com 
 pensation of enduring youth : they stood upon a 
 threshold ; their own. 
 
 At last the house was complete but starkly bare ; 
 power had been brought to it along with the pre 
 liminary installation for the mine and here and there 
 Digby hung temporary lamps pending arrival of the 
 fixtures of Mary's choosing. Water in plenty had 
 been piped and with a fine head from the new dam 
 far up on the mountain; the calcimined walls were 
 stained a light golden drab; all the debris of build 
 ing had been carted away and with it the under 
 brush from the entire flat, leaving it naked beneath 
 the few trees, carefully conserved. 
 
 The trail had been cleared to an even width all the 
 way to the highroad, but was still rough and un 
 finished when the heavy cart arrived loaded with 
 the cots, bedding, pots, pans and provisions that 
 Mary had selected as the minimum with which the 
 family could camp in comfort in the new home. She 
 did not come with them nor did the children, but 
 on the following day Digby arranged with the 
 friendly contractors a car to bring them all to the 
 railhead which was already within half a mile of 
 
 42
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 the town in the valley. From there a wagon drawn 
 .by four mules carried them to the very house. 
 
 The excited children clamored to be put down 
 the moment the mules, panting from the steep 
 ascent, came to a halt ; but Mary sat quite still except 
 for the agitation of her bosom. Before her were 
 the house and the pergola, the latter more won 
 derfully fitting than she could have imagined for it 
 gave promise of a stately embowered gallery on the 
 edge of space ; on her right was the flat. Wherever 
 she looked her eyes saw nakedness but it was a 
 nudity as full of promise and as demanding of ten 
 der care as that of babes newborn, crying for soft 
 raiment. To her left was the valley. Upon this 
 first full sight of it her eyes widened, turned dim 
 as though drunk with quaffing too greedily of its 
 beauty, filled slowly with tears. 
 
 Digby held out his arms and helped her down; 
 he waved one hand in an enfolding gesture toward 
 the flat. "There's just one acre of it," he said, 
 "tucked here into the mountain. What shall we 
 call it?" 
 
 "Just one acre?" repeated Mary still a little dazed. 
 "Why not call it Mountain Acre ?" 
 
 43
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 "That's strange," replied Digby placidly. "It's 
 the very name Ellerton suggested. It must be the 
 right one if you both thought of it." 
 
 "You boy !" cried Mary, smiling through the mois 
 ture in her eyes. "Don't you suppose I can see that 
 you deliberately put it into my mind? Give Rox 
 Ellerton the honour that is his due; it's the only 
 name." 
 
 Happy are those who can look back to begin 
 nings, who can recollect the birth of a wistaria trunk 
 of the thickness of a man's arm, who can pick the 
 fruits of trees planted by their own hands and see 
 in stalwart sons and daughters the full day of a 
 pink remembered dawn. Youth builds unknowingly ; 
 it doubts of the ultimate fulness of a sprouting 
 vine, sighs at the hope deferred of an orchard in 
 embryo and despairs utterly of the creeping fruition 
 of a buried acorn, seldom planted with deliberate in 
 tent save by the very old who have learned in the 
 shadow of fronded, towering trees the fleeting qual 
 ity of years. 
 
 Mary and Richard Digby were still young in days 
 and in heart when they came to Mountain Acre but 
 it was their good fortune to be able to measure their 
 
 44
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 probable stay by decades. So exact was the modern 
 science of Digby's profession that the success of his 
 and Ellerton's venture could be counted ahead in 
 dollars and almost in cents ; so much to initial expen 
 diture, so much to his salary which was to continue 
 at the same figure which he had lately received, so 
 much to the overhead charges, so much to running 
 expenses based on exhaustive knowledge of prices, 
 labour supply and transportation facilities, so much 
 to a sinking fund for the recovery of the original 
 capital during a term of years. 
 
 These were all accurate sums, fixed not immuta 
 bly but as firmly as the prescience of men deeply 
 acquainted with all existing conditions and probable 
 eventualities could establish. An earthquake might 
 unsettle them, or an eruption of a near-by volcano 
 or a social upheaval or an assault by unlimited cap 
 ital on the mining titles, most fallible of all treaties 
 among individuals. But such events were highly 
 improbable; they constituted the unavoidable un 
 known risk named in ancient documents of the sea 
 under the indefinite terms of force majeure and "act 
 of God." 
 
 Earth tremors were known in the vicinity but had 
 45
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 done no damage in the memory of man ; activities of 
 neighbouring volcanoes had left their traces but they 
 were equally remote; for centuries the country had 
 been a maelstrom of rapine and social disorder, but 
 during the score of years preceding the reopening of 
 the Pico mine it had known peace and exemplary 
 security. As to titles, possession of a mine differs 
 from almost every other material tenure ; its benefits 
 are strictly temporary and as a consequence the mere 
 continuance of a dispute favours the holder if he 
 can support a running fight. 
 
 Against the outgoing sums falling upon the Pico 
 enterprise was balanced the most unvarying of all 
 commodities, gold, the standard of the world's val 
 ues. Its existence, its proportion to the ton of tail 
 ings, the amount of these tailings in sight and the 
 capacity for recovery of the plant installed were all 
 facts, mathematically established. They showed a 
 definite margin of clear profit within wh : ~h two 
 men of such exceptional experience as Ellerton and 
 Digby could feel reasonably, even exuberantly 
 secure. 
 
 In the face of such conditions it is lit lie wonder 
 that Mary should have taken time for the purchase 
 
 46
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 of furniture piece by piece and chosen for both 
 beauty and endurance, or that Digby should have 
 planned out the planting space available with grave 
 deliberation, picked out his seeds and nursery stock 
 after long consultations and awaited patiently their 
 arrival, in some cases long delayed. 
 
 The results of such pondered beginnings were 
 slow in development, they did not assail the senses 
 with sudden breath-taking transformations, but 
 from the day their influence was felt it aspired stead 
 ily to the long, strong hold of the fibres that grow 
 with and around the heart. The children were still 
 children when Mountain Acre had become a syno 
 nym for embowered peace, hiding beneath succeed 
 ing encrustations of foliage, moss and kindly stain 
 ing lichens its sharp contours, rough surfaces and 
 once naked estate, still tenderly remembered at least 
 by Mary and Richard. 
 
 To Laura, Richard Junior and in less extent to 
 the baby, Madeleine, the high pillared and trellised 
 pergola that formed the link between the whole 
 front of the house and the precipitous descent into 
 the valley had become a balcony completely over 
 grown with sturdy perennial vines by the same slow 
 
 47
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 magic which had brought strength unnoticed to their 
 own legs. 
 
 Even the eldest of them could scarcely 'remember 
 that the fronded garden had once been bare, the 
 domed mango trees mere striplings leaning on yard 
 sticks stuck in the ground for their support, or 
 imagine the low red brick wall which continued the 
 line of the pergola and had guarded them from roll 
 ing to destruction in the abyss, stripped of its close- 
 trimmed covering of matted English ivy. Yet each 
 and every one of them had been frequently spanked 
 for stepping through the thin line of wands which 
 now formed a privet hedge four feet thick and as 
 high as their father's shoulder. 
 
 This hedge bounded the Acre on three sides, ris 
 ing to high trained arches over the exit to the path 
 leading from the house around the mountain rib to 
 the mine and over the wider gate giving ingress 
 from the driveway coming from the highroad. The 
 drive had become a shady smooth delight of crushed 
 stone, crowned and drained against the rushing tor 
 rents of the rainy season. Midway of its length a 
 gully had been graded and leveled to hold the sta 
 bles, chicken-run and a pig-pen. 
 
 48
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 To the children the hedge symbolized control, the 
 barnyard privilege; none could define exactly the 
 line beyond which the freedom of the latter was con 
 ceded by parental authority but generally speaking 
 it came to each child at the age when he or she could 
 climb a tree limb to the ridgepole of the stable and 
 slide off the steep roof without breaking a leg or 
 an arm. 
 
 While the delights of the barnyard and its en 
 virons maintained their supremacy in the affections 
 of the juveniles for many a year they never attained 
 even a transitory hold on the parents' hearts which 
 owed a fealty to Mountain Acre proper, backed by 
 overhanging cliffs but faced by a far and broad 
 horizon; an allegiance too deep and hidden for 
 words and that could be expressed only in such pre- 
 vocal communions as the pressure of a hand, a dim 
 ming of the eyes or a sigh quivering up from the 
 depths of feeling and fluttering at its end between 
 laughter and a sob. 
 
 On a night when moonlight surged its overflowing 
 flood to the farthermost limits of the golden valley, 
 tagged hill and castled crag with spilled blots of 
 shadow and held the high snows of Popo in ghostly 
 
 49
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 suspension, pale, paper-white, unreal as though 
 threatened with annihilation by any vagrant gust of 
 air, Digby sat with his wife at the gallery's edge, 
 his arms resting on the balustrade of masonry as 
 if he needed its solidity as an anchor to his far-flung 
 eyes. So long did he hold them to the engulfing 
 scene that Mary, contrary to usage, grew restless of 
 the silence. 
 
 "Dick," she said, touching his shoulder, "what is 
 it? I see the beauty, dear; as Rox said the other 
 night, it squeezes tears from the heart. But it isn't 
 that that has gripped you." 
 
 "No," said Digby, sinking back in his seat, "you're 
 right; there's beauty there, unlimited charm, and 
 because it seems to have no end it bears a message 
 still unread. That's what worries me, Polly. I've 
 got to read it. I never was good at waiting for 
 revelations." 
 
 "Oh, Dick, you analyst!" cried Mary, springing 
 up and rumpling his thick dark hair, "can't you spare 
 even our wonder valley ? Leave it its mystery, dear. 
 Come into the house and let me play for you." 
 
 But not always did the trellised balcony harbour 
 such overcharged moments ; it was the constant scene 
 
 50
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 of many an evening romp and still oftener the coign 
 from -which three children caught glimmering flashes 
 of worlds real and unreal through their father's 
 eyes and lips. He was a great man for youngsters. 
 Thrown directly from college into the hard school 
 of the field engineer, cut off from clubs, reunions 
 and the froth of social amenities, subjected to hard 
 journeys, privations and frequent lonely hours, he 
 had early acquired an avid appetite for the simple 
 and basic elements of old-fashioned homecoming. 
 
 Fortune had mightily favoured him in the pe 
 culiar qualities of the woman he married. He had 
 not picked her up in any byway of adventure, but 
 grew up with her in one of those boy and girl friend 
 ships which trend tacitly and shyly toward ulti 
 mate possession and are built on a mutual faith 
 which by reason of its very strength, once broken 
 knows no mending. Mary was of that New Eng 
 land stock the surface pruderies of which have so 
 filled the eye of the world that it has been blinded 
 to far more significant qualities ; passions held in re 
 serve like banked and undying fires, self-imposed 
 prohibitions carried to an extreme which leaves no 
 middle ground between virtue and total destruction. 
 
 51
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 She was paradoxically violent in slow decisions 
 which, once arrived at, became as immutable as the 
 span of life. Such women can be held; they can 
 never be retaken. 
 
 Ever since he could remember Digby had been 
 subconsciously aware of this fundamental limita 
 tion and he was absolutely content within its bounds. 
 Let others yield to the moral vagaries of his gen 
 eration which first found itself cut adrift from the 
 anchor of religion accepted in all its tenets as a mat 
 ter of course and turned, bored, from faith torn to 
 bits in the field of controversy to indifference and 
 then to laxity; he and Mary would walk the old 
 path, narrowed not by bigoted prejudice but by the 
 inhibitions which were the fibre of their dual being. 
 In an age distracted by divorce, the single standard 
 and allied subjects of promiscuous sex as the un 
 charted channels of daily thought, these two were 
 steadfast not through piety but because loyalty was 
 the keystone of the arch of life. 
 
 The family thus escaped the atmosphere of social 
 problems and had leisure for the habit of happiness ; 
 a bald and bold statement of which the far-reaching 
 
 52
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 implications are difficult of prompt assimilation. The 
 influence of this negative ambient, however, laid its 
 living touch on Digby's inner growth. In any other 
 air he might easily have continued in the standard 
 ized category of an American of his class, absorbed 
 in considerations of income and expenditure as the 
 skeleton art of living. But fortune having led his 
 feet into unusual ways without wrenching them 
 from the traditional path of personal honour, he 
 was gradually attaining a broad foundation of mind, 
 an evenness of temperament and a contemplative 
 brooding over simple verities which made him an 
 ever-deepening well of philosophic conviction. 
 
 What man has not dreamed of this estate and 
 finding himself rocked in its transitory cradle fol 
 lowed that hope which springs eternal in the human 
 breast and aspired to the high permanence of the 
 still stars in an infinite firmament? Digby asked 
 no more of heaven than what he now possessed. To 
 be for an hour of each evening with his children on 
 the cool tiled gallery after the strain of the noisy 
 day's hard work and have his wife's playing, half 
 muted by intervening walls, weave its undertone to 
 
 53
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 a share in their intercourse was to him the full fruit 
 of bliss, too sound in flavour ever to pall upon the 
 palate. 
 
 On one such evening he beheld the size, studied 
 the propensities and speculated on the potentialities 
 of his three youngsters with a feeling of sudden 
 awe. Whence had they come, how attained to their 
 astounding weight and firmness and whither were 
 they bound? Already he could see in each a ma 
 terialization which cut them off from that elfland 
 which is the peculiar realm of little children, wherein 
 we see them as actually allied to fairy folk and 
 poising, breathless and half-winged at the thrill of 
 a sound first heard, a taste new to the greedy tongue, 
 a wonder fresh to curious and ludicrously sober 
 eyes. 
 
 Laura, his first-born, was a pale slip of a maid 
 apparently frail but guarding within the transpar 
 ency of her delicate flesh the steady flame of an un 
 conquerable spirit. She was on the verge of trans 
 ition, standing on the threshold of those mysteries 
 revealed which bring swift age to girlhood and 
 chain body inexorably to mind, but Digby knew in 
 stinctively that for her he need feel no fear. She 
 
 54
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 was of the flowers of God's earth, destined to bloom 
 serene above the mired exigencies of life linked to 
 knowledge. 
 
 Richard, Jr., commonly known as Junior, was 
 of different stuff. His close-knit body had an affin 
 ity for rawhide which led him to select a thrashing 
 every time he was given the choice between physical 
 chastisement and going without his supper. The 
 event was of frequent occurrence, for he was pos 
 sessed of an investigating mind which led him into 
 filth, destruction and occasionally personal danger. 
 Had his father been of those parents who punish 
 their children in the white heat of anger, substi 
 tuting malignancy -for calm judicial execution, the 
 boy's fibre inevitably would have been twisted from 
 straight growth, perhaps broken. But between 
 these two, father and son, there seemed to exist a 
 mutual understanding as to the fitness of the ancient 
 custom of corporal punishment and a disinterested 
 agreement in the method of the rite. 
 
 To-night, with his eyes full of the awkward lanki- 
 ness of Junior's twelve years, Digby looked back 
 half their span in memory to the day when he had 
 first discovered his son as a distinct personality. He 
 
 55
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 had just administered a thorough strapping and 
 was amazed to see a dreamy smile of attenuated an 
 ticipation creep through the grime on the boy's tear- 
 stained face. He took him by the elbows and 
 smiled an answer to that look. 
 
 ''Tell me what you're thinking, Junior," he 
 begged. 
 
 The boy gave him a roguish glance and a reply 
 that by reason of its sheer precocious recognition of 
 changing values established him once and for all in 
 his father's respectful regard. 
 
 "I was thinkin'," he said, "that some day I c'n 
 lick you." 
 
 "Whenever you feel that the time has come, boy," 
 replied Digby when he had recovered his poise, "go 
 right ahead." 
 
 Whereupon Junior had turned his round, sober 
 eyes to a careful inspection of his father's six feet 
 of hardened brawn, nodded his head solemnly and 
 muttered, "Aw right." 
 
 From such dawning moments of flashing intelli 
 gence, gleamings of nascent will and births of the 
 indomitable spirit of a conscious individuality as 
 piring to stand alone, spring the sources of undying 
 
 56
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 affection. Digby, moist-eyed, turned rather hastily 
 from the contemplation of his son to seek distraction 
 in the young lady who sat restlessly upon his knee. 
 
 Here was a problem, a sum in all the dimensions 
 of arithmetic that changed its terms just a little 
 faster than one could figure out the answer. Made 
 leine spent the long hours of the short days of 
 childhood in running the gamut of all the adjectives 
 embraced by the lexicon of deportment and interior 
 fittings ; she was wilful and winsome, fair to behold 
 but often ugly as to both appearance and temper, 
 she condescended to authority, smiled with the wis 
 dom of the serpent at blandishments, flirted deli 
 cately with man, rosebush or a brick wall and occa 
 sionally transformed her small body into a reservoir 
 of rage and tears which threatened to burst its over 
 strained retaining walls. She, too, had already 
 pricked her tiny fingers on the thorns of reality. 
 Digby loved her with an abandonment, an unreason 
 ing and completely surrendered affection such as 
 man lays only at the feet of those qualities of mys 
 tery in woman which are eternal, knowing not age 
 nor the divisions of birth and death. 
 
 To her surprising bodily strength and mental 
 57
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 hunger fear was absolutely incomprehensible, a 
 realization that had caused her father more anxiety 
 than the combined exploring activities of the two 
 other children. He had been afraid for her and 
 had spent patient hours in trying to bring her to 
 an appreciation of what would result should she 
 tumble from the coping that divided Mountain 
 Acre from the valley below. By endless repetition 
 while holding her in the crook of his arm above 
 the abyss he taught her the old nursery rhyme: 
 
 "Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, 
 Humpty Dumpty had a great fall ; 
 Not all the king's horses, nor all the king's men, 
 Could put Humpty Dumpty together again !" 
 
 But it was not until he secured an egg, stood it 
 by the Columbus method on the inner edge of the 
 balustrade, tipped it off to smash on the tiled floor 
 of the gallery, pointed at the resulting mess and 
 called it Madeleine, that her mildly interested eyes 
 widened in sudden horror and overflowed with a 
 gush of self -pity ing and rebellious tears. 
 
 "Not Maddie!" she screamed, clutched his trous 
 ers at the knees, buried her face against his legs 
 
 58
 
 and jumped her nether portion up and down in an 
 ideal position for spanking. 
 
 He had snatched her up, held her quivering body 
 close and murmured with a comforting but self-ad 
 dressed intensity, "No, not Madeleine! Never 
 Madeleine, so held me God." 
 
 These memories flashed through Digby's mind 
 in a fraction of the time it has taken to relate them; 
 he returned now to the thought from which they 
 had made their original departure, the sensing of the 
 intrusion of reality between childhood and youth. 
 
 "Come here, you children," he called in a stage 
 whisper. 
 
 Immediately Madeleine's fidgeting ceased, her 
 body grew tense, her eyes concentrated on things 
 about to be even though unseen and her lips half 
 opened to the best disposal for silent breathing under 
 stress. Laura and Junior drew their chairs near. 
 Elbows on knees, chins cupped in hands, they en 
 tered the circle of conspiratory heads, their faces 
 joining in an intentional withdrawal which wiped 
 years away and left father, son, elder and younger 
 daughter in a single ageless category. 
 
 59
 
 "Never forget old friends," whispered Digby. "I 
 used to know a girl named Laura and a boy called 
 Junior and a baby with the longest name in the 
 world, Maddie-Madcap-Madeleine. One day I saw 
 the three of them climbing a fence on the top of a 
 hill. I stopped to light my pipe and when I looked 
 up again they were gone. Tooh!' I said, 'that's 
 easy. I'll climb the hill to find them.' I did and 
 when I got there there wasn't any hill, no fence and 
 not a child in sight." 
 
 He paused to let this surprising information sink 
 in. "You can imagine," he continued, "that I was 
 annoyed. Things like that are not supposed to hap 
 pen to people who are thoroughly grown up; they 
 make them ridiculous and impatient at the absurdity 
 of seeing what isn't and realizing that if they really 
 do see it, why it doesn't do any good to know that it 
 isn't because it's just the same as if it was. In addi 
 tion to being put out at myself I was worried. I 
 couldn't afford to lose those children. There are 
 plenty more in the world, but they aren't so easy 
 to get as you might think because you have to buy 
 a child every day for ten years before you own it. 
 
 "I looked everywhere I could think of, finally 
 60
 
 gave it up and came back here to the garden at 
 Mountain Acre and started walking 1 in circles like 
 a yellow dog about to lie down. Just as I was really 
 and truly going to give it up I heard a voice as thin 
 as one string of a spider's web say quite distinctly, 
 'Never forget old friends.' 
 
 " 'Where, what and who are you ?' I asked, my 
 hair standing on end. 
 
 " 'Don't be alarmed, Richard, Sr.,' said the voice, 
 'I'm just your old friend, the rose janitress.' 
 
 "I was standing over there by the gate under the 
 Etoile de France and when I turned I found a great 
 red rose just under my nose ; the voice was coming 
 from the center of one of its petals. I stared and 
 stared at the spot but I couldn't see anything for 
 tobacco smoke until the voice asked, 'Can't you re 
 member the rose janitress?' 
 
 "Then I realized that it wasn't smoke that blinded 
 me, but the mist of years, so I blew it away and 
 there I saw her just as she used to be. From the 
 tips of her toes to the crown on her head she was 
 no bigger than nothing at all; an ant could have 
 stood over her without mussing her hair. Her 
 bodice was cut disgracefully low; around her waist 
 
 61
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 she had wrapped a caterpillar's eyelash three times 
 and tied it in a bow knot; below that stood out 
 fluffy skirts like the tiniest granddaughter of a 
 peony upside down and under them were two per 
 fectly straight and adorable legs with a dimple on 
 each knee. You would never have taken her for! a 
 janitress if she hadn't carried a mop. 
 
 " 'Her "cheeks were pink, her lips were red, 
 Her eyes as big as twice her head.' 
 
 "Extraordinarily bright, too," he added to the 
 doggerel, "but that was not to be wondered at when 
 you consider that those eyes were the buckets into 
 which she squeezed the dew that it was her business 
 to mop up every morning early. My sight grew 
 dearer and clearer and presently, all over the gar 
 den, wherever a drop of dew was left on a petal, I 
 saw them at work, lily washladies, grassflower laun 
 dresses, honeysuckle bees-of-all-work and bachelor- 
 button and sweet-william men-servants. When these 
 last saw that I saw them they yelled in a chorus, 
 'Hallo, old scout I Where you been?' 
 
 " 'Now look up on the hill/ whispered the rose 
 janitress. 
 
 62
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 "I did. There was the hill, there was the fence 
 with Junior, Laura and Madeleine climbing back 
 over it and coming for me as tight as they could 
 run. 
 
 " 'If you don't want to lose your children,' whis 
 pered the rose janitress hurriedly, 'and if they don't 
 want to lose themselves, don't any of you ever dare 
 forget old friends, least of all the Little Folk. Make 
 fun of us if you like, don't believe in us if you 
 can't, but if you're afraid of the dark you'd better 
 keep us handy for we are the light that shines on 
 yesterday.' "
 
 "Set me a riddle, O, my son, for 1 am weary of the 
 knowledge of all things." 
 
 "Where dwells the sky without a cloud?' 
 
 "Child, the world is round, the sky's about it; thy 
 cloudless heaven is in the little eye of a man's head"
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 SUCH hours, in the meagre proportion of one 
 in every twenty-four, were merely the gossa 
 mer bloom on the heavy warp and woof of Digby's 
 daily existence. He was a worker ravenous of 
 accomplishment; his far-sighted eyes beheld the 
 Pico mine as a pilgrimage stretching out into the 
 years, but not as a non-stop journey along a lane 
 without a turning. All its stages were clearly de 
 fined in his mind from the initial crude departure of 
 material installation and the rush to handle ore in 
 paying quantities to the time of first approximate 
 leisure to be harnessed promptly to chemical analyses 
 and experiment. That field in itself is without end, 
 but it did not limit his vision which was fixed beyond 
 on an ultimate dream of levels too deep for profit 
 to-day, but which must inevitably creep up to the 
 reaching hand of delving science. 
 
 It gave him a sense of sharing in omnipotence to 
 gaze upon the mounds of tailings abandoned by the 
 experts of another generation and to feel that he 
 
 65
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 could summon all its progeny who flocked to tHe 
 welcome wages he proffered, assure them of the 
 presence of gold in plenteous though undazzling 
 quantity, give it to them in illusive fee-simple and 
 yet leave them destitute, famine-stricken, by his sin 
 gle withdrawal. Pay from such leadership became 
 more truly largess than from any purely industrial 
 manufactory however hedged its appliances by pat 
 ented genius and mechanical intricacy. 
 
 The peons who thronged to the standard of vol 
 untary labour which he had raised on the barren 
 mountainside were alternately the bane of his hun 
 ger for achievement and the object of a social-philo 
 sophic questing that was gradually becoming his 
 medium of relaxation to the wonder and amusement 
 of his wife, Mary. Lucent-orbed, dark-skinned, 
 black-haired, soft-footed and as slow as a deep, slug 
 gish stream, they flowed before him like a river 
 weary from long travel and brooding lazily in its 
 murky depths over the possibilities of a flood to 
 hurry it along. No people as a class could be more 
 gentle, more absorbed in momentary well-being, ap 
 parently more content with minimum benefits ; and 
 while Digby like all active men accepted the present 
 
 66
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 at its face value he was not ignorant of the past 
 nor incapable of making deductions from deliberate 
 retrospection when time and the inclination syn 
 chronized. 
 
 He knew these men; a single glance was enough 
 to enable him to segregate pure Indian from mestizo, 
 mestizo from impoverished Latin white-trash. The 
 Indian stock was in an overwhelming majority and 
 unmistakable not only by reason of its unvarying 
 black eyes and blacker hair, coarse, straight and 
 heavy as a horse's mane, but also because it carried 
 in its composite countenance a look that was the 
 equal inheritance of age-long subjugation and fre 
 quent revolt, the faintly smouldering expression of 
 all oppressed peoples, the unbroken continuity of 
 which alone dignifies them above thoroughly domes 
 ticated animals. 
 
 Against this sombre background the mestizos 
 showed like gnarls in a rough but even web. The 
 alien blood in their veins whether descended from 
 black or white tended to dull their features while 
 it sharpened their wits. Their hair was drabbed 
 and twisted, their skin lacked the thick smoothness 
 and their cheeks the almost universal roundness and 
 
 67
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 smothered red glow from deep beneath the surface 
 which distinguished the pure native. Their eyes, 
 subject to emotional flashes of astonishing intensity, 
 never attained to the fixed, impenetrable blackness 
 of cut jet. Digby could make a surprisingly expert 
 mechanic of any one of them in six weeks j in six 
 years none of them could win his trust 
 
 Their proportion to the mass of labour he em 
 ployed was small but still outnumbered by twenty 
 to one the few pure whites who had drifted to the 
 new camp which demanded no references beyond 
 arms and legs sound enough for the day's work, and 
 as is the way of pioneering enterprise blindly asked 
 no questions of past or future. Such whites, not 
 to be confused with certain imported foremen and 
 a group of native professional miners, were to him 
 the lowest of all his workmen in the scale of dignity. 
 They were degenerates, scobs pared from the hard 
 timber of centuries of dominance, weaklings cast 
 off from the warring factions of an iron class which 
 for generations had climbed to power on the backs 
 of peons perennially deluded to revolt only to be 
 despoiled with a wearying redundancy of fate. 
 
 These outcasts gleamed here and there like dying 
 68
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 sparks from which fire would not deign to spring. 
 They showed a cheap vivacity, a willingness to trade 
 on their degradation, an aptitude for pander and 
 lor bullying not by strength but through tradition; 
 even their swashbuckling turned quickly to cringing 
 weakness at a frown. "Hawks, wing-clipped," 
 thought Digby, "and soiling their claws with car 
 rion." Thin-faced and sallow, shifty-eyed, nervous, 
 impressionable, they were the first to respond to an 
 appeal for effort and the first, by much, to drop 
 the sudden load. 
 
 From such a racial conglomeration Digby welded 
 the manual organization with which to build his su 
 perstructure of inanimate appliances; derricks, an-' 
 chorages, head-gears, concrete foundations, mill 
 sheds, process tanks and the vault-like zinc-room,' 
 all rough, ponderous and strictly utilitarian, allied to 
 the mountain almost as intimately as its gray ribs 
 of rock and seeming to stand aloof from the con 
 genital instability of their actual creators. Under 
 his scheme the mass of workmen fell into natural 
 divisions: the out and out peons stood for brute 
 weight, burden bearers, hod-carriers, pick and shovel 
 graders; the mestizos for improvised masons, me- 
 
 69
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 chanics and blasters; the white-trash for gossipers, 
 tale-bearers concious of the value of their secret 
 wares in an industry which has never yet attained 
 to victory over dull wits intent on pilfering. Stand 
 ing quite apart was the small group of professional 
 jniners from the north marked by a traditional in 
 dependence. 
 
 There is a blessed fever which assails all men, 
 even habitual laggards, at the initiation of any vis 
 ibly growing material project, inciting them to a 
 ^peculiar curiosity that demands certain stages of 
 achievement for its satisfaction. Digby constantly 
 played on this useful human failing throughout the 
 constructive period, assigning set jobs to various 
 gangs and deliberately spreading the impression that 
 upon the culmination of all these tasks hung the 
 inauguration of the aerial ropeway. Even as far 
 back as his consultations with Ellerton on equipment 
 he had instinctively seen in this feature a trump card 
 which would appeal unfailingly to the imaginative 
 and lazy and had stood out for the more expensive 
 installation of two fixed wire cables and an endless 
 hauling rope as against a single-line shoot. 
 
 "I don't see it," Ellerton had objected, "not at 
 the price." 
 
 70
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 "Well, I do," Digby had insisted, "and I'll show 
 you. We'll have a carrying capacity of ten tons 
 against three, we'll cut our power bill by balancing 
 down loads against the up and we'll start work on 
 time when we get the thing going by making the 
 town men who miss the five o'clock skip climb the 
 hill. Last and first, it will be a bunch of fresh-mown 
 hay for me to dangle before the donkey noses of 
 the construction gangs. Have you forgotten the 
 power for good of a new toy?" 
 
 "You win four times over," Ellerton had agreed 
 with a laugh and as the work progressed his acqui 
 escence was fully justified. The completion of the 
 ropeway, cleverly manipulated by Digby to depend 
 on the more or less simultaneous termination of 
 half a dozen tasks of far greater importance, be 
 came to the men an outstanding landmark of ac 
 complishment out of all proportion to its intrinsic 
 and comparative value. The gang with the best 
 record was to have the first ride. 
 
 After five years Digby could look back on those 
 months of sheer toil with deep satisfaction and a 
 sense of wonder at what now seemed prodigies of 
 success in distilling a mild essence of enthusiasm for 
 (work out of a mass that had since gone sour and
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 settled down to a sodden level of minimum exertion 
 which still was sufficient, however, to produce an 
 even and reasonable flow of results. 
 
 In judging others he did not spare himself ; rou 
 tine had him also in its clutch, but as he went his 
 daily systematic rounds he was conscious of regret 
 for that hard time of happy fever which had made 
 his present road so easy. Passing one morning from 
 the wicket gate within the arch of the privet hedge 
 which opened on the beaten, unadorned path to the 
 mine, he stopped as he turned the sharp corner of 
 the mountain buttress at a point from which he 
 could view the plant whose construction had led 
 through eager turmoil to a smooth and slumberous 
 security. 
 
 Well above the level of his eyes rose the hoisting 
 plant and the clumsily constructed landing-stage 
 sticking out like an eyebrow from the edge of the 
 hill and which with staccato rumblings and rhythmi 
 cal puffs of dust was feeding ore from the bins be 
 neath it into the skips. A man stood on a small 
 platform lazily releasing the chute-door with a lever 
 as the buckets swung into place; other men could 
 be seen moving slowly about, digging, disappearing 
 
 72
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 into tunnels, reappearing behind truck barrows, at 
 taching them to an endless rope and languidly 
 watching them run down the Decauville railway to 
 the landing-stage, strike the tipple and dump their 
 loads. 
 
 The big iron buckets dangled in a widely spaced 
 string down the steep mountainside and led his 
 eyes to the main plant looking absurdly minute at 
 the foot of the ropeway where the incessant muffled 
 roar of the stamps made a steady underlay of sound, 
 a pool of commotion, in the vast silence of the open 
 spaces visible from his point of vantage. He sighed 
 as he remembered the exigencies arising from the 
 smallness of capital which had forced the placing 
 Of the mill at the base of the main slope and beyond 
 a gully which had made a wooden chute impracti 
 cable. Both he and Ellerton would have liked to 
 have had it at the mine's door but that would have 
 entailed the overcoming of tremendous difficulties 
 in the way of transportation of heavy pieces and 
 great expense in blasting and leveling. 
 
 "It couldn't be helped," he murmured to himself 
 as he started on toward the landing-stage, but his 
 (eyes glowed with vision of what might soon be. The 
 
 73
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 Pico mine, in a modest way, had made good; it 
 had been a paying concern from the first month of 
 operation. The outside capital which had originally 
 come in purely by faith and on the strength of the 
 reputation of the two partners had gained confidence 
 and was ready to contribute to a wider development. 
 Even now Digby was engaged in making soundings, 
 clearing old tunnels, exploring pinched-out reefs 
 and testing his results. He was not in a hurry ; all 
 was going well and he could give months to making 
 sure and never regret the time thus spent. 
 
 He arrived at the landing-stage, swung himself 
 into an empty skip and leaning from its edge to avoid 
 cable and hauling rope, stood with head uptilted to 
 drink in the never-palling view of the golden valley 
 Avhich stretched away to the left. Absorbed in that 
 distant prospect, the foothills seemed to rise toward 
 him rather than he descend to them, finally usurping 
 his attention; for no sooner did he arrive at the 
 foot of the ropeway than he felt suddenly dimin 
 ished; foothills became mountains and the mill a 
 roaring giant fed by the sweating labours of pygmy 
 men. 
 
 He passed through every division of the plant, 
 74
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 looked into the power room, watched the crushers 
 at work, studied their feed into the ore bins and 
 from there to the feeder tables and finally to the 
 stamps, hung over the swirling process vats and 
 talked with foremen, mechanics and an occasional 
 labourer in whom some gleam of intelligence above 
 the low average had awakened speculation as to his 
 possibilities. As he crossed the frail bridge to the 
 long zinc-room which in contrast to all surrounding 
 structures was built of solid masonry and had its 
 small windows stoutly barred, his eyes fell on a mes 
 tizo, Pablo by name, who with a helper was squatted 
 under the shadow of the mill in the midst of a snake- 
 like swirl of wire cables. He stopped to watch 
 him, caught his eye and raised a hand in a wave of 
 friendly greeting ; Pablo nodded but did not release 
 his grip on rope and marlin spike. 
 
 All these men were underpaid, Pablo more so than 
 any other; Digby knew it He was no altruist to 
 the point of self-destruction, but he was a fair man 
 willing to reap only where he had sowed In his 
 heart of hearts he would have been glad to raise his 
 entire wage-scale had he not been deterred by that 
 sixth sense which -comes to practical men who have 
 
 75
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 learned a local and alien psychology not by scholas 
 tic reasoning but through a series of very real and 
 rude awakenings. 
 
 Theoretically he should have said to Pablo, "There 
 is no camp in the world where you are not worth ten 
 dollars a day so I am going to pay it to you here." 
 Had he done so he would soon have lost the only 
 wire-rope splicer in a vast region, added one to the 
 corps of town drunkards and planted active misery 
 in a humble home now slumbering on the edge of 
 but beyond the borders of actual discontent. So 
 with the rest of the skilled men who received re 
 muneration in excess of the common horde but still 
 far below their worth; he did not speculate as to 
 why he could not better their lot spontaneously, he 
 only knew it, felt it by acquired instinct. 
 
 Unbeknown to himself he was even at that day 
 face to face with an unseen truth, the fact that man's 
 relation to benefits is not that of a sponge to water 
 but one of wearying evolution, of attainment meas 
 ured by his power of assimilation, of perception of 
 injustice and of battle for satisfaction which must 
 yet stop just short of destruction of the sources of 
 
 76
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 welfare or defeat its own end. The fate of a man 
 manacled by ignorance and the inhibitions of ar 
 rested development from whatever cause thrown into 
 a sea of gold and of a cat in a weighted bag plunged 
 into a hogshead of water have ever been one and the 
 same ; they will both drown. 
 
 Digby's conscience was alive to a sense of wrong 
 but not to one of wrong-doing; it was not uneasy, 
 largely because the value of these men above their 
 fellows was in great part of his own creation. In 
 that day, so briefly removed in point of years from 
 present times, gratitude still entered into calcula 
 tions of justice and an individual's immediate estate, 
 irrespective of class-consciousness, was not assumed 
 to be divorced from its past in every calculation of 
 increasing demands. 
 
 As a result it took the cockles from Digby's heart 
 to watch Pablo and let his own mind run to further 
 recollections of those first days when he had picked 
 his material as one would sort likely colts from a 
 herd and himself broken it to this and that mechani 
 cal need. He had aspired to omniscience and if by 
 chance some mechanism threatened to stump his pre- 
 77
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 eminence he had gladly sat up a night with cat 
 alogues, specifications and directions like a teacher 
 put to it to keep ahead of his class. 
 
 Pablo's was more than a case in point; it went 
 beyond the reach of book-learning into a combined 
 realm of dexterity, common sense and brute force. 
 Digby had picked him as showing these three quali 
 fications in excess of his fellows and had spent a 
 week in overalls at his side, first with lengths of a 
 six-stranded manilla hawser and then with sections 
 of the wire rope a little over four inches in circum 
 ference, of six strands of twelve wires each, hemp 
 heart and centers, which was to be the size most in 
 use at the Pico mine. For the hawser, employed 
 purely as an optical illustration, their hands and a 
 wooden pin had sufficed but when it came to manipu 
 lating the wire rope they had been forced to impro 
 vise a marlin spike of chilled tool-steel and resort 
 to a vise and nippers. 
 
 Never would Digby forget the interest that the 
 big, somber-eyed mestizo had taken in every step of 
 the arduous process nor his own feeling of conquest 
 when at the end of a week of lacerated hands and 
 continual backache he could at last straighten up 
 
 78
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 and say, "You see, Pablo? It's badly done; it's 
 rough work, but every turn is right, every plait in. 
 place. Make a smooth one like the hawser there 
 and I'll double your pay." 
 
 "For always?" asked the peon doubtingly. 
 
 "For always," confirmed Digby with a smile. 
 
 Pablo had glanced at the clean splice of the haw 
 ser, touched lightly with his stubby fingers the crude 
 inequalities of the work they had just finished and 
 nodded his big head slowly but comprehendingly. 
 "It is well," he said. Within a month he had become 
 an expert wire-rope splicer, that rarest of all jour 
 neymen who once uprooted from his habitat poises 
 frequently but never settles, led on by the will-o'- 
 the-wisp of ready gold gleaming from every spot 
 on the broad earth where men toil with the imple 
 ments of giants. Unwittingly he held in his rough 
 ened hands a valuable but dangerous gift from 
 Digby, his well-wisher. 
 
 Digby turned from staring at him and walked 
 thoughtfully to the locked and barred door of the 
 zinc-room; he opened it and entered the holy of 
 holies of the mine. Along one side beneath two 
 of the small windows stood a rough deal table 
 
 79
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 strewn with samples of precipitate, crucibles, retorts 
 and all the paraphernalia of process investigation; 
 on the walls above it were plastered formulas and 
 charts; stretching away into dim shadows was 
 the battery of zinc-boxes. Here he had spent 
 many happy hours engrossed in manipulations of 
 oxidizing agents, potassium ferricyanide, sodium, 
 manganese dioxides, into combinations far above 
 the reach and interest of the lay mind. He was 
 master of a small mine, he stood alone, and was as 
 subject to endless obligations as a country general 
 practitioner of the old school; the tenacity of slimes 
 and tailings in retaining that last imbedded cor 
 puscle of gold, invisible to the naked eye, was to 
 him the arch enemy as worthy of pursuit as the 
 most recondite and formidable microbe. 
 
 It was an understood thing at Mountain Acre that 
 if he did not appear on the stroke of twelve, he was 
 not to be expected for lunch and many were the 
 days upon which this rule saved the household from 
 long fasting. There is only one kind of work that 
 will make a man forget food and it is found in that 
 activation of the mind upon which is based the fer 
 tile illusion of its ultimate mastery over matter and 
 
 80
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 which is intimately allied to the nebulous sources 
 of sheer creation. The artist, he who with tool or 
 pen or brush or mortar and pestle is engaged in the 
 production of that which he believes will live, alone 
 is fed by unseen ravens and stands, a silent bulwark, 
 against the embattled materialistic forces of the 
 forty-two-hour week and minimum production for 
 maximum pay. 
 
 With Digby, however, the unseen ravens were 
 sometimes displaced by Patrick Hogan, his right- 
 hand man. Pat was no technician, he knew nothing 
 of the why and wherefore of this and that in the 
 intricate recovery of gold from low-grade ores, but 
 he had a keen perception for results and the driving- 
 power of a born overseer as well as an occult faculty 
 for transmitting to his underlings the essence of a 
 near-blasphemy acquired through wide wanderings 
 and of ironic Gaelic wit without the aid of actual 
 translation into an alien idiom. Big, rawboned, 
 wide-eyed, loose-mouthed and violent, he yet pos 
 sessed a tender heart which would often lead him 
 to seek out Digby, bearing an offering of food on 
 a shining bit of banana leaf. 
 
 "Will you not be having an enchilayda, sor ? It's
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 me missus itself that watched to make them and they 
 be clane." 
 
 Digby would invariably accept the proffered 
 enchilada or tamalc, which Pat's incorrigible tongue 
 enunciated as "taymayly," with an absent-minded 
 nod of thanks, often ate the titbit subconsciously but 
 sometimes laid it aside and when he finally knocked 
 off work was put to it to cover up his gastronomical 
 delinquency without giving offense. 
 
 About the mill were grouped two or three dwell 
 ings and half a dozen shacks which were occupied 
 by the imported foremen and labour but the vast 
 majority of the peons had been recruited from the 
 neighbouring town and came to their work more or 
 less daily, frequent absences being ascribed to deaths 
 in the family, but in reality due to the low price 
 of pulqiw. 
 
 Pat occupied with his wife the most pretentious 
 of the houses which was placed facing the zinc-room 
 and at such a short distance that the roaring of the 
 stamps would have been deafening to ears less 
 trained by long usage ; his had attained to an amaz 
 ing capacity for elimination which entirely ignored 
 all sounds attributable to the proper functioning of 
 
 82
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 the mill but left them peculiarly sensitive to any 
 ominous silence or the prowlings of interlopers. He 
 owned a sawed-off shotgun of short range but war 
 ranted to hit everything within an angle of ninety 
 degrees and which for some occult reason he had 
 named, "Ne'er-do-weel's fayther." 
 
 "I don't see it, Pat," said Digby to him one day. 
 "If you'd call it stepfather, now " 
 
 "What for will I call it stepfayther thin, Misther 
 Digby, and it to be me best friend ?" 
 
 Far was it from him to explain and much farther 
 from Digby to guess the involved connection be 
 tween saving parent and spendthrift son, a blunder- 
 bus and the ancient saying, "A narrow gathering, a! 
 broad scattering." 
 
 Pat was not above formally visiting the stables 
 at Mountain Acre on Sunday afternoons and giving 
 careful inspection to the horses, the cow and the pigs. 
 This was no part of his duty as one could see by 
 the deepening of the blue in his eyes but rather a 
 weekly journey by the road of old familiar contacts 
 and smells to a far country. No sooner did the 
 wicket gate click at his passage than the children 
 would be around him, catching his hands, matching 
 
 83
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 his step along the pergola and down the driveway, 
 all silent; Junior intent on learning more things 
 about horses, Laura hoping for fairy lore whispered 
 with a fervour of faith that would "raise the hair 
 on a hen's egg," and Madeleine engrossed with 
 thoughts of her rabbits which had once induced a 
 tale of weasels and hares wherein the latter in self- 
 protection had learned to sleep with one eye only 
 "an' when that was rested and slep enough, they 
 opened it and shut the other." 
 
 Once Pat had passed the stable, barnyard and 
 stye in sober review and berated their shiftless at 
 tendants with language intrinsically innocent but 
 violent which the children had no need to translate, 
 they would gather on barrels, fodder-bin or the floor 
 and hear how Katty got out of the pot or any one 
 of a thousand thousand other tales, for Hogan was 
 a well possessed of the unfathomable depths of an 
 ancient people eternally young, a spring that bubbled 
 hoary fantasies as delicate as a thrush's ankle, light 
 narrative that one could blow off the hand and lose 
 save as a lasting perfume on memory. 
 
 Laura and Junior were not so young as to be ig 
 norant of a flaw in the complacent armour of their 
 
 84
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 big friend nor so spiritless as to spare him weekly 
 darts directed at the aperture; so, when story-time 
 was over and they were on the way to repay him 
 with a dish of "tay" and half an hour of Mrs, 
 Digby's company on the terrace, they would ask 
 him, round-eyed and serious, "How is Mrs. Hogan, 
 Pat ? Couldn't she come up with you to-day ?" 
 
 To which Pat would automatically reply, "Why 
 then she has the fever on her still ; she eats any more 
 than a midge in the Glen of Downs, she's speechless 
 and kilt with the fasting." 
 
 "Perhaps mother will take us down to see her," 
 Laura would murmur, her eyes slanted to observe 
 Pat's face. 
 
 "Aree!" he would reply sadly, "itself can see no 
 one the day, aroon." 
 
 Nobody had ever seen the Mrs. Hogan of Pat's 
 unfailing spoken solicitude and respect. Though he 
 always referred to his missus as merely superin 
 tending the preparation of the food which he oc 
 casionally offered to Digby, it was an open secret 
 that he had married a native lady of humble origin 
 who at the time of the contract already had a good 
 many nicks to her horn, but for all her age and per- 
 
 85
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 haps by reason of it was a mistress of the local 
 culinary art. 
 
 Pat on the terrace was another man; gone were 
 fantasies from his mind and light speech from his 
 tongue. Whether the Digbys were alone or 
 whether Ellerton and some of his friends had come 
 down for the week-end and with occasional visitors 
 crowded the cool tiled gallery, he took his tea with 
 equal solemnity and seldom spoke unless he was di 
 rectly addressed; even then his mouth opened only 
 to sententious maxims or verbatim repetitions of 
 some previously rendered report. 
 
 Digby never tired of trying to draw him out. 
 "What was it you were telling me about the cat, 
 Pat?" 
 
 "It was this way, sor," Hogan complied solemnly. 
 "The cat was in an empty skip an' the spalpeen of a 
 peon opens the chute an' kilt the poor baste dead 
 with a load of ore an' then when it crawled out 
 half-way down the ropeway to the cable, screeching 
 an' squalling an' caterwauling, they let the next 
 bucket run down on the top of it an' murdered it 
 entirely so that it would have died inside the week 
 
 86
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 for all its nine lives if the missus herself hadn't 
 nursed it the night long." 
 
 "And what did you say to the gear-tender?" 
 asked Digby when the general laughter was over. 
 
 "I towld him," replied Pat, apparently unmoved, 
 "he wasn't fit to mind mice at a crossroads and that 
 if ever he did the kind again I'd bate his four bones 
 into a frog's jelly, comb his hair with the creepy 
 stool and murther the mother's sowl of him." 
 
 Mountain Acre was so near to the City that Eller- 
 ton found frequent opportunity to stop off two or 
 three days on his way from one company property 
 to another and visit it. At first his comings were 
 more or less forced by problems in which Digby re 
 quired his assistance, but as the years passed by and 
 the mine settled to a steady productive routine he 
 came more and more often partly because he had 
 done well for himself and had greater liberty and 
 partly because there was a charm, a security, a sense 
 of clean rest about the Digby house which acted on 
 him like a lodestone. 
 
 He was younger than his partner by eight years, 
 attractive, well-to-do and as a consequence sub- 
 
 87
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 jected in an unusual degree to the temptations which 
 assail such a man in a society relaxed from home 
 ties and home morals by the mere fact of a too- 
 sudden rise, both as to prosperity and numbers, in an 
 alien atmosphere. There are foreign colonies of 
 slow growth that work themselves into the weave 
 of the country of their location, choose the best in 
 a studied environment and gradually wed tradition 
 to tradition but the element of his compatriots in 
 which Ellerton mostly moved was not that of the 
 scattered many who had actually sent down new 
 roots but of the spectacular few who had the air of 
 picnickers on a holiday. 
 
 There were times when he could be gay with the 
 gayest but on occasion he would awake to thoughts 
 of Mountain Acre as of a green oasis in a desert of 
 dead ashes, a quiet well of cool water where the 
 thirst of the heart for those fundamental and simple 
 things upon which his generation had been nursed 
 to vigour could be appeased even though it were 
 never sated. On such days he would drop whatever 
 he was doing, take to horse or train or more recently 
 to motor and cover the intervening miles in an im 
 patience hard to reconcile with his usual careless 
 mood.
 
 'Father, I see a smile upon the face of the Earth." 
 'Hush! my son. Some mortal hath read a message."
 
 V A 7HILE the children were young, young enough 
 Y Y to be taken on the knee and ridden breathless 
 to the beat of a rhyme of Pat's teaching, 
 
 "How many miles to Dub-el-in ? 
 
 Three score and tin. 
 [Will we be there by candle-light ? 
 Yes, and back ag'in! 
 Hupp, hupp, my little horse, 
 Hupp, hupp, ag'in !" 
 
 Ellerton enjoyed them without any reservation but 
 when tHey attained to what grown-ups term the awk 
 ward age and the young inarticulately regard as the 
 epoch of durance vile during which within prison 
 bars they make acquaintance with books, teachers 
 and the metronome, he was conscious of impatience 
 at the rigid rules of tasks and silence and even in 
 the hours when these were suspended felt himself 
 to be a partner in the shyness which comes to youth 
 along with lanky, uncovered shanks. 
 
 During this period he rather shunned Mountain 
 90
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 Acre. He did not analyze the reason; had he 
 done so he would have found it rooted in his limita 
 tions as a bachelor who is without the capacity for 
 sympathy with that orderly, humdrum, even and 
 arduous interim which divides inconsequence from 
 purpose in children's lives and sets for the span 
 of each the unmistakable hallmark of the home. 
 
 These drowsy days of first instruction were not 
 without their underlay of charm to the initiated, 
 however; Mary loved them, sharing with Digby 
 revelations little in themselves but epochal when 
 illumined by that most poignant of the cries of won 
 der, "Flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone.'* 
 
 She herself taught the girls to play and here came 
 across the fact that there is a rock in the compo 
 sition of every human being, however unformed, 
 soft, animate and seemingly malleable to outside 
 influence, the mile-stone that marks the spot where 
 even the worm will turn. The look that would set 
 tle like a pall on Madeleine's features when at the 
 age of seven she was placed on a book-raised stool 
 before the piano was more than legible, it flamed in 
 livid words; conventionally toned down and trans 
 lated it would read somewhat as follows: "Damn!
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 Dod blast my splinters and the old cat's eye ! Silly, 
 silly, silly: one, two, three, bang! 'Bang! BANG!" 
 
 The oscillating finger of the metronome aggra 
 vated her to a point where rage could no longer be 
 contained and one day her mother came upon her 
 on the terrace just too late to save the hated instru 
 ment from being hurled over the balustrade, down 
 and down, to crash far below to the accompaniment 
 of a single word from Madeleine. 
 
 "Humpty!" she grunted and turned to take her 
 licking. 
 
 After a curtain consultation that night broken fre 
 quently by the admonition, "Dick! Dick! Don't 
 laugh so loud," it was decided that for the comfort 
 of all and in the name of common sense Madeleine 
 was to be informed on the following morning that 
 she might never, never again, play the piano. So 
 solemn was the pronouncement of sentence that she 
 cried as though her heart were broken but strangely 
 enough obeyed the injunction, spirit and letter, from 
 that day on. 
 
 In marked contrast Laura would sit at the piano 
 by the hour, not always playing, sometimes dream 
 ing, sometimes clasping trembling and inexpert fin- 
 
 92
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 gers in an agony of thwarted aspiration. More 
 than once she, too, broke into tears, wept softly 
 for the longing that was in her to bruise nothing 
 beautiful and for the impatience which overwhelmed 
 her desire. At such moments her mother would 
 carry her away and pet her. 
 
 "There, there, darling, don't I know how it is? 
 Don't I? You mustn't cry; soon you'll forget 
 your fingers, dear, and they'll be chasing your 
 dreams all up and down the keys." 
 
 That prophecy was fulfilled and as a result before 
 long Mary passed beyond her pedagogic depth ; she 
 was fortunate to be able to secure an excellent 
 teacher from the near-by town, a young woman, an 
 artist who had crawled into that soft clime to die 
 and found life too lingering sweet to quite let go. 
 She was an unassuming person too withdrawn to 
 impose a rule on recalcitrant pupils but tuned to 
 meet Laura's very need. 
 
 For daily lessons of a more practical nature the 
 children were handed over to Miss Downs, an Eng 
 lish spinster who lived in the home yet to the casual 
 observer appeared to be no more a part of it than 
 the stranger within its gates. The exact opposite 
 
 93
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 was true ; Miss Downs had so built herself into the 
 establishment that she was as unnoticeable as its 
 walls or oaken floors. She was studiedly colourless 
 in looks and in deportment, generically incapable of 
 an intrusion, deliberately devoid of expressed opin 
 ion; silently, completely given over to the efficient 
 performance of her duties. Upon meeting her one 
 remarked nothing of note but he who once knew 
 her despairs of depicting her in a paragraph. She 
 was in herself a volume of humanity, a national 
 monument to the finished art of minding one's own 
 affairs. 
 
 It was her business to ground the children thor 
 oughly in primary knowledge, to watch over their 
 deportment, to tone down their voices and to teach 
 them to distinguish Americanisms without oblit 
 erating them. Nothing could have exceeded the 
 absolute judicial impartiality with which she would 
 say, "In England we say of meat that it is under 
 done; in America you call it rare. They mean the 
 same." Or, "In England we call any footwear that 
 comes above the ankle a boot but when you say 
 boot you mean something that covers the calf of 
 the leg," 
 
 94
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 In the face of many transgressions she never in 
 flicted or requested from the children's parents 
 corporal punishment; she knew only perseverance. 
 N With never a variation she called Laura, My Dear ; 
 Madeleine, Darling, and Junior, Richard. Lacking 
 a home of her own, her room became her castle and 
 into it she retired when her duties were done or 
 her solitary walk over, never imposing her influence 
 beyond the confines of the house and her specifically 
 allotted hours. 
 
 It is hard to overestimate the grip acquired 
 through years of such unvarying deportment ; in its 
 long run it was bound to inculcate respect without 
 fear, solid friendship without demonstration of af 
 fection and a pondered recognition of fairness in 
 big and little things as the foundation of that loy 
 alty which is the flower, par excellence, on Anglo- 
 Saxon tradition. Poor, unasking Miss Downs! 
 She and her rare counterparts are of the steel 
 girders of the earth, destined to be buried but in 
 master masonry. 
 
 Once released from their lessons the children 
 were free of Mountain Acre and its immediate en 
 vironments save only the unattractive path to the 
 
 95
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 mine. They would play about the garden, the 
 stables or along the driveway but tended to gather 
 sooner or later at the back of the house where there 
 was a veritable colony of native dependents. Here 
 congregated Maria, the cook, an ogress subject to 
 occasional softenings of the heart; Maria Chica, 
 her assistant; Paula, Innocencia and Chucha, once 
 individual nurses to the three youngsters, now pro 
 moted to the category of housemaids and laundress ; 
 Pancho, the gardener, and a nameless helper; 
 finally, at varying hours of the day, all the relations 
 of the above to the third generation and the fif 
 teenth degree of cousinship. 
 
 In vain had Mrs. Digby fought against age-long 
 custom and precedent in kitchen hospitality; it was 
 as futile to warn off the courteous, mild-mannered, 
 soft-speeched throng as to shoo chickens away from 
 an unprotected heap of grain; it returned with 
 smiling, unwearying persistence. She could only 
 fall back on the expedient of doling out her serv 
 ants' strictly measured rations of beans, flour, meat 
 allowance and sugar daily and saving her nerves 
 by refraining from deliberate excursions to the rear 
 of the house. 
 
 96
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 So silent were the comings and goings of both the 
 domestics at their duties and the visitors who flitted 
 into the yard and away like shadows of ghosts 
 scorched dark by the sun that the peace of Moun 
 tain Acre was never disturbed to those who were 
 content to avoid the servants' restricted quarters, 
 drinking their fill of the quietude of the darkened 
 rooms, of the warm drowsy terrace or of the sun- 
 flecked garden. But for the children the afternoon 
 hour of village gossip, of the incessant pittapatting 
 of tortillas, of the pungent odours of chili-con-carne , 
 frijoles or a rare mole t verde in preparation or of the 
 skilful rolling of enchiladas, all foods which occa 
 sionally found their way to the family table but 
 robbed of the aperitif of open braziers and watering 
 mouths, was pregnant with excitement to every one 
 of their five senses. They looked longingly at the 
 coarse provender they were strictly forbidden to 
 share and joined freely in the chatter, flattered by 
 the lazy, good-natured consideration of all warm- 
 climed peoples for the words of a child. 
 
 Such epochs end in point of duration however 
 lasting the stamp they leave upon their product and 
 the day came when Miss Downs' mission at least 
 
 97
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 to that family was done and Mrs. Digby could 
 soften the break to herself and to the children in 
 the excitement of a journey home, long 1 pondered 
 and discussed, but which seemed nevertheless dras 
 tic and swift in its execution. She came back with 
 out the youngsters; even little Madeleine, now ten 
 years old, was left behind to attend school under 
 the guardianship of pleased and sadly deluded 
 grandparents. From that time on Mary appeared 
 to herself and her husband to be constantly packing 
 for a journey or unpacking from another ; a trip to 
 fetch the children, another to take them back, still 
 another because she was heartsick and one made 
 with the deliberate purpose of giving the baby of 
 the family a spanking she would not forget in a 
 year of Sundays. 
 
 During these comings and goings and long ab 
 sences Ellerton came back into his own; every 
 week-end and holiday that found him within reach 
 he spent at Mountain Acre, sometimes alone, some 
 times accompanied by four or five men of the same 
 stamp as Digby and himself, long limbed or tubby 
 but all bronzed, cool of eye and steady of hand, 
 men who had gambled with fate and could yet find 
 
 98
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 deep solace in those emblems of nationality, a game 
 of penny-ante or double pinochle at a quarter a 
 hundred. 
 
 Weightier matters, however, were not lost to 
 view and as a result a memorable week in the 
 autumn of 1906 brought two representatives from 
 the capital which had backed the Pico mine to de 
 cide definitely by conference on the spot on matters 
 of far-reaching importance. The four men spent 
 as many days in overalls; they crawled through 
 half-obstructed levels, descended on a rope-sling 
 shafts long unused, took samples of reef from deep 
 workings, studied the geological formation, argued 
 hotly as to its true reading with regard to breaks 
 and pinched leads, made assays and studied for 
 hours the life chart of the enterprise to date. When 
 every source of tangible evidence had been clawed 
 with a fine-toothed comb Powel, the elder of the 
 two visitors, broke a long silence with a single 
 question. 
 
 "You believe in it, Ellerton?" 
 
 "I believe in it so solidly," replied Ellerton, 
 "that I'm going to break all rules and tumble all the 
 eggs I can reach into this one basket." 
 
 99
 
 "And you?" asked Powel, turning to Digby. 
 
 Digby 's eyes assumed the same concentrated 
 glow which had come to them when Ellerton had 
 first sprung the project of the Pico mine; only now 
 it burned with an added almost fanatical intensity 
 as if the question were an aspersion on the stability, 
 worth and promise of that which he had built with 
 his own hands, bathed with the daily sweat of his 
 brow and inspired with the breath of life. He felt, 
 besides, the tugging of that bond of sympathy which 
 links the master-builder to his creation, endows the 
 inanimate with attributes of benevolence and im 
 poses a mutual loyalty. 
 
 "I go Rox one better," he said hoarsely. "I wager 
 what money I've got, wife and children." 
 
 "That settles it," said Powel soberly. "If we lose, 
 we lose in damned good company." 
 
 Digby could not sleep that night; his mind bored 
 into the mountain, sank shafts, ran tunnels, opened 
 levels and finally raised a monstrous mill that es 
 caped its control, swelled and rose until it threatened 
 to out-tower Babel and crash to its own and the 
 dreamer's destruction. In a vain effort to calm his 
 spirit he impelled his thoughts far afield until they 
 
 100
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 swept in review the whole course of an awakening 
 so wide-spread that the Pico mine became dwarfed 
 to the proportions of a mere hanger-on at the small 
 end of a mighty procession. 
 
 During twenty years his compatriots had poured 
 money into this country at the rate of fifty millions 
 a year. Rough-tongued, rough-handed, uncouth to 
 the eye and ear, they had yet constructed the cleanest 
 roads known to railway history the world over, res 
 urrected mines, established smelters, built foundries, 
 factories, breweries and all unconsciously played the 
 role of Frankenstein, created in a land of almost 
 universal bondage a new class, produced a social re 
 birth of that which had not existed in the memory 
 of the living, brought to life the wage-earner who 
 received payment for his labour in cash and not in 
 credit against the debts of his forebears. 
 
 "And it's only the beginning," murmured Digby 
 aloud, staring wide-eyed at the shadowy ceiling. 
 None knew better than he the extent of fertile un- 
 planted valleys, the bodies of untouched ore locked 
 behind barriers of transportation, the millions of 
 cattle without a market, the wealth of primeval for 
 ests and the broad field still barren of industries. He 
 
 101
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 felt the pride of a communion, a oneness, with a vast 
 surge of human prosperity, and gloried as had his 
 forefathers in the silent, deep-seated emotion of the 
 pioneer. 
 
 On the following day he summoned Mary, who 
 had gone to the City on the pretext of urgent shop 
 ping but in reality to give the four men a free hand, 
 release them from the exigencies of shaving, dress 
 ing and generally being polite while engrossed with 
 matters intimately allied to the soil, old clothes and 
 an occasional emphatic oath. She returned in time 
 to shine as hostess during two days of quiet but 
 none the less fervid rejoicing over a consummation 
 pregnant with possibilities. 
 
 The evening of the day when Ellerton, Powel and 
 his companion took their departure was one of pene- 
 trating silences. The silence of accustomed voices 
 recently withdrawn, of footsteps echoing in memory, 
 of drooping trees, drenching moonlight, creeping 
 shadows, pale snows and silver-ribboned waters afar, 
 entered into Digby's very soul as he gripped the 
 balustrade of the terrace, diffused his sense of entity, 
 wafted it out and away to partake of the cup of uni 
 versal knowledge. Suddenly he straightened with 
 
 1 02
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 a quick turn of his head toward Mary, who was 
 sitting near by watching him with a tender yet quiz 
 zical intensity. 
 
 "You didn't hear it, of course," he said with a 
 faint unreadable smile. 
 
 "Hear what, Dick?" asked Mary, her brows 
 puckering to a troubled frown. 
 
 "The voice of the valley," said Digby, still smil 
 ing. "Do you remember what I told you, Polly? 
 That it had a secret, a vast secret, and that I would 
 never rest till I'd read it? It spoke to me just now. 
 I I made it speak." 
 
 "And what did it say?" 
 
 "The earth is of the body of God." 
 
 "That's blasphemous," said Mary quickly, her lips 
 a proxy for her ancestors. 
 
 "No," said Digby calmly but frowning in concen 
 tration, "I haven't got all its meaning yet, but there's 
 more to it than that. The crowding of so much 
 beauty into the insignificant angle of a man's eye 
 can be a symbol beyond blasphemy. I guess such 
 things go by feeling." 
 
 Mary arose and came close to him ; a sense of sud 
 den loneliness possessed her as though a single deep 
 
 103
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 moment unshared were enough to open a chasm be 
 tween her heart and his. She looked not at the 
 valley but into his eyes as she whispered, "Dick, I 
 feel it too. Indeed I do." 
 
 His smiling eyes filled suddenly with moisture, he 
 forgot all but her tender anxiety, caught her in his 
 arms and held her tightly. "Mary, my darling," 
 he murmured, "I love you. You know that I love 
 you." 
 
 For one such moment after long association with 
 any woman a man may go on his knees and thank 
 God. Digby was not conscious of reverence but he 
 knew that he was happy beyond the just allotment to 
 any individual; consequently it was almost as an 
 earnest to his fatalism that a cablegram arrived on 
 the following day laconically announcing the sus 
 pension of Madeleine from school a fortnight before 
 the close of the term. From herself came a char 
 acteristic supplementary message: "Don't worry 
 why they promised to let me tell it myself." 
 
 Ten days later came a letter from the head-mis 
 tress of the school addressed to Mary. She read it 
 eagerly, her eyes turned absurdly blank and then 
 flashed angrily. "Dick, what do you think of this? 
 
 104
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 Listen. 'My dear Mrs. Digby. We have been 
 forced to suspend Madeleine ; when she confesses to 
 you as she has promised to do, you will know why 
 we could take no other course, why I despair of tell 
 ing you about it by letter, why we will be glad to 
 receive her again in the fall and above everything 
 else why we love her behind her back/ ' 
 
 "Is that all?" asked Digby. 
 
 "Every word except the 'cordially yours,' etc.," 
 replied Mary. "What does she mean? What does 
 she mean?" 
 
 "There, there, now," warned Digby, "if you begin 
 that way curiosity will be picking the bones of what's 
 left of you by the time Madeleine gets here." 
 
 "I'm not curious," declared Mary, angry tears 
 in her eyes. "My own baby !" 
 
 "Now, Mary," said Digby in a tone he seldom 
 used, "you read the thing over again. It's a mighty 
 clever letter, comforting from start to finish and just 
 means that Madeleine, true to form, has invented 
 some entirely new breed of scrape which can't be 
 described in the mails.'* 
 
 "Dick!" cried Mary horrified, but with lips 
 tempted to smile, "how; can you say such a thing." 
 
 105
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 "I don't mean what you think," hedged Digby 
 hurriedly. "What I meant is that the words that 
 would make the matter clear aren't available yet to 
 -the general public and won't be until Madeleine re 
 leases them." 
 
 Mary thought soberly for a while and then de 
 liberately faced about within herself and arrived at 
 a decision of patience; during the three weeks that 
 intervened before Digby was to depart to meet the 
 three children who were coming by steamer to the 
 nearest port chaperoned by friends of the family 
 she never once reopened the subject. 
 
 "My dear," said Digby as he kissed her good-by, 
 "you are wonderful. I could almost promise not to 
 let her tell me until we get back." 
 
 "Don't be silly," said Mary, giving him smile for 
 smile. "Now go or you'll miss the train." 
 
 Two days later as he stood on the wharf and 
 looked up at his children crowding excitedly to the 
 rail of the steamer Digby felt a pride that for a 
 moment usurped the rightful place of affection. 
 They had more than the beauty of youth ; character, 
 distinction and each an individuality which he alone 
 could read in the light of all the years of their lives. 
 
 1 06
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 Laura, though only nineteen, had come into the full 
 legacy of womanhood ; she was as old to-day as she 
 would ever be. Her expression was one of sweet 
 ness that would live beyond knowledge because her 
 heart was born choked with tenderness for every 
 thing that suffers. 
 
 To look upon Junior's face, resolute, round- 
 cheeked, warm-lipped but blatantly young, it was 
 difficult to believe that he had already passed his 
 examinations for college with flying colours. There 
 was a shy light in his eyes of questioning before the 
 door of life overlaid by a brazen stare which pre 
 tended to the world that if he had not seen all dark 
 things he at least knew about them. Close beside 
 him, one hand on his shoulder, stood Madeleine in a 
 cloud of tumbled hair, light as the breezes that 
 frolicked with it. Her cheeks were a flame of 
 subtly changing colour, her lips were red, mobile, 
 closing and parting as though to kiss good-by each 
 regretted passing breath of the joy of being. She 
 was just fifteen; kittens played in her eyes, mis 
 chievous, demure, sometimes still, abnormally still, 
 waiting to pounce. As they met her father's gaze 
 they flashed defiance and then suddenly melted to a 
 
 107
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 look of heartrending wistfulness that brought a 
 lump to his throat. 
 
 On the way to the train she snuggled up to him 
 and whispered, "Not here, Daddy, not to-day. At 
 Mountain Acre, sometime." 
 
 He pressed her arm in silent understanding, 
 waited and persuaded Mary to wait for five long 
 days. Mrs. Digby yielded to one temptation and 
 felt ashamed of her weakness the moment after; she 
 asked Laura in an hour when they were alone if 
 she or Junior had learned what had happened. 
 Laura's steady eyes tenderly amused had brought 
 a quick flush to her mother's cheeks and swift re 
 pentance to her heart. She felt a culprit, immeas 
 urably younger than her daughter. 
 
 "I'm sorry I said anything, dear," she whispered 
 hurriedly. "Don't tell." 
 
 "Why, Mother darling," cried Laura with a soft 
 laugh. "There's simply not a thing to tell. There 
 never was a girl like Madeleine. Not a word, not 
 one single word and Junior after her day and night 
 for a solid week !" 
 
 Five long days during which the house and all it 
 contained seemed hung in suspension by a thread 
 
 108
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 and in danger of falling with a crash at a laugh, a 
 loud word or even a too expressive sigh and then at 
 night, just after dinner, Madeleine grew restless, 
 walked with sharp turns on the terrace, suddenly ap 
 proached her father, caught his hand and laid her 
 cheek against his shoulder. "It's so lovely and still 
 and dark in the garden, Daddy." 
 
 He went with her swiftly, with never a look back 
 at Mary and the older children who might quite 
 pardonably have burst into screams at- this harbinger 
 of imminent deliverance from long waiting. He did 
 not let Madeleine stop in the garden; instinctively 
 he felt that an acre would not quite hold the story 
 that was coming and so led her slowly under the 
 wide privet arch and far down the driveway. It 
 was a night of velvet blackness shot with a shimmer 
 ing silver half-light from a myriad crowding stars. 
 
 "I couldn't tell you sooner," murmured Made 
 leine, "because of the moon. It's dark to-night," 
 she added ruefully, "but somehow I can see you and 
 of course you can see me. I nc /er knew stars could 
 be nasty before." 
 
 Digby stopped and stared at her. In that moment 
 conviction came to him of her beauty not as that of 
 
 109
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 his child beheld with generous love but as a demon 
 stration patent to the eyes of all the world, of men, 
 of the trees that drooped to touch her as she passed, 
 of the flowers that nodded primly as to a rival. She 
 was dressed in a little frock of plaited, clinging red, 
 cut in a shallow scallop at the neck, short-sleeved. 
 Against its dark warmth her throat and bare arms 
 showed white as milk on raspberries. The long 
 lashes of her eyes made her seem to peer from 
 shadows. 
 
 "If you wish," he said, "I'll turn my head the 
 other way while you tell me." 
 
 "Would you?" said Madeleine eagerly and then 
 cried with sudden decision, "No! Look at me; I'm 
 going to tell you now." Her voice dropped to a 
 lower tone. "Daddy," she continued, "it was a very 
 hot day, not clean hot like here but muggy, nasty, 
 clammy hands, you know." 
 
 "Of course I do," agreed Digby. 
 
 "In the morning they had dragged us out in the 
 broiling sun for natr.rc study and the only last thing 
 we saw or heard was a pestering old Teacher bird 
 that we'd studied over and over again and he kept 
 following us around, sniggering 'Teacher, teacher, 
 teach-ti.* You know." 
 
 no
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 Digby nodded with pursed lips. 
 
 "Well, in the afternoon the editors of the School 
 
 \ 
 
 Zephyr, silly name, came and told me they were 
 going to print a Hot Weather Anthology and every 
 girl in our class was to write one and I said, 'what 
 is an anthology?' and they said, 'a collection of 
 choice extracts from authors, please won't you write 
 one, the prize is Nellie Blythe's silver-mounted fly- 
 swatter.' So I said I would and I did and I won 
 the swatter and then I got suspended and and 
 that's all" 
 
 "Oh, no, it isn't, Maddie," said Digby. "Come 
 now, tell me what you wrote." 
 
 "Every word ?" pleaded Madeleine. 
 
 "Every last single word." 
 
 "Oh, Daddy, are you sure you realize what a hot 
 and muggy and clammy and sticky and nasty day 
 it was ; poisonously hot and muggy and " 
 
 "Yes, yes," interrupted Digby, pretending to wipe 
 sweat from his brow. "I've often come near lying, 
 dear, on a day like that." 
 
 "Oo-o-oh, Daddy," exclaimed Madeleine. 
 
 Digby nodded his head gravely. "Mighty near." 
 
 "Well!" said Madeleine, "that makes it easier. 
 Here here goes: 
 
 in
 
 HOT WEATHER ANTHOLOGY 
 TURTLE SONG 
 
 Were I a turtle on a limb, 
 
 Beside some noisome pool, 
 
 And could I like a turtle swim, 
 
 I'd never go to school! 
 
 I'd sit beneath my bony dome 
 
 And listen to the rain, 
 
 And if my mother called me home 
 
 I'd crawl into a drain, 
 
 Hobnob with oysters in the shell, 
 
 Blow bubbles all day long! 
 
 The Teacher bird could go to Hell, = 
 
 I'd sing my own darned song." 
 
 Digby suddenly crumpled at the knees, sat on his 
 heels, buried his face in his folded arms and broke 
 down ; his shoulders heaved spasmodically. "Leave 
 me," he gasped, "please leave me." 
 
 "Father!" cried Madeleine, stooping over him; 
 oh, Daddy, oh please don't, Daddy. I tell you I'm 
 sorry/' 
 
 She stopped speaking abruptly and straightened; 
 the odd sounds that were clawing their way out of 
 her father's throat were not sobs; they suddenly 
 freed themselves and developed into a peal of 
 laughter that rang the gong of echo a mile away. 
 
 na
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 "You think it's funny, do you ?" cried Madeleine 
 and in the reaction from the very real strain she had 
 been under forgot relationship completely, grasped 
 two handfuls of her father's hair and pulled with all 
 her might. He broke loose, arose, tore up the drive 
 way as fast as he could run and burst upon the dum- 
 founded group on the terrace with Madeleine fol 
 lowing hard at his heels. She was in a towering 
 rage and before her father could recover his breath 
 she exploded : 
 
 "Don't you tell ! Don't you dare tell. If you do, 
 I'll hate every last one of you always and always 
 and always." 
 
 Digby sobered immediately. "Look here, Mad^ 
 die," he said. "I won't tell, but listen to me. You 
 know it's absolutely impossible for your mother or 
 Laura or even Junior to sleep until they hear the 
 muggy-day poem that got you fired from school. I 
 laughed; I couldn't help it, but that doesn't mean 
 you haven't done a naughty thing. I won't tell but 
 you will." 
 
 "I I won't," said Madeleine. 
 
 Digb/s eyes turned to the gray of steel, they 
 seized on, Madeleine's and locked in a gaze that 
 
 "3
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 meant life or death to him. "Tell," he said quietly, 
 "or take a whipping you'll never forget, big girl 
 that you are." 
 
 "W-well, whu whip me, then," sobbed Made 
 leine, tears pouring down her cheeks. 
 
 Mary threw herself forward on her knees and 
 wrapped her arms around the child's waist. "Made 
 leine," she said, "your father will never whip you, 
 never in this wide world ; but if you don't make him 
 laugh again now, you'll do a cruel thing to us all, 
 you'll bring the first great unhappiness that ever 
 came to Mountain Acre." 
 
 Madeleine stopped crying; her face broke into a 
 slow smile and into her eyes there sprang that swift 
 look of liquid wistfulness which struck straight at 
 the heart. "I'd do anything in the world for my 
 Daddy," she gasped in one long breath, straightened 
 in her mother's arms, froze her gaze to a stony stare 
 and once more recited the Turtle Song with a single 
 change, she said damn instead of darned. 
 
 The others laughed, like Digby they couldn't help 
 it, but he strode forward, snatched up his big baby, 
 kissed her with the trembling lips of adoration and 
 carried her away to bed. 
 
 114
 
 Romance? Two turtle doves 
 with an echo in every heart!"
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 A FEW days later Ellerton arrived unannounced 
 at Mountain Acre; he had known for over a 
 month that the children were expected but the fact 
 had not impressed itself on his mind. It was two 
 years since he had seen Madeleine or Junior and 
 over three since Laura had last come home; as a 
 consequence he had grown accustomed to dropping 
 in without the slightest formality on Digby, feeling 
 sure that he would cause no inconvenience. If it 
 were during winter Mary was usually there but she 
 had spent the last three summers away and as the 
 weather on this particular day was exceedingly 
 warm it acted on Ellerton by suggestion and gave 
 him a hazy impression that he was to find his partner 
 a grass-widower, orphaned of his offspring and 
 eager for company. 
 
 Such aberrations of the mind are of common oc 
 currence ; one finds one's self convinced for no valid 
 reason that Wednesday is Sunday or that west is 
 east on a familiar street and an awakening from any 
 
 116
 
 NUT T ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 such deluded condition is as real as that of being 
 dragged to consciousness out of actual slumber. 
 Ellerton was preoccupied with thoughts of mines, 
 business and the money market when having left his 
 car at the stables he entered the gate to the garden 
 at Mountain Acre and came upon a slim vision in 
 white bending over a half -opened rose. 
 
 He stopped and stared; not for a moment did it 
 occur to him that the apparition might be Mary 
 caught in an effort to renew her youth and at the 
 same time meet the weather half-way by arraying 
 herself in a diaphanous clinging garment of some 
 what less than ankle length. He knew Mary too 
 well, every pose of her body and mind had matured 
 through long years under his eyes and eliminated all 
 possibility of a confusion of her identity with that of 
 this stranger. 
 
 So still was everything around, the fixed, sharply 
 cut shadows of the sun-bathed hedges and trees, the 
 soft warm air, the abnormally quiet house, that -it 
 seemed to him in his trance-like mood that he had 
 entered to a lovely scene of abandonment and come 
 upon the incarnated spirit of beauty in the .act of 
 taking inventory. The stooping figure sensed his 
 
 117
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 presence, straightened and turned in a single supple 
 movement devoid of abruptness as though no event 
 could startle its habitual calm in action. 
 
 Ellerton found himself face to face with a girl 
 almost as tall as himself ; her head was carried with 
 that eager lilt which imbues flowers in the cool of 
 early morning, her shoulders were slim but erect and 
 proportioned to her body which forced attention not 
 so much by its veiled suggestions of perfection as by 
 the swift impression that it was the symbol of a state 
 of mind, a visible expression of a rule of life. Her 
 eyes as they met his were bemused with dreams but 
 suddenly awakened to a wide-open grayness which 
 immediately haunted his recollection and puzzled 
 him by confusion with his recent thoughts of Digby. 
 Thus had Dick looked at him out of those selfsame 
 eyes many and many a time. 
 
 "I I beg your pardon," he stammered, snatching 
 off his soft hat and crumpling it nervously in his 
 hands. He was not aware how outrageously he was 
 staring until the eyes suddenly filled with laughter; 
 then came recognition, overwhelming, breath-taking 
 in its implications of cosmic changes in an old world. 
 His lips parted to the cry of Laura! but no sound 
 
 118
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 issued. Why ? He did not know ; it was as though 
 he stood outside himself, observing the contractions 
 of his own throat, the wave of colour that flooded 
 his bronzed cheeks, listening to the pounding of his 
 own heart and cursing the outrageous fixity of his 
 paralyzed gaze. 
 
 Laura, too, had started to speak, to call him Uncle 
 Rox and make fun of him for not knowing her but 
 the alien force which had so suddenly possessed 
 itself of Ellerton, body and soul, is seldom limited to 
 a single direction; it is an ambient, an aura, within 
 whose prescribed reach men and women breathe 
 equally an air of suspended joy and peril, an air in 
 which message and answer are apt to fuse to a be 
 wildering oneness that makes the quickened heart 
 beat to the confused measure of "Guilty; Not 
 Guilty." 
 
 As without conscious volition Laura met Eller- 
 ton's look in spirit as well as in fact, the old familiar 
 words died on her lips and a faint flush rose to her 
 pale cheeks. There was no giving of self in the sur 
 render of her eyes ; only a questioning wonder linked 
 to the courage of investigation as if she accepted 
 new worlds as incident to the scheme of any indi- 
 
 119
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 vidual progression and entitled to an appropriate 
 measure of understanding. But so unheralded was 
 the experience which now held her in its puzzling 
 grip that for a moment her sense of innate poise 
 failed her and she felt lost upon an unstable sea. 
 She knew instinctively that in this sole instance she 
 could not look to Ellerton for help and it was by a 
 deliberate exertion of the will that she finally 
 wrenched herself back to a more normal but still 
 faintly palpitating condition of mind and body. 
 
 Her lips, which had been parted in suspense, broke 
 ,to a shy smile. "You didn't know me," she mur 
 mured. 
 
 "No," said Ellerton, still staring at her, "I didn't 
 know you." 
 
 Laura's eyes wandered from his face; she felt 
 vaguely that it was unfair of him not to aid her 
 effort to regain the dry land of every-day associa 
 tions. "Junior and Madeleine have gone for a ride," 
 she said inconsequently, "but Mother is somewhere 
 in the house. Shall we look for her?" 
 
 Ellerton sighed and at last came to himself. "Yes, 
 let's/' he said quite easily but without familiarity. 
 "Where's your father?" 
 
 Laura glanced at him with a gleam of mischief 
 1 20
 
 in her eye. Who should know better than Ellerton 
 where Digby would be at that hour of the day ? "I 
 think he's at the mine," she answered demurely. 
 "It's beyond the house, you know; around the moun 
 tain." 
 
 He forced a smile to his set lips. "Yes, I remem 
 ber," he said. "I think you'd better not bother your 
 mother just now; I'll go straight through and find 
 him." 
 
 Her eyes still smiling but with a puzzled frown 
 wrinkling her usually placid forehead, Laura 
 watched his erect figure pass through the wicket and 
 along the short visible reach of the path to the mine ; 
 as it disappeared, cut from sight by the protruding 
 buttress of the mountain, she turned slowly and went 
 to find her mother. 
 
 "Mr. Ellerton has come," she said. 
 
 "Mr. Ellerton ?" repeated Mary. "Oh, you mean 
 your Uncle Rox." She glanced up at Laura's face 
 and found there a faintly smiling expression new to 
 her experience of her children. "Don't you, Laura?" 
 she asked after a perceptible pause. 
 
 Laura fingered a book lying on the table at her 
 hand, glanced down at it and then raised her eyes 
 frankly to her mother's face. "I don't know whether 
 
 121
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 I do or not," she said. "You see, Mother, he didn't 
 know me. He stared at me so queerly and even 
 when it came over him who I was he didn't call me 
 Laura, not once, or even shake hands. Isn't it 
 funny?" 
 
 Mary did not answer; she pretended to be ab 
 sorbed in her work but her brows slowly gathered in 
 a troubled frown. Laura started to leave the room 
 but as she reached the door her mother spoke, 
 "Where did Rox go, dear?" 
 
 "To the mine," said Laura. "He must have 
 come just to see Father." 
 
 Mary glanced at her, met her eyes and smiled. 
 "Come here, dear. Keep me company and tell me 
 all about it." 
 
 Laura sat down on a stool at her feet. "I was in 
 the garden near the gate and felt somebody behind 
 me. I looked around and there he stood staring and 
 snatching off his hat and saying 'I I beg your 
 pardon/ just like that." 
 
 "Didn't he smile or look surprised ?" 
 
 "No, he just stared and got red. He looked like 
 a nice boy the first time he speaks to you." 
 
 "And then what happened?" 
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 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 "Well, for just a moment I looked at him the way 
 he was looking at me. I didn't mean to; something 
 made me, and after that I don't know just why but 
 I just couldn't call him Uncle Rox and he didn't call 
 me Laura. I said, 'You didn't know me/ and he 
 said no he didn't in a queer tone as though he felt 
 we ought to be introduced." 
 
 The frown had gone from Mrs. Digby's face ; she 
 smiled and murmured, "Poor old Rox." 
 
 "It's odd," mused Laura aloud, "but he didn't 
 look a bit old to-day, Mother; he was just like a boy 
 after he's slipped on a dancing-floor and, some 
 how I didn't laugh at him until it was too late." 
 
 "Nevertheless, he's twice as old as you, my dear," 
 said Mary practically, "old enough to be your 
 father." 
 
 "That would make him thirty-eight," said Laura 
 pensively. 
 
 Ellerton did not return to the house until Digby 
 was free to come with him; he greeted Madeleine 
 with a kiss and Junior with a hearty slap on the back, 
 but after the first laughing flush of welcome was 
 past he subsided into a strangely detached mood 
 which lasted through dinner, well into the evening 
 
 123
 
 NOT ALL 'THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 and at length attracted Digby's attention and made 
 him remark, "What's the matter, Rox? You're as 
 solemn as an owl. What's worrying you?" 
 i "Me? Nothing," replied Ellerton, straining his 
 ears to catch the words of a song which Laura was 
 just finishing. He left his seat, walked up and 
 down the terrace, stopped before one of the open 
 French windows to the living-room and finally 
 slipped through it. Laura was seated at the piano, 
 looking down absent-mindedly at her slim pale 
 hands which lingered on the notes she had last 
 touched. 
 
 "What is the name of that song?" asked Ellerton, 
 forcing into his voice a naturalness he did not feel. 
 
 She was not startled ; she let her fingers slip from 
 the keys and turned to him with a welcoming smile. 
 "It's an Irish love song called Happy Land" she 
 said. "Would you like me to sing it again ?" 
 
 "Please," he begged. 
 
 Bending over the piano she struck a single chord, 
 then threw back her head and sang. Her voice 
 lacked the power which fills the farthest limits of an 
 auditorium, but it had a searching quality that in 
 fallibly reached the heart. Within the confines of 
 
 124
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 the sitting-room it was clear, warm and full in its 
 intonations, all-possessive. Ellerton listened to the 
 words of the song with an intensity which left them 
 printed for all time on his memory. 
 
 "I do not fear for thee, asthore, 
 
 Who hold my heart and hand ; 
 I can not pledge thee gold galore, 
 Nor more than Happy Land. 
 
 "Thou hast a kingdom in my breast 
 Knows never bourn nor bound ; 
 Fly high, fly low, yet come to rest, 
 My love's the world around. 
 
 "So much I pledge nor any more, 
 
 Here's all my loyal stand, 
 I do not fear for thee, asthore, 
 Who hold my heart and hand." 
 
 She finished and turned with a light question on 
 her lips, but did not ask it; Ellerton seemed quite 
 unconscious of her, absorbed in thoughts so deep 
 and so withdrawn that they left his eyes staring, 
 his face a blank. She wondered if he had been 
 listening but took no petty offense; because it was 
 her nature to comfort and to soothe she stayed at 
 the piano and played one wordless melody after 
 
 125
 
 another until she heard him get up and slip quietly 
 away. 
 
 Ellerton was still virilely young; his body demand 
 ed seven hours' sleep and three square meals a day 
 and it was his practise to see that it got them. On this 
 night, however, he broke all rules, paced his room 
 until every one else had gone to bed and then quietly 
 opened the French window leading to the garden 
 and stepped out. The night was still, as had been 
 the day, but much cooler; there was a lift in the air 
 that cleared the mind, charged the blood and set 
 feet a-longing for distant places. He walked rapidly 
 and far but when toward dawn he found himself 
 back at Mountain Acre he was still loathe to go in 
 and paced up and down the driveway, hands clasped 
 behind his back, head hung low in thought. 
 
 At last he came to some decision which seemed to 
 clear the decks for action ; erect he walked straight 
 to his room and to bed ; in ten minutes he was sound 
 asleep. On the following day he was nervous, but 
 in quite a different manner from the night before; 
 he laughed, chatted, entered into the family circle as 
 of old but always with a reservation like one who 
 awaits his hour and is doing his best to kill the in 
 tervening time agreeably. When bedtime came, he 
 
 126
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 held back Digby and his wife by a remark casual on 
 the surface but sufficient for his purpose. 
 
 "You two aren't going in yet, are you ? It's early." 
 
 The three sat in silence for some time until Eller- 
 ton felt he was secure from interruption, then he 
 arose and paced up and down before Richard and 
 Mary, never going more than a couple of steps be 
 yond them in either direction, puffing furiously at a 
 cigarette and saying not a word. Mary's nerves 
 were the first to give way. 
 
 "For heaven's sake, Rox," she said, "sit down.'* 
 
 Ellerton promptly obeyed; with elbows on wide 
 spread knees he ran a hand through his crisp dark 
 hair ; for a moment he stared at the tiles between his 
 feet, then he looked up and met four curious and 
 pitying eyes with a nervous twisted smile. "Dick," 
 he said, "I've tackled a hard job. I I think I'll just 
 talk to you and and Mary can listen." 
 
 "Thank you," said Mary meekly. 
 
 "Oh, come now, Polly," protested Digby. "You 
 know perfectly well what Rox means ; he's got some 
 thing on his heart that requires man-talk and if you 
 weren't you, he wouldn't even let you hear it." 
 
 Ellerton nodded emphatically. "That's it," he 
 said. "You know me, Dick. You know every life 
 
 127
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 I've ever lived, good, bad and indifferent, and if 
 there's anything you think you don't know, why I'm 
 ready to prove up. All that has to go by record and 
 we needn't talk about it now. You probably re 
 member too a lot of the things I've said about the 
 special brand of fool that will marry a girl half 
 his age." 
 
 Digby straightened in his chair, whistled and 
 then laughed. "Well," he cried, "what do you know 
 about this! Who's the happy girl, Rox?" 
 
 Ellerton stared at him with an expression of com 
 miseration for his dullness and unbecoming mirth. 
 "Why, who do you think?" he asked. 
 
 "Laura," murmured Mary. 
 
 A half-finished cigar dropped from Digby's fin 
 gers, suddenly unnerved ; his jaw fell and he sobered 
 immediately. "Laura!" he whispered. "Why, 
 Laura " 
 
 "I know everything you're going to say," inter 
 rupted Ellerton, "and some that you wouldn't dare. 
 You think of Laura as still one of your babies, a 
 child, in a measure still a mental dependent, but she's 
 none of those things ; God has finished making the 
 of her. Don't ask "me how I know it; I just 
 128
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 do. Now, Dick, the things you wouldn't dare think 
 are the things I've said to myself in days gone by 
 about the physical limit of loyalty and that a man 
 who marries half his age deliberately pawns his 
 wife's honour and crucifies his own. I still believe 
 it for the common run of women, but " 
 
 "But Laura is of other flesh," interrupted Mary, 
 a little bitterly. 
 
 Ellerton turned on her. "You have said it," he 
 cried, his cheeks flushed, his eyes shining. "I don't 
 know what you meant us to think but you've said 
 the truth, put words to the belief that is deep in my 
 heart and in Dick's and in yours, too. She is of 
 other flesh. Don't think I'm so old-fashioned as to 
 have come to you two for permission to court her; 
 it isn't that. Because she is so young I'm serving 
 warning on you so that if you don't like it, you can 
 fight in the open as I am going to do! If I can win 
 her, if I can only win herself, no consideration of 
 friendship, or money or old ties will be too great to 
 lay at her feet." 
 
 "Here!" cried Digby, recovering his usual sane 
 outlook ; "cut out the hysterics, Rox, and go to bed. 
 That's what Mary and I are going to do. YouVc 
 
 129
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 put a rather astonishing proposition frankly before 
 us; now let us sleep on it. You can't add anything 
 to what you've said except poetry and if you start in 
 on that I'll throw you over the balustrade; which 
 would save us all a lot of hard thinking." 
 
 He got up, laid his hands on Ellerton's shoulders 
 and smilingly looked him straight in the eyes. 
 "Keep your mind even, old boy. Between you and 
 Mary and me there's something that Rox Ellerton 
 can't break. It's just possible that she and I may 
 decide to play what cards we have against yours, in 
 which case we'll tell you; but as you said we both 
 know Laura. Perhaps she'd make us feel like fools 
 if we tried to teach her how to play her lone hand 
 and the chances are we'll have sense enough to stay 
 out of the game from this minute on." 
 
 Ellerton asked no more ; he turned to Mrs. Digby 
 and held out his hand. "Good night, Mary. You 
 won't hold the madman I've been against me, will 
 you ?" he asked quietly. 
 
 "No, Rox," said Mary. "I'm with Dick, always." 
 
 Within two days he cornered her to demand what 
 on earth it was possible and proper for a suitor to 
 give a girl in a land where there were no English 
 
 130
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 bookshops, no bonbons and where flowers were 
 spread by an impartial God in a limitless carpet for 
 the feet of the just and the unjust to tread upon. 
 Mary laughed. "None of that, Rox," she said. "If 
 I'm out of the game, I'm out of it. Fight your own 
 battle, but don't tread on. my toes." 
 
 The courting of Laura afforded much carefully 
 concealed amusement to the family, to herself more 
 than to any other of its members ; not until Ellerton 
 was well on his way did it begin to dawn on his ob 
 servers that he had laid his plans with all the fore 
 thought and meticulous attention to details of a 
 Napoleon preparing a campaign for the overthrow 
 of an empire. In the matter of gifts alone he 
 showed a power of imagination for which Mary had 
 never given him credit. Once it was a bit of bro 
 cade, a cope, so beautiful, so old yet intact, that it 
 seemed in itself a worthy and lasting bloom on the 
 fairest of all religions. 
 
 He brought it out and draped it over a chair. 
 "How do your toes feel about this ?" he asked Mary. 
 "Picked it up in the Thieves' Market for a song." 
 
 Again it was a pair of bronze candle-sticks of un 
 usual design or a bit of genuine Puebla ware or a
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 painted fan frail as the wings of a moth but yet 
 outlasting by generations the woman who first cast 
 a murdering glance or blew a kiss from its shelter. 
 To this series, stretched over a period of months, he 
 added a tiny eagle of gold, half an inch across its 
 outstretched wings, six feathers to each wing, six 
 to the tail, a monstrous head, thick-beaked and 
 crested, a hollow, squat body and beneath the tail 
 two fixed rings in line, which showed the long wear 
 of a cord. Laura was fascinated by the toy; she 
 held it in the palm of her hand, turned it this way 
 and that, discovered that the slimmest of her chains 
 would pass through the rings and thereafter wore 
 it as a locket To Mary it appeared the most inno 
 cent of Ellerton's gifts until one night it drew 
 Digby's attention as he kissed Laura good night. 
 The two younger children had long since been re 
 turned to school and college. 
 
 "Is your little eagle wished on ?" he asked. 
 
 "No, indeed," cried Laura, flushing at the smile 
 which accompanied the question. 
 
 "Then leave it with me," begged her father. 
 "You've never given me a chance really to look 
 at it." 
 
 132
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 "You may keep it for a week," said Laura, as she 
 passed the chain over her head ; but she waited. 
 
 Digby took the trinket beneath a lamp and exam 
 ined it closely with his naked eye, then he reached for 
 a reading-glass and finally went into the house to fetch 
 a microscope. Ellerton had begun to show signs of 
 nervousness and now thought he saw his chance. 
 
 "I think I'll go for a bit of a walk,'* he said and 
 started. 
 
 "Wait a minute, Rox, please," said Mary. 
 "There's something I wanted to ask you. I've for 
 gotten what about, but I'll think of it again in a 
 moment." 
 
 Before she could remember the important matter 
 that had slipped her mind Digby came back, still 
 wearing the monocle microscope in his eye, a sign 
 sufficient in itself to prove to his wife how deeply he 
 was moved out of his habitual calm. 
 
 "Rox," he said, "this thing is annealed." 
 
 "No !" cried Ellerton, trying his best to show sur 
 prise. "Let me have a look." 
 
 Mary and Laura glanced at each other with puz 
 zled eyes, as though sharing on an equal footing 
 thoughts of the foolishness of men. 
 
 133
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 "What if it is annealed, Dick?" asked Mrs. Digby. 
 "What difference does it make?" 
 
 "A difference," said Digby still engrossed, "of 
 three hundred years, perhaps five. Look at it, my 
 dear." He laid it in her hand. "You can hardly 
 tell it with the naked eye but the thing isn't sol 
 dered; it's built up from a single nugget of gold, 
 annealed into its intricate shape. It certainly dates 
 from before the Conquest." 
 
 "Does that mean it's worth a great deal?" asked 
 Mary. 
 
 "You can't measure a thing like that in money," 
 said Digby. "There's ten dollars' worth of gold in 
 it; the right collector of Aztecana would give thou 
 sands to own it" 
 
 "Something has happened to my toes," said Mary, 
 "they feel crushed." 
 
 "Perhaps they've gone to sleep," said Laura in 
 quick sympathy. 
 
 "Perhaps you had better, too," replied Mary. 
 "It's getting very late. Leave the eagle behind, dear ; 
 Rox didn't know what he was giving away." 
 
 Laura sighed, slipped the trinket off her chain and 
 handed it to Ellerton. He took it and as she looked 
 up at him with a smile that begged his forgiveness 
 
 134
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 for the hurt, his eyes suddenly flamed as on the day 
 he had found her in the garden ; they possessed her 
 own, established a swirling ambient of emotion 
 which made her feel faint yet sustained as though 
 he and she were in suspension from the world, iso 
 lated, beyond the reach of any harm that was not in 
 themselves. The proof that he felt that same divi 
 sion was in his words when he spoke as if they two 
 were alone. 
 
 "They can't understand," he said with low inten 
 sity, "that every gift I bring you must have some 
 thing of me, of what I believe to be the best, 
 something that will show you my measure of values ; 
 frailty stealing a / day from eternity, enduring beauty 
 and the little things which are without price." 
 
 "I know," murmured Laura and, startled at the 
 sound of her own voice, tore her eyes from his and 
 fled. He turned and marched from the terrace into 
 the garden, erect, buoyant, as though he were keep 
 ing step to the Song of Songs. 
 
 "Well !" exclaimed Digby, staring at Mary, "you 
 certainly turned over the applecart." 
 
 "Who could have believed he would have had the 
 impertinence?" asked Mary ruefully in self-defense. 
 "I wonder where he thought we were." 
 
 135
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 "Out of it, my dear," said Digby, rising and 
 knocking the ashes from his pipe. "Entirely out 
 of it." 
 
 For a time Ellerton brought no more gifts; his 
 activity took an entirely new and puzzling direction 
 which consisted in never coming to Mountain Acre 
 unaccompanied. He would write or wire for per 
 mission and bring one after another of the wide 
 circle of young men who were proud to be counted 
 even in the outer circle of his acquaintance and 
 would carry his generosity to the length of leaving 
 Laura alone with each of the callow youths for hours 
 at a time. At first she was puzzled, then bored and 
 finally troubled ; she went to her mother. 
 
 "Mother," she said, "please stop them coming." 1 
 "Who, dear ? The very young men ?" 
 Laura nodded. "I I can't understand it; do 
 you? Is it something we can laugh at? If it is, 
 please tell me. Do you understand what he's driv 
 ing at now?" 
 
 "Yes," said Mary, "I think I do. I'm beginning 
 to see, dear, that Rox has depths I never gave him 
 credit for ; he'll be glad when I tell him we can't be 
 bothered any more." 
 
 136
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 To a man such an involute reply would have 
 meant nothing, but to Laura it was quite satisfying. 
 "Will he?" she asked and went to look for Ellerton. 
 She drew him out into the garden and watching his 
 face whispered, "I've asked Mother to please stop 
 them coming ; the boys. Do you mind ?" 
 
 The effect of the dramatic question provided all 
 she had hoped for in the way of entertainment ; El- 
 lerton's eyes gleamed, he blushed, his mouth opened 
 and shut without saying anything; he was embar 
 rassed. "Don't tease me," his pose seemed to beg 
 without words and then he suddenly regained poise 
 and voice. "Isn't the garden lovely?" he asked. 
 "Every flower under the sun, almost" 
 
 The mischief died abruptly out of Laura's eyes. 
 "There's never trailing arbutus," she said, as though 
 the thought made the world empty. 
 
 "No," said Ellerton, "that's so. Do you love that 
 flower? Did you know that somebody has called it 
 the 'Hope of Heaven'?" 
 
 "No, I never knew that," said Laura softly, "but 
 we've all felt it, haven't we? In a month girls at 
 home will be looking for it in the bare woods. Did 
 you ever hang a May basket ?" 
 
 137
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 "Never," said he, feeling a sudden spasm of jeal 
 ousy.. "Did you?" 
 
 Laura shook her head in denial and laughed; she 
 wondered if there would ever come a time when she 
 would not laugh at his quick betrayals of emotion so 
 in contrast to the reserve of his measured words. It 
 was difficult to associate the man he had been during 
 the last few weeks with the eruption which had 
 blazoned to all the world and his wife in the persons 
 of Digby and Mary things from deep down in the 
 heart, allegiance to frailty stealing a march on eter 
 nity, to beauty triumphant over soiling associations, 
 to the worth of a trifle put out at compound interest 
 through centuries of obliterated adventure. That 
 outburst of sheer and desperate sincerity had laid its 
 lasting grip on her imagination ; she wondered if his 
 eyes could possess hers as they had on that night at 
 will or if such moments came to disturb the human 
 breast only by favour of occasional gods. She was 
 growing impatient of his long restraint and from the 
 day they had spoken of arbutus turned from him 
 more than once when his eyes begged what his 
 tongue failed to utter. 
 
 During four weeks he abandoned Mountain Acre 
 138
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 and when at last he returned, bearing with the as 
 sistance of his chauffeur a large heavy box which 
 they placed on the tiled floor of the terrace, she was 
 prepared to punish him for his neglect with a severe 
 and persevering cruelty as foreign to her nature as 
 recriminations from a flower. She ignored the box 
 and clung to her mother's side with a pertinacity 
 which baffled and enraged him. Digby finally put a 
 period to the situation out of pity, but without tact. 
 
 "What have you brought, Rox? A new spring 
 hat?" 
 
 "No," Ellerton answered shortly, cut the strong 
 cord with which the box was bound and lifted the 
 cover. Instantly a matchless fragrance leaped from 
 confinement and floated out upon the air. Digby 
 and Mary threw up their heads with a movement 
 oddly similar, their nostrils dilated and into their 
 eyes sprang the same look of haunting reminiscence, 
 but puzzled, unbelieving; Laura's body went sud 
 denly tense, then she arose, flew to the box and fell 
 on her knees beside it. Her father and mother 
 joined her and peered over her shoulder at a deep 
 sod of earth half a yard square which had been lifted 
 bodily from some damp nook in the woods of south- 
 
 139
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 ern Jersey, still strewn with the sodden leaves of 
 winter, twigs and shoots of budding grass but bear 
 ing on its humble bosom a first sunburst of the Hope 
 of Heaven, a single, living, clustering, all-pervasive 
 spray of trailing arbutus. 
 
 Laura suddenly collapsed, buried her face in her 
 hands and sobbed her heart away. There was some 
 thing pitiful in the spasmodic heaving of her slim 
 shoulders, something so intimate, so closely allied to 
 the unadorned sources of emotion, so redolent of the 
 stripped privacy of the individual soul that Digby 
 felt abashed and Mary afraid as though their feet 
 had flippantly intruded upon a moment which should 
 have been consecrated from them. Ellerton stepped 
 forward, brushed them aside and sank to his knees 
 beside Laura. They stole away swiftly, panic- 
 stricken lest they should hear and despise themselves 
 forever as pilferers of a sacred hour. 
 
 Laura seemed unconscious of the hands that lifted 
 her, turned her around and brought her head to rest ; 
 all the springs of volition appeared to have dried 
 within her; her body was lax, pliant, but warm and 
 throbbing to the storm that racked it. Ellerton did 
 not speak; he held her gently, his eyes wide and 
 
 140
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 fixed, his face set, his hands trembling in a willed 
 effort at restraint. Presently she stirred, stopped 
 crying, raised her arms slowly until they encircled 
 his neck, pressed her face against his shoulder and 
 murmured, "Oh, Rox, it's too much. I I can't 
 stand it." 
 
 The unmeditated use of his given name, slipping 
 from her lips so readily and in appeal, galvanized 
 him into action as though it had been a signal tensely 
 awaited; his set lips broke into a smile, his eyes 
 softened and dropped to her half-hidden face, his 
 arms tightened and tightened about her until, gasp 
 ing, she cried out and struggled in self-defense, 
 "Rox, you're hurting me." 
 
 "Then look up," he commanded. 
 
 She threw back her head and looked into his eyes, 
 not fearfully, not merely curious of an undiscovered 
 world, but with an abandon that conceded and de 
 manded a mutual surrender of the utmost strong 
 holds of the hidden heart. 
 
 "Are you mine?" he whispered. 
 
 "You know that I am," she answered. 
 
 He kissed her lips and eyes and hair with the 
 measured ardour of one who knows that conquest 
 
 141
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 by assault too often kills the perfect fruit of love. 
 The months she had spent in his thoughts or at his 
 side, while they had absorbed him to the exclusion 
 of all but his single purpose of possession, had not 
 blinded him to the peril of bruising that frailty 
 which was her greatest strength, the quality of ten 
 derness in all her thoughts and acts and ways. He 
 arose, lifted her, led her to a big chair at the edge of 
 the terrace and placed her there, enthroned ; then he 
 stood before her and carefully told her all the things 
 that a woman has a right to hear from a lover's lips. 
 The more he said, the older, wiser and more smiling 
 grew Laura's eyes. 
 
 "There's only one thing I've wondered about," 
 she interrupted at length, "and that's why you've 
 been so cruelly slow about it all. Didn't you know 
 that long-ago first time in the garden or have you 
 been afraid ?" 
 
 "I knew," replied Rox earnestly, "I knew that I 
 could take some of you but I was afraid of those 
 parts of you I would have to leave unwon. Laura, I 
 want you all. You don't know how terrified I've 
 been of marriage, not because of anything that is in 
 
 142
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 me, but because of what I've seen. There are quite 
 a number of people in the world who are made for 
 the yoke and plod along quite contentedly beside 
 whatever mate they've chanced upon, but leaving 
 those aside I don't know a single marriage among 
 my friends, except your father's and mother's, 
 that isn't half-baked, soggy or threatening to crum 
 ble. One in ten of the women seized in that trap 
 is a martyr ; the rest become charnel-houses of men's 
 ideals, for woman is the highest and the lowest of 
 God's creatures." 
 
 He stared at Laura, wondering how far her inex 
 perienced thought could follow him; she smiled at 
 the trouble in his eyes and said, "Don't worry any 
 more, dear. You've taken a long time to do it, but 
 you've won me, all of me, Rox. Won't you believe 
 me now, this minute, for always ?" 
 
 "I will," he said, "but there's just one thing more 
 I must tell you before I begin to make love to you 
 for all my life and it's this. You are nineteen years 
 younger than I am ; that's a debt that is beyond pay 
 ment in kind by any man, but if ever you feel that 
 I have failed to meet the interest on it, don't be 
 
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 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 afraid to tell me, for I promise you by this hour that 
 I shall cut myself away." 
 
 Laura's face paled and tears came to her eyes ; she 
 arose, laid her hands on his shoulders and looked 
 into his face. "Rox," she said, "your mind has been 
 touched by horrible things ; I'm sorry for it, but that 
 is all behind me and I shall never look back even 
 through your eyes. As for cutting yourself away, I 
 am only a girl, untaught, weak too, but never afraid ; 
 you will always be able to kill the thing in me that 
 is you, you can never release it because it is already 
 bound to my heart with bands that aren't of your 
 making alone. Now come and let me sing Happy 
 Land to you as I've never sung it before." 
 
 He put his trembling arms around her and held 
 her close. "You can't," he said. "You can never 
 sing it again as on that first time when it became my 
 creed. Sweetheart, it's a selfish song, written by a 
 man for men with lots of take and just a little give, 
 but it's the cry of the heart triumphant over the 
 transcendent fear of betrayal, a confession that in 
 love there's no middle ground left between belief 
 and death." 
 
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 "But it's not all selfish," whispered Laura. 
 
 "No, not all," he conceded. 
 
 "There's just a little bit, the biggest bit, that we 
 can say together, 'Fly high, fly low, yet come to rest, 
 my love's the world around/ "
 
 "Father, awake! Thou art ever sleeping. Tell me, 
 what is knowledge?" 
 
 "An inch-worm climbing the Peak of Popo" 
 "And storm?" 
 
 "The Peak of Popo roaring at the inch-worm." 
 "And man?" 
 
 "Is thy mind, then, a grasshopper? Man is that 
 which leadeth the worm to split its sides with laughter." 
 
 "And?" 
 
 "Enough; I would sleep"
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE wedding of Rox and Laura took place at 
 Mountain Acre immediately after the return 
 of Mary from a hurried trip to fetch trousseau and 
 the younger children. It was a representative gath 
 ering for while the Digbys had lived quiet and 
 secluded lives they had made many true friends of 
 like tastes in their wanderings among those to whom 
 the City was still largely a point of passage, and El- 
 lerton in addition to this group possessed ties of 
 varying strength with almost every man, woman and 
 child in the colony which made of the Capital a gay, 
 almost kaleidoscopic, caravansary. A special train 
 brought to the town in the valley such guests as did 
 not come by motor; straw -bedded wagons with 
 benches fixed to resist the steep incline and the as 
 saults of unrestrained gaiety, drawn by six mules 
 each, provided the final relay to the house. 
 
 To many of these people Mountain Acre was a 
 revelation out of an empty sky; none who had not 
 seen it could have dreamed so marvelous a conjunc-
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 tion of location, intrinsic beauty and boundless out 
 look united to form a setting for the unique atmos 
 phere of a home welded to and inseparable from the 
 lives of its inmates. The effect produced was as 
 varied as the natures of the visitors; some caught 
 their breath and sat for a moment with closed eyes ; 
 others saw without seeing and hurried on greedy to 
 register the last nook and cranny of the premises on 
 the over-crowded yet eternally empty tablets of their 
 minds; others, a few, had come to see Rox Ellerton 
 face to face with marriage and the hidden girl who 
 had brought the scoffer to book ; still others, the vast 
 majority, were too gay for ulterior motives. These 
 had come to have a good time, found it awaiting 
 them and saw all things though blurred in outline 
 through rosy glasses. 
 
 By the immemorial right of her white veil Laura 
 was the belle of the occasion but she was pressed 
 hard by Madeleine who floated through laughter, 
 dance and song like an elf cast adrift amid a throng 
 of mortals and desperately intent on holding her 
 own. From early morning, when she had awakened 
 Mary to propound in all seriousness the difficulty 
 of settling to her satisfaction the attitude she should 
 
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 assume to her impending brother-in-law until late 
 night when she could no longer hold up her long 
 lashes nor keep her ears open to receive her eight 
 eenth proposal of marriage, she rode in an ecstasy 
 the torrent of Life spelled with a big L and released 
 with a suddenness which all but shattered her confi 
 dence in her ability to weather unaided any storm. 
 
 Who but Madeleine could have shaken her mother 
 awake to ask her, with the immeasurable gravity of 
 sixteen years, ''Mother dear, Mother, please, what 
 should I do about Uncle Rox? I've always called 
 him Uncle Rox, but you see, after to-day things will 
 be different, won't they? I don't want to do the 
 wrong thing in front of all those people and if he's 
 my brother, why " 
 
 Or who but Madeleine could have come impul 
 sively to the same source of all wisdom and regard 
 less of other grown-ups declared as soberly, 
 "Mother, Mr. Trawley has just proposed to me. I 
 thought he was joking, but he said he certainly isn't; 
 that if Rox can get away with it he guesses he can. 
 I asked him should I speak to you and he said of 
 course, so I guess he does really mean it, and / don't 
 know what to do." Three ladies and Mrs. Digby 
 
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 answered by a single impulse and in one voice, "Re 
 fuse him, darling." 
 
 This incident could not be suppressed and so imi 
 tative of bees around a pot of unadulterated honey 
 are mortal men before the shrine of budding beauty 
 that after Trawley blazed the way, to be alone with 
 Madeleine for the space of half a dance was suffi 
 cient to bring the stiffest neck in search of halter. 
 Earnest and unsmiling, they proposed to her singly, 
 by couples and finally in a group. She stood on a 
 step leading from pergola to sunken lawn and stared 
 down at their grave faces. "If you are joking," she 
 said, with a threatening flash of her brown eyes, "I 
 might tell you that I said damn once." With this 
 veiled warning as to the quality of temper she kept 
 in store, she turned in a swirl of pleated skirts and 
 marched soberly away. 
 
 That night when Ellerton and Laura and all but 
 the few house guests were gone, when Digby and 
 Mary had between them carried the sleeping Made 
 leine into her room, undressed and rolled her into 
 bed like some flushed log cast up by a magic sea, 
 when the soft-footed servants had brushed away all 
 signs of revelry and the echo of the last good night 
 
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 shouted down from the mountain road had died 
 away, a group of men gathered on the terrace for a 
 final Dock-and-Doris : Trawley of the Colina Mines, 
 pink-cheeked, white-haired but with youth packed 
 into his twinkling blue eyes; Dawton of the Power 
 Company, dark, young, black-browed, slow in move 
 ment and in speech, sure in judgment; Temple, 
 president of the Inter-Continental Bank, six feet 
 of beef and bone, a plunger self-bridled under con 
 tinual protest with the hard bit of caution; all old 
 friends. Digby was there, of course, and Richard, 
 Jr., emancipated for a night to the company of 
 grown men. 
 
 The boy was too young, the men too absorbed in 
 putting their thoughts into words to discern the out 
 standing significance of two omissions of the talk 
 that followed. It ranged the length and width of a 
 great country, ebbed and flowed with detractions 
 balanced against astounding predictions, bordered a 
 wide sweep of technical appreciations, descended to 
 incident, rose to generalities, held in the main to a 
 high course of satisfaction with the present, hope for 
 the future; but it did not touch on politics and it 
 never looked back. Success has no past, needs no
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 policy; failure broods over what-might-have-beens, 
 reminiscence marks the finished road. These men 
 were all looking ahead, they rode a wave, and some 
 thing of their exhilaration stirred the spirit of the 
 boy who listened, stained his cheeks with red and 
 fixed his eyes to the question, "Who would not be 
 a builder?" 
 
 Toward the end of his holiday he spent a whole 
 day with his father at the mine, the scene now of 
 tremendous activity for the work of moving the 
 entire plant to the vicinity of the new pit-head where 
 a deep shaft was being sunk was well under way. 
 In a few hours he seemed to himself to have 
 learned so much which books could never teach that 
 he approached his father in the eternal manner of 
 boys the world over with pondered wisdom as to 
 the advantages of leaving college at once that he 
 might plunge the sooner into actual productive 
 labour. He repeated verbatim whole sentences from 
 the one talk of the giants he had been permitted to 
 hear in order to prove his mature appreciation of the 
 work to be done and the few there were to do it 
 
 Digby did not answer at once; he led the way 
 silently along the path to Mountain Acre but before 
 
 152
 
 they reached the turn and at the same spot where 
 he had stood seven years before and dreamed of the 
 coming of this day he stopped, sat down on a nar 
 row shelf of rock and looked his boy over with 
 brooding yet speculative eyes and then turned them 
 toward the valley. "Son," he said, "sit down here 
 by me where you can look at something bigger than 
 a man ; I want to talk to you." 
 
 Junior did as he was bidden and his father con 
 tinued. "I'm glad you heard us talking that night 
 and proud of you for remembering what was said, 
 but there were a couple of things way down under 
 the surface that you missed : one was the silent sigh 
 in the heart of every man who spoke for what he 
 failed to learn when he was young enough; the 
 other, but I'll tell you about that later. Your 
 father and his friends are a hardbitten crowd, in a 
 small way we've mixed in some very big things. Do 
 you see that pda'o up by the gear-head ?" 
 
 "Yes, sir." 
 
 "What's he pushing?" 
 
 Junior looked around to see if his father was 
 serious. "A wheelbarrow, sir." 
 
 "Exactly," said Digby, "and over his head is 
 
 153
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 swinging a half-ton-skip on the ropeway. Well, 
 boy, the wheelbarrow was a big thing in its day, so 
 was the ropeway, so are some of my chums to your 
 eyes; each thing in its day. We pass, the instru 
 ments we use pass, too, but the principles of energy 
 never die. What do you know about kinetics, what 
 can you tell me of the motion of a solid of revolu 
 tion, of moving axes of reference, of the stability of 
 equilibrium? I'm not trying to frighten you, but 
 until you can answer those questions, at least in part, 
 you can't describe the wheel of a barrow or tell why 
 its first revolution bridged a thousand years." 
 
 He paused for a moment, his eyes fixed back 
 through the centuries as if in homage to the un 
 known who had first rounded a block of wood, 
 burned a whole through its center and lightened for 
 all time the burdens of beasts and men. "The hard 
 est thing for youth to do," he finally continued, "is 
 to escape from the immature perspective of its 
 schoolmates. You must learn to keep an even mind 
 if you hope to balance values. Remember the wheel, 
 a thing so self-evident, so apparently crude that 
 you've never before given it a thought and every 
 time you see lever and fulcrum at work or block 
 and tackle or a capstan, all homely familiar things, 
 
 154
 
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 stop to think of the profound principles which gave 
 them birth and made of them the highlights, the 
 stars that shine eternally on the passing history of 
 man, the builder." 
 
 He turned and looked into his son's eyes, wide, 
 interested, but puzzled in their striving to fix sug 
 gested outlines so far beyond the comprehension of 
 his immaturity. "Junior, you're young," continued 
 his father, "you're not too old to take something 
 from me on faith and I tell you that the men of your 
 generation, at least in our profession, who hope to 
 hold their heads above the waves of an angry indus 
 trial sea must have their feet set in the eternal prin 
 ciples of energy. The four estates of man you've 
 read about are leveling fast ; the world may have to 
 do without genius but it can't down knowledge. Go 
 back to college and think of it as a prep school ; go to 
 tech and imagine you're an apprentice; then come 
 out and fight for your place in the guild that has 
 done more than any other to bring material peace on 
 earth. Study, boy; not because you have to but 
 because it isn't in you to be one of the world's peons, 
 working for nothing beyond a wage. Will you ?" 
 
 Junior nodded ; he could not speak, for the spirit 
 of his father's words even though some of them 
 
 155
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 were Greek to his understanding entered his heart 
 and swelled it so that it clogged his throat. 
 
 "And now there's that other thing," continued 
 Digby, turning his eyes away, "that I said you'd 
 missed in the talk that night because it was buried 
 out of sight. It's the pull of home on the heart, not 
 home here around the corner, but of that wider 
 meaning which lies under the flag of our country. I 
 don't want you to think I'm running down the land 
 that's given us food and shelter for so many years 
 but in the same breath I don't want you ever to for 
 get that I've paid our board and filled a hundred 
 mouths for every meal we've taken." He paused, 
 and then continued, "Did you ever wonder why 
 you're a Lone Star and Madeleine a Native Son and 
 Laura a Yankee ?" 
 
 "No," said Junior, smiling. 
 
 "Because I sent your mother across the border 
 every time. It cost a lot of money for us in those 
 days but not the tenth part of what it's costing to 
 keep you at school ; yet I don't grudge it, not a cent 
 of it, because the allegiance I owe to home isn't paid 
 to a bit of bunting alone but to standards of honour, 
 of character, of personal cleanliness, of national 
 
 156
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 probity and strength such as can be found nowhere 
 else at the same high level of average. Take every 
 year at home where you were born that you can get 
 without shirking ; keep clean in mind and body ; for 
 get the leprous if you can, remember leprosy." 
 
 He got up and laid his hands on the boy's shoul 
 ders. "That's all; every word I've got to say," he 
 added, "but, Junior, if you love your mother and me 
 remember it all, even what you can't quite under 
 stand just now." 
 
 Junior had stood up when his father arose; their 
 eyes met in a long look of affection but neither 
 spoke further, Digby because he had said all that 
 was in his heart to say, Junior because he felt the 
 embarrassment of youth face to face with a first mo 
 ment of mutual and shared intimacy with a parent. 
 As is the way with fathers, Digby underestimated 
 his son's capacity for understanding; he would have 
 been amazed could he have read the boy's mind and 
 found there only the warm thought, "I'm a man. 
 Father wouldn't have said all that to me in front of 
 the girls, not even before Mother. He and I are 
 men." Side by side, their shoulders very close to 
 gether as though in expression of a communion felt 
 
 157
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 all the more deeply for not having been uttered, 
 they returned to Mountain Acre. 
 
 Junior went back to college and finished his course 
 with a fair rating, distressingly low in a few par 
 ticulars but carried high in languages and to a 
 veritable peak in mechanics and allied subjects. It 
 was this specialized excellence that saw him through 
 but neither his father nor he was sufficiently re 
 trospective to attribute his impatient hunger for a 
 mastery of mathematics as a tool of the mind to the 
 moment when his boyhood's imagination had been 
 first set in motion to match the leap of a thousand 
 years of so apparently simple and dead a thing as 
 the wheel of a barrow. 
 
 He came back after graduation, a handsome and 
 extremely youthful Bachelor of Science, for two 
 months of heavy application of his book knowledge 
 in the rough school of the Pico mine preparatory to 
 an effort to double up on his technical course and 
 take his full engineering degree in two more years 
 of study. His arrival coincided with that of Eller- 
 ton, already the proud father of two babies, breath- 
 takingly lovely, even to the eyes of others than their 
 progenitors and largely responsible for the fact that 
 
 158
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 their father had become almost a stranger to Moun 
 tain Acre. Only twice in three years had he re 
 turned to the spot he had so haunted in his bachelor 
 days and on both of these occasions his object had 
 been to fetch Laura back a week earlier than planned 
 and originally agreed. 
 
 For this visit, however, he came alone and with 
 out warning. From the moment of his arrival 
 Digby perceived that his partner was worried but 
 that the matter which troubled him was not of a 
 personal character. In comparison with women 
 men have few instinctive intuitions, the surest of 
 which is the power to divine a desire unexpressed in 
 words for a stag talk on the part of a fellow male. 
 As a consequence Digby made none of his usual 
 frank frontal attacks on Ellerton's absorption and 
 waited patiently for Mary to sense the situation and 
 carry Madeleine off early to bed, remaining away 
 herself to attend to household duties. Ellerton 
 glanced at Junior, not as a hint, but in speculation. 
 The boy read the look and held his ground, remem 
 bering the day now so long ago when first he had 
 been admitted to the councils of men. 
 
 159
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 "Let him stay, Rox," said Digby quietly. "Now, 
 fire away." 
 
 Ellerton nodded acquiescence. "All right," he 
 said. "Has any one telephoned you ?" 
 
 "About what ?" asked Digby. 
 
 "Dick, the President left for the coast last night," 
 stated Ellerton who had arisen and was pacing up 
 and down the gallery, head dropped and holding a 
 forgotten cigarette in one hand. 
 
 Digby was sitting in a characteristic pose, one 
 elbow on the balustrade, his chair tipped back and 
 half-turned so that his eyes could easily seek the 
 valley. He now brought the chair down to all- 
 fours swiftly but without noise and leaned forward. 
 "What !" he cried, "the Old Lion show his back to 
 that rabble? I can't believe it." 
 
 "You'll have to," said Ellerton. 
 
 The two men were silent for five minutes which 
 seemed to Junior a century; his quick eyes moved 
 from one to the other of their faces in puzzled ques 
 tioning ; for once he had heard a bare stated fact and 
 failed utterly to understand its implications. Not in 
 vain had he been trained in an atmosphere aloof 
 from politics and allied to distant ideals. What did 
 
 160
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 it matter, he wondered, who was president? Why 
 didn't Rox and his father tend to business and talk 
 Pico mine ? He awaited impatiently an explanation 
 that did not come. Ellerton struck a match, lit his 
 cigarette, and said he was going to bed but walked 
 off into the garden; Digby took out his pipe and 
 filled it slowly, his eyes staring at the tiles between 
 Junior's feet. 
 
 "What's the row, Dad?" asked the boy. 
 
 "Go to bed," said Digby quietly and without 
 breaking his absorbed gaze. 
 
 Junior obeyed; he was not angry at the unquali 
 fied dismissal because long experience had bred in 
 him a spontaneous conviction of justice in every one 
 of his father's decisions, but he was intensely 
 anxious as to the grounds for this particular ver 
 dict. He had one grain of satisfaction ; the two men 
 did not resume their talk after his departure. He 
 had left his door open and heard no voices on the 
 terrace; a peep from his curtained window showed 
 him Rox still walking up and down alone. 
 
 Had he been able to keep awake long enough, he 
 might have witnessed or at least surmised a mo 
 mentary coming-together of Digby and Ellerton. 
 
 161
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 'It's no use talking about it, Dick," said the latter. 
 "We've been fanned asleep by thirty years of one- 
 man security ; now he's gone and we've got to face 
 the music, whatever it happens to be. Probably the 
 old tune they played for three hundred years." 
 
 Digby appeared not to have heard his words. "It 
 had to come," he said half to himself. 
 
 "Had to come?" repeated Ellerton. "What do 
 you mean?" 
 
 "I mean that this time it's different," replied 
 Digby. "Peonage is a factor sooner or later con 
 trollable by force, but you can't smother the blaze 
 from industrial slavery because it's intelligent." 
 
 "What on earth are you getting at?" demanded 
 Ellerton. 
 
 "I'm trying to keep an even mind," said Digby, 
 smiling at Ellerton's impetuosity. "You and I, Rox, 
 and a lot more like us have been creating a class ; it's 
 come to life and it's going to the mat for a settle 
 ment." 
 
 "You're right," said Ellerton, his jaw setting, 
 "we have created a class, fed mouths that had 
 starved for generations and paid ready cash by the 
 day's work. Where's the call for a settlement?" 
 
 162
 
 "Through no fault of our own," answered Digby, 
 "it hasn't been a just wage." 
 
 "Not a just wage!" cried Ellerton, opened his 
 mouth to say more and stopped. For a moment the 
 two men stared at each other with a shade of fright 
 in their eyes as though for the first time in the long 
 course of their happy association they stood at a 
 fork on the road of union; then by a single impulse 
 they gripped each other's hand and parted for the 
 night. Neither slept, for both were so entwined 
 with the conflicting factors which threatened to 
 throw the country of their sojourn into chaos that 
 they felt an equal premonition of disaster without 
 being able to put their fears in words or even define 
 the status of their own position in relation to im 
 pending cosmic events* 
 
 They both knew by the sixth sense which they 
 had acquired through years of contact with local 
 and innate conditions that a great storm had broken 
 but even in their anticipation they were too much 
 an integral part of the disturbance to be able either 
 at that day or later to measure or analyze it ; for no 
 man caught in a holocaust is a fit witness to its 
 sources of origin, its course or its effect. Only from 
 
 163
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 a bridge of intervening years and from a stand ele 
 vated by the barren virtue of non-participation is it 
 possible to look back and down and formulate a 
 three-sided equation which can account for all the 
 ramifications of a national catastrophe that was to 
 bring in its wake a decade of murder, rapine and 
 desolation. 
 
 One point of this triangular equation was symbol 
 ized by an eagle of a man born to rule with a hand 
 of iron and to fall with that hand's weakening; 
 another was represented not by the resurrection but 
 by the actual, new birth of a class of conscious 
 artisans superimposed on generations of peonage 
 and slavery; at the third point stood the dreamer, 
 the cactus Messiah, a bewildered weakling subject 
 to all the vacillations known to the human mind but 
 from the day of his astonishing elevation sure, at 
 least, of a crown of thorns. Eagle, artisans and 
 dreamer all raised their eyes on high, walked toward 
 one another blindly, collided, plunged into one and 
 the same vortex. 
 
 Many pygmies live to malign the dead eagle who 
 defied for thirty years the natural laws of disinte 
 gration and held in his strong talons as one grasps 
 
 164
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 a nettle a hundred warring tribes that in the short 
 space of three score years had known the misrule of 
 fifty unstable heads. This soldier who quelled in 
 ternecine warfare, brought order out of turmoil, 
 bestowed peace on his peoples by the might of his 
 right hand, enforced social integrity and won for the 
 nation of his own welding the respect, faith and 
 friendship of an unbelieving world; who had but 
 four simple, every-day ambitions quartered on the 
 shield of his character, to drain the inundated val 
 ley in which was cupped the sodden City of Palaces, 
 to finish a trans-isthmian railway, already forty 
 years in the building, to swing the balance of ma 
 terial trade to his country's favour and to establish 
 a school in every hamlet of the land ; who took boy 
 ish pride not in his achievements but in a collection 
 of all the arms known to history ; who never looked 
 on the public treasury as an annex to his own pocket- 
 book and whose favourite of all the possessions 
 within his reach was an old bear-skin rug, developed 
 one fault execrable in the eyes of gods and men, 
 he grew old. 
 
 Against that day a condition had been preparing 
 from sources so distant, so covert, so widely divided 
 
 165
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 from human prescience that its silent flood fell 
 upon him without warning, swept him from the 
 foundations of a lifetime of uninterrupted service, 
 whirled him out upon uncharted waters and cast him 
 up, a bit of flotsam on the far shore of history, an 
 old man, childishly bewildered, broken-hearted, 
 dead, refuse. 
 
 And yet by the laws of ethics and epochs he had 
 no cause to complain, for unknowingly he had as 
 sisted as had Digby, Ellerton and a thousand others 
 in more humble measure at the birth of the forces 
 which smote him from his long seat. Blind to a 
 slavery so ancient that it was no less natural to his 
 eyes than the milk of his mother's breast to his lips 
 or the high air of his native land to his lungs, he 
 broke its shackles even while it seemed to be bowing 
 to his unconscious will. In twenty-five years he and 
 his helpers drew a billion dollars to their aid, never 
 dreaming that for every coin a drop of new blood 
 coursed through the veins of an entity bent toward 
 independence and a destructive freedom. 
 
 The birth of an industrial consciousness through 
 the activities of a thousand fostered foreign enter 
 prises scattered through the length and breadth of 
 
 166
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 the land guided the swirl of the maelstrom but 
 tributary to this main stream were the trickles of 
 poverty-stricken jealousy in the face of rapid 
 wealth, of race-hatred, born of a discouraging and 
 ever-increasing sense of dynamic inferiority, of the 
 heavy mass of ignorance too recently allied to out 
 right savagery to yield to the puny lever of village 
 schools, and finally of that tragic weakness in 
 human fate which denies the power in any mortal 
 to rejuvenate in himself or will to another the tri 
 umphant spirit of dominance. 
 
 This last, the sapping of a vigour which had up 
 held the hands of honest coadjutors while it con 
 trolled the avarice of satellites imbued temporarily 
 with vicarious integrity, was the signal for an on 
 slaught on the once-guarded resources of the nation ; 
 the very class which through historical habit the 
 eagle had made his agents in reform, turned para 
 site and first timorously, then boldly as it realized 
 the relinquishing grip of the aging talons, resorted 
 to blood-sucking, rule by favour and indirect pecu 
 lation. 
 
 The old man knew that something was wrong 
 >vith the mechanism into which he had built his 
 
 167
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 life; he did not realize that because his times and his 
 mission were material and because he had fixed his 
 heart on a material resurrection for the land he loved 
 he must perforce fall by materialism. The clouds 
 arisen on the social horizon found him totally blind 
 to a condition outside his scheme of ingeniously 
 pragmatical welfare summed up in three words, rail 
 roads, industries, exports. Nobody in the world 
 denied that these things were good and the good in 
 them so filled his eyes that he could grasp no other. 
 He did not understand. 
 
 Deep beneath the surface of these gathering 
 waters moved one more disastrous cause; the flow 
 of fifty million dollars a year which for a quarter of 
 a century had fed the nation's sturdy industrial babe 
 and kept it drowsily silent and content had been 
 suddenly snatched from sucking lips by the crisis 
 of 1907. The consequent wail of social distress 
 was too inarticulate for immediate interpretation 
 but not so the blow to the financial fabric of the 
 country which, pledged at the moment to vast under 
 takings, swayed and all but fell. 
 
 Such was the flood prepared by destiny against 
 the old age of a failing giant and as is the imme- 
 
 168
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 morial habit of like inundations it spewed up a 
 dreamer to ride its crest. Throughout the North 
 from whence had sprung a vast majority of the suc 
 cessful revolutions in a country perennially in revolt 
 was scattered a patriarchal family said to be stiff 
 ened by Anglo-Saxon and sharpened by Semetic 
 strains of blood and which in the short space of four 
 generations had grown to a clan numbered in thou 
 sands. The enmity of this element to the great ruler 
 was open and gradually became traditional ; as a con 
 sequence its members were cut off from the gains 
 of favour and office and turned with a certain stal 
 wart dignity to agrarian and commercial pursuits. 
 
 As farmers, tradesmen, ranchers, bankers, they 
 sent roots deep into the soil, twined their fibres with 
 the sinews of commercial life, mutely and steadily 
 increased in strength and prosperity and formed a 
 nucleus of wealth honestly acquired, of leisure un 
 tainted by remorse. To this peaceful faction, men 
 tally hard by long training in the driving of a bar 
 gain but as soft as an unformed babe in physical 
 execution, was born the dreamer. 
 
 Puny in figure, with tiny feet, thin wrists, effemi 
 nate hands, large head, bulging brow and slum- 
 
 169
 
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 berous, lucent eyes, he was fashioned by nature and 
 endowed by pecuniary independence for the life of 
 a recluse and such was his tendency. He became a 
 reader greedy only for that new literature which 
 marked the birth of humanism and strove to blaze 
 the path to a leveling of social welfare. In any 
 other place and time he might have lived and died 
 unnoticed behind a printed page but driven perhaps 
 by that impulse toward human regeneration so trag 
 ically allied to Semetic tradition and lifted from nat 
 ural inertia by the forces of unrest about him 
 arrived psychologically at the point of fermentation 
 he emerged as a pamphleteer, caught the imagination 
 of a seething populace awaiting any plume of leader 
 ship upon which to fix its myriad eyes and found 
 himself flung to the crest of a monster inundation 
 not of his making. 
 
 Exhilarated, bemused and finally stunned by the 
 phantom blow of a dream come true, he was swept 
 by the flood into the presidential chair and there 
 awoke to a numb terror of the overwhelming, be 
 wildering, totally uncomprehended necessity for 
 action. He had no strength beyond the residue of 
 an impetus of consistency which led him to turn his 
 
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 back on the ancient formula of compromise with the 
 mighty, death to the strong, amnesty only to the 
 weak and harmless, and which, in the face of a gath 
 ering host of harpies, left him murmuring, reiterat 
 ing, whispering at last only to himself his message 
 of peace on earth, good will toward men. 
 
 His image lingers in the memory of the pitying 
 public as that of a dreamer cringing from the night 
 mare of reality. So do we see him last, sitting 
 crouched with his heels caught childishly on the rung 
 of the seat of government against a great desk, his 
 elbows on its edge, his pitifully thin wrists rising 
 like two shafts of fragile light from cuffless sleeves, 
 his chin cupped in slender inefficient hands, a fatuous 
 smile upon his face and the look of the hunted in 
 his tender bewildered eyes; a dove set to hatch the 
 eggs of an eagle's laying. 
 
 Because his love was for the weary and heavy- 
 laden, because he was good, because he was merciful, 
 because he was meek, because he was long-suffering, 
 because he was pure of heart, because he lifted un 
 resisting the other cheek and most of all because his 
 hand was too weak to seize the scourge and clear his 
 temple of unworldly righteousness of those who 
 
 171
 
 would defile it, they took him out and crucified him 
 against the back seat of a motor-car. 
 
 These events, of necessity so compactly depicted, 
 erupting in November of 1910 and coming to an 
 anticlimax of terror in February of 1913, rushed 
 with such precipitancy to catch up with the premoni 
 tion which Digby and Ellerton had shared that they 
 left the two men stunned, incapable of a realization 
 of the catastrophe which they themselves had known 
 to be impending. Far and wide the army of newly- 
 trained had thrown down its tools to join the de 
 luded rabble which believed itself to have stumbled 
 on a millennium ; all work was at a standstill, the de 
 pressing silence of untold paralyzed mechanisms 
 hung like a pall above men of action concentrated 
 against their wills in camps of idleness. When he 
 could safely do so Ellerton moved his family south 
 to Mountain Acre as being withdrawn from the 
 traveled highways of insurrection; for himself he 
 sought not security, but companionship in the misery 
 of waiting for the unknown.
 
 "Father, hath man then no greatness?" 
 
 "The space of a man's years are three-score and ten 
 and if by reason of his strength they be four score ye* 
 is their strength labour and sorrow" 
 
 "Thou mockest me." 
 
 "Nay; for in that little space of years man weldeth 
 his single lasting link of suffering to an eternal chain."
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 SHORTLY before the coming of Ellerton and 
 his family, Digby had gone through a terrible 
 experience of mental strain. Feeling that great 
 events were impending, he had left Mary with 
 Junior and Madeleine at Mountain Acre and run up 
 to the City to order a carload of supplies. Scarcely 
 had he reached the club where he was to put up 
 when the coup d'etat, since known as the Ten Days 
 of Terror, broke over the Capital with a fury which 
 left him gasping at the puerility of his anticipation 
 of trouble in the face of its realization. Every high 
 way leading from the town, almost from the mo 
 ment of his entering it, became a death-trap. 
 
 In the club with Digby were several men who 
 either lived there or had been cut off from their 
 homes; they stared out of the windows, for some 
 time, grew bored, discovered that they were that 
 perfect number seven and sat down to a game of 
 poker. Within an hour it developed that the stock 
 of beer was practically exhausted and they played a
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 freeze-out to decide which of them should go out 
 to replenish the void. 
 
 The lot fell to the smallest and weakest man pres 
 ent; he arose unsteadily with pale cheeks and drawn 
 lips but did not hesitate. On a common impulse, 
 the other six left the table, picked up their hats and 
 followed him. He looked back with a sudden light 
 ening 1 of his face and asked, "You fellows aren't 
 coming, too, are you ?" 
 
 "Sure," said one with a laugh. "Why, you 
 couldn't carry enough to water a geranium." 
 
 "That's so," said the small man. Up to that mo 
 ment he had given no thought to ways and means. 
 
 The street they first crossed was in the main line 
 of fire; Digby glanced up it and saw a dozen black 
 blotches scattered along its length looking incon 
 gruous and abnormally still like shadows which had 
 forgotten to follow their masters. Arrived at the 
 door of the nearest purveyor of liquors, they had to 
 use every stratagem to accomplish its opening. They 
 knocked very gently, called in quiet unexcited tones, 
 whistled gay airs and finally secured an interview 
 with an unseen within an upper window. After 
 much patient persuasion the merchant came down, 
 
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 opened the door, slid three cases into the street and 
 scarcely waited to take the proffered gold. 
 
 As the men started back, Trawley leading the way 
 and the other six following in single file, two to each 
 case of beer, they came upon a barrel organ propped 
 against the wall ; in the deep recess of a door near by 
 huddled its owner holding in his lap a dead mon 
 key. The organ-grinder's eyes stared up at them 
 from a daze which was too deep for wonder; they 
 might have gone on and left no recollection of their 
 passing but such was not Trawley's humour. He 
 stopped, poked the man with his foot and asked 
 what was his price by the hour. 
 
 The man only shook his head and glanced down 
 at the dead monkey in his arms. There was no af 
 fection in the look, rather a dull sequence of logical 
 deduction to the effect that what had happened to 
 the stiffening beast might have come to its owner 
 by an original deviation of a thousandth of an inch. 
 He refused employment but was finally persuaded 
 to name a price for his organ. Trawley paid it and 
 with the twinkle in his blue eyes dancing like the 
 facets of a diamond in the sun, slipped his gray 
 head through the greasy shoulder strap, resumed his 
 
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 position in the van of the line, turned the crank and 
 produced with many jerks in its tempo an air so 
 old, so martial and so familiar that his followers, 
 including a southerner, burst simultaneously into 
 the cry of Marching Through Georgia. 
 
 More dum founded by that chorus than by the 
 rumble of field-guns, the bursting of shells and the 
 crackle of Maxims, the organ-grinder got up and 
 staggered after the cortege as though the mind 
 which had been able to grasp the significance of a 
 monkey falling dead from a swaying clutch on his 
 shoulder could deduce nothing but safety in the 
 wake of so heart-free a procession. He followed it 
 almost to the doors of the club, stumbled on some 
 thing in mid-air and fell. 
 
 Throughout their excursion Digby had watched 
 the action of such natives of the city as were still in 
 the streets. Their faces were panic-stricken with 
 unreasoning fear yet set to a single determination; 
 they were like animals stricken by the foreknowledge 
 of an unescapable doom scurrying to their holes to 
 die; they seemed totally incapable of regarding as 
 shelter any refuge but the squalid cellar or the palace 
 they knew as home. 
 
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 One woman passed swiftly holding her rebozo 
 tight beneath her chin as though it could hide 
 her from peril. From within its narrowed aper 
 ture her face gleamed white as milk; her eyes 
 stared fixedly down the straight street as if they at 
 least might reach the haven of her desperate desire. 
 A bullet struck her, sending out from her flowing 
 black cape a faint puff of dust undiscovered by many 
 brushings. She sank to earth and the strangest 
 thing about her was the sudden insignificance of the 
 unbelievably small heap she became in the great 
 emptiness of the thoroughfare. 
 
 It was half an hour after the successful return 
 to the club that Trawley, looking from a window, 
 discovered the fallen organ-grinder still clutching 
 his monkey. "Dick," he said, "come here." Digby 
 joined him; they stared at the dead man. 
 
 "It's a queer feeling," said Trawley, breaking 
 their long silence. "I paid twenty dollars to noth 
 ing; threw it into the air. It makes you feel queer." 
 
 Digby did not answer, he was staring horrified at 
 a coche which was making its leisurely way up the 
 street Its driver sat hunched on the box in a posi 
 tion natural to rainy weather but to-day there was 
 not a cloud in the sky ; in the open carriage, regard- 
 
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 less of the sun and other things, was a lady sitting 
 very erect, her hands folded over the head of a 
 furled parasol. Digby recognized a fellow-country 
 woman ; she was from an outlying mining-camp and 
 had probably come into town for a day's shopping. 
 He rushed hatless out of the club, into the street and 
 stopped the coach. The lady smiled and held out 
 her hand ; she was one who took pride in the white 
 ness and fit of her gloves. 
 
 "Are you mad?" gasped Digby. "Get out and 
 come into the club." 
 
 She glanced at the building, waved at Trawley, 
 and then looked back at Digby. "I can't do that," 
 she exclaimed with a laugh. "Think what people 
 would say ! I haven't a stitch with me but what I've 
 got on. I know perfectly well where I'm going, 
 Dick; get back into the house; the sun isn't good 
 for you." 
 
 She spoke to the driver and then prodded him 
 with her parasol; he was an old man, he had seen 
 many things. He grunted and whipped up his 
 horses so effectively that they seemed to snatch the 
 carriage from Digby's grasp. He stood staring 
 after it, a half-smile on his lips, anxiety in his eyes. 
 Presently the parasol bloomed above the lowered top 
 
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 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 of the carriage; it made a spot of swaying green, an 
 impudent plume of disregard for the badly-ordered 
 affairs of a world ignored. 
 
 He went back into the club and resumed his place 
 at the card-table but while he met automatically the 
 requirements of the game saying in his habitually 
 controlled playing voice, "I raise you five," "I see 
 you," "I'm away," "Three, please," the green para 
 sol was bobbing before his eyes, giving them a rest 
 by diversion from their long mental staring at what 
 might be going on at Mountain Acre. Over and 
 over again he had passed in review every element, 
 every individual worker, at the Pico mine, return 
 ing invariably for comfort to thoughts of Pat 
 Hogan and of Richard, Jr. ; once in a while he tried 
 the telephone to ascertain if central had resumed. 
 Yet those who watched him never guessed that he 
 was nervous. 
 
 Days and nights passed with only one noticeable 
 break in the monotony of tumult and an almost 
 simultaneous interruption of the poker game caused 
 by the advent of the Embassy messenger. With 
 almost insolent faith in the power of the flag and 
 the white napkin flying side by side at the head of 
 
 180
 
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 his motor, he had run down the opposing lines of 
 fire to their sources and by the sheer weight of his 
 smiling effrontery persuaded the commanding offi 
 cers to suspend action for two hours to enable him 
 to clear certain members of the colony from the dis 
 trict which was being shelled. He burst into the 
 club with a list of addresses in his hand, reserved 
 half to himself and allotted the rest to eager vol 
 unteers. 
 
 At the exact end of the two hours of the silence 
 which had seemed abnormal when it fell on the torn 
 city, firing recommenced but in the meantime fifty 
 families had been hustled out and guided to wel 
 coming homes whose location made them compara 
 tively safe, some of them already choked with gay 
 though uninvited guests. On Digby's last trip he 
 came across the lady of the green parasol; he was 
 immensely relieved and then petulantly aggrieved 
 that he had discovered her safety so soon; it left 
 him no anxiety but Mountain Acre. 
 
 As he hurried down the Paseo he saw two 
 Britishers, deceived by the long quiet, on their placid 
 way to office. There was a complacent look on their 
 faces as though they were bathed in content at the 
 
 181
 
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 mere liberty to resume familiar ways. Their brows 
 darkened in wrath as the rattle of far-away firing 
 suddenly shook the air; unwilling to believe their 
 ears, they kept on doggedly for a few steps, then one 
 of them hearing a droning as of a lazy bee looked 
 up to meet the spent bullet that crashed into his 
 brain. Digby stopped to help his companion carry 
 the body to a friend's house; then resumed his way 
 to the club. 
 
 He was amazed at his own calm ; he felt sorry for 
 the dead man whom he had known slightly but he 
 was unconscious of any shock, nor was he stunned. 
 It was as if he had witnessed something regrettable 
 but quite expected. What seemed most remarkable 
 to him was that the man had fallen away from the 
 bullet which was against the known rules of recoil. 
 Digby felt a certain pride in his reasoning powers 
 when he decided that it must have been because the 
 bullet was spent. 
 
 When he arrived before the club, he found Tem 
 ple, the banker, his huge frame and bulging eyes 
 expressing disgust and disdain, out in the street 
 with a watering-pot pouring petroleum over three 
 miserable bodies which had begun to pollute the air. 
 
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 He helped him set fire to the filthy rags in which 
 they had been clothed and somehow this sensible act 
 seemed to him infinitely more shocking than the 
 swift death of the clean Britisher. He plunged into 
 the poker game which was still going on with an 
 intensity of purpose which blinded him to all but the 
 varying value of his cards. 
 
 And so through the Ten Days of Horror. When 
 stillness once more fell on the City it was the heavy, 
 permeating silence of grim accomplishment. Digby 
 secured a friend's motor-car and was of the first to 
 dare the open highways. More than once he saw 
 bodies heaped at street corners preparatory to be 
 ing carted away or in some cases undergoing im 
 promptu cremation; twice he caught a rushing 
 glimpse of outposts with rifles, staring at him and 
 then at their guns in dazed indecision as to whether 
 he should be shot or not. At Mountain Acre he 
 found the family quite safe and going about its usual 
 affairs. The presence of Pat loafing with his pipe 
 on the gallery and the dumb void created by the 
 cessation of the accustomed faint undertone of 
 rumbling stamps at the far-away mill were the only; 
 indications that all was not well with their world.
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 It was a week later that Ellerton appeared bring 
 ing with him Laura and her babies. He was not 
 deceived at the peace he found at Mountain Acre, 
 neither was Digby; they remembered their conver 
 sation of two years before and its unspoken predic 
 tions and stared at each other with grave faces. 
 They had little to say, because men face to face with 
 catastrophe are not talkative, especially such as 
 know each other as well as did these two. 
 
 To the women of the household every aspect was 
 pleasing if not rose-coloured; they knew that the 
 men were nervous, but even Mary attributed their 
 uneasiness to enforced idleness. It seemed to her 
 that the entire family had much to be thankful for ; 
 they had escaped unscathed, they were safe, with the 
 sole exception of Digby they had been spared even 
 gruesome sights. Never before had the house been 
 so peaceful. She wondered why, puzzled over the 
 explanation until she found it; there was no after 
 noon chatter from the servants' quarters, the men 
 among their visitors were gone, the women no 
 longer came. For some reason which she could not 
 quite fathom the discovery turned the peace fulness 
 a little acrid. .When next she noticed Ellerton and 
 
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 her husband sitting in moody silence a tiny frown 
 puckered her brow. 
 
 Of all the inmates of the house none was more 
 blissfully ignorant and content than Madeleine. She 
 had seen the first of Laura's babies soon after its 
 arrival and without betraying her opinion had found 
 it disappointingly ordinary; now it was two years 
 old and quite charming, but not nearly so wonderful 
 as its younger sister. This second child was an 
 anomaly, a lovely sport of nature, for it had been 
 born entrancingly beautiful, free of that look of 
 wrinkled age which almost universally stamps upon 
 the first days of a babe the mark of human limitation. 
 
 No group could exceed in delicate charm that 
 which was wont to gather immediately after the 
 baby's bath: Madeleine, round-eyed, flushed of 
 cheek, catching her breath in little puffing gasps, 
 holding the tiny perfumed child on her outstretched 
 arms which trembled with a poignant, bewildering 
 desire to hug and crush the atom of rosy joy lying 1 
 upon the soft towel like a flushed pearl upon a field 
 of snow; Mary, leaning over, her eyes filled with 
 dimming tears, her lips curved to a smile of inde 
 scribable tenderness ; Laura standing by with a look 
 
 185
 
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 of questioning wonder forever unanswerable, her 
 hand on the curly head of the two-year-old, who 
 clung to Madeleine's skirts, begging for a peep. 
 
 As Mary looked down upon the pink perfection of 
 those tiny naked limbs, at the bud of a mouth which 
 smiled but never gurgled, at the eyes, so big, so 
 blue, so content, so unfrightened, so infinitely at 
 peace with every disposition ordained or to be or 
 dained by a fate accepted without question from the 
 moment of life's inception, she murmured, "I can't 
 understand it, Laura. Baby is too perfect, she 
 never cries, never dribbles ; she isn't like a baby but 
 like a dream come true. She fills the heart too full 
 for belief as though she had bloomed overnight 
 beyond the realm of pain." 
 
 And Laura breathed with dilated eyes, "It was 
 like that ; she was born like a happy sigh that hurts 
 with pleasure." 
 
 Digby, coming upon this scene, felt a strange con 
 traction of the heart, a sense of impotence before the 
 sisyphistic burden of man, doomed to roll with puny 
 arms the stone of human happiness for himself and 
 for others against the steep ascent of an immutable 
 fate. He turned with an unaccustomed stoop to his 
 
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 shoulders to continue his search for Ellerton, as he 
 had news for him of grave importance. 
 
 Six months of shattering unrest had continued to 
 shake the country since it had been rocked from its 
 foundations by the cataclysm of the tragic Ten 
 Days; without exception industry had been at a 
 standstill throughout the land and hearts had grown 
 sore under the racking of idle anxiety and hope de 
 ferred. To put an illusive period to this condition 
 of affairs came the first of the announcements of a 
 broadening of the advice now a year old of the home 
 government that all its nationals should concentrate 
 in the large cities to a policy charged with peril to 
 the intimate sinews of ten thousand lives, the fun 
 damental and simple things of existence, such as 
 shelter, daily bread and the elementary garments of 
 decency. 
 
 It was this pronouncement published in the daily 
 press of the Capital and sent to Digby by courier 
 that he wished to show to Ellerton whom he finally 
 found under an arbor in the garden desperately un 
 occupied and disconsolately smoking a pipe in spite 
 of a tongue gone raw from too frequent indulgence 
 in the solace of tobacco. He raised a listless hand 
 
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 to take the paper, read the announcement through 
 twice and sat thereafter with brows gathered in 
 concentration. 
 
 "What do you think, Rox?" asked Digby quietly 
 and continued himself with an impromptu resume 
 of the message. "You see, Washington says that 
 while it waits, the contest of the rival forces will 
 doubtless be a bit sharper because it's self-evident 
 that a prompt end must come to such a situation and 
 as a consequence increased danger to non-combatants 
 is to be feared. That sounds reasonable, doesn't it?" 
 
 Ellerton made no reply and Digby continued. "It 
 urges all of us to leave the country but says that 
 doesn't mean in the least a slackening of the efforts to 
 safeguard our lives and interests and that it should 
 be published broadcast to every one assuming author 
 ity here in the most unequivocal way that the for 
 tunes of those of us who can't possibly get away will 
 be vigilantly watched over and that those responsi 
 ble for our sufferings and losses will be held to a 
 definite reckoning. It says that should be made 
 plain beyond the possibility of a misunderstanding. 
 What more can we ask, Rox?" 
 
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 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 Ellerton waved his hand in a gesture of dis 
 missal. "I've finished thinking about what it says, 
 Dick," he answered. "I'm trying to get down to im 
 mediate facts, such as where I'll put my foot the very 
 next step I take. I don't mind telling you I'm hard 
 up and as for you, if you're not, you soon will be. I 
 know all the platitudes about not thinking of money 
 when life is at stake, but as a matter of cold fact, 
 money is more important than life, it always has 
 been. If it weren't, why should a circus acrobat dive 
 a hundred feet into a shallow tank of water for five 
 dollars a time ? How many of us do you think there 
 are in the country to-day, Dick?" 
 
 "All told?" asked Digby. 
 
 Ellerton nodded. 
 
 "I've heard as low as twenty thousand and as 
 high as fifty," replied Digby. 
 
 "Let's call it twenty," said Ellerton. "Think of 
 moving day for twenty thousand men, women and 
 children, not to the next-door flat but away from 
 bread and butter, lots of them leaning on the arm of 
 governmental charity just to get put .Well, I've 
 made up my mind." 
 
 189
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 "To what?" asked Digby eagerly. He had little 
 faith in Ellerton's ethical capacity, but looked upon 
 his practical acumen as virtually infallible. 
 
 "The women and children may go," replied Eller- 
 ton, "but we men must stay ; we've got to stay and 
 I'll tell you why, Dick. You can't leave bread and 
 butter and a billion dollars of investment, equip 
 ment and running gear even in a desert without a 
 human dam; it will seep away like water into dry 
 sand. There's a consideration of honour on me and 
 on a thousand more like me, the same consideration 
 that binds a millionaire guardian or a common 
 night-watchman. We owe it, do you get that? 
 we owe it to half a million folks at home that had 
 faith in us and I for one won't quit. I won't. I 
 was born to a certain brand of honour just as surely 
 as I was to an inalienable right to protection wher 
 ever I may choose to wander on God's green earth." 
 
 "Hold on, Rox," said Digby, smiling, "keep an 
 even mind. You're right but you're violent. I've 
 got to stay here; every cent of income for me 
 stopped when the Pico mine closed down. But you 
 talked as if it was for months, as if you hadn't even 
 read what the paper says about unslackening vigi 
 lance." 
 
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 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 "I know I did," said Rox, running his hand 
 through his crisp hair. "I can't tell you why I did, 
 but I guess it's because I always talk by feel and not 
 by reason." 
 
 Digby stared at him, surprised that he should 
 have put so neatly into words what he himself had 
 often sensed in regard to the intimate make-up of 
 his partner but never been able to define. To 
 gether the two left the arbor to go and break to the 
 women of the family the necessity for immediate 
 departure from the country. Their unbelieving 
 faces, the excitement of packing for what they con 
 sidered a flying visit, the disorder consequent upon 
 hasty choice and ruthless discarding, made on the 
 watching men an impression which in the course of 
 the next few years was to become a mental picture 
 not of an event but of a condition. 
 
 The peculiar movement which now began of a 
 vast body, an entire class of intelligent, highly- 
 trained factors in the life .of a hundred communi 
 ties, was one of the strangest series of exoduses 
 known to history; it was not a hegira carrying the 
 implication of roots uptorn and bridges burned but 
 rather the ebb and flow of a tide anchored by the 
 laws as old as man and as immutable as nature her- 
 
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 self on which Ellerton had laid an unerring 1 finger. 
 In a period of four years thousands of women and 
 children and many men abandoned their homes 
 thrice in distracted obedience to their country's thrice 
 repeated command ; great was the outward flood on 
 these occasions but great also was the return flow, 
 in some cases after months, in many after mere 
 weeks. 
 
 Why ? Why did these individuals go back ? Was 
 it to embarrass their own country by drawing petu 
 lant attention to the misdemeanors of another ? No ; 
 it was because nothing short of a thunderbolt of 
 God which should destroy them, life, lock, stock 
 and barrel, could have made good the order to 
 evacuate. They came back, to give no nobler rea 
 son, because San Francisco was rebuilt, because the 
 slopes of Etna, to our knowledge continually swept 
 by fire and brimstone since eight centuries before 
 Christ, have to-day a thousand inhabitants to the 
 square mile, because their friends looked askance at 
 further loans, because the edifice of an individual 
 life can not always be built twice, because they were 
 desperate, threadbare, hungry and cold. 
 
 There were many who had not the resources for 
 even a first: return ; citrus fruit farmers by the hun- 
 
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 dred, some of them old men, who had seen their 
 groves wantonly razed ; ranchers, whose wealth, bred 
 through patient years, had been shot down for the 
 hides or driven off on the hoof ; small miners ; pros 
 pectors; employees of big concerns whose worth 
 hung to a narrow margin of language or location, all 
 of them producers who had given but never sucked 
 blood. There were those also whose funds were suf 
 ficient for but a single return; of these were the 
 Digbys. 
 
 Almost every family has its ups and downs, its 
 day of ease, its hour of reverse, but it will be found 
 that the quality of fortitude with which these tran 
 sitions are met is invariably in ratio to the measure 
 of justice; the arrows of outrageous fortune sting 
 deeply only those who know themselves wronged. 
 Mary had gone to the States with a slim purse but 
 a heart full of courage ; she came back an old woman, 
 aged not by years but by seeing herself and her 
 children burdens on those who were already over 
 laden and by the knowledge that it was through no 
 fault of her own that she had come through years 
 of wise management and modest opulence to penury. 
 
 Unconscious of the change in herself, she was 
 shocked to find Digby's hair turned quite gray, a 
 
 193
 
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 stoop fixed in his once erect shoulders and a mild 
 look of shame in his steel-blue eyes as though they 
 could never escape from the sight of himself as a 
 failure in protection, the first duty of love. He 
 stammered, almost choked, when he explained to her 
 that he could not go to the port to meet her because 
 of lack of the few dollars necessary. He looked 
 with faint wonder at Laura and her children. 
 
 "Why did you come ?" he asked. 
 
 Laura smiled, put her arms around his neck, 
 kissed him, held up her two lovely children to be 
 kissed and then said quietly, "To give music lessons." 
 
 She would not go to Mountain Acre; she took a 
 tiny apartment in the City, sought patiently for the 
 few pupils that would give her the pittance she re 
 quired and telegraphed for Rox to come to her. The 
 message missed him, for a rumour had reached him 
 and he was already on the way. When after many 
 inquiries he found her, he gave her the first and last 
 angry glance of all their years together, but before 
 he could speak she had laid her pale cool fingers on 
 his hot lips. 
 
 "Rox," she said, "my dear big boy, we can't live 
 any more so far away from you." 
 
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 Looking into her calm eyes he felt himself de 
 meaned, sank to the floor, wrapped his arms around 
 her and buried his face against her knees ; his hands 
 stole up along her body to her waist and clung there, 
 trembling. Her fingers moved caressingly through 
 his hair. 
 
 "When you can come," she continued, "we are 
 here; when you're away, you'll know where we are." 
 
 "But, darling," said Ellerton, "the music lessons ; 
 they're not true, are they ?" 
 
 "Rox, stand up," said Laura in a strangely potent 
 tone that brought him to his feet in wonder. "Look 
 at me," she continued. "I'm going to support my 
 self and the babies if I can do it; if I can't I'll let 
 you know. In the meantime you're going to give 
 every cent you can make or borrow to Father. Do 
 you know what it meant to Madeleine, or to Mother 
 for that matter, to come back with just the clothes 
 they went away with a year ago? No, you don't 
 dear ; you couldn't, but I do and if you refuse what 
 I ask, you'll kill something in me that can't die 
 alone." 
 
 Then he threw back his head and laughed, seized 
 her, kissed her, picked her up and bearing her in the 
 
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 strong arms of love carried her protesting on a tour 
 of inspection through every room of the little flat, 
 the two children following, screaming with mixed 
 fear and delight at his heels. He ended up by de 
 positing her on the bed, piling the babies on top of 
 her and then plunging to embrace in one monster 
 hug all the rosy breathless mountain of beloved flesh. 
 
 Digby had begged Mary and Madeleine to stay 
 in the City also but they had only looked at him out 
 of offended and pitying eyes; the three went to 
 Mountain Acre in a borrowed motor-car because the 
 trains had stopped running. Junior rushed out to 
 meet them ; he at least was gay, no consideration of 
 danger for himself or others could stifle his un 
 bounded joy at this showered benefit from a Provi 
 dence too long parsimonious with the least of gifts. 
 He hugged and kissed his mother till she gasped 
 for breath ; then hugged and kissed Madeleine, pum- 
 meled her, ordered her to take down her hair so he 
 could pull it as of yore. 
 
 "Oh, Junior!" begged Madeleine in a strangely 
 subdued voice. She would not be his playmate but 
 hurried to her room, pulled out all her bureau draw 
 ers, emptied them of their contents discarded months 
 
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 ago and sorted out one garment after another with 
 an avid eagerness and pitifully tremulous lips. She 
 had outgrown all her clothes; her beauty was as 
 great as ever but it had an air of inevitable im 
 modesty, of unbecoming nakedness. 
 
 Of all the force of the Pico mine, Pat Hogan 
 alone remained. During Mary's absence he had 
 taken on the duties of the entire staff of household 
 retainers ; with Junior for helper he was cook, laun 
 dress, gardener and stable hand. Even so he had 
 time to loaf with his pipe on the gallery of an eve 
 ning and regale his two hearers with Irish tales 
 galore and minute-long near-oaths on the character 
 istics of all races not individually descended from 
 kings. He still clung solemnly to the assertion that 
 herself, the missus, wasn't up to being out the day 
 but he none the less relegated to her the duty of 
 keeping watch over the mill and zinc-room. 
 
 Time hung heavy on his hands after the return 
 of Mary and Madeleine, who laughingly refused to 
 let him more than wipe the dishes, but not for long. 
 On an afternoon marked by that dreamy, infinite 
 peace so characteristic of Mountain Acre the 
 sounds of strange voices and clanking spurs were 
 
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 suddenly heard upon the gallery. Junior was the 
 first to hear the noise ; he hurried to the door, peeped 
 out and then came back hastily in search of his 
 father. 
 
 "There's a bunch of men on the terrace, Father," 
 he said quietly but under evident restraint "You'd 
 better come out with me." 
 
 Digby rose to his feet with the lithe movement of 
 a panther, apparently deliberate but in reality swift. 
 "Richard!" he said sharply, "go to your mother and 
 Madeleine ; keep them away ; stay with them ; never 
 leave them. I mean that ; every word of it." 
 
 "Don't worry about me, Father," replied Junior, 
 his face white but his eyes shining. "I'll do exactly 
 as you say." 
 
 Digby strode out to the gallery, his head up, the 
 stoop gone from his shoulders. A large group of 
 men was gathered there; their horses were tethered 
 in the garden and along the driveway. The men 
 were a nondescript lot but they were all armed with 
 both carbines and revolvers. Digby greeted them 
 with an uncringing smile of good-fellowship but it 
 met with no response from their lowering faces. 
 They seemed to have no leader. 
 
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 "Spik Spanish ?" demanded one of them. 
 
 "You know I do," replied Digby. "What do you 
 want?" 
 
 "Fifty thousand pesos," replied the spokesman. 
 
 "Fifty thousand pesos!" cried Digby. The mere 
 sound of that sum of money made him laugh aloud, 
 and on the instant he was set upon, seized, and 
 bound with a halter-rope to a pillar of the pergola. 
 An evil-looking, low-class white whom he had once 
 employed stepped forward, spit on him and slapped 
 his face. "Yes," he said, with the bravado of the 
 protected coward, "feefty tousand pesos." 
 
 Digby looked gravely from one man to another. 
 "Some of you know me," he said. "You know that 
 
 
 
 I never lie. All the money I have in the world is in 
 my left trousers pocket." 
 
 Two or three of them approached him with the 
 leisurely dignity that seldom deserts a member of 
 their race, be he gentleman or bandit. They drew 
 from his pocket a bunch of keys, a great roll of al 
 most worthless bills and half a dozen gold coins ; the 
 bills, which were of their own high commander's 
 issue, they threw in his face. 
 
 It was at this stage of the game that Pat Hogan, 
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 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 coming from the mine, rushed into the group on the 
 gallery and lifted up his voice and great freckled fists 
 in eloquent rage. "Ye blatherumskites o' half- 
 grown stirks," he yelled, "take a sup of the length 
 and breadth of me tongue. If you don't cut your 
 stick out o' here, I'll strell your guts from Ballyhooly 
 to the back of God-sped. You'll get no money here, 
 not the last taste in life of the price your faythers 
 paid up the lane of shame to the straddies that bore 
 you. Spal !" 
 
 A bullet cut the word in two, plunged into his 
 breast; a look of childish wonder, of frightened 
 awakening and dawning horror spread over his face 
 as he fell toward the shot, sprawling, his great arms 
 outspread, his knees sharply crooked. His hat rolled 
 away, disclosing a shock of red hair damp at the 
 forehead. He raised his glazing blue eyes to Digby's 
 face and murmured just before the blood rushed up 
 from his lungs to choke him, "I'm thinking long till 
 I see my mother." 
 
 All the sadness in the world was in Digby's voice 
 as he looked about and asked, "Why did you do 
 that?" 
 
 "He was noisy," said one. "He 'talked too much." 
 200
 
 The white who had spit on him stepped forwanJ, 
 holding out the bunch of keys. "Show us the one to 
 the zinc-room," he demanded hoarsely. 
 
 Digby obeyed. They consulted and argued in low 
 voices, disputed, gesticulated, and excited by the 
 flamboyant statements of the low white who never 
 in his life had been allowed to enter the zinc-room 
 and who consequently jumped to the conclusion that 
 it was a treasure-house of easily lifted wealth they 
 moved off in a body along the path to the mine. 
 Digby waited until the last of them, gesticulating to 
 himself, had turned the sharp corner and then called 
 "Junior!" The boy ran out quickly, opening his 
 knife as he came. 
 
 "That's right," said his father with a terrible 
 calm, as Junior slashed the halter-rope. "Now get 
 your mother and Madeleine." 
 
 "Mother can't come," said Junior. 
 
 "Can't come? Why not?" demanded Digby. 
 
 "I don't know," said the boy, his eyes filling with 
 tears. 
 
 Digby rushed into the house and returned pres 
 ently bearing Mary in his arms. Her face was 
 twisted, her limbs powerless, but there was a look in 
 
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 her eyes as though she were trying desperately to 
 smile. Madeleine followed, sobbing. 
 
 "Don't cry, Madeleine," commanded her father. 
 "Get on a horse ; pick a good one." 
 
 In a flash, Junior grasped his father's plan; he 
 rushed ahead, untethered all but three of the horses, 
 gathered their reins and tied them one to another; 
 then he helped his father with his mother. 
 
 "Now, Madeleine," said Digby cheerfully, "be 
 a cowboy. Drive the horses before you, but don't 
 let them turn down the hill." 
 
 Madeleine was an excellent rider; she caught the 
 quirt which Junior tossed to her and drove the 
 ponies tethered to each other in a plunging mass 
 slowly down the driveway toward the highroad. She 
 knew too much to press them through the open gate ; 
 she let them turn unhindered down the hill, passed 
 them quietly on the far side and then whirled at 
 them, turned them up the road and took them past 
 the entrance to Mountain Acre, where Junior and 
 her father steadying Mary had just arrived, at a 
 brisk, high-headed trot. 
 
 "Madeleine is a born cowpuhcHer," murmured 
 "I wonder where she learned that trick." 
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 "She knows horses," said Junior, "You told her 
 not to let them turn down the hill." 
 
 "So I did," said Digby absently, his fingers mov 
 ing tenderly on Mary's arm. "I was wrong; she 
 knew better." 
 
 His mind was dazed with grief for Pat, faithful 
 perhaps far beyond intention, but who had never 
 theless paid the last price without a murmur ; it was 
 stunned and numb for Mary, his wife, his lover, his 
 helpmate, flesh of his flesh. He looked wistfully at 
 her distorted face and saw only beauty; but as he 
 looked he awoke, came out of his perilous trance. 
 
 "Junior," he said, "steady your mother." Then 
 he slipped back over the high cantle of the short- 
 seated saddle to his horse's haunches and held out 
 his hands for Mary, drew her to a firm and comfort 
 able seat before him, wrapped his arms about her 
 and held her securely. "Now, boy," he called, "drive 
 this horse till we kill him ; there are plenty more." 
 
 Madeleine, far ahead, turned in her saddle and 
 looked back, startled, in answer to the suddenly clat 
 tering hoofs. In a moment she comprehended; a 
 smile curved her lips, then they grew set and her 
 eyes flashed as she lashed the ponies before her into 
 
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 a wild gallop. They plunged with heaving bounds 
 up the steep ascent to Huichilac, turned the sharp 
 corner in a rain of sparks from the cobblestones and 
 flattened out on the mild ascent toward the town of 
 the Three Marys into a steady, reaching run. 
 
 On the long flat beyond Parres ten miles from 
 Mountain Acre she stopped them at a waved signal 
 from Junior riding alone. He came up with her, 
 said nothing, but cast her a look of loving approba 
 tion and boundless admiration, singled out the 
 heaviest and least blown of the remounts and trotted 
 him back to meet his father, whose horse was ad 
 vancing only in a staggering walk. Mary was trans 
 ferred and the whole party started on at a brisk 
 pace, bringing her to welcome rest at the American 
 Hospital just before nightfall.
 
 "Come, my son, a riddle or I sleep and wake no 
 more." 
 
 "What is it that is light and darkness, seen and not 
 seen, heard and not heard, misunderstood yet compre 
 hended, believed and- unbelieved, loved and detested " 
 
 "Enough. The truth writhing off the end of a man's 
 tongue."
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 IN the period that followed Digby found himself 
 immersed to one of the lower stratas in that 
 dead sea of catastrophe which spread its numbing 
 weight over a nation submerged, cutting short the 
 vision of all those who suffered by the inundation 
 and presenting a blank, confusing and unfathomable 
 negation to the home government which amid 
 many other distractions was driven by the cries of 
 its drowning nationals to efforts praiseworthy in 
 themselves but unfortunately directed toward per 
 ception rather than toward immediate action and 
 relief. 
 
 In frequent attempts to understand the incompre 
 hensible, it sent envoys of every category out upon 
 the troubled waters. They were as men in row- 
 boats on an open sea. Encased within their peculiar 
 limitations like divers against exterior permeation 
 and fed through a tube with foreign air, they 
 plunged into the penumbra, bewildered walked with 
 the lost on the mountainous ocean floor, asked them 
 
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 questions in a forgotten language of freedom and 
 heard in muffled answer the unreasoning cry of the 
 oppressed not for understanding of that which their 
 own sealed eyes could not encompass but for plain, 
 ordinary, every-day salvage. 
 
 To these emissaries, linked safely to an outer 
 world, untrammeled during their cursory inspection 
 of the distressed -country by those sordid, but none 
 the less tenacious ligaments which bind man inex 
 orably to that place and condition where he has best 
 learned to meet the immediate exigencies of life, 
 food, shelter and raiment not for future genera 
 tions but for to-day, for himself and for the wife 
 and children to be met at evening in the actual flesh, 
 there appeared to be no better counsel than the dis 
 tracted order to do the impossible, to evacuate. These 
 envoys withdrew, not always complacent, bemused, 
 not quite blinded, leaving behind them shears of 
 cheese to cut a Gordian knot of tangled sinews. 
 The world never wearies of telling its neighbour to 
 lift himself by his own boot-straps. 
 
 To add gall to wormwood, American and Brit 
 ish cruisers, chafing under unequivocal orders, 
 had stood by while three hundred American men, 
 
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 women and children barricaded against a mob were 
 rescued by Germans from a German warship; a 
 tale in itself which, despite many tellings, never fails 
 to bring tears of shame and regret for the double 
 stain on an ancient tradition. 
 
 This chronicle of cause and effect seeks a plane 
 above individual censure; its mission is one of illu 
 mination, of illustration of the eternal truth that in 
 the dark all men step in puddles ; but it asks a judg 
 ment of the heart for Ellerton and for others who 
 in those trying days dripped bitterness from un 
 bridled tongues and, red- faced and angry-eyed, tried 
 but in vain to tear down the shrine of patriotism 
 within their breasts built by hands long dead on 
 frontier, battle-field and ship of the line. For 
 Digby, the merciful, no mercy is asked; he needs 
 no defense whom time can not obliterate. 
 
 His hair gone gray, his dark brows gathered in a 
 constant concentration of thought, his deep-set eyes 
 filled with a troubled brooding, his. tanned cheeks 
 sunken to long sweeping lines of strength, his shoul 
 ders bowed and his thin,, wiry fingers nervously 
 busied with the cheapest of cigarettes, he was to be 
 found near but seldom, within the excited groups 
 
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 gathering in the clubs which he still frequented 
 though he never bought nor accepted a drink. He 
 listened to every one, but rarely interrupted any but 
 Ellerton. 
 
 There is no broken pride like that of the man 
 who having lived and held his own amid affluence 
 looks around the room and knows himself the debtor 
 of every friend present. Digby had but one pos 
 session worthy of the name, his large share in the 
 life value of the Pico mine. That holding was tem 
 porarily worthless; it was not only unproductive 
 but absolutely unsalable. What else he had in the 
 world, a mere nothing, he sold ; then, his mind tor 
 mented by thoughts of little things once lightly held, 
 clothing, silver spoons, bibelots of value, portable 
 articles of market worth, he slunk back to Mountain 
 Acre over the trackless hills and at the hourly risk 
 of his life. 
 
 When first his eye caught sight of the devastation 
 of the Pico mine, wrecked by terrific overcharges of 
 dynamite in merciless revenge, such a lump rose to 
 his throat that he raised his hand to thrust it down 
 lest it strangle him. Clutching his neck, he felt the 
 hammering of his pulse in abnormally distended ar- 
 
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 teries ; his head reeled and he reached gropingly for 
 a stone upon which to sit down. 
 
 "An even mind," he murmured aloud, "God give 
 me an even mind." 
 
 Strengthened by that appeal to the best within 
 himself, he arose, climbed the rugged spur which 
 cut off mine from Mountain Acre and descended the 
 steep wooded incline to the garden at the back of 
 the house, of which he had*caught a sufficient glimpse 
 to know that it still stood. 
 
 Eight months had passed' since the afternoon of 
 Pat's death ; eight months of reading to Mary every 
 day, of looking wistfully at her twisted face, trans 
 parent hands, wan cheeks and brilliant imprisoned 
 eyes; eight months of watching anxiously over 
 Madeleine, of trying to arouse her from a stupour 
 of arrested youth, of taking her to and from a busi 
 ness college where she might learn to earn and fend 
 for that self which had' once been so exuberantly 
 secure of the cream and the froth of life; eight 
 months of accepting help from Ellerton andjatterly 
 even Richard, Jr., proud to be a clerk at twenty-five 
 dollars a week. 
 
 In that short eternity the privet hedge had sent 
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 out long, tender shoots streaking across the sky as 
 though in frightened disarray; rust had gathered on 
 the rose-leaves, crumpling them up in. burned, dis 
 torted shapes, the bushes were laden with sodden 
 petals and hard, unnatural seed pods. Grass had 
 died in the lawn and sprung up wherever it should 
 not grow. The door to the kitchen hung ripped 
 from its upper hinges. He crept to it stealthily, en 
 tered, looked around with a sinking of the heart at 
 the wanton destruction of the fixtures to which he 
 and Mary had given so much thought and care, and 
 passed on to baths, bed-, dining- and living-rooms. 
 The house still stood. It was a mournful echo 
 ing shell, a wreck, a derelict, an empty tomb, await 
 ing the burial of all those happy memories to which 
 it had given such prolific birth. What could not be 
 stolen had been outraged by vandal hands ; even the 
 plaster on the walls and the parquet floors had been 
 ruthlessly gashed with axes. Many things had been 
 destroyed in the taking, hangings dragged from 
 their fastenings by the impatience of greed, picture 
 frames cut down to crash and crumble, toilet fixtures 
 cracked and broken for the lack of the aid of a 
 wrench. Mary's lovely piano had been torn limb 
 
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 from limb and the tough mahogany showed where 
 it had stood the test of a fire built against the dis 
 membered heap. 
 
 "How it must have cried out," whispered Digby. 
 
 Of other heavy pieces of furniture only parts 
 were missing; the drawers from bureaus, tops from 
 tables, looking-glasses from dressers. What could 
 not be made of immediate use in hovels where life 
 demanded few conveniences and no refinements had 
 been broken, burnt, crushed underfoot. From a 
 shadowed corner he rescued one single object of 
 personal value, his favourite pipe. 
 
 In that hour of poignant, overwhelming distress, 
 the finding of the beloved pipe assumed to Digby the 
 proportions of a miracle of good-fortune. He picked 
 up the companion of many a blissfully contented 
 hour, rubbed it clean on his sleeve of the splattering 
 of powdered plaster and examined every curl and 
 wisp of the lovely grain. How cold the briarwood 
 bowl seemed to his caressing touch, as though feeling 
 itself abandoned by the kindly warmth of fire and 
 friendship, it had gone forever dead! He smiled 
 and still smiling passed on to the front door. 
 
 It was closed, though many a window hung 
 
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 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 broken and open. As if held by unseen hands it 
 resisted his efforts to throw it wide and let light 
 into the gloomy, musty hall. He persevered and 
 tore it loose from the grip of a hundred tendrils of 
 encroaching vines. So overgrown with rank vegeta 
 tion had the pergola become that no burst of free 
 daylight greeted his eyes, hungry for the simplest 
 element of cheer. He peered out into the golden 
 shadows of the veiling foliage and his gaze suddenly 
 widened to a sight of horror. They had added 
 shame to murder and hung Pat's body to a trellis 
 beam. 
 
 Digby went sadly into the garden, found an old 
 rusty spade with broken handle and dug a grave in 
 a nook of infinite quiet, of stillness so secure that it 
 seemed a denial of the past, of the memory of pat 
 tering feet and children's cries at play; then he cut 
 down the horror that had once been Pat, wrapped it 
 in a torn, stained window curtain and laid it away to 
 rest. It was night before he turned, weary, hungry 
 and sore at heart, to climb and feel his way through 
 the mountain wilderness. His dreams of coming 
 back laden with clothing or salable articles had been 
 demolished, but something saved him from the de- 
 
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 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 pression of utter failure. He would smile, wonder 
 why he was smiling and then remember the old pipe 
 nestling in his pocket. 
 
 On a certain day Ellerton came into town on one of 
 his periodical visits to his family. Digby, going his 
 methodical rounds of the clubs, was glad to see his 
 son-in-law, watched him with a kindly gleam in his 
 eyes, but did not force himself to the front. This un 
 wonted diffidence, with its terrible implication of 
 how far he had fallen in his own -esteem and conse 
 quently been lowered in that of others, did not seem 
 to him an unnatural thing; it never occurred to him 
 to contrast it with the quiet assumption of con 
 scious power which had once marked his contact 
 with all the world. He knew, however, why he was 
 so glad to see Ellerton ; it was because Trawley was 
 gone after the murder of three of his staff; because 
 Temple had left .after risking his very life in a 
 refusal to bow down to robbery under government 
 arms; because Dawton, slow in movement and in 
 speech, sure in judgment, had had the idol of his 
 labours first confiscated and then wrecked and had 
 turned his back on the ruin. 
 
 These men were gone and many more so that the 
 prosperous City colony, once of ten thousand, was 
 
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 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 reduced to as many hundreds, a residue formed of 
 those who like Ellerton refused with a blazing-eyed 
 stubbornness to yield to anything short of death 
 their right to the protection to which they were born, 
 of those who like Digby and hundreds of others 
 could not leave and live; and finally, of those who 
 felt secure, laughed at danger or saw a chance to 
 make good money at mere risk of life. Such whole 
 sale withdrawals necessarily made wide gaps in 
 every man's individual circle and Digby's was all the 
 more drastically reduced as he had never been more 
 than a transient in the Capital. So he was glad to 
 see Ellerton and hear him talk. 
 
 Of living from hand to mouth, of descending 
 steadily from expedient to expedient, subterfuge to 
 subterfuge, Digby had now known over four years. 
 During their daily passing they had crawled on 
 laggard feet but as he looked back upon that long 
 season of weary waiting, of aching hope heartlessly 
 deferred, it seemed to him an instantaneous night 
 mare from which he might yet awake to his lost 
 happiness and to the old comfort for those he so 
 profoundly loved could he but hold his mind to an 
 even keel. 
 
 It was already some time since the refugees of the 
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 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 great exodus of 1914 and of the later one of 1916, 
 had begun to return first singly, then in groups of 
 twos and threes and finally by families. They had 
 been talking in the club of losses, tragic only to the 
 individual, of the hardships of the enforced journey 
 on swarming transports, of the trials to women ac 
 customed to lavish wardrobes landing with filthy 
 children against the contrast of the homeland in 
 somnolent peace and which was inclined to stare 
 wonderingly but uninterested at these discomfited 
 people whose faces burned with the shame of taking 
 charity in complacent substitution for justice. 
 
 To this informal caucus came the news of the 
 blowing up of a train and the massacre of seventeen 
 Americans who had been assured of local protec 
 tion. Ellerton whirled on Digby, his eyes full of 
 wrath. "Four years ago, Dick, and you thought it 
 would be a little matter of weeks ! Four years of 
 scavenging by every element, each rottener than the 
 other, that can arm a band of cutthroats. Do you 
 remember it, Dick ? Publish broadcast to every one 
 assuming authority that our fortunes would be vigi 
 lantly watched, that those responsible for our suf 
 ferings and losses would be held to a definite reckon- 
 
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 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 ing! Oh, Lord, how long!" His eyes suddenly 
 dropped. "Suffering!" he added, "in what kind of 
 cash does one repay suffering?" 
 
 "Keep an even mind, Rox," said Digby, with an 
 earnestness which showed how deeply he was 
 moved. His hearers smiled indulgently at the 
 phrase; for many months now he had been known 
 as "Even-mind Digby." To any one acquainted with 
 his history this nickname marked a transition, a 
 complete substitution of personality; there had once 
 been a Dick Digby, pointed out by the young and 
 ambitious, respected by all, a man of solid attain 
 ments whose weight gave ponderance to the justice 
 within him; now they could smile indulgently when 
 "Even-mind" spoke. 
 
 "Give them time, Rox," he continued, his eyes 
 and cheeks burning with suppressed ardour. "They 
 have got a lot to think about just now. A dog 
 doesn't stop to scratch fleas when he's baiting a 
 bear." 
 
 "No," said Ellerton quickly, "but did you ever 
 hear of a man too much in a hurry to crush a bed 
 bug?" 
 
 He took a short nervous turn and glanced at the 
 217
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 men around him. "Times have changed," he said. 
 "When I was a kid at school there were two names 
 which used to bring a gleam to every boy's eyes ; a 
 flush to his cheek. One was Decatur and the other 
 was Farragut. The Barbary Pirates could collect 
 tribute and lives for a century from every power in 
 Europe but not from a two-by-four youngster of a 
 Republic whose conception of justice reached around 
 the world ; Farragut could go for two years without 
 a bed of his own in order that he might the better 
 track down the buccaneers of the Caribbean. Could 
 you have thought that the day would come when 
 school children would be taught that an American 
 who lets go of the apron strings of his mother- 
 country by that act becomes a national outcast ?" 
 
 "Steady, Rox," said Digby. 
 
 "Steady !" cried Ellerton. "Be steady before the 
 spectacle of a country of our traditions first raising 
 to its feet and then supporting the greatest delib 
 erately and cynically piratical combination ever put 
 across by man, a tyranny of the few which destroys 
 us and the work of years, merely as an incident to 
 feeding upon its own flesh and blood ? Am I lying ? 
 Who here doesn't know that four-fifths of this coun- 
 
 218
 
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 try is being trampled into the mire by a machine 
 which turns out high-sounding laws in a stillborn 
 stream with one hand and with the other raises 
 the black banner of murder, rapine, petty graft, 
 robbery under arms, robbery by international 
 trickery, hails dishonour as a new-found virtue 
 of immaculate conception, a sort of substitute 
 emblem for the Virgin of Guadulupe and still 
 finds opportunity to fill with foulness the mis 
 guided hand of friendship extended by a print- 
 blinded neighbour?" 
 
 Every eye turned on Digby, curious as to what 
 answer his even mind would find to an accusation 
 whose proofs were believed to be self-evident. He 
 sat silent, shaking his head from side to side. 
 
 "When I came into town to-day," continued El- 
 lerton, "I was walking down the Paseo and I saw a 
 young American sitting on one of the benches, evi 
 dently out of work, hard up and half starving, but 
 he was smiling. I stopped and I said, 'What the 
 hell are you laughing about?' Well, what do you 
 think he was smiling about?" 
 
 "Tell us," said some one. 
 
 "He said, 'I'm laughing because I've just found 
 219
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 out that their women are of two classes : those who 
 smell and those who smell of perfume.' ' 
 
 "Rox !" cried Digby. 
 
 "I know," said Ellerton impatiently, "an even 
 mind. Well, there's something the matter with an 
 even mind which can't see that we, our people at 
 home, have planted the seed and nursed an abscess 
 of famine and oppression which when it bursts 
 will shower on our door-step, where it rightly be 
 longs, such a heritage as will splatter the fair name 
 of our grandchildren and of theirs. I wonder 
 if we'll wake up and if we ever do, how I'd like to 
 see the faces of our people when they draw in and 
 smell their hand, pudgy with altruism, which has 
 been patting on the back the masters of a national 
 slave market who hold for hire the strangled bodies 
 of every virtue in the calendar. 
 
 Digby clutched his hands lying on the table be 
 fore him until the knuckles showed white. "I be 
 lieve,'* he said in a clear voice, "that all men aspire 
 to an equal justice, that when we hear a man cry 
 out even in the stilted phrases of altruistic laws 
 we ought to take it for a measure of his vision. I 
 do not admit that an ideal can be besmirched by pol 
 luted hands. On the other hand," he continued, 
 
 220
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 with a peculiar added resonance to his deep voice, 
 "all pollution carries with it a demand for sanitation, 
 a wail to the ruling powers among men for execu 
 tion as a step toward immediate justice as opposed 
 to a scholastic theorem." 
 
 "You've caught it," cried Ellerton, "even you. If 
 our people who gave that order to twenty thousand 
 of their own flesh and blood to tear up their roots 
 and run had first gone on their knees before the 
 innermost shrine we all possess, humbled themselves 
 with sackcloth and ashes, beaten their bowed heads 
 on the lowest step of the throne of divine justice, 
 called upon the Almighty to guide the words of their 
 mouths and pledged their immortal souls to give 
 body to the spoken truth, God wouldn't seem a 
 traitor to every man here to-day." 
 
 "Perhaps they did," interrupted Digby. "We 
 know that George Washington did a thing like that, 
 and Lincoln; perhaps thousands besides the ruling 
 few did just what you say." 
 
 "No!" roared Ellerton. "No people with a pal 
 sied right hand was ever the mouthpiece of God. 
 Do you think I haven't wondered how it happened 
 and seen it? We bothered them, God knows we 
 did; and some clerk in Washington must hare had 
 
 221
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 a brain-wave and said, 'I've got it ; why not tell the 
 lot of them to get out?' " 
 
 "Rox," cried Digby, "I won't take that even from 
 you. You don't know it. I tell you, if it hadn't 
 been for our communal faculty of saying a bit too 
 much, drawing the long bow when a short one 
 would do, we might not be standing where we are 
 to-day. Take the oil interests; all they had to do 
 was to print the clause of the constitution which 
 stated that petroleum rights were purchasable and 
 throw in for good measure proof that they didn't 
 hold one square foot of ground by gift or conces 
 sion. If they'd stood pat on just that, said it and 
 said it again and not another word, there never 
 would have been an argument. We had a tale of 
 outrage; some of us tried to make it into one of 
 horror. When the horror really came, we cried it 
 to deaf ears." 
 
 He arose, picked up his hat and left the club; El- 
 lerton followed him. As they walked up the ave 
 nue they came upon an open patio, glanced in 
 through the great open doors of wrought iron and 
 stopped on a common impulse. The patio was car 
 peted with a huge Persian rug upon which soldiers 
 were bivouacked in lounging groups while others 
 
 222
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 arriving rode their horses across it to the stabling 
 beyond. 
 
 "Dick," said Ellerton, "do you remember what 
 that rug cost ?" 
 
 "I never knew," said Digby. 
 
 "Forty thousand dollars," said Ellerton. "Now, 
 let's have some fun and perhaps make a killing." 
 
 He advanced on the guard and asked, "Who is 
 in command here?" 
 
 The guard shrugged one shoulder and spat peril 
 ously near Ellerton's foot. He drew it back quietly 
 and whispered, "I'll give ten pesos gold for the car 
 pet and a hundred paper to the men who'll carry it 
 home for me to-night" 
 
 The guard's face immediately produced a look of 
 intelligence as though a secret spring had been 
 pressed. He went into the yard to hold a consul 
 tation and Ellerton, his pulses beating rapidly at 
 the thought of the coup he was about to make, took 
 advantage to look within. He drew back and pay 
 ing no heed to the anxious shout of the guard took 
 Digby by the elbow and urged him away. "They've 
 hacked great squares out of one side of it for saddle- 
 blankets," he explained. 
 
 Digby drew a deep sigh but it was Ellerton who 
 223
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 first broke the heavy silence. "Dick," he said, "it's 
 that sort of outrage that breaks your heart. This 
 country produces not a single thing except through 
 the gift of God or the grace of foreigners. You and 
 I have traveled it through and through yet neither 
 one of us has even seen a live native industry; not 
 one. That statement is enough in itself to damn any 
 people that calls itself civilized, but the worst of it is 
 that because they can't produce they hate creation 
 and its creators and take it out in brutal destruction 
 of inanimate things ; the greater the beauty the 
 quicker the blow. Vicious children with the tear 
 ing hands of apes." 
 
 Digby felt that he had no more strength to com 
 bat Ellerton's mood and tried to change the subject. 
 "Heard from headquarters ?" he asked. 
 
 Ellerton frowned but not angrily; a half-smile 
 drew up the corners of his mouth. His position was 
 a peculiar one. When every one else had fled he 
 had gone single-handed to his company's main prop 
 erty, recruited a handful of workers from the thou 
 sands who had been turned off and proceeded to hold 
 the fort. He did not attempt to operate, but it was 
 his ambition to retain unbroken possession, keep the 
 pumps going and the water down, prevent destruc- 
 
 224
 
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 tion by rust and neglect and above all justify him 
 self in his own eyes. Four separate times he had 
 been ordered home by his superiors but in vain ; he 
 paid no heed. 
 
 They were men who counted money in millions 
 and whose> properties were estimated by their in 
 trinsic "lives" ; it made little difference to them when 
 a mine with thirty years of productiveness in sight 
 did its living so long as the basic value remained 
 inalienable. They were in- no sense slave-drivers 
 and the measure of their intelligence was the ex 
 traordinary importance they attached to keeping 
 Ellerton alive and out of harm's way. They cabled 
 to him, they wrote to him and finally cut off his pay. 
 
 He said nothing, continued to send in stereotyped 
 monthly reports and also to draw checks and drafts 
 the proceeds of which were duly accounted for, in 
 cluding the item of his usual salary. In desperation 
 the company at last dishonoured his paper. That 
 action threw him into a towering rage for it struck 
 at the most vulnerable point in his excessive pride. 
 (Who could know but he that in a time when one fac 
 tion after another and finally the de facto govern 
 ment were issuing banknotes at such a rate that one 
 went to market with a bushel basketful of them for 
 225
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 the day's purchases, a slip of paper with the signa 
 ture of Ellerton on it was known and treated as 
 gold throughout a wide countryside and even at 
 tained the distinction of a name? Such a scrap of 
 paper was called a "Roxano" ; men swore by it as 
 by the Rock of Ages. 
 
 Filled with wrath and thoughts of what a horse 
 whip could do to a Boston board meeting he made 
 his preparation for a flying trip, but before he could 
 reach the Capital, necessarily its first stage, his blood 
 had cooled and his brain cleared ; he realized that he 
 had been about to abandon the sole strength of his 
 position, the mingled elements of distance and pos 
 session. By virtue of the local laws and his extraor 
 dinary isolation he was a king in his own right ; he 
 went through the formality of mortgaging a hun 
 dred million dollars' worth of property and arranged 
 to have his checks honoured locally. 
 
 Everybody knew about this friendly duel and 
 many were the speculations as to Ellerton' s motives ; 
 one of them came near the truth. Twenty years be 
 fore Mary Digby had called him a nice, lovable 
 gambler. She should have omitted the adjectives. 
 Ellerton had not the itch which makes a man sit up 
 all night risking sums he can ill afford with trem- 
 
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 bling fingers but he ha'd the iron nerve which will 
 play a long shot while the heavens fall. He was 
 capable of defying a tremendously powerful com 
 pany and fate combined in the knowledge that should 
 he succeed he would be a made man, his rebellion 
 forgotten, wiped out by praise, congratulations and 
 advancement. 
 
 But deep within him there existed another con 
 sideration which few if any defined, least of all 
 himself. He was possessed by an all-consuming 
 flame of independence, a heritage of freedom, a will 
 that would not bend to oppression, a fundamental, 
 essential belief in right and justice as rewards to the 
 fearless and upstanding and of "No surrender!" 
 as the very breath of life without which it could not 
 advantage the heart to beat. 
 
 On a subsequent visit to town shortly after the 
 United States had entered the World War, he 
 talked to Digby of the tremendous responsibility he 
 had shouldered. "Dick," he said, "for three months 
 now I've been drawing my pay against orders. If 
 I pull through, it's all right ; we'll be on velvet. But 
 if I don't, remember if you ever get on your feet 
 that it's a debt against the Pico mine." 
 
 "For God's sake, Rox," said Digby, "drop it. 
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 Pull out. Go home and take Laura and the babies 
 with you. Play safe just this once. Please!" 
 
 Ellerton's face took on a look of strange abstrac 
 tion. "Dick," he said, "I'll tell you the truth; I 
 can't. I don't know exactly why but perhaps you'll 
 understand when I say it's something in me that's 
 first cousin to what made you borrow the money to 
 send Junior home the day we entered the war. Tell 
 me about that, Dick." 
 
 Digby's eyes filled suddenly with unshed tears; 
 he was silent for a moment and then he said, "It 
 was this way, Rox. I was out at the hospital read 
 ing to Mary; Madeleine was there too. She's pale 
 and thin now and her eyes are so big you look at 
 them and forget she's a girl and see a world of suf 
 fering women. Junior came rushing in with the 
 news; he just gulped it out in one breath, flushed 
 cheeks and blazing eyes ; then he really saw his poor 
 mother and Madeleine and my shabby clothes. He 
 sat down, dropped his head in his arms and burst out 
 crying.'* 
 
 "Poor youngster!" murmured Ellerton. "How 
 did you handle him ?" 
 
 "You know how we've been in this country," con 
 tinued Digby, "since that Tampico affair when a 
 
 228
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 German commander pushed his way through the 
 mob and rescued our women and children; we've 
 gone by the heart here and not by what we've heard 
 of what went on five thousand miles away. Well, I 
 didn't know then that every man of us was going to 
 follow the boy's lead and turn right face about, for 
 everything each one of us had to give ; so I felt proud 
 of him, Rox, as proud as if an angel had sung to 
 me, 'Unto you a Child is born.' I told him to stand 
 up, and when he didn't I asked him if he was crying 
 because he was afraid to go !" 
 
 A smile dawned on Digby's face that for the mo 
 ment wiped all trouble from its deep lines. "I wish 
 you could have been there," he went on. "The boy 
 jumped up and turned on me with eyes blazing and 
 both fists clenched; he forgot all about his mother 
 and shouted, 'You take that back/ and I did and 
 then he marched up and down and told us why he 
 wanted to go, a dozen reasons, each a clincher in 
 itself, but at the bottom of all of them was this little 
 speech, 'Dad, I want to fight. You thought I was 
 a baby for blubbering, but I was crying because I'm 
 so glad, so glad, Dad, that there's something that 
 Americans won't stand for. You think I'm nothing 
 but a kid, but let me tell you that every time I've 
 
 229
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 heard of one more of us murdered in this country, a 
 man, a whole man way back that I never knew about, 
 has died inside of me for shame. I want to fight 
 any one, anywhere, to save something that was leak 
 ing out of me so fast that I couldn't look any one in 
 the face.' " 
 
 Ellerton blew his nose violently. "Heaven for 
 give me, Dick, but I want to cry, too. The indom 
 itable spirit, the divine Hair, the knowledge that the 
 flesh passes while right lives are things we don't 
 learn; they are sucked in with mother's milk. And 
 Mary; what did she do?" 
 
 "I gave her pad and pencil ; she's learned to print 
 with her left hand. She held the pencil for so long 
 that we thought she didn't want to use it, but when 
 I started to take it away she clung to it. We waited 
 a long while, Rox, then at last she wrote just five 
 words, 'My boy, I love you.' ' 
 
 t)igby's lips trembled and his eyes filled again 
 with moisture. "So he flopped down on his knees," 
 he continued, ^'crumpled up with his head in her thin 
 lap and cried as though his heart would break. If 
 she had been well and strong she would have smiled, 
 and if she had smiled he wouldn't have cried; not a 
 tear. I'm glad that the boy cried." 
 
 230
 
 "My son, I am troubled for I have looked in the eyes 
 of a miserable man and beheld a great light.'' 
 
 "How could so small an orb shine so far; for thy 
 sight is old and rheumy/' 
 
 "I would cuff thine ears were I not troubled by the 
 thought of Faith."
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 ELLERTON might have won out in the stiff 
 game he was playing if it had not been for 
 the courage that was in him, mad daring linked to 
 an unbridled tongue. For months he had held off 
 the bandits in his neighbourhood by a rough friend 
 ship, jeering at their threats and jocularly assuring 
 them that he swallowed a stick of dynamite every 
 morning, took a purge every night and was con 
 sequently prepared at all times to blow up any one 
 who touched him. He knew these people, their love 
 of a coarse joke, their instinctive sense of fellow 
 ship with any one who deliberately came down to 
 the low level on which they were at home. "Ai! 
 El Rojo!" they would cry, making a play of his 
 given name, and smile. He was a landmark, not 
 so much a Gringo as a local institution in which they 
 took pride. 
 
 Upon his return from the Capital after his heart 
 to heart talk with Digby, however, he noticed a 
 marked change in the atmosphere. A deputation of 
 
 232
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 men he had never before seen from the bandit camps 
 called on him and met his laughing denials with a 
 stony surliness coupled with such muttered insults 
 as no man can forgive or forget Immediately 
 Ellerton was on the alert; the lines of his mouth 
 hardened, his eyes gleamed wickedly, but he did his 
 best to suppress these outward signs of inner com 
 motion. Something had happened ; something he had 
 missed. He sparred for time and finally persuaded 
 the blackmailers to give him three days, ostensibly to 
 get the money demanded but in reality to enable him 
 to tap his extensive underground system of in 
 formation. 
 
 In twenty-four hours he had the truth, the whole 
 vile story. It brought to his very door conditions 
 which were said to exist throughout the vast por 
 tion of the Republic under the control of the estab 
 lished government but to which he had attached no 
 more than cursory interest until they struck at the 
 foundations of his individual immunity. Para 
 doxical as it may seem to the ignorant of facts and 
 to the unbelieving, Ellerton was in a fix because the 
 local bandit leader had applied to the local govern 
 ment commander for amnesty; he wished to sur- 
 
 233
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 render; his men desired to return to peaceful 
 pursuits. 
 
 In a towering rage, Ellerton rode the few miles 
 to the government barracks and demanded an inter 
 view with the commander. He found a small man, 
 swarthy, square-chinned, badly educated and badly 
 bred, but whose wide-open eyes presented an almost 
 visible presentment of a single carefully cultured and 
 intelligent hatred of the Gringo in general, Ellerton 
 in particular. 
 
 The significance of racial detestation as an ele 
 ment in the life of a nation can not be overestimated ; 
 it is almost invariably the corollary of decadence, at 
 the same time it represents such false strength as 
 comes to a madman in convulsions, to an inebriate 
 in delirium tremens and to a corpse in rigour mortis. 
 In the case of the race with which Ellerton was deal 
 ing it stands alone and unsupported as the answer 
 to the question so often asked, Why should an ex 
 ecutive who was placed in the seat of government 
 by the moral force, consciously and honestly di 
 rected, of a neighbouring people never miss an op 
 portunity, to spit on the friendly hand that had aided 
 him? 
 
 234
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 Contrary to popular conviction, it was not because 
 of any factor of dislike or suspicion in his personal 
 make-up, although these naturally carried minor 
 weight, but because he was forced to the policy, 
 borne as irresistibly as a carefully guided canoe 
 down a cataract. He was no soldier but a civilian, 
 by training a farmer and rancher in a small way. 
 During the first few months of his administration 
 he balanced like an acrobat over a military quick 
 sand; within a year he was the apex of a military 
 pyramid built painstakingly as of blocks of granite. 
 
 How was the miracle performed? By shrewd 
 manipulation of the element of race hatred supported 
 by subornation of military commanders, nominally 
 under him, virtually his pitiless masters, on a scale 
 never before equaled by any keystone of a corrupt 
 oligarchy. Frequent and overt insults to a friendly 
 power which could at any time crush him with the 
 parings from its finger-nails built the congenital 
 hatred of the military factions into a single edifice ; 
 special privileges and vast sums from the enormous 
 revenue of the wondrously productive country 
 poured in a liquid flood into the pockets of exalted 
 
 235
 
 NOT ALL THE KINGS HORSES 
 
 military officials formed the cement which welded 
 the blocks together. 
 
 The intrinsic fallacies of this superficially suc 
 cessful opportunist policy were twofold: one was 
 the impossibility of continuing to fill the rapacious 
 maw of the military machine ; the other was the fact 
 that the very life of the ruling organization depended 
 on an unbroken continuance of outlawry through 
 out the land. Prophets of disaster to a nation 
 through any specified departure meet a thankless 
 fate; they die before they can say "I told you so." 
 The task of the observer taking notes is simpler, but 
 even with this concession an ounce of illustration 
 is worth a pound of exposition. Ellerton, face to 
 face with a live, active exponent of the system, 
 linked effect to cause with a tragic illumination that 
 should give sight to the blind. 
 
 "Commandante," began Rox, without introduc 
 tion or hypocritical hand-shaking preliminaries, "al 
 though you were sent here to pacify this neck of 
 woods, you have refused to accept the surrender of 
 Jefe Miguel and his band." 
 
 "It's a dirty lie," remarked the commander pen 
 sively, rolling a cigarette. 
 
 236
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 "Well, if it's a lie, you're going to hear some more 
 like it before you throw me out," replied Ellerton 
 quickly, "and if you don't listen to me I'm going 
 to the Capital and publish the facts if I have to buy 
 a newspaper and be railroaded out of the country 
 the next day. Just hear a little bit of your own his 
 tory. To get command of this district which is 
 considered a 'fat' one you offered one hundred pesos 
 monthly to a high official ; he stood out for a hun 
 dred and fifty and you finally agreed. It sounds 
 like a small sum for a man of such rank but he 
 gets it from two hundred and thirty-eight other men 
 of your rating and ilk; a tidy income for any one 
 in a half-starved country." 
 
 The commandante smiled. 
 
 "On the other hand," continued Ellerton, "a hun 
 dred and fifty pesos a month tribute from a 
 petty officer whose pay is just that, sounds like 
 a lot of money. How can you do it? Because 
 you have sixty troopers in the flesh with you and a 
 hundred and twenty on your pay-roll. Add to that 
 your billeting and forage perquisites in a rich bit 
 of country and we begin to see daylight. All that's 
 none of my business but when you refuse to accept 
 
 237
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 the automatic pacification of this district and tell 
 Miguel he's got to bleed me or you'll have him mur 
 dered and see that he's replaced by a cdbecilla who 
 knows his business, why that's a horse of another 
 colour, damn you." 
 
 "It's a lie," commented the commander calmly. 
 
 "Well, if it's a lie," replied Ellerton, "I'll know 
 it inside of forty-eight hours. If Miguel's cut 
 throats show up I'll know it's a lie, but God help you 
 if they do. I've written a letter to my people in the 
 City, telling the whole dirty tale and you'll get 
 what's coming to you in the long run, you sucking 
 bed-bug." 
 
 The commander rose to his feet livid with rage 
 and shouted for an orderly. As the door swung 
 open, Ellerton spoke his smiling thanks for the at 
 tention, stepped out, leaped to his horse and was off, 
 very much satisfied with what he considered had 
 been a highly diplomatic and clever interview. At 
 the exact termination of the three days of grace, 
 Ellerton's bluff was called. Armed horsemen ap 
 peared at the mine headquarters as though they had 
 sprung from the ground. They came from every 
 direction in groups of three and four, so that there 
 
 238
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 was no way of telling when the last of them would 
 arrive. 
 
 Ellerton, however, was too old a hand to attempt 
 resistance or even arm himself. He came striding 
 out hatless into the sun-baked court before the small 
 house he was occupying. He wore no coat and his 
 soft shirt was open at the collar, exposing the tense 
 tendons of his neck and the strong but agitated beat 
 of his pulse ; his sleeves were rolled up. In his set 
 face there was none of his old-time jeering; his lips 
 were drawn to a white line, his black eyes flashed, 
 his crisp hair swept back from his brow in a bel 
 ligerent crest. 
 
 "Well ?" he demanded, his eyes sweeping the dense 
 group of men before him and hesitating for one 
 vindictive instant as they recognized in the back 
 ground and no longer in uniform the orderly who 
 had been called to show him from the commandante's 
 office two days before, "what do you want?" 
 
 "Ten thousand dollares," said the spokesman ap 
 parently self-appointed. 
 
 "Go to hell," said Ellerton, and turned to enter 
 the house as though the interview were over. For 
 the first time in his life he had no clear plan of 
 
 239
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 action, no policy of deportment. Deserted by the 
 exposure of his long bluffing of a lone weak hand 
 against all the aces of destiny, he became suddenly 
 confused, desperate and angry. Nothing was left 
 to him but a stubborn, suicidal defiance. 
 
 They fell upon him in a body, struck him with 
 the barrels of cocked carbines, beat him with stones 
 held in puny fists, overwhelmed him, crushed him to 
 the hard earth, grated the flesh from the side of his 
 face, kicked him in the stomach and between the legs 
 until he succumbed and went suddenly flaccid in 
 their hands; then they picked him up, carried him 
 into the house and threw him into the swivel chain 
 before his desk. 
 
 "Write," said the orderly. 
 
 "Write what?" demanded Ellerton with a last 
 flare of resistance. 
 
 "Whatever you like," replied the orderly, grin 
 ning evilly. "Write the letter you lied about, that 
 you said you had sent. Tell your people what has 
 happened to you and the things you said to the 
 co mmandante !" 
 
 "Do you mean that ?" asked Ellerton, unbelieving. 
 
 "It is your privilege," replied the orderly, still 
 240
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 grinning 1 . "We will see that they get it, all of it. It 
 will be diverting." 
 
 During half an hour, aching in every bone of his 
 body, his head feeling as if it would burst with the 
 successive rushes of blood which rose to it as his 
 rage returned, Ellerton laboriously wrote the un- 
 garnished truth. They did not hurry him; they 
 were secure from interruption. When he had fin 
 ished, one of his retainers all of whom had scattered 
 like fowls from the shadow of a hawk, was dragged 
 into the room to receive instructions in his presence. 
 They were concise. 
 
 "Bring back proof within three days that you 
 have delivered this letter to the person to whom it 
 is addressed or you know what will happen to your 
 mother, your wife and your sister." 
 
 The man reached out a trembling hand. "It is 
 done," he said. "Only give me a mule or I can 
 never make it." 
 
 He had a friend among the bandits who granted 
 the concession; but as he was about to leave they 
 stopped him after murmured consultation. Almost 
 before Ellerton could surmise their purpose his 
 arm was seized at the wrist, his hand laid forcibly 
 
 241
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 3at on the desk and his little finger containing a 
 signet ring was flicked off with a blow from a foul 
 axe. The ring slipped off and rolled rattling into 
 a corner; they picked it up, slipped it on the black 
 ening finger and tied it there with a bit of string. 
 
 "Take this with you," said the orderly to the ter 
 rified messenger. "They will understand the letter 
 better." 
 
 Ellerton never stared more wonderingly than he 
 did at his mutilated hand, no longer under restraint 
 but lying quiescent on the desk before him, merely 
 throbbing to the spaced bursts of escaping blood. 
 His eyes left it only to seize upon the missing finger 
 which was being handled so nonchalantly by filthier 
 counterparts than it had ever deigned to grasp in 
 life. Could that miserable fast-blackening worm of 
 flesh ever have been part of him, of his pulsing, 
 aching, living body? Was it credible that it had 
 ever caressed the smooth pale cheeks of Laura or 
 tickled the ribs of his crooning fragrant babies? 
 
 "No!" he cried, threw back his head and roared 
 with laughter. 
 
 They took him out, strapped him to a mule and 
 led him away into the hills. 
 
 It was only a question of two days before cable, 
 242
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 telegraph and telephone, between countries, cities 
 and houses, were busy in a frantic attempt to move 
 a great power, a Goliath among nations, toward the 
 salvation of one of its insignificant citizens ; but there 
 are times when power is a negation, when it is noth 
 ing, less than nothing, when the strength of a people 
 however vast is anchored as the Rock of Gibraltar, 
 and when the actions of men are as puerile, as insig 
 nificant, as tragically ludicrous and aimless as the 
 movement of frightened, minutely important ants 
 busily crawling up and down a mountainside. 
 
 Officials are not so hard-hearted as the public 
 has reason to suppose ; they are subject to the same 
 impulses of wrath, pity and impotence as the man 
 in the street but their innermost souls are branded 
 with a truth, the truth that policies once estab 
 lished seldom bend to the impact of any one event 
 however outrageous. The Department would act, 
 did act at once with all the good will in the world. 
 It sent a forceful cablegram. So far its activity had 
 been human, touched with the quality of mercy, but 
 with the hurried despatch of the message the flush 
 of animation as from flesh and blood possessed of 
 a beating heart, immediately evanesced. Why? 
 Because from the moment of starting on its pil- 
 
 243
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 grimage the message became one of a dozen more 
 like it, part of an international file, of a dossier, of 
 a docket held against a necessarily; postponed judg 
 ment, one of a thousand claims to be justly decided 
 in their own day, perhaps before the courts of a 
 future generation. A single lie has sometimes 
 plunged peoples into war but no orderly, systematic, 
 loose-leaf file of truths ever stopped a tennis match. 
 [Who was to blame? An executive held in the 
 inexorable grip of a decision not originally of his 
 inception and whose very essence was a fulfillment 
 through the shibboleth of the healing powers of 
 time? Or was it the clerk who docketed the memo 
 randum to the Foreign Office, filed its reply; dock 
 eted a further memorandum, filed a reply to that and 
 quite justifiably went out to play tennis? Neither. 
 If censure there be, it lies at the door of a peculiar 
 torpidity of moral consciousness which is possessed 
 only by clean-minded peoples who are incapable of 
 conception of an oncoming avalanche of immorality 
 until they awake to find themselves stained with the 
 eternal shame of murder by default. 
 
 In the meantime Ellerton's friends were busy; 
 Digby it is true had vanished after one look at the 
 
 244
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 letter and the gruesome talisman which accompanied 
 it and no one knew, .where he had gone, but Renbow, 
 the head of Ellerton's City office, aided by many 
 others, was pulling every hidden wire known to 
 local consummations. The climax of his efforts was 
 reached in an interview with one of the well-known 
 flock of intermediaries whom those in the know 
 made use of to approach with backsheesh all officials 
 'from the majority of cabinet officers down to any 
 inspector of pulque or collector of excise. 
 
 The intermediary listened to the whole case at 
 tentively and realizing the importance of selling only 
 wares which he could deliver, replied at once that 
 nothing could be done. The look of bewildered in 
 credulity on Renbow's face moved him to pity. He 
 explained. 
 
 "You think you are demanding a little thing, 
 !don't you?" he asked. "Such a favour as has often 
 been 'arranged' for a trifling few thousand dollars. 
 But you're not, amigo; you're asking for the over 
 throw of the government yours recognized only 
 three days ago." 
 
 He spoke with a peculiar twitch to his lips as 
 though they would laugh in spite of himself at the 
 
 245
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 f 
 
 sardonic humour of one presumably powerful chief, 
 helpless before the unmerciful goad of policy, hail 
 ing another presumably powerful chief, insultingly 
 unreceptive, as "My Great and Good Friend," 
 across a heap of the unavenged murdered bodies of 
 his countrymen and the ruins of twenty years of 
 industry. 
 
 "What do you mean?" cried Renbow more be 
 wildered than ever. 
 
 "I mean," explained the intermediary, frowning, 
 "that the executive can't go back on the minister in 
 question and he in turn can't go back on the cotn- 
 mandante who is only one of hundreds, a single 
 mesh in a great net; but the tearing of that mesh 
 would unravel the whole fabric of present govern 
 ment control. If this thing were not true and known 
 to every apparently insignificant command ante, why 
 should this one have cynically allowed that letter to 
 come through? Power! Why, any officer in any 
 kind of standing with the army has more power in 
 his little toe than the President in his right hand, 
 upheld by all the laws and a family of constitutions. 
 You know that." 
 
 Renbow bowed before the unanswerable logic ; for 
 246
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 the first time and in spite of the original denial of 
 an outlet, he began to realize the hopelessness of his 
 mission. 
 
 The go-between continued musingly, "It's a funny 
 business. Our Old Man says he hates the Gringoes 
 because they supply the rebels, as he calls them, with 
 arms and ammunition. That may be true of the bor 
 der, border people breathe contraband, always 
 have and always will, but we all know that at least 
 ninety percent of the arms and ammunition in ban 
 dit hands is sold to them by government troops and 
 officers. They sometimes have to take them against 
 their will." 
 
 "What do you mean by that?" asked Renbow. 
 "It's the same thing I've been telling you in other 
 words," replied the intermediary patiently, "and 
 your case is absolutely in point. The military can't 
 afford to pacify the country, the ministers can't 
 afford to pacify the military and the executive can't 
 afford to pacify the cabinet because what strength 
 the entire fabric of this government has is based on 
 protected rapine." 
 
 "How can you say a thing like that?" demanded 
 247 
 
 "*
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 Renbow curiously. "It's true; but how can you 
 say it?" 
 
 The go-between's lips drew back slowly until they 
 showed a gleam of smiling teeth. "Why shouldn't 
 I say it?" he asked pleasantly. "We have estab 
 lished the age of cynicism; we can say anything in 
 the world we like. Protected rapine ; protected from 
 abroad. Since we came into power we have mur 
 dered unpunished the subjects of half a dozen coun 
 tries; your particular average is two a month. 
 Amiga, you have assured us so often that you won't 
 hit us whatever we do that you can't do it now 
 without looking like fools before the whole world. 
 Why shouldn't I talk?" 
 
 Renbow flushed angrily but said nothing; after 
 a pause his informant continued, "There's some 
 thing else you haven't thought of," he said, "in 
 asking your little favour. Quite incidentally the 
 official in question would destroy a wonderful in 
 come, damage his own pocket to the tune of many 
 thousand dollars gold a month. How can you 
 counter-bribe a man in such a position?" 
 
 "Many thousands a month !" murmured Renbow 
 unbelievingly. 
 
 "Oh, quite," replied the intermediary, and smiled. 
 248
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 "I'll tell you what I'll do," he added, his brows 
 gathering to a look of concentration on the matter 
 in hand. "I'll do my best to get you a concession of 
 immunity from the government to pay the ransom." 
 
 "You mean we need permission to pay the money 
 when we get it?" cried Renbow. 
 
 "Certainly," said the man, once more smiling, "a 
 permit to 'trade with the enemy.' You can under 
 stand that, can't you ?" 
 
 Before this strange interview drew to a close, 
 Digby was well on his way up-country. The light 
 and cunning which are commonly associated only 
 with madmen were in his somber eyes and seemed 
 to clear the way for him as by some mysterious pro 
 jected power. He moved not automatically but 
 with that deliberate panther-like swiftness which 
 had brought him to his feet in a single gesture of 
 his whole body on the day when Junior had called 
 him to meet the individual swarm of nation-wide 
 locusts whose lot it was to devour Mountain Acre, 
 quiet green spot of many memories. 
 
 Arrived at mine headquarters and after meticu 
 lous, abnormally reasoned searching, he finally un 
 earthed a miserable frightened scullery-maid whose 
 fear had robbed her of the power of flight and had 
 
 249
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 led her to crawl into a rain-hole beneath the founda 
 tions of the mill. For a time she could not speak but 
 at last became sufficiently rational to point out to him 
 the trail by which she knew the cavalcade to have 
 gone. Gaining confidence from their solitude and 
 Digby's determined manner concentrated with ter 
 rifying intensity on a single purpose, she reacted to 
 the ..erery-day impulses of pitying womanhood and 
 whispered to him the name of the hamlet in the 
 hills where he would doubtless find "Don Rojo." 
 
 It was already the afternoon of the fifth day since 
 Ellerton's capture and although possessed by no pre 
 monition of a fatal outcome, empty-handed and 
 without sane plan for his friend's deliverance, Digby 
 pushed on swiftly and with a directness that denied 
 the very existence of doubt in connection with his 
 mission. Coming upon a man riding alone, heavily 
 armed but drowsy under the warm sun, he seized 
 him by. the leg and lifted him from the saddle, not 
 roughly but with a deliberation that would not be 
 denied. "I need your horse," he explained with 
 grim calm, "I'm going to your headquarters." 
 
 The man stared at the tall lank figure, at the mad 
 glow in the somber eyes and withheld the hand 
 which was moving toward his holster. There was 
 
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 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 something so elemental in Digby at that hour, so 
 intimately allied to primal forces such as fire, flood 
 and pestilence that the man stood with jaw and eyes 
 wide open, all muscles of volition neutralized. It 
 was as though to his own stupefaction he himself, 
 his entity, had become a thing of no account, a 
 minutely conscious crawling sin in the suddenly il 
 lumined path of a righteousness secure above the 
 puny acts of any mortal. He watched Digby flog 
 the horse into a gallop. He let him go and finally 
 smiled for he knew the pony would willingly follow 
 his nose straight to stable. 
 
 When he came within sight of the hamlet crop 
 ping out of the gray loam of the hills like some dis 
 eased excrescence of the surrounding rocks, Digby 
 slowed his mount to a walk, finally got off, dropped 
 the bridle and strode silently into the very midst of a 
 lounging group which showed no astonishment even 
 when he spoke; his coming had been too swift, too 
 wholly unexpected and unexplainable to cause im 
 mediate reaction. 
 
 "Where is he?" demanded Digby, his shoulders 
 erect, his head upflung. 
 
 As with him whose horse he had commandeered, 
 so with these; they stared at him, became abashed 
 
 251
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 not before his helpless body but before that subtle 
 protection from on high with which all ignorant 
 peoples endow the mad. They looked at one another 
 questioningly and finally one of the group slunk 
 away, returning presently with a squat individual 
 of leonine brows and a piercing eye which measured 
 Digby by no superstitious standards and found in 
 him a man. 
 
 "What do you want ?" he asked. 
 
 "Where have you put him?" demanded Digby 
 with an intensity that seemed to reduce all per 
 sonalities, all hatreds, to the dead level of a single 
 human intention. 
 
 The cabecilla looked at him shrewdly, question 
 ingly, yet when he asked his question aloud it was 
 a mere formality ; he had already sensed the answer. 
 "Have you brought the money ?" 
 
 "Money?" repeated Digby. His brows gathered 
 as though the sound of that word awakened in him 
 troubled thoughts but only of a distant depression. 
 "What money?" 
 
 The two men stared at each other fixedly and into 
 their silence crept a groan, "Dick, is that you?" 
 
 Digby whirled and strode through the open door 
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 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 of the nearest of the adobe hovels; the cabecilla 
 raised his eyebrows, shrugged his squat shoulders, 
 turned and walked away. 
 
 Ellerton was lying on his back on a miserable, 
 filthy stretcher propped on two rough hurdles. At 
 his side hr.d been placed an empty whisky case upon 
 which rested a hideous bolster-like roll of flesh. It 
 was his arm. It seemed a thing detached from his 
 body and from the soul that flamed in his dark eyes 
 to welcome Digby's coming. "Dick," he murmured 
 contentedly, "old friend." 
 
 A spasm of commiseration controlled only by a 
 mighty effort of the will threatened to shake Digby's 
 frame into a crumpled, sobbing, futile mass. Open 
 ing and closing his fingers in an effort to dominate 
 his emotion, he stood for a long moment looking not 
 at Rox but at the crumbling mud wall at the level 
 of his eyes. He did not drop them until he too 
 could smile. He got out his knife and with that 
 tenderness of a strong man which exceeds the gen 
 tleness of women gradually cut away the shirt-sleeve 
 which had formed a stricture just beneath the shoul 
 der. As the last binding strand gave way Ellerton 
 heaved a sigh of relief which was stifled before it 
 
 253
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 was half spent by an agonizing stab of a new kind 
 of pain. 
 
 "Mustn't sigh," he murmured. 
 
 Digby continued his work until he had laid arm 
 and shoulder quite bare. He merely glanced at the 
 truncated hand, comprehended the green evil which 
 had settled there and gave all his attention to dis 
 covering how far the infection had spread. Very 
 gently, very tenderly, he moved the bolster-like arm 
 until he could touch the glands under the armpit; 
 they were like hen's eggs. Through the pink red 
 ness of the flesh, up to the shoulder, past the shoul 
 der, traveled and radiated the pale, white, tell-tale 
 lines of the infected nerves. The greatest surgeon 
 on earth were he present could not save Rox Eller- 
 ton's life. 
 
 "I see that you see, Dick," he whispered. 
 "Spreading gangrene, mortification, tetanus soon, 
 perhaps." 
 
 Digby did not answer; he went to the door and 
 hailed a passing woman. "Bring me some hot 
 water/' he ordered. 
 
 She stared at him and glanced inquiringly at the 
 lounging men in sight ; none of them paid the slight- 
 
 254
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 est attention. "Bueno," she muttered, turned back 
 to her hovel and presently appeared with a shallow 
 clay casuela half full of greasy hot water. Digby 
 looked at it hopelessly, dipped his handkerchief and 
 started to bathe the festered stump of the missing 
 finger. 
 
 "Cut it out, old fellow," said Ellerton presently. 
 "What's the use ? Get something to sit on ; I want 
 to talk to you. That's the curse of this special 
 brand of death; the brain lives." 
 
 Digby did as he was bidden. He found another 
 box, placed it beside the stretcher, sat down and 
 began to wring out his handkerchief. 
 
 "Don't do that," cried Ellerton sharply. "Throw 
 it away. Burn it. No, don't burn it. Who knows 
 but what it might do good yet? Leave it around 
 somewhere; a firstborn may pick it up to wrap a 
 cut finger." 
 
 "That's not like you, Rox," said Digby quietly, 
 and smiling to make the reproof still milder. 
 
 "Not like me," repeated Ellerton thoughtfully. 
 "What is 'me,' Dick? I remember Rox Ellerton, a 
 clean upstanding fellow who played an open game, 
 never cheated, never asked quarter, who loved sweet 
 
 255
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 things and worked for them, things like like 
 Laura like her babies " 
 
 His eyes stared unseeingly beyond the walls of 
 the squalid room, seizing and holding a distant vi 
 sion desperately as though he strove to take it with 
 him on his long journey. Presently he closed them 
 tight and as if by that action he had locked his treas 
 ure away, opened them again and looked steadily at 
 Digby. 
 
 "Will you make a pillow of your coat for me, 
 Dick?" 
 
 "It isn't good for you," murmured Digby, as he 
 complied. 
 
 "There you go again," said Ellerton. "Not good 
 for me. What is 'me' ? I used to think of myself 
 as a man, but this carrion, this polluted offal " 
 
 "Rox!" interrupted Digby. 
 
 They sat for a long time in silence; then Ellerton 
 spoke again but a peculiar change had come to his 
 voice, a resonance, a power that made it seem a 
 thing apart from his sinking body. "I saw it in the 
 paper they showed me yesterday," he said. "The 
 letter. It began with that damned hypocritical 
 phrase of traditional international benediction, 'My 
 
 256
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 Great and Good Friend/ Dick, you have the even 
 mind. Tell me, was it necessary? Did they have 
 to recognize? Across so many festering wounds! 
 So many blasted ambitions for a common right to 
 live ! So many rusting ruins of properties that did 
 good, not evil, never evil in this land flowing with 
 milk and honey and and blood, forever ringing 
 with the cry of the starving! Not an industry to 
 day, not one, that isn't run by a foreigner at the 
 self-chosen peril of his own life!" 
 
 "That isn't absolutely true, Rox," said Digby 
 pleadingly. "There's one shoe factory." 
 
 "So there is," agreed Ellerton, with a sardonic 
 gleam in his eyes. "One one shoe factory !" 
 
 "We don't know everything, Rox," said Digby, 
 reservedly reverting to Ellerton's great question of 
 necessity for recognition. "Of course, it must have 
 seemed best. People in power have a burden we 
 never measure. Perhaps it's because we're too close. 
 They have the burden of the counted cost." 
 
 "The counted cost," repeated Ellerton. "Nobody 
 ever taught me about that. Where does it come in, 
 Dick? Somewhere in the over-head charges ?" He 
 smiled pathetically at his joke with God. 
 
 257
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 As though brought on by that slight effort a 
 spasm contorted his body and face in a convulsion of 
 excruciating pain. "How does this end?" he gasped 
 when the climax had passed. 
 
 Sweat stood out in glistening globules on Digby's 
 forehead as though hi's mental agony kept pace with 
 the bodily suffering of his friend. "When the in 
 fection reaches the spinal cord," he replied. 
 
 "Excursionists," murmured Ellerton after a long 
 silence. "I see that our chambers of commerce are 
 sending down big parties. A pilot train ahead and 
 an armoured car behind; guiding them along the 
 only safe bit of railway in a big system. I suppose 
 you'd call those week-end trippers fellow-country 
 men, wouldn't you, Dick?" 
 
 "Yes, Rox," replied Digby heavily. 
 
 "I wonder if they know," continued Ellerton, 
 "that to do business they'll have to shake the hands 
 of fratricides, people who devour their own. I ad 
 mire in a way a hatred toward foreigners; but 
 These people, Dick. I wonder if the tourists know 
 that when our country in its policy of showering 
 coals of fire released fifty odd million pounds of 
 wheat flour to relieve the starving here, another high 
 official took his price for slapping on a duty. And 
 
 258
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 they telegraphed on the open wires, using his initial, 
 to the millers around to know if they'd stand their 
 share!" 
 
 "Stop thinking about those things, Rox," said 
 Digby. 
 
 "Stop thinking!" repeated Ellerton. "I wish I 
 could laugh, old Even-mind, but I don't dare; it 
 hurts above pain. Shake their hands. If they could 
 only come up here and shake mine and take a rotting 
 death back to those they love !" 
 
 "Rox!" cried Digby. 
 
 "Why not?" demanded Ellerton. "We residents 
 abroad have been accused of being privateers, Dick, 
 but nobody ever dreamed of saying we would con 
 done murder, robbery and rape for the sake of a few 
 easy dollars! We worked, God how we worked! 
 and it was good work, well done. Perdicaris!" he 
 murmured. "Perdicaris !" 
 
 "What's that, old man?" asked Digby, leaning 
 forward. 
 
 "Perdicaris!" repeated Ellerton more clearly. 
 "Have you forgotten, Dick? Perdicaris was a 
 young Greek studying at Harvard who filled in his 
 extra time by taking out papers as an American 
 citizen. He went away, never paid a tax, never 
 
 259
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 voted, but twenty years later a chap named Raisuli 
 snatched him out of his winter residence at Tangier 
 and carried him into the hills." 
 
 A strange light dawned in Digby's eyes, a light of 
 puzzled awakening, as though he found himself face 
 to face with a great fact astoundingly obliterated 
 not by the passage of long years but by a national 
 reversal of fundamental ideals. "I I remember, 
 Rox," he stammered, and felt a red flush rising to 
 his cheeks. 
 
 "You remember!" whispered Ellerton. "Who 
 else remembers ? Will they teach it in our schools ? 
 What did our country do, Dick? How are they 
 going to tell our children, yours and mine, that, 
 story of only fifteen years ago? We sent seventy- 
 five thousand dollars and paid it to Raisuli at the 
 drop of the hat; we sent not one ship but a fleet, > 
 do you get that? a fleet under Admiral French 
 Ensor Chadwick. We didn't kill anybody. We 
 didn't have to. If that was shame, if that was the 
 'big stick,' if that was interference in the internal 
 affairs of a weak sister country, God give me dis 
 grace, a club and the name of bully for my portion.'* 
 "You are wrong on the details, Rox," said 
 Digby, "but the main facts stand." 
 
 260
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 "Privateers!" continued Ellerton, unheeding. 
 "What about the thousands of us, who have been 
 driven away from bread and butter by a swarm of 
 harpies croaking in the deserted seat of government? 
 What about the little fellows, the ranchers, the indus 
 trials, the clerks, who went down and out for the full 
 count and couldn't shout loud enough for their home 
 counties to hear? Do they smell of oil, poor bank 
 rupt devils? Not naturalized Greeks but native 
 sons! Privateers! What a high-sounding name! 
 Why call us that ? Why not brand us once and for 
 all as the discarded refuse of the new nationalism 
 which has made the name of American an evil stench 
 in all the western hemisphere !" 
 
 "Oh, Rox," begged Digby, "please don't. It can't 
 last, old man, it can't." 
 
 "That's what we've been saying for eight years," 
 muttered Ellerton, "eight eternal years that no 
 added blood can ever wipe out. But, Dick, believe 
 me, I'd rather be this vile and stinking thing, dis 
 carded, forgotten, despised and incidentally betrayed 
 by my nation than to live another lifetime under 
 the stain of a pacifism which in the name of peace 
 when there is no peace has smothered millions 
 
 261
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 into bondage, driven thousands to starvation and 
 drowned the memory of justice, honour, mercy, in 
 a sea of blood. 
 
 "Rox," begged Digby, "please stop thinking of 
 these things," 
 
 "I know what you mean," said Ellerton. "You 
 mean I haven't long now. But Dick, old friend, just 
 remember that you've been listening to things which 
 all of us know but which hypocrisy can't say; to the 
 tongue of death that never lies. As for me, some 
 thing passes more than this transitory body that I 
 tried so hard to keep clean, like a sword, and which 
 is so vile now, so far on the road to rust and putre 
 faction. Something else passes ; something else dies. 
 The faith of a once-great country." 
 
 "Rox!" cried Digby in the sonorous voice of a 
 sudden great strength, "you have kept the faith. 
 If ever man did, you have. I tell you here and now, 
 when we two are hidden away from the world and 
 down to bedrock, that you are like a light to a lost 
 souL The faith of any country dies only with the 
 last true man." 
 
 A faint happy smile such as one sees on the faces 
 of children after desperate illness came to Eller- 
 
 262
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 ton's lips as though all pain and death itself had 
 become a small price to pay for just a few words 
 stripped of the cruel reserves of every-day contacts 
 to a rare and stark sincerity. He lay silent for some 
 time; then his body was seized with violent contrac 
 tions that wrenched it this way and that; tendons 
 swelled and stiffened, locking his limbs in grotesque 
 positions ; the bolster-like arm, dragged from immo 
 bility, thrashed around sluggishly like some hideous 
 fish in shallow water ; his abdomen became distended 
 and hard as corrugated iron; only his lungs still 
 lived. 
 
 "Oh, God," he muttered, "and you too, Dick, hear 
 tny curse on these people. Throw my body in the 
 open. Don't bury it. Let it rot and stink so that it 
 may feel at home in this poisoned air !" 
 
 His face cleared to a sudden illumination which 
 
 Divided it from all that had gone before. "There 
 
 was a kingdom in my breast," he whispered. 
 
 "Laura's kingdom. It's rotting away, Rpx Eller- 
 
 ton has rotted away >"
 
 "My son, thoit hast spoken truth; my sight is old and 
 rheumy. Look down and tell me what thou seest." 
 
 "Oh, Father! A sight to make the gods laugh. 
 Wisdom kicking her heels free of a man's body."
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 UNAIDED Digby buried Ellerton's body be 
 hind the hovel in which he died. The work 
 completed he replaced the hoe which he had taken 
 from a near-by quinta and afterward walked un 
 hindered from the bandit stronghold. It never 
 occurred to him to wonder whether some order had 
 gone out from the squat, keen-eyed cabecilla that 
 he was not to be molested ; he never gave the matter 
 a thought because the Digby returning from Eller- 
 ton's bedside had lost physical consciousness to a 
 degree seldom vouchsafed to man short of the 
 moment of death. 
 
 On his way into the hills he had been so abnor 
 mally absorbed in a single fixed purpose that for the 
 time being he not only enjoyed but actually pos 
 sessed such faculties and immunities as attend a 
 monomaniac; now not a vestige of that estate re 
 mained yet he felt no less secure from outer influ 
 ence, no less imbued with a confidence quite apart 
 from courage or kindred positive qualities, no less 
 
 265
 
 NOT ALt; THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 reserved to certain definite ends. He was scarcely 
 aware of what was happening to him; he certainly 
 could not have defined it as the first step toward an 
 ultimate division between mind and body, if for no 
 other reason than that introspection was one of the 
 faculties which had been drained from his compo 
 sition. 
 
 He was on the way to becoming a mind, an entity 
 devoid of emotions, indifferent to action as allied to 
 a subordinated body, holding legs, ,arms, hands and 
 even individual fingers to an absolute subserviency 
 which can be attained only by completely ignoring 
 them. To an indescribable extent he was freed 
 from the obscuring sensations of physical pain, of 
 hunger and thirst, heat or cold, and by the same 
 evolution became inordinantly exposed to all such 
 impressions as were purely mental and divorced 
 from the objective impulses of fear, regret, hope, 
 censure or palliation. 
 
 Such phenomena of the disembodiment of the 
 spirit are not uncommon to men at the point of death 
 or who face what appears to be inevitable destruc 
 tion. Digby himself had known more than one such 
 moment. As mine superintendent he had once beer) 
 
 266
 
 called upon to examine the wall of an abandoned 
 airshaft for outcroppings of a newly-found vein of 
 paying ore. The time was one of acute distrust be 
 tween men and their masters but he had taken with 
 him on that occasion a foreman in whom he had 
 every reason to repose confidence. 
 
 At the head of the airshaft which began at the 
 third level of the mine and dropped six hundred feet 
 to a caved-in station there lay a large coil of manilla 
 rope. Digby picked up its loose end, tested it, found 
 it in excellent condition, looped and tied it into a 
 sling and prepared to go over the edge. 
 
 "You're sure you and the two men can hold me, 
 Mike ?" he asked. 
 
 "As sure as sure," replied the foreman. 
 
 "Pay it out slow," he had instructed, "and when 
 I holler, stop." 
 
 He had descended over a hundred feet at a crawl 
 ing rate when he noticed an acceleration in the pace 
 of the rope so even yet increasing so terrifyingly 
 that he realized he was lost though the rope could 
 not have broken. He shouted loud and desperately 
 to the men above to stop and in instantaneous, al 
 most simultaneous answer, came Mike's hoarse cry, 
 
 267
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 "God help you !" Then he was falling and knew it, 
 falling five hundred feet to a rock bottom. From 
 the instant of that realization until he found him 
 self hanging doubled across a beam which had in 
 some far-gone day slipped into the shaft and 
 jammed, not a second of time elapsed yet it had 
 been a sufficient interval for him to think of so many 
 things that their review later when he was lying in 
 bed with two ribs and an arm broken consumed 
 hours. 
 
 His shout had been an objective impulse but 
 every thought that followed it had been of calcula 
 tion, of clear seeing, of review ; he had become dis 
 embodied before death. So vivid was his recollec 
 tion of having ascribed his fall to treachery that he 
 sent for the foreman to apologize after learning the 
 simple explanation of the accident The top coils 
 of the rope had been dry but once they had been 
 paid out the men had found themselves clutching 
 with futile fingers a slithering, slimy substance which 
 raced ever faster through their desperate grip. 
 
 This incident will serve as well as another to 
 illustrate by approximation the condition of mind in 
 which Digby returned to the City ; a condition which 
 did not partake of the element of instantaneous 
 
 268
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 summary of years into the fraction of a second, but 
 which in all other respects was closely allied to the 
 calm estate of a man who has suddenly abandoned 
 life as a door to further mysteries and casts an eye 
 cleared of mundane obscurities back along- the trav 
 eled way, his consciousness alert to all considerations 
 save those of the flesh and the body's well-being. 
 
 It is probable that could he have returned to a. 
 possibility of happiness; to Mary, his wife, strong 
 and companionable, to Laura unbereaved, to Junior 
 out of danger and to Madeleine awakened from her 
 long stupour into the elf of old, eyes flashing, cheeks 
 aglow and feet uneasy for youth's heritage of joy,. 
 he might have come back in time to that dual entity 
 the pain of which alone binds man to earth. But 
 such was not his destiny ; the current of misfortune 
 upon which he was borne had gathered from too- 
 distant a source to veer on the rock of a foundered 
 hope. His intimate division might grow wider, 
 more absolute, it could never heal ; the flesh of him 
 had not yet lost all power to suffer, added blows 
 could drive it into deeper obliteration but no pos 
 sible factor could make it emerge. 
 
 At the station he intercepted Renbow on the way 
 to deliver the ransom and told his story in so matter- 
 
 269
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 of-fact a tone and so succinctly that his listener was 
 robbed of the chance of a spoken question even while 
 his eyes, traveling up and down Digby's lank form 
 but ever returning to his passionless face, puzzled 
 silently over an elusive strangeness in one who had 
 always seemed the most readable of men, a differ 
 ence too indefinable to lend itself to catechism but 
 which set him definitely apart from familiarity. 
 
 They returned to the City together and Renbow 
 twice went over every phase of his interview with 
 the go-between; once for Digby's information and 
 then in a soliloquy of detached, explosive phrases, 
 spoken aloud but for his own ears alone as though 
 the impassive silence of his companion drove him to 
 build around himself a barrier of words lest he too 
 be swept away from the every-day touch of things 
 and dragged into a peril he sensed but could not 
 define, a danger of company without companionship 
 in a realm robbed of frailty but destitute of warmth. 
 
 Strange to say upon arrival in the City, Digby's 
 first thought was not of Laura, but of Madeleine. 
 For months he and Madeleine had been living alone 
 in a miserable flat sparsely furnished and situated 
 half-way between the hospital and Laura's small 
 
 270
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 quarters. The two restricted households had made 
 more than one attempt to join forces but owing to 
 the fact that the surrounding country had been un 
 safe during so many years, all sorts and conditions 
 of persecuted families had crowded into the Capital 
 and filled its accommodations to the bursting point. 
 Rents were high; there were no vacancies. 
 
 Under these conditions, Madeleine had been liv 
 ing a life which in every coarse detail was a negation 
 of the atmosphere in which she had been bred. She 
 kept house for her father, prepared skimpy meals 
 of what was cheapest in the local market, she swept 
 and dusted the little apartment with repulsion at 
 every piece of ugly furniture she touched, she went 
 to the business school and worked doggedly at mas 
 tering the science of taking down other people's 
 words, an employment which she detested even in 
 anticipation. 
 
 The Digbys were not aristocrats in any sense 
 beyond that of the habit of clean-living; they had no 
 claims to illustrious or attenuated lineage and had 
 none of the weaknesses nor the strength of a tradi 
 tion having its roots in bygone ages and bearing 
 with a peculiar pinch- faced stubbornness the bitter 
 
 271
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 fruits of adversity. They were plain, average Amer 
 icans, interchangeable with any one of a million 
 well-educated families, but they had assimilated to 
 .a remarkable degree that ready and charming broad 
 ening of the little interests and views of life which 
 comes quickly to all Anglo-Saxons who live abroad 
 and gives them a culture far above their original 
 station, a finish not deeply founded but most pleas 
 ing in casual contact. 
 
 By the standards of accepted fiction Madeleine 
 should have been a ray of light shining in her uni 
 versal darkness, a comfort to her father, a solace to 
 her invalid mother and a bright visitant at Laura's 
 home. But unfortunately the record of human 
 nature does not show a preponderance of paragons 
 shining through the dampening fog of benumbing 
 poverty ; the young commonly have only the stamina 
 of youth and anything which suddenly drains that 
 precious reservoir is apt to leave them sadly exposed 
 to the desiccating glare of the sun that shines piti 
 lessly only on nakedness. 
 
 Madeleine was no quitter and no cry-baby; she 
 attended to every duty thrust upon her by fate with 
 a conscientiousness and patience which only served 
 to wring the heart the more when one saw her sit- 
 
 272
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 ting by the window, tired out by the day's work: 
 only because it carried with it no elixir of hope, 
 drooping like an unwatered flower, her eyes gone 
 dead with monotonous despair. She was of those 
 women who are capable of impulses of drastic no 
 bility, who can cast all to the winds for love, give 
 all their blood in a single transfusion, cut them 
 selves off from fortune in one clean sweep and there 
 after die, but whose natures know nothing of the 
 steady surrender of self in little morsels nipped 
 daily from the body through years of patient self- 
 denial. 
 
 When misfortune overtook her people she had 
 barely passed beyond the hoydenish age which 
 might have laughed at worn shoes, cotton stockings, 
 patently remade dresses, turned them into a joke and 
 brought her out triumphant even though a little 
 brazen from the shadow which had fallen on her 
 spirit. Unfortunately she had been caught by disas 
 ter in that breathless year of adolescence when a girl 
 loves clothes not with any figurative affection but 
 with outright physical adoration, that time of prettily- 
 sinful preoccupation when soft silks held in rivalry 
 against a softer cheek produce sensations far more: 
 acute than the kiss of a mere man. 
 
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 r A.s Digby walked toward his abode he was not 
 thinking of Laura because his new-found power of 
 clear-seeing had seized upon certain incidents of his 
 life with Madeleine which at the time of their oc 
 currence had been too blurred emotionally to show a 
 true perspective but which stood out now with 
 marked significance. One such scene had puzzled 
 him, left him vaguely troubled and in fear of a re 
 currence which had never come. Now he knew why 
 it had never been repeated; because he had been 
 blind, because love had failed in its first duty of 
 understanding. 
 
 It had happened on a rainy evening, cold and 
 (lamp in the unheated little flat. He and Madeleine 
 were sitting in silence in the front room; they had 
 finished very early their frugal dinner, he had helped 
 her with the dishes and reproved her mildly for 
 dropping the drying-cloth with a shudder of disgust 
 into the waste-bucket as she finished wiping the last 
 plate. 
 
 "Maddie, darling, we can't throw that away; it's 
 the only one we've got." 
 
 "That's why," said Madeleine, in a low voice. 
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 "Never. I'll never touch that cloth again. How 
 soggy! No; let the dishes dry themselves; they'll 
 feel better." 
 
 Then he had followed her into the front room, 
 sat down with her in silence, stared at her ques- 
 tioningly. Presently she arose, went to the hall door 
 and bolted it, ran into her room and after a long 
 interval slipped out into the half-light of the fast- 
 dying day and startled him with the impression of a 
 ghost at large, she came toward him so silently, so 
 white. 
 
 Her loosened hair, brushed clean of the day's 
 sordid contacts, hung in a dark cloud about her 
 shoulders ; out of its shadows peered her face, lovely, 
 hungry, rubbed to spots of adorable colour; her lips 
 were parted to little anxious breaths and in her eyes 
 was an unforgetable look of liquid, heartrending 
 wistfulness. She wore nothing but a sheer white 
 chemise de nuit of finest nainsook, a lone Christmas 
 present sent by post by an old schoolmate. It was 
 maidenly modest in its full length and relieved at the 
 high round yoke with inserted hand-made lace. The 
 tiny sleeves coming just three inches over her shoul- 
 
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 <ders were of lace too; they left her long thin arms 
 quite bare. She wore no slippers on her naked feet. 
 
 "Madeleine!" cried her father, "you'll catch your 
 death!" 
 
 With frightened eyes and trembling lips she ran 
 the last few steps toward him, threw herself into his 
 arms, climbed into his lap, curled up, locked her 
 hands about his neck, buried her face against his 
 breast and began to quiver to the rending shock of 
 one long sob after another. Her body smelled of 
 coarse unscented soap ; it was not warm and yield 
 ing but rigid and cold; its tremours were not of 
 flesh surrendered but of flesh as the hard casket of 
 the straining soul. 
 
 Digby drew her close to his throbbing heart. "Oh, 
 Madeleine," he said with uneven voice, "you are 
 cold, so cold." 
 
 "It isn't cold!" sobbed Madeleine. 
 
 "Why, dear, you're shivering with a chill; let 
 Daddy carry you in to bed/' 
 
 "No, it isn't a chill. Never in to bed, never!" 
 
 And then the tense resistance of the virginal body 
 to any surrender broke down utterly. Relaxed and 
 limp she sagged against him, burrowed in against 
 
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 his heart, became fluid as the scalding tears that 
 poured in a sudden torrent down her cheeks. Her 
 limbs grew warm, overwhelmed him with a sensa 
 tion of drowning in a tepid sea. He gasped as he 
 clung to her, rocked her to and fro and caught his 
 mind whirling away to that day of her babyhood 
 when staring at Humpty Dumpty, splashed and in 
 ruins, she had screamed, "Not Maddie!" and he had 
 sworn, "No, not Madeleine! Never Madeleine, so 
 help me God !" 
 
 Wherein had he failed? In vision. He knew it 
 now as he looked back on that puzzling evening when 
 he had held in his arms his baby, child of the inner 
 most fibres of his heart grown to womanhood, 
 through half the hours of a long night and then, still 
 frowning in bewilderment, carried her sleeping yet 
 whimpering to bed, drawn back the covers and laid 
 her between the coarse damp sheets with a sudden 
 revulsion that so cold and cheerless a nest should 
 receive her breathing loveliness into its clammy 
 embrace. 
 
 Given the cue of that instinctive revolt, how could 
 he have been so blind? He saw it clearly enough 
 now. Madeleine was being driven desperate by the 
 
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 ugliness of her most intimate surroundings, by the 
 coarseness of her clothes, her food, her occupations, 
 by the very clamminess he had so resented in the 
 sheets into which he had thrust her when she had 
 come to him in the one sweet garment of all her 
 possession to sob out her rebellious inarticulate pro 
 test against the demeaning sordidness of barely liv 
 ing only to live. She had not even the solace of 
 companionship in misery, for youth seldom counts 
 the sufferings of its elders as of the nature of its 
 own pain and the very few young people whom she 
 knew had long since been swept out of the country 
 by succeeding emigrations. 
 
 As Digby strode along he tried in vain to think 
 of little things which he might deny himself to give 
 her at least one pair of silk stockings, one dainty 
 frock, one change of dish-cloths, one day in the week 
 when she might draw a long happy breath and smile ; 
 but he more than any other of his immediate circle 
 was living along the very bedrock of hand-to-mouth 
 existence. He had long since abandoned even the 
 cheapest of cigarettes ; he still smoked a single pipe 
 after each meal because Ellerton had passed on a 
 pound of mixture which was not to his taste. But 
 
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 even so, thought Digby, he had failed in not seizing 
 upon Madeleine's spirit and lifting it by a deliberate 
 effort of the will toward cheerfulness. He might 
 have woven such tales as would have caught and 
 held her safe in a gossamer web of illusion and 
 fancy but, alas! he had quite forgotten the Little 
 Folk. 
 
 What was it he had made the rose-janitress say 
 to himself? "If you don't want to lose your chil 
 dren and if they don't want to lose themselves, 
 don't any of you ever forget old friends, least of 
 all the Little Folk; if you're afraid of the dark, 
 you'd better keep us handy for we are the light that 
 shines on yesterday." He sighed deeply but his 
 lips drew to no sneer, no deprecating smile at the 
 memory of the airy fantasy with which he had 
 striven so long ago to bridge for his own the little 
 chasm between childhood and youth. 
 
 "I have forgotten the Little Folk," he said to him 
 self quite gravely. "Old friends." 
 
 He hurried up the three flights of stairs to the 
 flat and knocked on the door hoping that Made 
 leine would come running to let him in, but there 
 was no answer and after waiting a minute he took 
 
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 his keys from his pocket and began to sort them. 
 How strange they looked in the face of his abject 
 poverty ! So many keys, keys to store-room, study, 
 stables, desk, drawers and iron safe, keys to trunks 
 and bags, keys whose uses he could no longer re 
 member, so many keys yet no single thing left to 
 keep behind a lock. 
 
 He opened the door and entered to that musty 
 smell which habitations acquire almost immediately 
 upon abandonment. The air was not impure, for a 
 window was open, but it was nevertheless laden with 
 faintly sour odours. He opened more windows and 
 the few intervening doors, looking at the same time 
 for indications of Madeleine's recent presence. There 
 were none but he was not alarmed; he had had no 
 time to let the girl know of his sudden journey but 
 he was sure she would have heard of it. Naturally 
 she had gone to stay with Laura. 
 
 Still rilled with thoughts of the night of Made 
 leine's sobbing but unspoken protest against the sor- 
 didness of her /surroundings and feeling even in his 
 new role of a mind more than half -fledged for inde 
 pendent flight the compunction of a dispassionate 
 remorse, he entered her bedroom and stared about 
 
 280
 
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 him making inventory of all its unclean nakedness, 
 of its uncovered stains of former occupations, of its 
 cry for dainty coverings, of the ugliness of its few 
 sticks of inappropriate furniture. One chair was 
 more eloquent than many tongues; it had two legs 
 and a rung painted white by an inexpert hand. He 
 remembered that day, a day when Madeleine had 
 been given a tragically insufficient sample tin of 
 enamel paint. His eyes fell upon the bed and looked 
 it over with whole-hearted disdain; it seemed to 
 mark the limits between endurance with dignity and 
 the insufferable. 
 
 His gaze traveled its little length and was finally 
 caught by a bit of paper looking like a pale un 
 healthy butterfly born and bred in a sunless air 
 impaled upon the single pillow with a pin. He 
 reached over, snatched it up and read the few words 
 it contained. In that moment he was again all body, 
 subject and defenseless before the blow that called 
 it once more into full sensibility only to drive it 
 deeper than ever into an ultimate submergence. 
 
 "Madeleine !" he shouted in a full-throated tear 
 ing cry that left him trembling with sudden recol 
 lection of the screaming of mules caught in a mine 
 
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 fire, the most agonizing of inhuman sounds known 
 to man. 
 
 He fell on his knees beside the virginal cot, so 
 mean, so ineffectual, so criminally at fault in that it 
 had failed miserably in its mission of rest and happy 
 dreams to the sorely distressed. His arms outflung 
 in the relaxation of utter depair, his head buried 
 against the soggy dampness of the abhorred pillow 
 and his broad shoulders writhing, he sobbed not as 
 men sob for love at a woman's knees nor for grief 
 beside the dead but as he alone weeps who measures 
 in a little empty room beside a vacant bed the infinity 
 between the floor of hell and the mercy seat of God. 
 
 An hour later he was once more that strange man 
 whom Renbow had failed to recognize completely. 
 He arose, sought out the few stale scraps there were 
 to eat in the flat and paced up and down its limited 
 floor-space waiting for he knew not what. He was 
 not conscious that he was waiting. His mind had 
 returned to its supremacy over a widened empire. 
 He was thinking of Madeleine not as his baby, his 
 adored above all other flesh and blood, but as 
 woman the castaway, and of himself as partaker 
 in her sins and penalties. His vision grew incisive 
 
 282
 
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 as the touch of ice and presently he threw up his 
 head to a clear thought definitive, rounded and 
 complete. 
 
 "Not I alone," he said aloud. "Every man who 
 takes profit before reparation from this accursed 
 land can look upon his own wife, his sister, his own 
 child and say for them and for himself, 'Inasmuch 
 as we have not cared we too are sinners outcast, 
 shunned and despised." 
 
 Digby did not speak with rancour; never had he 
 felt himself less in need of the self-application of his 
 frequent admonition to Ellerton to keep an even 
 mind. He was calm not by an effort of the will but 
 by the draining of emotion from his heart. He saw 
 with a dazzling clearness a nation-wide complicity 
 by apathy in his own burden of shame. 
 
 He imagined himself a universal spectre leaning 
 over the shoulders of all the fathers in his native 
 land, reading papers at the breakfast table, noting 
 another murder of a fellow-countryman, another 
 outrage, placidly turning their thoughts back to 
 mental accounts of cash profit and loss or gazing 
 indulgently at wives and nurtured children; he im 
 agined himself tapping them on the shoulders, lean- 
 
 283
 
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 ing over and whispering in their ears, "You, too; 
 your women, too. Look! The Scarlet Letter!" 
 
 Inasmuch as they had abandoned an ancient tradi 
 tion which shouted full-voiced, "Thou shalt not 
 kill," and meant it; inasmuch as they had too will 
 ingly bowed to sophistries of right and might and 
 languidly questioned the ethics of staying the hand 
 of murder; most of all because they were ready in 
 flocks to step across the unburied bodies of the una 
 venged and snatch profit by private treaty from the 
 still bloody hand of the assassin, he found them 
 sharers in his guilt, their women too, responsible 
 for the tragedy of his beloved whom their too-soft 
 hands had pushed into the street. 
 
 He was still pacing up and down, luminous-eyed 
 but terribly calm of feature, when Laura threw open 
 the door of the flat, stepped in and stood before him. 
 Her whole body was stricken, her head drooped like 
 a golden flower on a wilting stem ; she did not speak 
 for a moment but there was panic in the agonized 
 eyes she raised to her father's impassive face. 
 
 "It isn't true," she whispered at last. "Daddy, 
 it isn't true! Rox, he's not dead; not quite dead. 
 Not gone so that I can never see him again !" 
 
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 Digby felt a sudden weariness as though her cry 
 were unanswerable because it was uttered in a for 
 gotten tongue. He stared at her with an air of 
 detached calculation. He remembered vividly the 
 day when Rox had said of her, "She is of other 
 flesh," and neither he nor Mary had contradicted. 
 As if against this day Laura had been born strong ; 
 all her frailty, the illusive delicacy of her faintly 
 tinted cheeks, of her lovely but slight shoulders, of 
 her long pale hands, was but her strength. She 
 was an indomitable spirit lightly burdened with 
 flesh. He had always felt it, always bowed to the 
 veiled truth, but now k stood out clearly to his per 
 ception. He said nothing ; only looked at her. 
 
 She turned from his revealing gaze, raised both 
 hands to her throat in a pitiful restraining gesture, 
 then threw her arms up against the wall, buried her 
 face in them and cried out words that could spring 
 only from such broad foundations as her father 
 had just divined. "Rox!" she sobbed, "My boy! 
 My dear boy! Always a boy! Forever a boy!" 
 
 Digby fled from that cry of an all-embracing 
 motherhood which holds all the forlorn ages of man 
 as one. It frightened him, threatened to tear him 
 
 285
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 from a hard-won liberation which once again lost 
 would inevitably reduce him to a whimpering mass 
 ineffectual as he was now non-sentient. He went 
 out to wander in the streets. He was not con 
 sciously looking for Madeleine, he had no desire to 
 visit old haunts, even Mary was far from his 
 thoughts. 
 
 It was as though he had begun a new life which 
 was not a life, as though fate had thrust into his 
 hands a fresh departure, a power of vision divorced 
 from action. He could see all things with a super 
 human clarity and the mere possession of this 
 faculty, so feebly but so constantly striven for 
 throughout long years of what now seemed puerile 
 analyzing, impelled him to give it all the scope of 
 his limited horizon, apply it to all the every-day evi 
 dence which crowds to the eyes of man, yet leaves 
 them blind. 
 
 Even while he studied every material obstacle to 
 sight he felt a peculiar impatience against each of 
 them; houses, walls, motor-cars and the enclosing 
 barrier of the encircling girdle of mountains de 
 pressed him. When he caught an occasional 
 glimpse of Popo he was conscious of a longing to 
 
 286
 
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 stand on its high summit. "If I might only stand on 
 the highest peak on earth," he murmured aloud, "I 
 could see the whole world and all the intentions of 
 God." 
 
 Speaking aloud while alone became a habit with 
 him. Walking at dawn he came upon a long string 
 of shivering bodies, crouched in doorways, littering 
 the sidewalk, tangled with each other in conserva 
 tion of miserable warmth, clad in filthy remnants 
 of the garments of decency. It was the bread-line. 
 They were waiting for the doors of some charita 
 ble institution which had flared into a short life on 
 some woman's conscience-money to open its doors. 
 Standing amid the odorous evidence of distress, 
 he turned and stood watching the frequent flash 
 ings of the passing motor-cars of libertine officials 
 and dissolute military, returning from nightly 
 orgies. 
 
 "It's a foul soul,'' murmured Digby, "that fouls 
 its own nest all of it that leaves no clean air for 
 its own to breathe!" 
 
 In the course of his wanderings on the follow 
 ing evening he found himself before the garden 
 of the hospital. He slipped in, walked along the 
 
 287
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 veranda to his wife's window, saw that she was 
 awake, and entered. It was a week since Mary had 
 seen him but his presence aroused in her no special 
 sign of emotion. Her imprisoned eyes studied him 
 with a settled, uncurious apathy. He sat and talked 
 to her but told her nothing of Ellerton, nothing 
 of Madeleine. 
 
 Of what use? Mary, the genuine, the consist 
 ently simple, had lived for her home alone. It had 
 been her sole exposition of a broad faith and a fixed 
 religion, her one element of moral expression. Her 
 home was gone and had left her twisted body with 
 out active soul. She was an abandoned shell, a 
 deserted habitation. These things struck Digby's 
 understanding with a clarity and force which could 
 not be denied. He felt companionship only for that 
 which was dead within her. He left her presence 
 with a feeling of finality, as though he had seen in 
 that particular aspect all that could ever be seen, 
 and returned to his cheerless, dust-covered flat. At 
 the door was a roll of newspapers. Some friend 
 knowing his destitution had been sending him a New 
 York daily. 
 
 He opened the bundle, glanced hurriedly over 
 288
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 the head-lines and then turned to the casualty lists. 
 He was persuaded that Junior was to fall, so con 
 vinced that his present occupation amounted to noth 
 ing more than a search for satisfaction of curiosity, 
 for a proof of the infallibility of his prescience. He 
 took up from the table an article which was oddly 
 incongruous in that setting of poverty, a long- 
 bladed paper-knife of sterling silver with a glistening 
 handle of cut crystal. It too had been sent to him 
 by some friend of prosperous days but who knew 
 nothing of his present penury, accompanying 
 a copy of The Education of Henry Adams. The 
 book he had never read but the knife came in 
 handily for tracing down the columns of fine print. 
 Its point now worked steadily down the page ; came 
 to a pause. 
 
 "Sergeants," he read, and then in finer type: 
 "Richard Digby, Jr. Mexico, (N. Y.?) K. A." 
 
 He took from his breast pocket a .much- worn 
 postal card, the only word from Junior which had 
 succeeded in overcoming heartbreaking delays of 
 mails and in penetrating the labyrinth of censor 
 ships. It had been written in Hoboken, mailed in 
 Hoboken, on receipt by the authorities of a blanket- 
 
 289
 
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 cable announcing the successful completion of the 
 voyage. "Safely arrived. Love to all. Richard 
 Digby, Jr., A. E. F."
 
 "Father, here is a new word. Tell me the meaning 
 of alarmist." 
 
 "Every prophet whose prophecy has not yet come 
 true." 
 
 "What then is a Seer?" 
 
 "A madman dragging Wisdom by the hair"
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 DIGBY finally slipped the card into his pocket, 
 arose, dropped the paper, but still holding 
 the knife went out hatless into the streets. He was 
 in the grip of a strange exaltation as though the 
 confirmation of Junior's passing had raised him a 
 long step up on that peak from which he might 
 see the whole world and all the intentions of God. 
 As from an aerie hermitage upon a towering moun 
 tainside he looked down upon a vast nation, three 
 million maggots crawling over a mothering host 
 composed of many tribes and a, round dozen millions 
 of individuals, massed into a single huge lethargi 
 cally squirming body. 
 
 So vast an entity could be subject to no sudden 
 convulsions of agony ; it moved, but with monstrous 
 writhings, each ripple a century of pain. Through 
 out its length festering patches had a life of their 
 own, supporting the maggot society taking nutriment 
 from corruption. These parasites were only three 
 million strong, but they represented those minute 
 
 292
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 forces of evil invisible in their action to the naked 
 eye which infect, contaminate and ultimately con 
 quer with the inexorable finality of gangrene and 
 mortification. 
 
 "Why can't they see it?" cried Digby aloud, 
 standing stockstill on an empty street corner. "For 
 four hundred years a Latin incrustation has fed 
 upon this people, sucked its blood, infected it with 
 the virus of an appalling decadence ; never governed 
 it, never!" 
 
 He started walking again, his head now gone 
 very gray moving from side to side as though to 
 shake itself free from all material actualities. Two 
 acquaintances caught sight of him, stopped simul 
 taneously in their tracks and stared after his 
 terrifying figure, so lank, striding so swiftly, gestic 
 ulating so majestically with the gleaming silver 
 paper-knife, disappearing into the gloom of an ill- 
 lighted thoroughfare. 
 
 "Even-mind Digby," murmured one of them 
 sadly. "I wondered what had become of him." 
 
 Digby hurried on, unconsciously seeking solitudes, 
 turning with impatience when he came across a clus 
 ter of lights but pausing whenever he found himself 
 
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 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 at a deserted intersection of streets. At one such cor 
 ner he cried, "What have I seen? I alone? The 
 age of an eagle, noble, but still a bird of prey; 
 the age of a sucking dove set to hatch the eagle's 
 eggs and destined to feed its voracious young with 
 his own body And now? Now the age of the 
 seven-year locusts, of the returning black cloud of 
 eternal vultures, doomed through centuries of a 
 monochromatic diet to demand and feed on carrion !" 
 
 He hastened from that spot as though fleeing 
 from miasmic odours only to come to a stand again. 
 "And we we Americans have declared a closed 
 season for vultures! Our head has been in the 
 clouds of altruistic reason, our foot heavy upon the 
 neck of a people rotting in bondage. Inarticulate. 
 Only their festering wounds cry out, 'God! God!' 
 where there is no God and no ear to hear!" 
 
 An hour later he was still fleeing from the puny, 
 ineffectual artificial lights of men, still seeking the 
 illumination that comes only to the soul made free 
 of darkness. "We have forgotten," he cried out, 
 "that there are sores that only the knife can heal. 
 We have been like blind children, robbed of hearing 
 and scent and the sense of touch, content to make 
 
 294
 
 mudpiesof muck. It's on our hands; it sticks to 
 our fingers. And with those hands we cling to the 
 fouled skirts of liberty and cry, 'Peace! Peace!' 
 when there is no peace ! And many whisper gently, 
 'But now that we have dropped the sword, what can 
 we do?' 
 
 "Evacuate!" roared Digby, the shout echoing 
 down the void of the empty street in which he stood. 
 "Not like ghouls who draw aside, watch the murder 
 of their own, then leap across the line to share with 
 the assassin the spoils from the dead. No ! not like 
 those who cry softly on the name of a Divinity 
 who came bearing not peace but a sword and hear 
 ing no answer whisper, 'The Master is away; let 
 us forget and lie together in frankincense and 
 myrrh !' 
 
 "If indeed," he continued, raising his empty hand 
 on high, "we have dropped the sword forever and 
 turned our back upon the scourge with which Our 
 Lord cleansed the temple, then let us use the weap 
 ons of peace as men, give these cormorants a space 
 of hours to admit a band of honest guardians to 
 the trust they have defiled, a river Alpheus from 
 without to sweep clean once and for all their Augean 
 
 295
 
 NOT ALL .THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 stables of four centuries ,of filth or else evacuate , 
 cut those of us who still live here from the con 
 taminating breath of a life no longer clean and, 
 as the gods above show no favour, cut those at home 
 from the gains of shame! Let no ship of any out 
 raged nation leave or reach these poisoned shores; 
 turn our backs upon the murder of a people if we 
 like but at least keep our hands from puddling in 
 their blood!" 
 
 His shoulders shrank in a gesture of abject hu 
 miliation. "Oh, Lord!" he cried, "all of us have 
 sinned, all of us who take profit by dishonourable 
 peace or more sordid gain, all of us have sinned. 
 Let every man who shares carrion with the vulture 
 throng be branded with the mark of shame, and 
 every soft woman who feeds from his hand know 
 herself for a harlot! 
 
 With head still hanging low he came out upon 
 a wide space which formed the junction of five of 
 the great avenues of the City of Palaces. He raised 
 his eyes and saw the flag of his country, forgotten 
 by some careless servitor, hanging limp with the 
 night dew high above a faded coat-of-arms. He 
 knew well the emblem held within the circlet of 
 
 296
 
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 bronze; an eagle rampant, holding in opposing tal 
 ons a sheaf of arrows and an olive branch. 
 
 "A miracle has come to pass," he murmured; 
 "there is no war and no arrows; no peace and no 
 olive branch; chaos has laid itself down to sleep!" 
 
 He started across the street with a half-formed 
 intention of wakening a servant to proper respect 
 for the flag. A rushing motor-car filled with a 
 ribald band swerved, missed him by inches, hurled 
 itself onward but presently came to a slithering 
 stop. A girl sprang from it and ran back toward 
 Digby's solitary figure continuing its interrupted 
 way to the broad sidewalk. 
 
 She wore a frock of foulard silk, dark blue and 
 spotted with great white polka dots, light as the 
 breezes that tossed it about her hurrying limbs. It 
 was simple but ravishing in its revelations of young 
 beauty, open at the neck to the tremulous verge of 
 daring, short in length but still not brazen in dis 
 closure. Her dark hair was piled upon her head 
 which wore no other covering. Her cheeks were 
 pale beneath two spots of borrowed glow. 
 
 "Father!" she cried, "where are you going? 
 [What are you doing with that knife?" 
 
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 NOT ALL.THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 Digby trembled suddenly from head to foot; he 
 did not look up but stared at the straight-bladed 
 paper-cutter. "It's sterling silver," he said dumbly. 
 "Perhaps I can sell it. But I I don't want to sell 
 it. There are sores that only the knife can heal." 
 
 Madeleine snatched a chain purse from her wrist. 
 Her eyes were wide and staring, her lips quivering 
 with tiny vibrations she was powerless to master, 
 her bosom rose and fell to a wild fluttering which 
 appeared to threaten to burst her body asunder. 
 
 "Daddy," she chattered as one in the throes of a 
 chill, "here's money plenty of money. Give me 
 the knife." 
 
 He took the purse, dropped it, looked into her 
 eyes. They seemed slowly to widen to an absolute, 
 an infinite communion. Within them he saw a strug 
 gling prisoner desperately constrained. As one 
 might open the door of a gilded cage to free a pant 
 ing bird, he struck downward with the knife. It 
 entered at the lovely curve of her young breast, 
 sank into her heart. To her eyes sprang the look 
 of the Madeleine of old, a look of wistful love, of 
 boundless trust and unquestioning adoration. 
 
 "Oh, Daddy!" she gasped; smiled, choked and 
 298
 
 fell not headlong but with a slow sinking of the 
 knees to rest 
 
 A hoarse shout came from the motor-car ; then a 
 hurricane of explosive sound as it started and roared 
 away up the Paseo, muffler cut-out wide open, a 
 screen of misty smoke trailing it, blotting it from 
 view. It was as though the machine itself were ter 
 rified and had bolted from the tragic scene un 
 aided by the nerveless hands of its despicable occu 
 pants, vicious children frightened by the price of 
 folly. 
 
 Digby suffered no awakening. From half across 
 the square he turned, troubled by the memory of an 
 errand uncompleted. He remembered. He was 
 to have called a servant to take in the flag. He 
 started back but stopped as his eyes fell on Made 
 leine, no longer Madeleine, only a little heap of 
 flesh untenanted. She knelt with her heavy head 
 bowed very low. About her crumpled body flared 
 the foulard dress. It was like a patch of blue sky, 
 star-spangled, come down from the dome of heaven 
 to hold her from the stain of earth. 
 
 "The banner of her people," murmured Digby, 
 and with the words came to himself. He stood 
 
 299
 
 NOT ALL THE KING'S HORSES 
 
 erect, immobile, his eyes fixed with a piercing inten 
 sity on the sacrifice of an Abraham unstayed by the 
 voice of God. A steely composure settled upon his 
 face suddenly ennobled above the limits set to man's 
 mortality and as though in turning his back on Mad 
 eleine he turned it also on the last shred of the husk 
 of his own flesh, he strode away with firm step 
 toward the mountains. 
 
 "Rox was right," he said aloud but quite calmly. 
 "He couldn't say what he knew in words, he could 
 only live out the knowledge that was in him to the 
 bitter end. But I can say it now ; I can say it for 
 him. A man can't abandon the gods within him, he 
 can't moralize and then shirk, cry peace and feed on 
 others' war, and yet live. Upon this foundation is 
 set our slender hope of immortality. No surrender ! 
 None! Not to the love of self or of woman or of 
 the dearly beloved, the tender fruit of our own 
 loins. Honour, justice, right, know no division, no 
 partial allegiance fed piecemeal to a complacent God. 
 I will cleave to this divinity alone, to the little spark 
 that is in me. Let it seem cold to alien touch, piti 
 fully dim to others' eyes, yet will I feed it, keep it 
 aglow with the last shred of mortal life!" 
 
 As though led inexorably by the thoughts he was 
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 uttering he started deliberately for Mountain Acre, 
 thirty miles away. What mattered food, raiment 
 or shelter, or the safety of the coward spirit ? Only 
 in that beloved spot where he had striven for these 
 passing attributes and reached though blindly be 
 yond them for the greater gifts of God's eternal 
 keeping could he now stand his last watch, his, hands 
 red with sacrificial blood, his heart dead but his soul 
 still upright and pinioned for cerulean flight. 
 
 In the misty dawn he reached Huipulco, swerved 
 to the left through Tepepan to Noria, turned to the 
 right and faced the first steep rise to San Mateo. 
 Twice he had been hailed by government outposts, 
 and here again. He paid not the slightest attention 
 to the orders of the sleepy guards to halt. Hatless, 
 threadbare, muttering or gesticulating, he passed 
 them by as though they were non-existent. His pov 
 erty-stricken figure seemed to none of them worth 
 the waste of a cartridge. They watched him, 
 faintly curious, shrugged their shoulders and let 
 him go. 
 
 Until he reached the flat between Topelejo and 
 Parres, Digby's voice was silent, all his breath 
 snatched from his lungs by the strain of the steep 
 climb in the high altitude, but once on the great 
 
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 plateau, accidented only by gullies, he began to talk 
 aloud. 
 
 "Outposts," he said; "a dozen outposts within 
 the city limits ! After years of government control ! 
 Not weeks nor months years ! American merchant 
 excursionists holding out the greedy hand of friend 
 ship one day and three weeks later a picnic party 
 held for ransom within sight of town and a ranch 
 cleaned of a hundred head of stock in the suburbs. 
 Never a day in three years when bandits haven't 
 overshadowed the Capital. Why ? Because author 
 ity needs them, because it lives only by disorder and 
 knows it!" 
 
 He nodded his head heavily and continued. "This 
 encrustation, this Latin scourge, this horde of para 
 sites cursed by God with the power to read and 
 write, hides itself from a credulous world behind a 
 screen of the printed shibboleths of purest altruism. 
 It makes a law to return the land to the peons, and 
 what happens? The world applauds and the pro 
 prietors pay millions to the corrupt officialdom !" 
 
 He nodded again. "Unable to take a ride ten 
 miles out of its own capital, it issues an edict that 
 no male shall marry without passing an eugenic test. 
 
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 'Wonderful,' cries the world, thinks itself a laggard 
 and never sees the naive announcement in the daily 
 press that the plan has been abandoned because 
 scarcely an applicant could pass! Will the edict 
 therefore die ? No, it will surely come again backed 
 by officialdom with no private reputation at stake, 
 and live not on the blood from a man's veins but 
 from his purse." 
 
 His head swung despondently from side to side. 
 "A corrupt generation," he murmured. "They 
 slapped the face of the Red Cross in a time of pesti 
 lence, cried with inflated pride to the world that 
 they can care for their own, but after two years let 
 their papers describe the horrible death of starving 
 aged women and weakened children eaten alive by 
 rats! In the City the City of Palaces!" 
 
 Finding himself in the long single street of a 
 village he had always known as squalid but teeming 
 with life, smiling and contented in its grime, he 
 stopped and stared. Every house was abandoned, 
 roofs gone, charred walls broken, blind windows 
 already choked with matted bush-growth from with 
 in. The once-fine highway was in ruins, far on the 
 road to one of its century-spaced obliterations. 
 
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 Until this moment he had not noted the grim sig 
 nificance of its abandonment. 
 
 "Just beyond the suburbs," he muttered. "Dev 
 astation, slaughter, rapine. While we fought for 
 freedom abroad, these people refused the hand of 
 friendship, devoured their own young, shouted 
 neutrality,' and stood at our backs with a knife 
 they dared not use. And we proclaimed sonorously 
 that every country has a right to its own salvation !" 
 
 He hastened on. "Who does not know," he 
 asked, "that the mind of a man whose frame is eaten 
 by the king's evil flares up to a white light of intelli 
 gence before it forever dies? And so with this 
 rotten body politic laying its contamination upon a 
 supine sea of human souls. It cries reform, prints 
 reform, sees reform with a crystal vision and wal 
 lows far below in the slough of every vice, every 
 dishonour, splashes about in the bogholes of das 
 tardly failure in the performance of daily duty un 
 adorned. No standards left for human frailty, none. 
 They and their women go to the one road, and we are 
 all splashed, all soiled with the infamous mud, even 
 even Madeleine !" 
 
 Staring wide-eyed along the abandoned highway 
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 he cried out, "Revenue! Graft! Graft! Revenue! 
 They suck and suck, and with foully-caked lips 
 shout to the world, 'See how much blood is still 
 left in the carcass!' and the world answers, 'Won 
 derful ! but it's because the body still struggles. Let 
 me hold it down for you !' 
 
 "Who would believe," continued Digby in a loud 
 voice; "who bothers to remember that the conquer 
 ing parasites who cry 'Patria' like a cuckoo croak 
 ing in a stolen nest and who have dragged down into 
 a universal mire of infamy this unhappy land, came 
 to overturn laws by which thieving, the falsifying 
 of weights, the changing of boundary lines, intem 
 perance, adultery and murder, all casual offenses 
 to-day, were punishable by death! And that men 
 lived then who knew a just judge by sight! In 
 our blindness will we see purity in some friendly 
 faction of this seething mass of the uniformally in 
 iquitous? Perhaps, and by backing it help to start 
 another cycle of tyranny on the worn road of Cal 
 vary, tail in on the crucifixion of thirteen million 
 miserable souls!" 
 
 He stopped, his head hanging to ponderous 
 thoughts. "And while we stand aside and simper, 
 
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 'Am I my brother's keeper?' there is no end, no 
 light in sight. Only this. That an ancient power 
 is abroad over the earth to-day which no man has 
 named, a force of destiny for evil or for good vast 
 beyond our present visioning. It is busy piling up 
 the mountain of human woe until such time as men 
 shall drop the scales of hypdtrisy from their eyes 
 and gaze upon the truth behind the mirror. It is 
 not God nor is it Devil but in its clutch the greatest 
 of men squirm like worms ; decked in the puny pomp 
 of mundane authority, holding world-power like a 
 rattle in a baby's hand they bawl for war and it 
 gives them peace ; cry 'Peace ! Peace !' and it chokes 
 war down their puling throats. Before its meas 
 ured stride centuries go down, nations pass away. 
 This one, too. Some day some blessed day of 
 gleaming hope. So long to wait ! So long to wait 
 because behind the doctrine of self -salvation we 
 have blared to the world, my neighbour may befoul 
 his own door-step and I may only hold my nose 
 and pass him by!" 
 
 He threw up a hand in an expressive gesture. 
 "Why am I the only one to see its measured stride, 
 this force that never speaks to men, only crushes 
 
 306
 
 them, keeps on (crushing them, because they are 
 blind, because they are deaf, because death is a just 
 portion to every people who rot in complacency and 
 forget that inactivity is at the inception of every 
 putrefaction. But I can hear it, I alone can hear. 
 It comes on with a rumbling like a great mill, a 
 crusher of mighty stones as if they were rubble. It 
 says, 'Clean the world or pass away ; clean the world 
 or pass away.' We too, all our puerile greatness, 
 lie in its path. We are of the world and we whisper 
 languidly to the world's little toe, eaten by cancer, 
 'Qean thyself, brother; thy sore is none of my 
 affair ! Peace ! Peace !' we cheep and cast in our 
 lot with far-away death." 
 
 In mid-afternoon he stumbled into Huichilac. He 
 was unconscious of fatigue, oblivious to the stag 
 gering of his long stride. Here was ruin, utter ruin. 
 From every side choked windows stared at him, 
 doorless enclosures which had once been houses 
 cried aloud to the open air with an eloquence be 
 yond speech. He turned the corner of revelation, 
 that corner whose turning twenty years before had 
 first disclosed to his eyes the inextinguishable glory 
 of the golden valley. He stood erect, stockstill, 
 
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 his shoulders squared, his gray uncovered head dis 
 heveled by the wind, his chin uplifted, his eyes fixed 
 in a piercing gaze that soared across illimitable 
 space. The memory of the message that he had 
 torn after long pondering from the heart of this 
 matchless scene echoed in his ears. "The earth is 
 of the body of God." 
 
 He stood alone on the vast verge, no longer a 
 pathetic figure. About him was the solitude of the 
 dead, the silently sobbing loneliness that haunts only 
 the path of destruction, ruined habitations, the 
 neighbourhood of monuments, the grass-grown cob 
 blestones where men once walked and children 
 played. 
 
 "Thunder the truth !" shouted Digby, raising both 
 his clenched fists on high. 
 
 "Thunder the truth !" echoed empty vale and hill 
 and distant peak. Two sentinels on picket duty 
 crawled out of a thatched shelter on a far-away knoll 
 and stared wonderingly about them. 
 
 Digby's voice spoke again, resonant above the an 
 swering rumble of the hills. "Thunder the truth !" 
 he roared. "Vultures who feed upon the beautiful 
 body of God ! Unclean ! Unclean ! Naked-necked, 
 
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 gory-headed with the blood of their own. The cloud 
 of them is black like the shadow of the wrath of 
 heaven, their talons drip pollution and the poison 
 that kills beyond death, slaughters new-born the hope 
 of resurrection. Loose my tongue, O Lord, to a 
 new commandment: Thou shalt not defile the fair 
 body of God!" 
 
 His hands dropped to his sides as though his 
 arms had been suddenly withered, his head fell for 
 ward between his shrunken shoulders and his eyes, 
 wide open and frightened, stared from side to side. 
 In that last cry the disembodied mind had flown too 
 high above the realm of common sense ever quite to 
 return. It left his miserable frame to struggle un 
 aided with a bursting heart turned sentient as if to 
 taste the full bitterness of a last despair. 
 
 He slunk stealthily, then ran openly, stumbling, 
 falling, rising, down the steep descent to the gate 
 way of Mountain Acre, scrambled through its ruin, 
 hastened up the driveway until he came to where 
 an arch had once opened upon a peaceful garden. 
 A stark and lonely pillar of scorched brick marked 
 the entrance; beyond it was a chaos of matted 
 growth pierced by the pointing fingers of shattered 
 
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 walls. What was left of a privet hedge had risen 
 high against the sky and bore black fruit, shriveled 
 and rotting. Arms upthrown, he fell on his knees 
 and buried his face against the brick pillar. In that 
 moment he was all flesh, all suffering. 
 
 "Oh, Madeleine!" he sobbed. "My baby! My 
 own baby! Not all the king's horses!" 
 
 Far above him the two pickets on outpost duty 
 wagered a handful of beans against a cigarette as 
 to which would hit him first. The cigarette won 
 and at the shock Digby turned suddenly calm. "Peo 
 ples," he murmured, "sin collectively; they seldom 
 repay the individual, for life is short, the vengeance 
 of the Lord is long." 
 
 THE END
 
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