TWO SIDES 
 
 Georpe
 
 ... 
 
 WO Pacif 

 
 Two SIDES OF A STORY
 
 Two SIDES OF A STORY 
 
 OLEY GROWS DAUGHTER. MRS. WINTER- 
 
 ROWD'S MUSICALE. " UNFINISHED." 
 
 MARCH AND APRIL. RAISING CAIN. 
 
 BY 
 GEORGE PARSONS LATHROP 
 
 BRENTANO'S 
 
 UNION SQUARE NEW YORK 
 1900
 
 COPYRIGHT, 
 
 1889, 
 By O. M. DUNHAM.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 Two SIDES OF A STORY, 
 OLEY CROW'S DAUGHTER, 
 CAPTAIN BILLY, - - - - 
 MRS. WINTERROWD'S MUSICALE, - 
 "UNFINISHED," - 
 MARCH AND APRIL, - 
 "RAISING CAIN," ... 
 IN A MARKET-WAGON, - 
 
 2061S99
 
 TWO SIDES OF A STORY. 
 
 I. 
 
 "T^ROM Constantinople, N. Y., a small city 
 i. within a short distance of Oneida Lake, 
 Martin Updike, a young but able lawyer, who 
 had been settled in the place for less than a 
 year, was suddenly called to Kansas City on 
 an errand of considerable interest. 
 
 He had been intrusted with a claim for Baf- 
 fler, Kidge & Co., wholesale dry-goods dealers 
 in New York. A younger member of this firm 
 had been a chum of Updike's, and used his in- 
 fluence to put the case in his friend's charge. 
 The claim was against one Owen Haymaker, 
 who, for some months, had kept a store in 
 Kansas City, and had made a sensation by the 
 enormous business that he conducted. 
 
 The old dealers, who had grown gray in the 
 belief that they represented the advance-guard 
 of "Western enterprise," rubbed their eyes and 
 shook their heads when confronted with the 
 peculiar methods of Haymaker, who was un-
 
 2 TWO SIDES OF A STORY. 
 
 derstood to have emerged from the effete and 
 somnolent East. He offered the most extra- 
 ordinary bargains at times, selling silks, lawns, 
 laces, ribbons, and other articles for about one- 
 twentieth of their cost ; and the result was a 
 wild scramble of customers, each eager to be 
 first. He chartered excursion trains from out- 
 lying places, and brought buyers free of charge 
 to his door, where carpets were spread on the 
 sidewalk for them to walk over, and men in 
 livery ushered them in. Occasionally he went 
 so far as to employ the best local brass band 
 to give a gratuitous concert in the back part of 
 his large "emporium ;" and, inspired by the 
 music, his customers flew around from counter 
 to counter as actively as if they were exercis- 
 ing at a skating-rink. 
 
 But, when his prosperity was at the highest 
 point, he disappeared unceremoniously, leav- 
 ing a number of large accounts unsettled ; and 
 it was found that just before leaving he had 
 also overdrawn upon two of the Kansas City 
 banks to the extent of more than twenty thou- 
 sand dollars; his illicit gains amounting in all 
 to about one hundred thousand dollars.
 
 TWO SIDES OF A STORY. 3 
 
 A few days before his departure, his wife 
 had taken the cars, ostensibly to visit friends 
 in the East; but the detectives were con- 
 vinced that she had changed her route and 
 gone to Canada, carrying part of the booty 
 with her perhaps, and that Owen Haymaker 
 had joined her there. No clew sufficiently 
 definite, however, could be obtained to make 
 his pursuit and capture possible. 
 
 Before going out from Constantinople, Mar- 
 tin Updike called upon Miss Angie Breese 
 (daughter of the Hon. Calvert Breese, a well-to- 
 do merchant and distinguished county political 
 magnate), and told her about the affair. 
 
 "If I can succeed in getting the claim settled 
 for Baffler, Kidge & Co," he said, "it will 
 make my fortune." 
 
 "You might possibly make that by staying 
 at home," said Angie, whom it was currently 
 supposed Martin hoped to marry. 
 
 And it was quite a triumph for her when he 
 returned, after a couple of weeks, without 
 having accomplished anything. 
 
 "It's a complete wreck," he said, as they sat 
 talking together again in the lofty, old fash-
 
 4 TWO SIDES OF A STORY. 
 
 ioned parlor of her father's house, which 
 looked out on the fine portico formed by ma- 
 jestic, fluted, wooden columns. "The man left 
 nothing that we could get hold of, and every- 
 body has given up hope of ever tracing him." 
 
 "Well, we've done much better than that 
 here," said Angie. "There have been lots of 
 things going on. Have you heard yet about 
 the dancing-party at Mrs. Gen. Cullender's? " 
 
 "No." ' 
 
 "Oh, you ought to have been there !" Angie 
 resumed. "It was almost a ball, and it would 
 have done you good to see all the attention I 
 received. My dance-card was full, and you 
 know a card like that is a cup of joy, filled to 
 the brim, pressed down, and running over. 
 That is, Eben and I nearly ran over some other 
 people in one of our waltzes." 
 
 "What, Eben Taft?" Martin asked, hero- 
 ically striving not to look jealous. 
 
 "Yes," she said. "Eben was so attentive! 
 Why would you believe it we got along 
 splendidly, he and I." 
 
 Updike felt as if he were beginning to fade 
 away into a cloud of gloom.
 
 TWO SIDES OF A STORY. 5 
 
 "Perhaps it's just as well that I wasn't 
 there," he remarked, with what is commonly 
 called a significant air, though he probably 
 could have given no reasonable explanation of 
 the significance. 
 
 "That is according to how you look at it," 
 Angie replied, giving a friendly little pout. 
 "But we had a new sensation at the Cullen- 
 ders', too. Have you heard of that?" 
 
 Updike began to be irritated by these refer- 
 ences to things that he didn't know about. 
 
 '"How could I hear?" he asked. "You are 
 almost the first person I've talked with since 
 I came back." 
 
 "Well, I'll tell you," said Angie, cheerfully 
 ignoring his annoyance. "There is a new arri- 
 val, a widow she seems to be Mrs. Garrish. 
 She has hired that house of Gen. Cullender's 
 right around the corner from him, and Mrs. 
 Cullender invited her to the party. It's the 
 funniest thing that she should have made such 
 a sensation, when there wasn't any particular 
 reason for it. But she did. I guess it was 
 principally because the men all liked her, and 
 the women mostly didn't. And now there's
 
 O TWO SIDES OF A STORY. 
 
 a grand question whether we shall visit her 
 or not." 
 
 "That question," Updike responded, with a 
 shade of sarcasm which he flattered himself 
 was rather delicate, "must be decided accord- 
 ing to how you look at it. If the men like 
 her, she must be pleasant. How did she im- 
 press you f" 
 
 "Oh, very charming. She is quiet and sweet, 
 and doesn't seem to be trying to attract atten- 
 tion ; but it comes to her just the same." 
 
 "Has she a fine presence?" Updike asked 
 mechanically. 
 
 "Yes, a great deal of presence," Angle 
 laughed gayly ; "and a good deal of absence, 
 too absence of mind. She seems to lose her- 
 self in reveries, and really has a pathetic way, 
 as if she had been through lots of trouble. 
 But she was dressed oh, exquisitely! with 
 the loveliest diamonds! Mamma hasn't de- 
 cided yet about calling on her, because no one 
 knows anything about her. Now you see 
 what you've missed by being away. You can't 
 even join us in talking over Mrs. Garrish." 
 
 "That's a pity," Updike returned. "But, if
 
 TWO SIDES OF A STORY. ^ 
 
 I'd seen her, I might have been inclined to talk 
 others over to her" 
 
 "How? Oh, I see! You mean talk other 
 people over to her side." 
 
 "Exactly," said Martin. "If there's any 
 prejudice against a person, you know I'm 
 always disposed to take up the defense." 
 
 "I know," Angie answered, "what papa says 
 about you : that you're always 'on the other 
 side' ; so much so that you even want to argue 
 against yourself. That's why you're such a 
 good lawyer, he says." 
 
 "Because I argue against myself?" Martin 
 asked, attempting to turn the compliment 
 aside.. 
 
 "No," said Angie, blushing; "but because 
 you look so carefully at both sides, and attack 
 your own position until you learn how to 
 defend it best." 
 
 "I dare say ; yes, I dare say," Updike mur- 
 mured somewhat inattentively. 
 
 He was reflecting how often he had defeated 
 himself in argument on his chance of winning 
 Angie's heart ; and he wondered whether these 
 frequent defeats really strengthened his posi-
 
 8 TWO SIDES OF A STORY. 
 
 tion. But he was unable to see how that 
 could be possible. Recovering himself, he as- 
 sumed a jocose superiority of age and wisdom. 
 
 "Your father's view is a very kind and judi- 
 cious one," he said, "and I hope, Miss Angie, 
 that you will profit by it yourself, and follow 
 my example." 
 
 "I don't see how I can," said she, as she rose 
 to bid him good-afternoon; "because I'm not 
 going to be a lawyer myself." 
 
 Martin was strongly tempted to ask, "But 
 couldn't you consent to be a lawyer's wife?" 
 Before he could decide to do so, the ponderous 
 outer door of the Graeco-Roman portico swung 
 open, and the Hon. Calvert Breese stepped 
 into the hall. 
 
 "Ah, Martin," said he, presenting his rugged 
 visage, which was tinged with a light earthy 
 brown, like that of old parchment, at the open 
 door. "Just going? Come in to tea this even- 
 ing. I want to talk to you." 
 
 Updike knew that this meant a conference 
 on politics, and he accepted the invitation. 
 
 When he had left the house, instead of 
 going directly to his office, he went around
 
 TWO SIDES OF A STORY. 9 
 
 through Oneida Street, so that he might pass 
 the dwelling-place of the newly arrived Mrs. 
 Garrish. It was a cozy little abode, with a 
 picturesque corner-turret, embowered in fruit- 
 trees. The curtains were up, but no one was 
 visible on the premises. 
 
 "What childish curiosity in me, to come 
 around here !" he growled to himself. 
 
 Nevertheless, when he returned to the 
 Breeses' for tea, he was in hope that he should 
 hear something more about the new-comer of 
 whom Angie had spoken. But the evening 
 was spent in the study of the Hon. Calvert, 
 who had work in view for the young lawyer in 
 the approaching State campaign, and also 
 intended to secure for Updike, as a reward for 
 past services, the party nomination for Assem- 
 blyman of the district. 
 
 Updike's "childish curiosity," however, 
 was destined to be gratified the next day. 
 About noon a lady entered his office while he 
 was sitting there alone. 
 
 "I was advised to come here," she said tim- 
 idly, "by General Cullender." 
 
 Updike gave a little start, which be-
 
 io TWO SIDES OF A STORY. 
 
 trayed his thought. "Cullender? Then you 
 are " 
 
 "His new tenant, Mrs. Garrish." 
 
 "Oh yes," said Martin; "I know that is, I 
 shall be glad if I can be of service to you." 
 
 She was richly dressed, he observed, 
 although in dark, unobtrusive colors; but the 
 thick vail which concealed the upper part of 
 her face exasperated him. 
 
 "I asked the general," she proceeded in a 
 soft voice that floated through Martin Updike's 
 brain like the memory of summer nights, 
 "about making some investments. But he did 
 not like to advise. He said it was always 
 better to employ a lawyer to care for one's 
 estate, and recommended you." 
 
 Her melodious tones gave an unbusiness-like 
 charm to the prosaic words, and Updike 
 answered with alacrity, tempered by senti- 
 ment: 
 
 "If you will tell me in what form your prop- 
 erty is at present, Mrs. Garrish, that may be 
 the best way to begin." 
 
 "Certainly," she assented. "But, Mr. Up- 
 dike, let me ask, do you not know me?"
 
 TWO SIDES OF A STORY. II 
 
 He was taken aback. "Know you ! Why, 
 this meeting with you gives me that pleas- 
 ure." 
 
 "But I am sure we have met before," said 
 the lady, drawing up her veil with such deli- 
 cate grace that it seemed only done so that 
 she might see him better, and not to show her 
 own face. 
 
 Bewilderment and excitement were added 
 to Updike's interest now, as he returned her 
 gaze. They were beautiful eyes that met his, 
 mingled of dark gray and brown tints, that had 
 the soft, shadowed depth often seen in a Lake 
 Superior agate. And it was a beautiful face 
 from which they looked out so calmly. Indeed 
 the eyes reflected the whole woman, it seemed, 
 cool, soothing, and restful. At once the truth 
 rushed upon him, while with a quiet smile 
 Mrs. Garrish added: "Don't you remember 
 Long Branch?" 
 
 "Eva!" exclaimed Updike, fairly rising to 
 his feet. "Eva Tuthill!" 
 
 "Hush," said the lady, without agitation, 
 but in a warning tone that checked him. 
 "Don't utter that name again!"
 
 12 TWO SIDES OF A STORY. 
 
 "Why not?" he asked. "What reason can 
 there be for concealing it?" 
 
 Mrs. Garrish sighed. "I will tell you all the 
 reasons by and by. But it is a long story." 
 
 She leaned back, as if the weight of sad 
 recollections suddenly oppressed her. 
 
 The lawyer insensibly passed into a subdued 
 and sympathetic mood. 
 
 "You don't know how delightful it is to see 
 you again," he said dreamily. "And so you 
 have come to live among us here? Will your 
 aunt come too?" 
 
 "She is dead," answered Mrs. Garrish softly, 
 as if she were laying a wreath of flowers on a 
 grave. "I am utterly alone in the world." 
 
 "But you are Mrs. Garrish now. Your hus- 
 band is he also " 
 
 "Ah !" She paused after that word. "It is 
 only a few years since you and I met at Long 
 Branch; but a great deal has happened since." 
 Again there was a pause. "My husband 
 is still living." 
 
 Updike rose and paced the floor. At length he 
 asked, hesitating: "Are you separated, then?" 
 
 He began to think the situation embarrass-
 
 TWO SIDES OF A STORY. 13 
 
 ing, a little unpleasant, possibly dangerous. 
 Angie and her mother, and the ladies at Mrs. 
 Cullender's had perhaps been right in viewing 
 Mrs. Garrish slightly askance. But her man- 
 ner disarmed this thought. 
 
 "It is a painful thing to speak of," she said. 
 "When Gen. Cullender gave me your name, 
 and I found you had established yourself here, 
 I knew I should have to explain to you. But 
 then I also knew that I should find in you 
 an old friend ; and that made it easier. My 
 husband has deserted me." 
 
 She hid her face in her hand one instant, and 
 Updike shuddered at his own momentary in- 
 justice. 
 
 "Is not that enough for me to say now?" 
 his visitor asked, looking up at him with pale 
 entreaty. "He has done even worse than that. 
 But no, I can not tell you now !" 
 
 This time she turned her face away, making 
 a half movement to rise ; and Martin began to 
 be alarmed lest she should drop her veil again. 
 But she did not. He paused in his walk near 
 her. "Believe me," he said, with real emotion, 
 "I am terribly grieved to hear this."
 
 14 TWO SIDES OF A STORY. 
 
 Visions came back to him of the one vaca- 
 tion at Long Branch which had fallen to his 
 lot. That was when he had been a village law- 
 student, before he came to Constantinople. He 
 remembered Eva Tuthill as a brilliant girl 
 among the many beauties at the sea-side, 
 where she was staying with her aunt ; he 
 remembered how a brief sentimental friendship 
 had grown up between himself and Eva ; the 
 long, delicious summer nights and the hollow 
 moaning of the breakers below the bluff. His 
 heart grew tender, and he warmed with a 
 desire to vindicate her now from any asper- 
 sions that might be cast upon her. 
 
 "But you must not tell any one," she ad- 
 jured him, after they had talked for some 
 time. "I have come here to escape from the 
 past, and to conceal myself. Afterward, when 
 the right time comes, everything can be made 
 clear to others. I have trusted you, Mr. Up- 
 dike. You will keep the trust?" 
 
 "Absolutely," he assured her. 
 
 Mrs. Garrish paused at the door as she was 
 going. 
 
 "We have had no time for business," she
 
 TWO SIDES OF A STORY. 15 
 
 reminded him ; "and I hardly feel like talk- 
 ing of it now. But why not come to see me at 
 my house some evening? Would it be too 
 inconvenient?" 
 
 The smile with which she ended made a 
 captivating question-mark. 
 
 "No inconvenience at all," said the lawyer. 
 "When?" 
 
 Again it was only as an interrogation that 
 Mrs. Garrish said, "To-morrow?" 
 
 She left him, with a brief pressure of the 
 hand. Here was Martin Updike, therefore, in 
 possession of the secret about which all the 
 Constantinople gossips were speculating ! 
 
 The business conversation at Mrs. Garrish's 
 house was far from being tedious. Her prop- 
 erty, it transpired, was chiefly in the form of 
 cash, the result of an unexpected legacy from 
 a distant relative in California. She wanted to 
 invest some of it in unregistered government 
 and railroad bonds, after Updike had explained 
 to her the nature of those securities. There 
 were about sixty thousand dollars, and of this 
 she asked him to take ten thousand dollars and 
 deposit it to his own credit.
 
 1 6 TWO SIDES OF A STORY. 
 
 "Because," she said, "I wish to keep out of 
 reach of my husband. Whenever I want 
 money I will call upon you, and I can draw a 
 check." 
 
 "It would be unusual," said Martin, notwith- 
 standing that he was deeply flattered by the 
 confidence she put in him. 
 
 So is my situation unusual," she answered. 
 "Dear Mr. Updike, I must beg you to oblige 
 me!" 
 
 He could not resist the appeal of those 
 eyes, with their soft, agate depths. 
 
 "I am so glad you consent !" said his fair 
 friend ; and, to his amazement, she stepped 
 into the library, opened a safe which had been 
 let into the wall, and took out ten one-thou- 
 sand-dollar bills, which she insisted upon his 
 taking, in spite of all protest that he could offer. 
 
 "I will arrange all this by a written agree- 
 ment, which you shall sign to-morrow," Up- 
 dike informed her, putting the bills into an 
 inside pocket. 
 
 He remained with her a long while, chatting 
 about old times, until it occurred to him all at 
 once that he had agreed to go to the final
 
 TWO SIDES OF A STORY. 17 
 
 meeting of the Charade Club (it was now June) 
 and escort Angie Breese home. The meeting 
 was at Mrs. Puff's, a few streets distant ; and 
 he hurried thither, carrying the ten thou- 
 sand dollars with him. Everybody noticed his 
 exhilarated manner when he came in; but 
 Angie had been wondering why he did not 
 come earlier, and she was less responsive than 
 the rest were to his gayety. 
 
 Once out of doors with her again, starting 
 for home, he said: "I've seen Mrs. Garrish, and 
 find that I knew her several years ago." 
 
 "Do tell me all about her, then!" cried 
 Angie. 
 
 "Ah !" said Martin, with a dry complacency, 
 "that's asking too much. I am bound not to 
 tell at present. But you may take my word 
 for it that she's all right." 
 
 A coolness that was not born of the night 
 wind immediately diffused itself around the 
 pair. At the next street-crossing, Angie, who 
 had allowed Martin his usual privilege of tak- 
 ing her arm in his, released it on pretext of 
 holding her dress ; and after this they walked 
 separate.
 
 1 8 TWO SIDES OF A STORY. 
 
 "Then you have known her very well?" 
 Angie asked. 
 
 "Not especially," he returned. "That is, I 
 knew her only a short time formerly, and have 
 just begun to know her again now." 
 
 "You were there to-night?" was the next 
 question from Angie. 
 
 Updike resented the tone in which it was 
 uttered. "Yes," he said, and was half resolved 
 to make no explanaton. But he added, "She 
 required my advice on business matters." 
 
 It was a relief to both these young people 
 when they stopped in front of the Hon. 
 Calvert Breese's house. Ordinarily, Updike 
 would have gone with Angie up the steps ; but 
 this time he stopped at the gate. She shook 
 hands with him ; but her touch was so indiffer- 
 ent that he almost wished she had not done so. 
 
 II. 
 
 For three months following that night, a 
 social war raged in Constantinople. 
 
 People were not slow to discover that Up- 
 dike had called on the mysterious new tenant 
 of the turreted cottage; that he had known
 
 TWO SIDES OF A STORY. 19 
 
 her before ; and that he continued to visit her 
 frequently. He was at once besieged and 
 waylaid with ingenious questions, the sub- 
 stance of which was: "Is she a widow, or 
 divorced? Who is she? Where did she come 
 from?" 
 
 Updike himself did not know where she had 
 originally come from, and he was debarred 
 from answering the other questions. 
 
 Now, society likes a mystery that it knows 
 all about ; one that is supposed to be a secret, 
 yet still can be discussed in corners as if it 
 were a rare discovery, which ought not to be 
 generally mentioned. But a mystery to which 
 there is no handle at all merely provokes soci- 
 ety, and comes to be regarded as an insult to 
 its intelligence. A strong party, therefore, 
 was speedily arrayed against Mrs. Garrish, on 
 the ground that she was not a conveniently 
 intelligible mystery. Updike, however, did 
 his best on her behalf by making general state- 
 ments in her favor. With Mrs. Gen. Cullen- 
 der it was a matter of pride to uphold the 
 lady whom she invited to her house ; and she 
 accordingly placed herself at the head of a
 
 20 TWO SIDES OF A STORY. 
 
 defensive faction, with Martin Updike as her 
 chief lieutenant. Hence all the tears, and 
 woe, and deadly combat without blows, that 
 ensued. 
 
 A variety of unpleasant rumors were circu- 
 lated about Mrs. Garrish, and indignantly 
 denied by the Cullender-Updike party. Old 
 friends were estranged, and families divided 
 on this issue ; and as the Hon. Calvert Breese 
 and his wife ranged themselves with the hostile 
 forces, Updike's relations with Angie were 
 broken off. But this did not come to pass 
 without a plea on the young lawyer's part for 
 tolerance. 
 
 "You ought," said he to Angie, in a final, 
 dignified interview, "to cultivate the faculty of 
 understanding both sides of a question. I can 
 remember" here his voice took on a refined 
 bitterness "when your father, a few weeks 
 ago, used to praise that faculty in me. But 
 now, because it doesn't suit him to have me 
 exercise it" 
 
 "You are looking at only one side," Angie 
 interrupted; "and that is Mrs. Garrish's." 
 
 "As it happens," Martin retorted, "I am the
 
 TWO SIDES OF A STORY. 21 
 
 sole person who is in a position to comprehend 
 both views of the situation ; and you ought to 
 accept my judgment without debate." 
 
 "No," said Angie. "I can see only one side 
 at a time, and I prefer that it should be the 
 right side. You are puzzling everybody by 
 your silence, and so is Mrs. Garrish; and 
 mamma has told me that I must not see you 
 any more, because you are making mischief 
 and that's what she says a scandal !" 
 
 So they parted. 
 
 "A scandal!" Yes; that was true; Up- 
 dike was aware that gossip had been set 
 astir by his frequent meetings with Mrs. 
 Garrish. But how could he help it? He had 
 to see her often, because he was attending to 
 her affairs. His pride rose, and his sense of 
 fair play for Eva Garrish lent its aid in making 
 him stubborn and unrelenting. 
 
 When September came, the Hon. Calvert 
 Breese had changed his sentiments about Mar- 
 tin as completely as some of the leaves had 
 changed their color in the beautiful wooded 
 landscape surrounding Constantinople. 
 
 "This business of Updike and the Garrish
 
 22 TWO SIDES OF A STORY. 
 
 woman," the Hon. Calvert declared, "has set- 
 tled that young man's chances for the Assem- 
 bly nomination if / have anything to say 
 about it." And Mrs. Breese fully concurred 
 in this resolution. 
 
 Hearing of it, Gen. Cullender, although he 
 had hitherto invariably supported the Hon. 
 Calvert in politics, at once organized a move- 
 ment to run Martin Updike as an independent 
 candidate. But even this signal honor did not 
 quite console our friend for the unhappy 
 trouble between Angle Breese and himself; 
 more especially since he had noticed that 
 Eben Taft, formerly his hopeless rival in the 
 race for Angie's hand, was now constantly seen 
 with her at picnics, teas, tennis-parties, and the 
 like. 
 
 Two opposition series of summer entertain- 
 ments had been kept going all through these 
 months; and to one of them Mrs. Garrish's 
 enemies were never invited. Consequently, 
 Updike could not meet Angie on any occa- 
 sion, and they had even ceased to bow 
 when they passed on the street. Yet some- 
 times, late at night, when the streets were
 
 TWO SIDES OF A STORY. 23 
 
 deserted, Martin would march up and down 
 under the wind-tossed maples that stood in 
 line before her father's house, with here and 
 there small rain-pools gleaming dimly in the 
 road, like fallen tears; and Angie, in the 
 silence of her room, would listen to the wind 
 among the maples as if it were a banished lov- 
 er's sigh. 
 
 Still, Martin was proud ; and neither of them 
 could give way. On a certain autumn after- 
 noon he took Mrs. Garrish with a large driving 
 party to the lake. They went out in a boat 
 by themselves; and, as they floated in a shel- 
 tered cove, she said to him suddenly: "I have 
 heard from my husband. Read that !" 
 
 He took the paper that she gave him. The 
 envelope that inclosed it was postmarked at a 
 village on the northern border of New York, 
 but the sheet itself bore neither address nor 
 signature. It contained these words : 
 
 "You have refused my claims long enough. 
 You think I am afraid to come; but perhaps 
 you will find yourself mistaken. I give you 
 two days more to send or bring me the money. 
 After that"
 
 24 TWO SIDES OF A STORY. 
 
 Here the missive ended, leaving some sinis- 
 ter threat to be imagined. Updike was aston- 
 ished and troubled. "Then he proposes to 
 come back to you ; is that it?" he asked. 
 
 Eva Garrish smiled with melancholy sar- 
 casm. "He knows that I have this money," 
 she said, "and he wants it." 
 
 Updike thought he comprehended. "I see. 
 He wants to extort. But that's preposterous !" 
 
 "Not a cent of it belongs to him !" Eva 
 asserted with unusual vehemence. "Besides," 
 she added, sinking her face, "he is not really my 
 husband." 
 
 "How is that?" Updike asked, strangely 
 agitated. 
 
 Tears stood in Eva's eyes as she answered : 
 "He married me under a false name, and after 
 a time by accident I found out that he had 
 done it to conceal from me his previous mar- 
 riage." 
 
 "A bigamist," muttered Updike. "The 
 scoundrel ! Then you were not really married 
 to him?" 
 
 "What am I to do?" asked Eva, sobbing. 
 "Whom can I look to for defense against him?"
 
 TWO SIDES OF A STORY. 25 
 
 "You can look to me," said Updike, 
 chivalrous indignation blazing from his eyes. 
 "If he ever shows his face here, /'// settle 
 with him ! But why didn't you tell me before?" 
 
 Eva gave him one glance of gratitude. 
 
 "It was foolish, I know," she confessed. "But 
 I didn't know, at first, how good and generous 
 you could be. I dreaded to tell you my dis- 
 grace." 
 
 "Disgrace!" Updike ground the word be- 
 tween his teeth. "The disgrace was that man's 
 not yours." After thinking a moment, he said : 
 "Let me give you an instance." Then he 
 rapidly narrated what he knew of Owen Hay- 
 maker's operations, and was gratified to see that 
 Eva listened closely. "Now there," he wound 
 up, "Haymaker's wife was supposed to be in 
 collusion; but, even if she were so, the real 
 guilt was his. Do you suppose I can blame her 
 as I do him? I represent this claim of thirteen 
 thousand dollars against him, for Baffler, Kidge 
 & Co. But you can't imagine that I would 
 demand settlement from her? " 
 
 "No, of course not," Eva softly agreed, 
 drawing a deep breath.
 
 26 TWO SIDES OF A STORY. 
 
 "Very well," said Updike, strengthening his 
 point. "She is a hundred times worse off than 
 you, because you are absolutely innocent." 
 
 His ardor was well-nigh quenched in the 
 despairing depths of Eva's eyes as they met 
 his. 
 
 "Oh," she sighed, "if this trouble of mine 
 had never happened ; or if I had only met you 
 again before it came !" She then collected her 
 thoughts, as if the words that she had spoken 
 had been merely part of an unspoken rev- 
 erie. 
 
 "We must row back and join the others!" 
 she said. 
 
 Updike drove with her from the lake in a 
 buggy. The moon was rising, and, as they 
 rode along, its cold, silvery rays seemed to 
 mingle with their talk. Martin kept revolving 
 in his mind that significant exclamation of 
 hers; and once he burst out: 
 
 "Why do you still bear that man's name? 
 You are free, and have a right to drop it." 
 
 She did not reply immediately, and he be- 
 came aware that she was trembling. Her voice 
 was barely audible when she said: "It is the
 
 TWO SIDES OF A STORY. 27 
 
 mark of my past, and I must bear it because I 
 have no future to look forward to that can 
 wipe that out." 
 
 Martin trembled a little, too. He asked 
 himself, as if he had been a third person, 
 whether Martin Updike was about to make an 
 offer of marriage. But the subject was not 
 pursued, and they arrived at Eva's house almost 
 in silence. 
 
 "Please come in," she said, when they had 
 alighted. "That letter it has frightened me. 
 I hardly dare to go into my own house alone. 
 Besides, I have something to say." 
 
 Updike was ready enough to comply ; and, 
 when they had entered, she led the way to the 
 library. They sat down. 
 
 "This man who wrote that letter," she be- 
 gan, with downcast lids, "seems to threaten 
 something. Suppose he were to come here and 
 rob me?" 
 
 "But he can't," Updike opposed. "I have 
 part of your bonds. The rest are in the safe 
 deposit." 
 
 "There is something more," said Mrs. Gar- 
 rish. "I have kept nearly forty thousand dollars
 
 28 TWO SIDES OF A STORY. 
 
 in cash in that safe." She pointed to the re- 
 ceptacle in the wall. 
 
 "Forty thousand that you haven't told me 
 about! " gasped the young lawyer. "It's a ter- 
 rible risk." 
 
 "I know that," she admitted. "What shall 
 I do? Will you take it and put it away for 
 me?" 
 
 Updike shook his head. "No. That would 
 be too great a responsibility. I have enough 
 already." 
 
 Mrs. Garrish took out her keys. "Then you 
 must let me do this much," she said. "If you 
 could get for Baffler, Kidge & Co. the money 
 that Haymaker owed them, it would help you 
 with them. It was thirteen thousand, you 
 said. I am going to pay it !" 
 
 "You! Why?" 
 
 "Because it will be doing you some benefit; 
 and I feel that I am positively bound to make 
 this much return for your stanch friendship. It 
 fairly belongs to you to hand to your clients." 
 
 "But that sum is over one-tenth of your 
 whole fortune. I couldn't possibly accept it ; 
 neither could my clients," Updike protested.
 
 TWO SIDES OF A STORY. 29 
 
 He was amazed at her lavish generosity ; yet 
 it touched him too, for he could no longer 
 doubt the sincerity of her attachment for him. 
 
 She approached him with an air of intense 
 entreaty. 
 
 "Do take it," she implored. "Do for my 
 sake ! I should be so happy if you would." 
 
 She seemed to be in such distress that he 
 instinctively rose and took her hand, to calm 
 her. 
 
 "Eva" he said, "may I call you so? I could 
 not accept such a gift, even if I were married, 
 and it were offered by my own wife." 
 
 "Your wife !" she echoed. 
 
 He could feel her hand quiver as it lay in his. 
 She drew it away, and made a few steps to- 
 ward the table. 
 
 "Then," she said, "I must leave this place. 
 If I can not, at least, be of some use to you, I 
 had better disappear. You know I have made 
 discord ever since I came. I have separated 
 you from some of your friends; I have done 
 you no good ; and now, if I am not to have the 
 right to make you amends, I shall go." 
 
 "Eva!" he exclaimed, following her. "You
 
 30 TWO SIDES OF A STORY. 
 
 must not think of such a thing! You owe 
 it to yourself to stay and to me. I can not 
 let you go until all your wrongs have been 
 righted, and you are put in a clear position 
 before every one." 
 
 She smiled sadly, yet with a sort of 
 triumph. 
 
 "Well," she asked ; "and then, after that" 
 
 Updike had never felt so powerfully the 
 bewitchment of her mysterious eyes. For one 
 instant he thought of Angie ; but, in the next, 
 Eva's glance, mingled of vague question and 
 mute sorrow, overcame him. 
 
 "After that," he answered, "whatever hap- 
 pens, you must stay !" 
 
 "Do you wish it?" she asked, in fascinating 
 submission, bending her head toward him until 
 it almost touched his shoulder. 
 
 "I do," he replied, feeling that he was the 
 only man on whom she could depend in her for- 
 lorn situation, aud that he ought not to fail 
 her. 
 
 The next moment he was startled by a 
 strong, quick, masculine voice in the parlor. 
 Eva shrank back, and dropped into a chair.
 
 TWO SIDES OF A STORY. 31 
 
 "He has come," she said, in a voice subdued 
 by terror. " That man ! " 
 
 Updike turned, and saw, coming directly 
 toward them, a man in shabby clothes, with 
 a long, thin, black beard, who had not taken 
 the trouble to remove his flat-brimmed felt 
 hat. 
 
 "I told the servant I had important busi- 
 ness, and would walk right in," this unpleasant 
 apparition announced, as he came forward. 
 
 Eva cowered silent in her chair, very pale ; 
 but Updike burned with wrath. "And who 
 are you, sir?" he asked. 
 
 The flat-brimmed individual seated himself 
 and said coolly: "I'm only the man that had 
 the misfortune to marry that woman," pointing 
 his thumb at Eva. "And I guess you are the 
 young lawyer that my private detective spot- 
 ted hanging around her. Let's see Updike, 
 ain't it?" 
 
 "I am Mr. Updike," Martin responded coldly. 
 "Take off your hat !" 
 
 "Thank you," said the man. "I don't need 
 to. My head ain't as hot as yours." 
 
 "Probably, then," retorted Martin, "it is as
 
 32 TWO SIDES OF A STORY. 
 
 cold as your heart. I know about your pre- 
 tended marriage with this lady, sir. And I 
 know what you've come here for. You want 
 to extort money from her. But, in the first 
 place, you are a bigamist ; and in the next 
 place, the money belongs entirely to her." 
 
 Apparently the stranger's hands were hotter 
 than his head ; for he now began to pull off 
 a pair of thin lisle-thread gloves. 
 
 "Go slow, now," said he. "You' have got to 
 look at both sides. That first marriage that 
 you refer to was entirely in fun. I supposed 
 it was a joke, until the young lady and her 
 folks began to make a fuss and insist that I was 
 really her husband according to the law, be- 
 cause I had spoken of her as my wife before 
 witnesses. Then I skipped ; and when I met 
 Miss Tuthill I married her under another name, 
 because I didn't want those people to get after 
 me and find it out." 
 
 Updike turned to Eva. "Is that story of 
 his first marriage true?" he asked. 
 
 Mrs. Garrish, still seated, drew herself up 
 haughtily and said, "I believe so." 
 
 "Nevertheless," said Updike to the intruder,
 
 TWO SIDES OF A STORY. 33 
 
 "the first marriage was legal, and Mrs. I mean, 
 Miss Tuthill is free." 
 
 The other man rolled up his gloves, and put 
 them into his coat-pocket. 
 
 "She may be free of marriage," he answered 
 deliberately, "but that doesn't necessarily 
 make her free from theft, does it?" 
 
 "What do you mean, sir!" thundered Up- 
 dike, starting toward him violently. "Remem- 
 ber that I intend to protect this lady." 
 
 "Oh yes," said his adversary, who, as easily 
 as if he were taking out a cigarette, drew a 
 revolver, and held it quietly in his hand. 
 "And I'm going to protect myself." 
 
 At this point Eva sprang up. 
 
 "Oh, Martin," she cried, "be careful! This 
 man is desperate. I'll tell you who he is: he is 
 Owen Haymaker!" 
 
 "Haymaker!" repeated Martin, in a dazed 
 tone. "Is he your supposed husband?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 Updike hardly believed that she had spoken 
 the word. But he was speedily brought to a 
 comprehension of realities by hearing Hay- 
 maker say :
 
 34 TWO SIDES OF A STORY. 
 
 "Yes, sir; I'm the man. You must excuse 
 me if I'm a little rough. Garrish is the name 
 I married her under, and Haymaker is the 
 name that dawned upon me afterward. I've 
 had several names; but I'd no more think of 
 keeping one name all the time than I would of 
 sticking to an old coat after it was worn out. 
 Mrs. Garrish knew all about the new name, 
 though ; and she stayed by me just the same. 
 What do you suppose she did after that? 
 Why, when I had collected about a hundred 
 thousand in cold cash by a smart business 
 operation, I gave her the whole boodle to carry 
 away. She was to meet me with it in Canada. 
 But I went up there a few days later, and she 
 wasn't on hand. She had skipped East with 
 the boodle ; and now, here she is !" 
 
 "What do you say in answer to this extraor- 
 dinary charge?" Updike asked of Eva. 
 
 She stood perfectly still ; but her face looked 
 as if it had been coated with a premature 
 frost. 
 
 "It is all true," she said, her lips scarcely 
 moving. "But he had cheated me ; he had 
 deceived me by a false marriage ; and then he
 
 TWO SIDES OF A STORY. 35 
 
 expected me to aid him, for his own profit, in 
 cheating others. I took my revenge by carry- 
 ing away the great sum of money that he 
 intrusted to me. 
 
 "Oh, Martin," she cried, clasping her hands, 
 "you must believe me when I say that I did 
 not really mean to keep it all. I only wanted 
 to hide somewhere, until I found a way of 
 restoring it, without being imprisoned myself. 
 And when I discovered you here, I thought 
 you would help me through in the end. I was 
 tempted to delay; and this is my punishment. 
 But you know that, just , before this miserable 
 man came in, I offered you the full amount of 
 your claim, and you refused it." 
 
 At this point, Eva fell on her knees and 
 moaned to Updike: 
 
 "Forgive me; oh, forgive me! It was be- 
 cause I loved you." 
 
 Mr. Haymaker seemingly did not relish 
 hearing this confession. He fingered his idle 
 revolver in such a way as to indicate that he 
 would like to give it employment. As for 
 Updike, he was so aghast at the double revela- 
 tion thus laid before him that the sweat broke
 
 36 TWO SIDES OF A STORY. 
 
 out upon his forehead. He suffered from a 
 sense of criminality, more than the two crimi- 
 nals themselves suffered. 
 
 "It's no time for such words as these," he 
 said frigidly to Eva. "You'd better stand up 
 again." 
 
 But he nevertheless assisted her, with much 
 gentleness and courtesy, to rise. When she 
 had regained her feet, she shot toward Hay- 
 maker such an icy, basilisk look that all the old 
 charm died out of her eyes, for Updike. It 
 struck him at once that their resemblance to 
 agates had been prophetic. 
 
 The whole woman was as smooth and 
 polished as an agate, but just as impenetrable; 
 and the melting dusk that he had imagined as 
 lurking in her eyes, now seemed to Updike 
 if such a thing were possible a petrified 
 shadow. 
 
 Eva guessed the change in his feeling; but 
 she was determined to win a victory, one way or 
 another. She addressed herself to Haymaker : 
 
 "You said in your letter that you would give 
 me two days. But I received the letter only 
 this morning."
 
 TWO SIDES OF A STORY. 37 
 
 "That ain't my fault," he rejoined. "I gave 
 it to a man to carry across the Canada line, 
 and mail. I suppose he forgot it. 
 
 "By the way," he continued, speaking to 
 Updike, "I wrote to Mrs. Garrish three weeks 
 ago, threatening to come here; but she 
 thought I didn't dare to because I'd be arres- 
 ted for swindling. Well, you see I have 
 dared ; and the fact that I'm here proves the 
 sincerity of my statements to you. I admit 
 the fraud." 
 
 "Then you're a fool as well as a knave !" 
 Updike declared. "I will put you into the 
 hands of the police." 
 
 "Yes," Eva chimed in, vindictively. "Mr. 
 Updike knows all about it. He represents 
 one of the claims against you. 
 
 "And here," she added to Martin, handing him 
 her safe-key, "this gives you control of all that 
 money ! You are master of the situation now." 
 
 This was her victory over Haymaker. The 
 villain, however, was not disconcerted. He 
 twirled the loaded cylinder of his revolver 
 between finger and thumb, making it click. "I 
 guess I'm the master," he said languidly.
 
 3 8 TWO SIDES OF A STORY. 
 
 "You think so?" Martin inquired, planting 
 himself directly in front of Haymaker. "Let 
 us look at the facts calmly. If you shoot 
 anybody here, you will have murder on your 
 hands as well as fraud. I hold this key ; and 
 most of the property is where you never can 
 find it, even if you commit a dozen mur- 
 ders. Now, sir, I'll give you one minute and 
 a half to get out of this house." 
 
 He pulled out his watch and held it up; 
 meanwhile eying the man and the pistol, with 
 a strong conviction that he was likely to 
 receive a bullet the next moment. But his 
 only chance was to brave the thing out. 
 
 Haymaker whistled. 
 
 "You've got sand," said he. "If I clear 
 out, do you promise not to have me fol- 
 lowed?" 
 
 "I promise nothing," Martin replied firmly. 
 "The hand has passed forty seconds. You'd 
 better move." 
 
 Haymaker rose and dropped the pistol into 
 his side-pocket again. "I ain't murdering just 
 now," he said; "and I guess I'm mated this 
 time. Good-night !"
 
 TWO SIDES OF A STORY. 39 
 
 Thereupon he turned and walked out of the 
 house. 
 
 As the door closed behind him, Eva crept 
 toward Updike, and said piteously: "What 
 will you think of me, Martin?" 
 
 Updike shuddered as if an adder had 
 touched him. 
 
 "Don't ask me to answer you," he said. "I 
 am going at once by the back way through 
 the garden to Gen. Cullender's house, to sum- 
 mon help and ring up the police. In five min- 
 utes I shall be here again with help." 
 
 He struggled with himself for an instant, 
 wishing to give her some kind word, possibly 
 to tell her that she had better fly; but he 
 stifled the impulse, and strode rapidly toward 
 the glass door of the library, which opened on 
 the garden. 
 
 III. 
 
 In the early dawn there was a great whist- 
 ling and chirping of blackbirds that had col- 
 lected in the outlying gardens of Constanti- 
 nople, preparatory to their southward flight. 
 Updike and Gen. Cullender were closeted
 
 40 TWO SIDES OF A STORY. 
 
 together, counting over the contents of Mrs. 
 Garrish's safe, when this cheerful uproar of the 
 birds began; and just then a constable came 
 to them, saying that Haymaker had been ar- 
 rested near the railroad station. 
 
 Mrs. Garrish was never found : how she suc- 
 ceeded in getting away remained a mystery. 
 But the chatter of the migrating blackbirds 
 was as nothing in comparison with the gossip 
 exicited by the strange termination of Up- 
 dike's relations with her. At first it was said 
 that he had connived at her escape ; and the 
 fact of his large bank account, which had been 
 drawn upon exclusively to meet her current 
 expenses, was brought up against him. 
 
 But fortunately, he was able to produce the 
 agreement that he had been careful to draw 
 up, witnessed by Gen. Cullender, and his own 
 astute office-boy, showing the purpose of that 
 account. Furthermore, having possession of 
 Mrs. Garrish's whole property, he turned it 
 over to Barrier, Kidge & Co. and the rest of 
 Haymaker's creditors; so that their claims 
 were almost completely satisfied. 
 
 Yet, notwithstanding all this, there was
 
 TWO SIDES OF A STORY. 4 1 
 
 much debate in local society as to whether he 
 had acted rightly. There were those who said 
 that he had compromised himself with Mrs. 
 Garrish. There was a group that maintained 
 that he had really intended to get possession 
 >{ her nefarious wealth for his own benefit, but 
 could not carry out the scheme. Another 
 more lenient party acknowledged with regret 
 that, while the results were good, considered 
 merely as a superior sort of detective work 
 (since he had secured all the property wrong- 
 fully obtained by Haymaker), Updike's meth. 
 ods of recovering it were reprehensible. 
 A few people stood by him uncompromis- 
 ingly, and defended his whole course of con- 
 duct. 
 
 Thus the young man, who had always been 
 in favor of looking at both sides of a question, 
 found himself uncomfortably enclosed between 
 the two sides of his own story. He was mor- 
 tified by the result of his championship of 
 Eva, and humiliated by the thought that he 
 had been ready to sacrifice his love for Angie 
 Breese, in favor of this plausible adventuress. 
 The Hon. Calvert was slow to give any sign
 
 42 TWO SIDES OF A STORY. 
 
 of reconciliation ; but, so far as Updike could 
 ascertain, Angie had not yet engaged herself to 
 Eben Taft. 
 
 One day it chanced that he met her just as 
 he was passing under the maples by her fath- 
 er's door. Contrary to his expectation, she 
 bowed to him, with a smile that seemed to 
 hold out some faint promise of forgiveness. 
 He stopped after he had passed her, ran back, 
 caught up with her again, and said : 
 
 "Miss Breese, you have heard all sorts of 
 things about me, I suppose?" 
 
 "Yes," said Angie, flushing. 
 
 Her fair hair shone around her face like the 
 halo of some uncalendared saint. 
 
 Updike's voice shook slightly: it may have 
 been from the exertion of hurrying after 
 her. 
 
 "Remember," he said, "you ought to con- 
 sider both sides." 
 
 "Oh, yes," she answered, laughing; "I re- 
 member. But you must forgive me I am 
 just the same as I always was. I can see only 
 one side ; that is, yours !" 
 
 They were married in November.
 
 TWO SIDES OF A STORY. 43 
 
 "How about the independent candidacy?" 
 Gen. Cullender inquired of Updike a fort- 
 night before the wedding. 
 
 "As to that," Updike answered, "I can't tell 
 you. / run on the regular ticket."
 
 OLEY GROWS DAUGHTER. 
 I. 
 
 (f T OOK out for a ducking now!" cried the 
 \_j skipper. "We're on the Rip." 
 
 Maurice Creese, crouching near him in the 
 smack which was darting through furrows of 
 foam, felt an added motion from the short, ter- 
 rible swash of breakers rolling over the shal- 
 lows like a section of Niagara rapids; and he 
 ceased to take much interest in the low bank 
 of sand, surmounted by a white light-house, 
 which appeared to be dancing up and down 
 near the boat. He was not quite over the dis- 
 comfort caused by this performance, when the 
 smack dropped her sail and brought up at the 
 old whaling wharf, close to the houses of Nan- 
 tucket. 
 
 "How about my trunk?" he questioned. 
 
 "Your chest?" returned the skipper, trans- 
 44
 
 OLEY GROWS DAUGHTER. 45 
 
 lating him. "I guess Oley Grow '11 see after 
 that, if he's around." 
 
 "Grow, eh !" 
 
 "Yes, I tell 'ee Grow. Anything agin 
 him?" 
 
 "No," answered Creese. But he failed to ex- 
 plain why he repeated the name as if it were 
 familiar. 
 
 A half-witted youth loitering among the 
 tackle went off in search of the unknown quan- 
 tity represented by the name "Grow," and 
 came back with it reduced to concrete form. 
 Oley Grow proved to be a short, dumpy man 
 with a foreign-looking face, and a despondent 
 expression, partially modified by what seemed 
 a thick knitted night-cap pulled over his ears. 
 He was attached to a heavy cart surrounded 
 by a low railing like a ship's taffrail, which he 
 commanded with a maritime air, holding a stiff 
 whip upright at the tail of his horse as if it 
 were a tiller. 
 
 "Want to move that chest ?" he demanded, on 
 dismounting. 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 Grow ran several steps, and tapped the bot-
 
 4<5 OLEY CROW'S DAUGHTER. 
 
 torn of his cart energetically. "Here's the arti- 
 cle!" he exclaimed. "This and that'll do the 
 business for 'ee." He pointed to his horse and 
 then slapped himself on the breast. "Now 
 where do you want to go?" he concluded, tri- 
 umphantly. 
 
 "I don't know exactly," said Creese, with a 
 smile which suddenly made Grow aware that 
 the stranger was a handsome young fellow. 
 
 The carter lowered his whip, and dejectedly 
 waited for more information. 
 
 "Do you happen to know a place where I 
 could board?" Creese inquired. 
 
 "How long you want to stay?" 
 
 "Two or three weeks." 
 
 Grow became confidential. "I've been a cast- 
 away myself," he announced, "and I don't mind 
 saying I guess I can 'commodate ye, though 
 ye be a townie." 
 
 "All right," said the young man, apparently 
 much exhilarated. 
 
 He was accordingly stowed on the cart with 
 his trunk, and his new landlord trundled him off 
 slowly, navigating first the grass-edged cobbles 
 of one street, then the sandy ruts of another, and
 
 OLEY GROWS DAUGHTER. 47 
 
 finally bringing up in front of an old house with 
 a brass knocker and enormous wooden latch on 
 the door. At the side was a tangled garden, 
 thickly spotted with the color-points of flowers. 
 
 The first thing Creese did on getting to his 
 room was to open the window and gaze out. 
 The house had at some time been cut in two 
 lengthwise, and one half had been slid along 
 a few yards for the better lighting of the inte- 
 rior. He found himself, owing to this, placed 
 at an angle where he could survey the rear of 
 the garden. To his surprise he discovered, 
 among a mass of petunias and hollyhocks, a 
 face staring fixedly up at him. "They're going 
 to take a look at me, too," he muttered. 
 
 The next moment he burst into a laugh. 
 The face was a wooden one. 
 
 There could be no mistake; he was ex- 
 changing glances with a weather-beaten piece 
 of oak, carved and painted into a semblance of 
 humanity. It was nothing but an old figure- 
 head from some ship, planted here as if it 
 might thus sprout into a beauty it had never 
 known before. What heightened the absurdity 
 was that it bore a likeness to old Grow himself.
 
 48 OLEY GROWS DAUGHTER. 
 
 Presently, however, there was a rustling of 
 the leaves near it. A gate in the back fence of 
 the garden had opened, and this time it was a 
 veritable pair of eyes, a rosy cheek, and two 
 sweet feminine lips that presented themselves 
 to his view. The girl to whom these attributes 
 belonged halted a moment, smelled the flowers, 
 then stepped out on to the path. Something 
 caused her to look up sideways. Creese 
 thought he had never seen so wonderful a profile. 
 It was like a cameo, enlarged, suffused with 
 pink, and made to breathe. The eyebrow 
 painted a downward shade, above the eye ; the 
 corner of the lips was drawn a little back; the 
 chin was round and strong. Her whole bear- 
 ing was that of unconscious beauty, fearless 
 simplicity ; and the purplish print she wore lent 
 these the charm of appropriateness. Her 
 head was bare, but the abundant hair made a 
 covering for her like a web of filigree gold. 
 Involuntarily Creese withdrew from sight ; but 
 in a moment he heard her steps entering the 
 house, and was unreasonably glad. 
 
 At supper she reappeared. "Then you are Miss 
 Grow?" he hazarded, receiving no introduction.
 
 OLEY GROWS DAUGHTER. 49 
 
 She blushed and made no answer. "Yes, 
 that's my Jessie," said her father. "Wife, is 
 the beans ready?" 
 
 Mrs. Grow, who brought the beans, was a tall, 
 sandy-haired woman ; she had apparently mold- 
 ed her features on the indentations of Cape 
 Cod. Yet they suggested vaguely that she had 
 once been fair. Jessie glanced curiously at the 
 new-comer during the meal, but spoke little. 
 When she and her mother had disappeared, 
 Oley Grow gave his lodger a pipe, and filled 
 one for himself. 
 
 "Yes, my wife's a Cape girl," he said, in 
 answer to a question. "I told you I'd been a 
 castaway. Well, it's nigh on to twenty-two 
 year that I was wrecked on the South 
 Shore. I come from Denmark, I did. No 
 Yankee! But" here he grunted by way 
 of vocal punctuation "I married a Cape girl 
 and stayed here. Been one of 'em ever 
 since." 
 
 "By-the-way that old figure-head in the gar- 
 den," his listener said. "How did you come 
 by that?" 
 
 "Part of the wreck part of the wreck," said
 
 SO OLEY GROWS DAUGHTER. 
 
 Grow gloomily. "And so am I. It's been 
 here ever since like me: hey?" 
 
 "Haven't you gone ashore to the mainland, 
 I mean?" 
 
 The carter shook his head. 
 
 "Then I suppose you're pretty well satisfied 
 where you are?" 
 
 Grow shook his head again. "I haint paid 
 for this house yet." 
 
 "Not paid ! In how long?" 
 
 "Twenty year." 
 
 "And how much do you owe still?" 
 
 "Three hundred dollars and some interest." 
 
 "Oh, well," declared the young man, san- 
 guinely, "that'll soon be all right." 
 
 He retired that night in a reflective mood, 
 full of a dim romantic project too impulsive to 
 bear analysis, but, for all that, delightful. 
 
 II. 
 
 "What can he be up to?" queried Aunt 
 Deborah Macy, when she came down next 
 day to talk over the new lodger. 
 
 "Most likely thinkin' to fit out a ship," said 
 Mrs. Grow, sheathing her knitting-needles in
 
 OLEY GROWS DAUGHTER. 51 
 
 their quaintly carved case made of a whale's 
 tooth. 
 
 Others believed he was purchasing "sheep 
 rights" to start a grazier's business; for in 
 those days sheep-raising was still a Nantucket 
 industry. It was rarely that they had an "off- 
 island" visitor of Creese's type to discuss, and 
 the inhabitants tried hard to unravel the 
 mystery about him. But he kept his coun- 
 sel, and the only topic he showed interest 
 in was that of Mrs. Grow's family connec- 
 tions. 
 
 Instead of two weeks he stayed more than 
 a month, and still gave no sign of going. He 
 grew familiar with the place, and loved to 
 wander about, looking at the queer, mossy- 
 shingled dwellings, the venerable windmill on 
 the outskirts, and the rolling downs beyond. 
 He lived in the sea and sky endless spaces 
 of changeful water and constant ether, over- 
 hung by idle clouds, or softening, sun-illumined 
 mists; and before long Jessie became for him 
 the one object on the horizon of this dreamy 
 demesne. Her delicate color, bright hair, free 
 naturalness, all accorded with the prevailing
 
 5 2 OLEY GROWS DAUGHTER. 
 
 atmosphere, and he idealized her into a kind of 
 embodiment of it. 
 
 They went out often together in row-boat or 
 sail-boat; Creese, who prided himself on his 
 seamanship, assuming control. One day they 
 rowed to the neighboring island of Tucker- 
 nuck "That's silly Indian for bread-loaf," she 
 explained and in coming back, as they round- 
 ed into the harbor, Creese found the tide so 
 forcible along the shore by the "bug light," 
 that he could not advance. 
 
 "Give me the oars!" cried Jessie. She 
 sprang from the stern, and he had to surrender. 
 
 With a few strokes she carried the boat out 
 of the current. 
 
 "Bad place for a man to fall overboard," he 
 remarked. 
 
 "Don't you try it, then," said Jessie, "when 
 I'm not here to help you." And she laughed 
 heartily. 
 
 "I'd better not try anything without you to 
 help me," said he, as they drifted back to the 
 wharf. 
 
 To this she paid no attention; but when 
 they were walking up the street she asked:
 
 OLEY GKOW'S DAUGHTER. 53 
 
 "What's your business, Mr. Creese? Appears 
 to me you're caught here in a dead calm." 
 
 "Oh no ; it's a very live one," he assured her. 
 "I'm doing a great deal." 
 
 "How?" 
 
 "Well, for one thing, I'm falling in love " 
 
 "Oh!" 
 
 " With Nantucket, you understand. But, 
 by-the-bye, I've something to say to you and 
 your father to-night about business." 
 
 "Business?" she repeated. At that moment 
 a peculiar sound took Creese's attention. It 
 was the blatant piping of a tin horn, which pro- 
 ceeded from the tall church steeple near them. 
 
 "Who's gone crazy now?" he asked, as if 
 it were an incidental matter. 
 
 "Oh, that's the crier, you see. He's sighted 
 the New Bedford packet. I shouldn't wonder, 
 too, if 'Lish Gardiner was on board." 
 
 "Lish Gardiner? I haven't seen him before, 
 have I?" 
 
 "Good reason, too," said Jessie "He's been 
 away a year, on a croosse." 
 
 "A cruise? What makes you think he's on 
 the packet, then?"
 
 54 OLEY GROWS DAUGHTER. 
 
 "Oh, I know it !" declared the girl, with em- 
 phasis. 
 
 Maurice fancied a light of pleasure and ex- 
 citement in her face ; though perhaps it was 
 only the sparkle which the swift wind and the 
 salt air and sunlight might bring out. He began 
 to be uneasy. But nothing more was heard of 
 '"Lish," that day. 
 
 After supper Jessie turned eagerly to 
 Creese. "Well, what was it?" she demanded. 
 
 "Oh, the business !" he responded, breaking 
 off a reverie. "Yes, yes. Mr. Grow, have you 
 ever heard of Manton Macy?" 
 
 Oley pulled at his pipe. "Yes," he said, with 
 the mien of a man not to be daunted even by the 
 complexities of Nantucket relationships. "He 
 was my wife's half-brother's cousin I may 
 as well tell ye, second remove. I never seed 
 him, though ; Pm a castaway, and he lives off 
 into Boston. Know him yourself?" 
 
 "He's dead," Creese answered. 
 
 Oley shifted his position slightly, and called 
 to his wife in the kitchen. "Hear that, Sarah? 
 Your cousin Manton is dead." 
 
 Mrs. Grow promptly appeared.
 
 
 OLEY GROWS DAUGHTER. 55 
 
 "Well," said she, thoughtfully, true to the 
 instinct of an economical mind, "he can be 
 spared just as well as not." 
 
 Tears came into Jessie's eyes. "Oh, father, 
 just think of it !" she murmured. "That poor 
 old man dead our own cousin, too !" 
 
 Creese waited a moment, then resumed : 
 "You know Mr. Macy was rich, Mr. Grow. He 
 has left your daughter a thousand dollars." 
 
 The carter rose excitedly. "Sheer off!" he 
 shouted. "The luck's coming too close. You 
 mean it true?" 
 
 "Perfectly. I've only been waiting for the 
 will to be proved, and certain points to be 
 cleared up, before telling you. This is the 
 business that brought me here." 
 
 "Well, well," said Oley, correcting his man- 
 ner by a touch of melancholy; "I didn't know 
 he had such a good heart. If I had 'a knpwn 
 it, I'd been sorry to have him die." 
 
 Jessie meanwhile looked to her mother for 
 help; and Mrs. Grow put an arm around her, 
 as if dire catastrophe had befallen her child. 
 
 "I'm a lawyer," Creese went on, "assisting 
 to settle the estate. In a few days a check for
 
 56 OLEY GROWS DAUGHTER. 
 
 the amount will arrive, and then I shall have to 
 bid you all good-by. I congratulate you, Miss 
 Jessie, on your good fortune; and you, Mr. 
 Grow ; for now your daughter can liquidate the 
 debt on this house." 
 
 Oley's eyes danced in spite of him. But 
 Jessie, in the bewilderment of the occasion, 
 made no response to this proposition of paying 
 the debt. 
 
 III. 
 
 Early the next morning, the "townie" was 
 walking the north beach in deep reverie. All 
 at once something whizzed through the air near 
 him, and was gone. 
 
 "Hullo!" he cried out; and raising his head 
 he beheld a sturdy islander with a red beard 
 and gray shirt, flinging into the sea a line ter- 
 minating in a large, formidable hook and a 
 heavy lead, which he had just whirled reckless- 
 ly around his own skull. 
 
 "Hullo !" said this personage in reply. "Who 
 are you?" 
 
 "Oh," returned Creese, "I'-m another fellow; 
 that's all."
 
 OLEY GXOWS DAUGHTER. 57 
 
 "Glad to hear it," the fisherman answered. 
 
 "Trying for bluefish?" Maurice asked. 
 
 "Mostly," said the other. "They're such 
 damn Injins, though, you never can tell when 
 they'll bite." Two shining finny trophies, 
 however, lay on the sand at his feet. 
 
 Creese passed on. At breakfast there were 
 two fresh bluefish steaming on the platter. Oley 
 looked across at his daughter and said, "Lish 
 caught 'em this morning." 
 
 "So-ho !" thought Creese. But he observed 
 that the name of the mysterious 'Lish no longer 
 brought vivacity to Jessie's face. 
 
 It happened an hour later that he saw this 
 identical youth of the red beard entering the 
 house. He himself was in the garden, and 
 waited to learn what might follow. In a 
 quarter of an hour 'Lish issued again, looking 
 strangely distraught, and walked away. 
 
 The simple fact, which Maurice did not then 
 know, was that the sailor had approached, full 
 of hope, to meet his sweetheart for the first 
 time in a year. But she received him coldly ; 
 'Lish withdrew in perplexity ; and it was not 
 until he met Oley, and was hailed by him
 
 58 OLEY GROWS DAUGHTER. 
 
 from his taffrailed cart, that he heard of the 
 legacy. Then he understood everything. 
 "We're rich now, 'Lish," old Grow said, vain- 
 gloriously, "and my house '11 be my own." 
 
 "Ah, that's it," muttered the poor fellow, as 
 he fared home. "She's got some money ; so she 
 looks down on me." And his heart sank like a 
 lead heaved in thirty fathoms. 
 
 Only three days after this, Creese made 
 ready to say farewell. But, on a pretext, he 
 got Jessie out into the garden, and there began 
 talking with abrupt earnestness. 
 
 "Before I leave," said he, "1 want to tell you 
 one thing: that is, I mean to come back here." 
 
 "Oh, how nice !" said Oley Crow's daughter 
 unaffectedly, glancing her blue eyes at him. 
 "When?" 
 
 "That depends on you. If you really are 
 glad, you might give me a good reason for 
 coming back." 
 
 "I?" She confronted him with eyes so wide 
 open and cheeks so pink, that she seemed to 
 have revealed herself then for the first time. 
 
 "Yes," said Creese. "I have found in you 
 something I never thought to find here. Meet-
 
 OLEY GKOIV'S DAUGHTER. 59 
 
 ing you has been like coming upon some 
 beautiful, perfect shell in the midst of the 
 worthless sand. That's what you are to me, 
 Jessie; do you understand? And now I have 
 found you, I want to keep you. Will you 
 let me?" 
 
 "I I never heard any one speak so before," 
 said the girl, faintly, in a tone of innocent 
 wonder. 
 
 He took her hand. "Shall I come back for 
 you in the spring?" he asked. 
 
 "I hope you will come, Mr. Creese if you 
 want to." 
 
 "And you will promise to be my wife?" 
 
 She drew her hand away, and covered her 
 face. Then turning full upon him again, she 
 nodded slightly. "I'll promise," she said, and 
 the next instant she darted away to the house. 
 
 Creese was very happy ; yet he smiled at the 
 strangeness of this consent. Left alone, he 
 stared at the old figure-head, thinking that it 
 might offer some response to his joy. But in 
 its half-resemblance to Grow it appeared to op- 
 pose him with an inane sort of gloom, and he 
 retired in dissatisfaction.
 
 60 OLEY GROWS DAUGHTER. 
 
 Still, before he left the island, everything 
 was arranged to his Lking. Jessie renewed her 
 promise more deliberately, and it was agreed 
 that her parents should not be told of the en- 
 gagement until his return. "They will feel 
 badly," he said/'when I tell them I'm going to 
 take you to Boston; so we won't let them 
 know just now." 
 
 A constraint fell upon the household after 
 he had gone, for Oley awaited, day by day, 
 some motion on Jessie's part to assist with her 
 money, and she made no motion. A certain 
 hardness seemed to have come over her, and 
 she lived withdrawn from her parents. In- 
 deed, it was only too clear that what she 
 considered wealth had developed in her an 
 unlooked-for pride ; and her father was himself 
 too proud to assail this. He continued to navi- 
 gate his nautical cart about the quiet streets ; 
 slowly, patiently, and with a settled sadness. 
 
 "What's the matter, pap?" 'Lish Gardiner 
 asked him one day, halting him on the road. 
 And little by little Oley allowed the cause 
 of his silent grief to become known. "Jessie's 
 ma she tried to wheedle her," he added; "but
 
 OLEY GROWS DAUGHTER. 6 1 
 
 'twa'n't no use. Jessie she said as the money's 
 hers, and Well, to-morrow's interest day, and 
 I'm comin' short on my payment." 
 
 "Never mind," said 'Lish. "I suppose it's hers 
 to do with as she's a mind to. I don't blame 
 Jessie, pap. 'Taint for poor devils like me to 
 judge her. I did hope But there, that's all 
 emptied out now. I'm in a corner. Of course 
 she don't want me, now she's rich. But keep 
 chirk, pap, keep chirk." 
 
 That night, when the two women had gone 
 to bed, 'Lish rapped at the wooden-latched 
 door, and insisted on handing Oley a small roll 
 of bank-notes. "That's what I got for my lay 
 on the croosse," he said. '"Tain't much, for 
 they didn't treat me fair; but then I guess 
 it'll help some. I meant it for Jess, but Now 
 don't you say nothin' to Jess about it." And 
 grasping the carter's hand in his own, he 
 retreated without giving time for a refusal. 
 
 I am not sure that something like a stifled 
 sob did not mingle with his footsteps, as he 
 hurried down the sandy street in the darkness. 
 But old Grow, sitting in his chair alone, 
 seemed to feel the house that he loved, and
 
 62 OLEY GROWS DAUGHTER. 
 
 had worked so hard for, becoming warm 
 around him with the gratitude that filled his 
 heart. 
 
 IV. 
 
 'Lish went seldom to see the Grows, after 
 winter set in. He had quietly abandoned his 
 suit for Jessie's hand, and did not like to meet 
 her on a new basis of distance. During the 
 cold months Oley had little employment ; but 
 when spring came he once more mounted the 
 cart and resumed his plodding. "How tired 
 and old poor father looks !" mused Jessie, as 
 she saw him start off. But the resolve to keep 
 her money stifled pity. 
 
 At last, on a cool March morning, when the 
 winds, racing over the Nantucket downs, began 
 to wake the island to life again, and the chilly 
 sunlight showed strange greens and purples in 
 the ruffled sea, Creese re-appeared, as naturally 
 as if he had been a sea-gull alighting, 
 
 "Oh, I'm glad you've come!" Jessie gave 
 him greeting. "I was beginning to feel so 
 sad I don't know why." 
 
 "Yes, the separation has been trying," he
 
 OLEY GROWS DAUGHTER. 63 
 
 confessed. "But we have had each other's let- 
 ters; that was one good thing." And yet, as 
 he spoke, a disheartened, anxious feeling came 
 over him, for somehow Jessie's letters had not 
 been all that he had wanted them to be. 
 
 Oley took the news of the engagement 
 quietly. "Marry Jess, hey? Well, she can 
 act her pleasure. Coin' to settle on the island, 
 then, be you?" 
 
 "Oh no; she'll go with me, of course, to 
 Boston. I can't leave there." 
 
 OJey began to laugh incredulously. 
 
 "You'll never," said he, "get Jess to live on 
 the continent. No, no, no. She's bound to 
 stay by Nantucket ; you can't rub that out." 
 
 "But she has agreed to go," Creese per- 
 sisted, with a smile which he thought rather 
 superior to the old man's laugh. 
 
 Nevertheless, a few days developed in him 
 the suspicion that a change which promised no 
 good had taken place since the summer. The 
 island looked dreary, this time ; there were no 
 flowers ; the crude simplicity of life with the 
 Grows, instead of interesting him as it had 
 done, grated on his sensibilities. Moreover, it
 
 64 OLEY GROWS DAUGHTER. 
 
 struck him that there was a change slight, 
 perhaps, but shadowing in Jessie's manner 
 toward him. Was it that she repented her 
 promise, or that he had invested her with 
 traits she did not possess or had partially lost 
 since the first meeting? He did not know 
 from which side the trouble came, but he 
 began to be sensible that the sea air and the 
 land air did not blend perfectly in their relation. 
 
 In one thing she differed from most Nan- 
 tucket women ; she liked to be on the sea, or 
 walking near it. Strolling along the beach 
 with her, Creese stopped beside the wasted 
 ribs of an old wreck buried in the sand. 
 "Some one else has been down here," he ob- 
 served, lazily. "See those foot-prints. The 
 boots that made them have gone around the 
 point." 
 
 While they were contemplating these marks 
 the boots returned from behind the low hill, 
 bringing with them the stalwart figure of 'Lish. 
 Seeing the two, he stopped in some confu- 
 sion, and said : "I wasthinkin' to myself I must 
 come up and see your folks, Jessie. I'm goin' 
 away again."
 
 OLEY GROWS DAUGHTER. 65 
 
 The girl caught her breath, Creese thought. 
 "So soon, 'Lish!" 
 
 "Late or soon, it's about the same," said the 
 sailor, fixing his eye on the wreck's hollow ribs 
 as if he wished they were his own. '"Tain't 
 much use my lying around here." 
 
 "When do you sail?" asked Creese, attempt- 
 ing the cheerfully benevolent. 
 
 'Lish's manner became on the instant fierce. 
 "In a fortnight," he growled, and at once 
 strode away toward the town. 
 
 "'Lish don't mean to be rough," said Jessie, 
 impulsively. "I know he don't." 
 
 Her lover made no reply, but began to talk 
 of their plans. Jessie however, hardly listened 
 to him. "What's the matter?" he asked at 
 length. 
 
 "I don't know. I'm sad again to-day." 
 
 "Your father thinks you won't want to leave 
 the island. Is that it?" 
 
 "N no, I don't believe it is." 
 
 "What, then? Are you thinking about 
 'Lish?" 
 
 Jessie looked at him gravely. "Yes, I'm 
 sorry for 'Lish," she said.
 
 66 OLEY GROWS DAUGHTER. 
 
 "Are you so much interested in him?" asked 
 Creese, frowning. 
 
 Her pensiveness vanished. "Why, it's 'Lish 
 that's interested in me," she explained, with a 
 laugh. "How you do turn things round !" 
 
 But Creese was not contented. They went 
 home in silence, and he left her at the door. 
 On crossing the threshold she met Oley, to 
 whom she imparted what 'Lish had told her. 
 He at first looked calm, but speedily con- 
 cluded to be violent. "I know what it means," 
 he declared. "The boy '11 never come back 
 again ; and it's all you !" He grew red with 
 the effort to suppress what he wanted to say ; 
 then burst out : "Do you know you, girl 
 what he did while you were hugging your dol- 
 lars? He came here and " So the old man 
 went on until he had disclosed 'Lish's clandes- 
 tine generosity. 
 
 "Oh, father!" Jessie moaned, struck with 
 contrition. "How wicked I've been!" 
 
 "Yes, you have," retorted Oley, immitigably. 
 "And I wish I'd never been cast away, and 
 then you wouldn't 'a been born." Having said 
 which, he made haste to leave her, with a
 
 OLEY GROWS DAUGHTER. 67 
 
 smarting at his eyes, and a conviction in his 
 heart that he was very glad Jessie had been 
 born, after all. 
 
 "I'm not fit to live," she told herself, bit. 
 terly, creeping out to the desolate garden. "I've 
 been so proud and mean, and done wrong to 
 everybody. And I see it all now. I wouldn't 
 even have hearkened to Mr. Creese if I hadn't 
 thought myself so fine. Oh, I can't I can't 
 marry him! And how am I to tell him?" 
 She twisted her hands together in distress, 
 while she made this confession aloud, to the 
 passive figure-head, through a mist of tears. 
 
 Then, finding no relief, she bethought her of 
 a desperate measure. There was the sea the 
 sea that she loved, and that would not re- 
 proach her. She would go and throw herself 
 into it, and her father, who wished she had not 
 been born, would be glad to have her die. 
 
 She unlatched the back gate, and sped 
 across the salt meadow straight for that place 
 where she knew the tide would be running out 
 most strongly, so intent on her purpose that 
 she was unaware of some one watching her, 
 and did not even notice the gathering clouds
 
 68 OLEY GROIV'S DAUGHTER. 
 
 and fierce gusts of a rising storm. But as she 
 neared the shore a sight met her eye which 
 compelled notice. The harbor bar was white 
 with a cataract of foam. Even the waves in- 
 side were high, and out amongst them was 
 a cat-boat which the squall had just struck. It 
 spun half around, lurched, and filled. Jessie 
 saw that it must sink, and at the same instant 
 she thought she could recognize in the man 
 on board, who was preparing to leap out, her 
 accepted lover, Creese. 
 
 There was a small boat on the sands by the 
 bug-light, and she determined to attempt his 
 rescue. Casting one mechanical glance about 
 her for aid which appeared impossible, she 
 saw a man running toward her and hallooing. 
 It was 'Lish, who was bringing another pair of 
 oars. 
 
 No time was lost. They both got in, and 
 rowed together with the tide toward the place 
 where the sail had already gone down. 
 
 "Yes, I knew 'twas he," said 'Lish, while 
 they were pulling. "Saw him go out. None 
 but a townie 'd ha' done it in the face o' that 
 sky."
 
 OLEY GROWS DAUGHTER. 69 
 
 They had almost reached the dark spot of 
 head in a hollow of the waves, when it sank. 
 It had gone down only for the first time, how- 
 ever, and when it rose Creese was hauled vigor- 
 ously into the boat. He had fainted, and his 
 eyes stayed shut. While Jessie was trying to 
 revive him, 'Lish said, quietly: 
 
 "I was passing by the garden then, Jess, and 
 stopped ahint the bushes when I saw you. I 
 heard what you said out loud there." 
 
 Jessie was betrayed into one look that 
 showed him she might yet pardon this offense. 
 Then, "Oh dear," she said, "do you suppose 
 Mr. Creese'll come to? I want to tell him 
 something." As soon as he revived she began. 
 "Are you all right?" she asked. Creese smiled 
 a faint affirmative, and she went on impet- 
 uously: "I must say it, Mr. Creese. I can't 
 many you really I can't. I'm so sorry, but 
 it was all a mistake, and I'm very wicked. Will 
 you forgive me? Don't you think you might?" 
 
 He smiled again, with something of amuse- 
 ment in spite of his feebleness. "Only get me 
 ashore," he said, "and I'll forgive every " At 
 this point he shut his eyes once more.
 
 7< OLEY GROWS DAUGHTER. 
 
 When he had quite recovered, and had 
 heard all she had to say, "I see now," he 
 agreed, "that it would have been impossible." 
 
 "Yes," said Jessie, "the wind can't blow two 
 ways at once." 
 
 "I did something for you, at any rate," he 
 continued, "in bringing you that legacy; and 
 now you've saved me from drowning." 
 
 "'Twas 'Lish did it," she declared. 
 
 "I don't know how I can reward 'Lish," 
 said Creese, with commendable lightness. 
 "But you might do it for me, by marrying 
 him." 
 
 He was ready to take his departure by the 
 next packet, and as he stepped on board he 
 said to Oley : 
 
 "I'm glad to hear from your daughter that 
 she has paid off the mortgage, and I hope she 
 won't be too lonely while her husband is on 
 his voyage." 
 
 "Oh, he aint going far this time," said 
 Oley, lifting his whip with a commanding 
 sweep worthy of Neptune's trident. "It's only 
 in our own Atlantic Ocean! "
 
 CAPTAIN BILLY. 
 
 I. 
 
 A BIG man was Billy Rust "Captain 
 Billy." His build resembled that of a 
 freighting schooner, and if you saw him from 
 the front, his broad chest, standing boldly out 
 in strong muscular development, suggested the 
 prow of such a vessel bearing down upon you 
 in a rather threatening way. But he seldom 
 really threatened, and he was not inclined to 
 pick quarrels. He had an accommodating 
 roominess of temper that made him seem to 
 be always living out of doors ; and the weather 
 in that atmosphere was exhilarating even when 
 rough. For a time he followed the diver's 
 trade. Once, being engaged in some subma- 
 rine work which required pushing, he arranged 
 since he was at some distance from home 
 to have a special messenger sent by boat to 
 give him the earliest notice of a certain impor- 
 71
 
 72 CAPTAIN BILLY. 
 
 tant event which there was reason to expect 
 would occur. When the messenger arrived 
 the captain was under water. The workmen 
 above signaled to him, he responded through 
 the signal cord, and was slowly hoisted to the 
 air. The helmet of his diving-suit was un- 
 screwed for him, and the first word he uttered 
 on being released was "Well?" 
 
 "Good news!" said the messenger. "It's a 
 boy. He was born this morning." 
 
 There was a momentary silence. Captain 
 Billy looked down at the stone platform on 
 which he was standing. Had it not been for 
 the grotesque appearance imparted by his 
 swollen diving-suit, one might have thought 
 he was struggling with a new emotion; but 
 the struggle, if there was one, was stifled 
 under that weight of hard rubber. Presently 
 he looked up again: "How's the mother?" 
 
 "Doin* first rate," was the reply. 
 
 "All right !" shouted Captain Billy, in lusty 
 accents. " Lower away, boys." So, with his 
 helmet made fast again, he disappeared 
 beneath the waves. 
 
 And yet some people called him hard-
 
 CAPTAIN BILLY. 73 
 
 hearted. But had he not made a great effort, 
 in his way, to meet the occasion? He enter- 
 tained, you observe, peculiar notions of duty 
 and was prompt in making up his mind as to 
 where his own duty lay. 
 
 This incident happened a number of years 
 ago. The son, whose advent he received in so 
 Spartan a manner, grew up into a sturdy 
 young fellow, and acquired a knowledge of 
 the waters along the Atlantic seaboard which 
 delighted his father's heart. Captain Rust 
 was good to the boy and to his mother. The 
 baby was launched upon the sea of life with a 
 name which, it is true, was somewhat top- 
 heavy, for they christened him Alonzo, but 
 this was promptly cut down to "Lon." How 
 often his father carried him in his massive 
 arms, flinging him up toward the sky and then 
 plunging him downward again as if to initiate 
 him into submarine mysteries! What pangs 
 did he not gladly undergo, when the little fel- 
 low, crowing with pleasure, laid hold of his 
 parent's thick beard and pulled at it as vigor- 
 ously as if it had been the main sheet of a sail! 
 
 No wonder that, after a long experience in
 
 74 CAPTAIN BILLY. 
 
 exercises of this kind, "Lon" should feel at 
 home when rocking on the billows or handling 
 nautical cordage. While he was yet a lad he 
 began to make trips on coasting vessels ; later 
 he served an apprenticeship on a New York 
 harbor-tug, and finally he rose to employment 
 on a pleasure-yacht. 
 
 Nevertheless must it be admitted? Cap- 
 tain Billy was not entirely satisfied with his 
 son. He fancied that there was something 
 effeminate about the young man. The dread- 
 ful suspicion had entered his mind that "Lon" 
 was allured by the knowledge that there were 
 other classes of society than that into which 
 he had been born and that he was disposed to 
 ally himself with those classes which were 
 commonly called "upper." In a word, Cap- 
 tain Rust feared that his son might be 
 willing, if opportunity offered, to merge his 
 sterling identity in the vague, neutral com- 
 monplace of "superior" people. 
 
 Now, Lon had been brought up to believe 
 that "all men are free and equal," nor had it 
 ever been pointed out to him that the free- 
 dom and equality referred only to questions of
 
 CAPTAIN B2LLY. 75 
 
 political and property rights. As a natural 
 consequence, he believed that the sons and 
 daughters of all men were free to make choice 
 of one another as companions, without tram- 
 mel. He had no idea that it could be a 
 descent from his high standing as a seaman on 
 a pleasure-yacht that he should fall in love 
 with the daughter of the man who owned the 
 yacht. 
 
 Hence, quite inadvertently, he fell in love 
 with her poor, innocent fellow! 
 
 It was on board the Ripple, in which Mr. 
 Meadows, a wealthy contractor and engineer, 
 was making a trip through the Sound to New- 
 port, Nantucket, the Beverly Shore, Mount 
 Desert. Evelyn, his daughter, was with him, 
 and one of their guests was young Beeny, son 
 and sole heir of the great cotton speculator. 
 Now, Beeny appeared to be much interested 
 in Miss Evelyn, and for this reason, but for no 
 other, Lon was interested in Beeny. Keep- 
 ing a keen watch on their graceful, subdued 
 flirtation, his first clear knowledge of his own 
 sentiment came from seeing the slender Beeny 
 help Evelyn over the side one day when they
 
 7<5 CAPTAIN BILLY. 
 
 were entering the yawl to make a landing. 
 The young man held her hand in his, at the 
 same time lifting a parasol to protect her from 
 the sun. Was it mere fancy, or did Lon guess 
 aright that the speculator's son bent the parasol 
 down a little so as to conceal his action, while 
 he raised the clasped hand close to his lips? 
 
 A shock of jealousy ran through him, and I 
 can imagine that his gray-blue eyes flashed 
 with a fiery spark. Beeny did not have it all 
 his own way after that ; for, standing on the for- 
 ward deck, Evelyn often talked with the sailor 
 lad, first about the boat and rigging, the winds 
 and sky ; afterward about other things, such as 
 his father, himself and his adventures. 
 
 "Why, he's not a bit like a common sailor!" 
 she exclaimed, speaking to her father. 
 
 "No, dear," said Meadows. " You don't sup- 
 pose I'd hire common men on the Ripple\ Lon 
 is a very good boy a sort of toy mariner. 
 That's the kind I like." 
 
 Evelyn did not seem entirely pleased. 
 " How silly, papa! You know that isn't so. 
 Lon is perfectly real ; and he's so bright and 
 and humorous ; and he has read a good many
 
 CAPTAIN BILLY. 77 
 
 books a whole bunkful, he said. I think it's 
 we who are the toys." 
 
 In short, he became a favorite with Evelyn. 
 She liked his handsome presence, the fine, 
 steady color in his cheeks, his frank, original re- 
 marks, and his simple deference toward herself. 
 It resulted that he was often detailed to attend 
 her and carry messages for her when the yacht- 
 Ing party were ashore. Is it supposable that 
 all this time he was unaware of the "gulf" 
 which, in the dialect of romances, "yawned 
 between them " ? Most likely he saw it with 
 some distinctness, but it makes a good deal of 
 difference which side of a gulf you are standing 
 on. Lon was so eager to cross this chasm that 
 it did not seem very wide. Besides, he had 
 won his own position by hard work, and he 
 considered it much closer to that of Mr. Mead- 
 ows than Mr. Meadows would have thought it. 
 But, then, as to Beeny? The youth obviously 
 possessed some puzzling, unreasonable advant- 
 age over him. It seemed, though, to arise 
 only from his having more money and being 
 used to society mere accidents, which had 
 nothing to do with deep affection.
 
 7 8 CAPTAIN BILLY. 
 
 The golden days of summer idleness were 
 melting away into receding distances as the 
 Ripple bore homeward, and Lon felt that with 
 those days Evelyn, too, was slipping away 
 from him. It was here that he faced a practi- 
 cal difficulty. How to speak to her? how see 
 her alone? When she talked with him on 
 deck some one else was sure to be not far off 
 one of the other sailors, or stalwart Meadows 
 with his newly-bronzed cheeks and branching 
 mustache, or little Beeny with his intrusive 
 eye-glass. He could not seek her out. 
 Discipline and social laws made him, in- 
 stead of free to act like a man, as helpless 
 as a woman waiting for her lover to offer 
 himself. 
 
 An accident favored him. The night before 
 they made Whitestone, where Meadows and 
 his guests were finally to leave the yacht, he 
 had taken the wheel for the second watch. 
 Evelyn, at a late hour when all the rest had 
 gone to bed, finding herself wakeful, came up 
 from the cabin to get some air. The night was 
 clear and starry ; the water rolled away from 
 the yacht in low undulations that were lost in
 
 CAPTAIN BILLY. 79 
 
 a noiseless vista, where they seemed to touch 
 the shores of dreamland. 
 
 "Oh, it's you," said Evelyn, recognizing him 
 in the faint light. 
 
 "Yes, Miss Meadows." Lon was secretly re- 
 joiced by the tone of calm approval with which 
 she had noticed him. 
 
 She walked a few moments along the deck, 
 then came back and seated herself on a camp- 
 chair near by. "How fast we go!" she said, 
 gazing at the whitish water that swelled and 
 fell away behind the stern ; "I shall be almost 
 sorry when this is over." 
 
 "So shall I," Lon responded, as heartily as 
 if it was "Ay, Ay," to a command. 
 
 "Why, Lon?" ( It was the custom to use his 
 first name.) "You can go on sailing and sailing 
 always, can't you?" 
 
 "Not on this boat, Miss Meadows." 
 
 "Why not? Surely you you haven't had 
 any trouble with my father?" 
 
 "Oh, no." He looked very steadily at the 
 binnacle, whence the lamp-flame glowing above 
 the compass streamed out, suffusing his face 
 with rosiness that might have been taken for a
 
 8o CAPTAIN BILLY, 
 
 sudden blush. "No; but I think I'd like to 
 get married !" 
 
 "Oh!" said Evelyn, startled by so unex- 
 pected a confidence, and, after a pause, "Well, 
 I'm glad it's only that. Papa can engage you 
 next summer, just the same." 
 
 "No, I'll not come back. My father 's pilot 
 on a ferry in East River. I'll go and work with 
 him, I guess." Lon waited an instant before 
 adding: "Maybe I won't see any of you again." 
 
 His voice betrayed his hidden grief, and 
 Evelyn was perplexed. 
 
 "That's a pity," she said slowly. " I 
 thought you were always going to be on the 
 Ripple." 
 
 She was greatly disappointed. Her ideal 
 sailor was to be taken away from her, and she 
 could almost have cried. She understood now 
 what it was to lose him as a "toy." And, 
 strangely enough, this idea of his marrying, 
 instead of pleasing her as a pretty romance, 
 had almost a depressing effect. "I do wish," she 
 declared, girlishly, "that people wouldn't 
 always be marrying !" 
 
 "Don't you think a sailor like me has a right
 
 CAPTAIN BILLY. 8 1 
 
 to marry?" asked Lon, more roguishly, recov- 
 ering spirit. 
 
 "Oh, I suppose so," she admitted, reluct- 
 antly, "if he really loves some one enough," 
 
 "And wouldn't you marry a sailor if if- 
 well, the same?" 
 
 Evelyn started up. "What do you mean? 
 Don't you know that you have no right to ask 
 me such things? Please remember that you 
 are only one of papa's men." 
 
 Lon, still at the wheel, stood more erect. 
 "I am my own man," he said firmly. "And I 
 know I have one right to say what I feel. 
 Don't take offense at my way if it ain't the 
 best. Miss Meadows, I " But here he 
 stopped. However slight the barriers of class 
 and position might be, he found that the bar- 
 rier between a man and woman, when passion 
 is to be aroused, remains formidable. Still he 
 rallied his courage with a great effort. "It's you 
 I want to marry, Miss Meadows. I love you !" 
 
 She withdrew hurriedly a few steps, putting 
 her hands up to her face. "Oh, this is dread- 
 ful," she murmured. 
 
 It occurred to her that she ought to be
 
 82 CAPTAIN BILLY. 
 
 severe; but how was she to do it? Should she 
 say: "I'll tell my father"? Should she address 
 Lon haughtily as "Mr. Rust"? No; that 
 would be absurd. She might, then, retire into 
 the cabin without a word, and ignore every- 
 thing. But while she was considering her 
 course, he spoke again. 
 
 "You needn't be afraid," he said gently, but 
 with some bitterness. "I can't come after you. 
 My hands are tied. I am bound to this wheel 
 here." 
 
 How true in another sense! He was bound 
 to it as to a wheel of torture. Captain Billy's 
 son, like the captain himself, knew his duty 
 and stuck to it. 
 
 This impressed Evelyn as a curiosity a 
 lover who could not leave his post even to foL 
 low up his suit. Moreover, it was rather pa- 
 thetic. She felt sorry for him. Advancing 
 some paces, she contemplated him earnestly, 
 while he remained holding on to the spokes of 
 the small wheel, glancing at the compass and 
 anon making the circle revolve a few inches. 
 Presently she came up and almost touched it 
 with her hand.
 
 CAPTAIN BILLY. 83 
 
 "Oh, you foolish Lon ! Can't you see that, 
 because I liked you as a sailor, it was not a 
 good reason for your having such thoughts?" 
 
 The brave young steersman literally quiv- 
 ered under the restraint of his position ; but 
 lifting his eyes he said, as steadily as he could : 
 "I haven't got any thoughts, Miss Meadows; 
 I only love you ! I love you twice over. I've 
 done fairly well for a poor man, but if I only 
 knew you cared about me, I'd make my way 
 further. I'd work like a dog. I'd do anything 
 for you." 
 
 A new idea struck Evelyn. She asked : 
 "Would you leave this wheel now for me?" 
 
 "I couldn't do that," he answered, shaking 
 his head. "It would be shirking." 
 
 Somehow his reply unnerved her. She 
 could not be cruel to him. His fidelity and 
 simplicity touched her; and then he had 
 spoken with such earnest warmth, such abso- 
 lute devotion. What was that strange, rush- 
 ing sound in her ears? Was it only the warn- 
 ing whisper of the water speeding by the 
 yacht? It grew louder and louder. Could it 
 be that it came from the tumult in her own
 
 84 CAPTAIN BILLY. 
 
 heart? There was something so manly, so 
 convincing about this honest young sailor, that 
 she trembled ; trembled for fear that, after all, 
 she might love him. And now she spoke 
 softly : 
 
 "I am sorry. Don't say anything more to 
 me ! But I don't wish you to feel badly. Oh, 
 if I could have guessed such a thing, I never 
 would have come out here ! There ; you may 
 take my hand once ; though it's only to say 
 good-by to you. It is useless to think of such 
 a thing, you know; but you may write to me 
 and say how you are getting on. And, oh! 
 your father you have told me so much about 
 him. I should like some day to see him. 
 Good-by." 
 
 So she was gone. What had she done? 
 She could not sleep again that night for think- 
 ing of what had happened ; whether she had 
 not been too lenient, and whether there were 
 not some sentiment in her heart that she dared 
 not confess. Lon, for his part, felt the blood 
 burning in his veins; partly with shame and 
 mortification, so that he was ready to jump 
 into the sea; partly with ecstatic triumph,
 
 CAPTAIN BILLY. 85 
 
 because he had revealed his love. The stars 
 shone whitely, the waves murmured, the sails 
 hung like huge specters above him ; the boat 
 appeared to fly with redoubled speed, and to 
 him, watching there, as to Evelyn, lying wake- 
 ful in her stateroom, that brief scene which 
 had just passed came back like a momentary, 
 incoherent vision. 
 
 II. 
 
 THE next night, having quitted the service 
 of Mr. Meadows, Lon reached his father's 
 house, a small wooden dwelling on the out- 
 skirts of Brooklyn. In one of the windows 
 there was a green shade, and in the other a 
 red one, so that the light from behind made 
 them look like the larboard and starboard lan- 
 terns of a ship, and gave the place a familiar, 
 home-like air. The captain greeted his son 
 with gruff cordiality, but it was not long 
 before he discovered that something had 
 gone wrong, Lon was so cast down. In a few 
 days the young man made full confession to 
 him. 
 
 "Now, look here, Lonzo," said Captain
 
 86 CAPTAIN BILLY. 
 
 Billy he always said "Lonzo" when he 
 wanted to be severe "you'd better steer clear 
 o' them kind o' craft. If you don't, you'll 
 have a collision, and then, first thing you 
 know, down you go !" 
 
 But the son was not to be dissuaded. The 
 more he reflected, the surer he was that Eve- 
 lyn's last words in their strange interview con- 
 tained a germ of hope for him ; and he obtained 
 sympathy from his mother. She was a plain, 
 placid woman whose fixity of expression bore 
 living witness to the artistic truth shown in 
 the carving of figureheads; but she had what 
 figureheads do not possess a tender heart 
 and she steadily sustained Lon against the 
 captain's frequent grumblings. Captain Billy, 
 however, was confirmed in his opinion that 
 Lon would "go down," by the way in which 
 Lon began to lag around and neglect work. 
 Sometimes he accompanied his father on the 
 ferry-boat and sometimes he talked of getting 
 employment, but more often he was mysteri- 
 ously absent and declined to give any account 
 of himself on returning. 
 
 Evelyn might have explained some of these
 
 CAPTAIN BILLY. 87 
 
 absences. She received a letter from her 
 sailor, to which she at first gave no heed ; but 
 one day, on a visit to a friend at Staten Island, 
 she went out to practice archery by herself. 
 Just as she had bent the bow and sent an 
 arrow flying, a figure in blue appeared at the 
 edge of a thicket behind the target. Evelyn 
 uttered a cry of fright. 
 
 "Did I hit you?" 
 
 "No," answered Lon, coming forward. "I 
 was wounded before, that night on the Ripple" 
 
 She consented to talk with him. He offered 
 to pick up the arrows for her while she shot; 
 and in the end she agreed to meet him again. 
 This circumstance solves the mystery of a cer- 
 tain inexplicable catboat tacking on and off 
 near that spot, some days later, and of a vailed 
 woman who, coming down to the shore, was 
 taken out for a sail past Bergen. They met 
 often after that at various places; there was 
 no longer any concealment between them of 
 their love, but it had to be secreted from 
 every one else, and each time that Evelyn saw 
 him she resolved that it should be the last. 
 
 Who would have suspected, seeing her calm
 
 88 CAPTAIN BILLY. 
 
 womanly face, with a sweet severity about the 
 innocent eyebrows, that she carried such a 
 great anxiety in her heart? In due time 
 young Beeny piped out in a thin voice the 
 proposal of marriage which he had long been 
 meditating; but she refused it with facile com- 
 posure. The men whom she met in society 
 were no more to her, now, than so many black- 
 coated silhouettes. Lon was her one reality ; 
 and yet what was she to do with him? where 
 would it all end? No hope was discernible, 
 unless by elopement ; and from that she still 
 shrank. But every night she lay awake a 
 long while, and often she would listen to the 
 mournful notes of the steamer- whistles on the 
 river, blending in a wild harmony of discord 
 while the vast city was sunk in slumber. She 
 knew that Lon frequently took his place on one 
 of the boats at night as an assistant pilot ; and 
 these prolonged tones, calling through the 
 darkness over the roofs and streets, were like 
 a distant hail from him a sorrowful voice of 
 separation and struggle. 
 
 Meanwhile, day by day, Captain Billy went 
 on conducting the ferry-boat to and fro, eight
 
 CAPTAIN BILLY. 89 
 
 hours out of each twenty-four; silent, diligent, 
 unnnoticed, unknown. Thousands of people 
 were borne from bank to bank without ever 
 thinking of his existence. It never crossed 
 their minds that over and over again he saved 
 them from some imminent peril in that short 
 and seemingly safe transit. The great white 
 boat moved like a gigantic swan across the 
 greenish flood, or, in times of fog and snow> 
 like a ghostly bark freighted with beings who 
 might have been fancied to be floating as dis- 
 embodied spirits on the strait between life and 
 death. Captain Billy, up on top, knew all 
 about the hair-breadth escapes, but performed 
 his function without noise. The world be- 
 neath the waves was as familiar to him as the 
 world above, and in a quiet way he felt that he 
 was master of both. But as he knew what 
 grim things underlie the surface, you can imag- 
 ine that he did not care much for superficial 
 show, or greatly value "social position." In 
 fact, he distrusted them. 
 
 He had been lecturing Lon about these 
 things as they came down to the half-past n 
 relief on a cold day of early December.
 
 9<> CAPTAIN BILLY. 
 
 "Lonzo, strikes me you ain't got any bone 
 left, or gristle either! You're pinin* after that 
 gal, and you go mewin' round like a puss-cat 
 waitin' for some one to take you up and coddle 
 you in her lap, side of the fire. If you're set 
 on't that you want to marry her you ought to 
 shin 'round and make a pile o' money. But 
 when you made it, t'wouldn't be worth much. 
 What's it good for with them folks, except to 
 throw away? You'd ought to stand by your 
 own kind ; not let yourself down to that sort o' 
 folks. Splice yourself with my old mate's gal, 
 Jim Ryerson's gal! I'm ashamed of you, 
 Lonzo. You was a baby once" the cap- 
 tain's voice softened a bit. "But I don't like 
 to have you a baby now !" he ended, vocifer- 
 ously. 
 
 Lon made no retort, but he was very sulky 
 when they went on board and mounted to the 
 wheel-house. Other ferry-boats were seen 
 plowing to and fro, like huge shuttles cast 
 back and forth, weaving together the strands 
 of life that connect New York and Brooklyn. 
 The weather was bright but freezing ; cakes of 
 ice were jostling and jouncing about in the
 
 CAPTAIN BILLY. 9 1 
 
 river, going seaward. Otherwise, everything 
 was as usual. 
 
 In the ferry-house, too, everything was as 
 usual. There was the huge, dreary waiting- 
 room walled with glass windows, its bare floor 
 gritty with dust from many feet. There in 
 the middle of the floor, with its misleading air 
 of riotous luxury, was the bronze-gilt fountain 
 that never plays, and across the room could be 
 seen the soda fountain that plays perennially 
 above the bloom of apples and the waste des- 
 ert of tinted popcorn. Cloaked and hooded 
 men and women came in, miserable, transitory, 
 and expectant, as they always are at ferries. 
 A pale 3'oung man with Christian Association 
 side-whiskers stood by the door ostentatiously 
 opening letters and reading them with im- 
 mense importance. A man with an artificial 
 leg busied himself by walking to and fro, while 
 the people with natural legs carefully sat down 
 on the bare, iron partitioned benches. His 
 spurious limb at every step sprang up, gave a 
 sideward shake, and flopped down methodically 
 on the planks, its owner bowing his head and 
 regarding the performance with grave atten-
 
 92 CAPTAIN BILLY. 
 
 tion. At the last moment Evelyn entered, 
 dressed in simple braided black, with a blue 
 veil over her face and a blue scarf crossed on 
 her bosom. She was coming home from an 
 early call in Brooklyn. She knew that this 
 was Lon's ferry, but she had made no appoint- 
 ment with him ; and he was not aware that she 
 was to cross at that hour. 
 
 III. 
 
 THE boat started serenely. There was noth- 
 ing remarkable in her progress until she had 
 gone a third of her way. Then the bell from 
 the pilot-house rang for her to slow down so 
 as to permit the passage of a tug with a heavy 
 barge in tow. The engine was stopped and 
 she lay waiting. The tug passed safely, but 
 was hindered by the blocks of ice some dis- 
 tance down ; her line to the tow slackened, and 
 before Captain Billy had time to reverse the 
 engine, the barge caught in an eddy veered 
 toward the ferry-boat and crashed into her. 
 
 Now the steamer was of the old-fashioned 
 build, without compartments, and Captain
 
 CAPTAIN BILLY. 93 
 
 Billy knew that unless the leak could be 
 stanched she must sink. He ran for the stairs 
 to go below, and Lon was at his heels. They 
 plunged into the hold nearly together. Hasty 
 efforts had been made by the engineer and the 
 rest of the men on the lower deck to close up 
 the break, with boxes, matting, and whatever 
 lay at hand; but they could not collect enough 
 stuff to block the opening. A narrow space 
 in the midst of the improvised barriers re- 
 mained vacant, and unless that could be filled 
 every soul on the boat was doomed. 
 
 Captain Billy threw himself impetuously into 
 the gap among the torn and jagged timbers. 
 His broad, burly figure filled it completely and 
 he held the greedy river back. But, unfortu- 
 nately, he had thrust his right arm out of the 
 opening. 
 
 "Dad ! oh, dad ! Get out of here. Let me 
 take your place. Get out, I say." 
 
 So rang Lon's cry, and Lon took hold of his 
 father to wrench him away. 
 
 Captain Billy answered : 
 
 "Lon, you fool! Don't you see we're safe? 
 I can't get out of here without letting her sink.
 
 94 CAPTAIN BILLY. 
 
 Take the wheel, Lon. You know how. Don't 
 let her drift. Run her into dock !" 
 
 All this while he was shaking off his son's 
 grasp. Lon fell back, overpowered. 
 
 "I'll take her in!" he cried, all afire. 
 
 "Right," gasped his father, "I was mistaken, 
 Lon. You're not a baby. You're a man!" 
 
 Lon flew up the steps, and regained the 
 pilot-house. He took the wheel. By this 
 time the tug had freed herself and was out of 
 the way with her tow. Lon started the 
 engine, and with steady hand and eye alert 
 guided the heavy ferry-boat up stream into her 
 course, then across and then downward with 
 the swing of the tide, adroitly, accurately, into 
 her landing-place. The bell rang to slow; 
 again to reverse; once more to unhook; then 
 to go forward by hand ; finally to stop. The 
 boat was docked as by the skill of a master. 
 But while all this was proceeding, Lon's nerves 
 tingled with the most horrible shudders, be- 
 cause he knew that his father was down there 
 in the gap, stemming the death-cold water 
 with his own body. 
 
 A carpenter had come, with some boards
 
 CAPTAIN BILLY. 95 
 
 gathered at haphazard and some oakum. Cap- 
 tain Billy surrendered his post to the carpen- 
 ter, and was carried up the engine-room stairs 
 faint, half-frozen, with his right arm lacerated 
 and bleeding from contact with the floating 
 ice. But, once on his feet, he refused aid, and 
 walked nonchalantly toward the office. The 
 rumor of his bravery had preceded him, and 
 an agent of the ferry company met him at the 
 door. 
 
 "Captain Rust," said the agent blandly ex- 
 panding with a noble sentiment, "you have 
 behaved like a hero! The company will ap- 
 preciate your services, and on their behalf I 
 will hand you in a minute or two a hundred 
 dollars." 
 
 With his left arm still intact, Captain Billy 
 waved the agent imperiously aside. "Hun- 
 dred dollars! What do I want of that? 
 D'you think I cared anything for your rotten 
 old boat? She might have sunk for all me, if 
 it hadn't been for the women and babies on 
 board ! I don't take money pay for what any 
 man ought to do." 
 
 And thereupon he strode forth into the
 
 9$ CAPTAIN BILLY.} 
 
 street, blazing with indignation and followed 
 by Lon. He had his right arm dressed and 
 bandaged ; and he formed a resolution ; which 
 was, to resign his place as pilot. 
 
 Meadows heard from his daughter, that 
 evening, the story of the accident and the fort- 
 unate escape. But restless reporters had 
 learned of the affair, and the next morning all 
 the particulars were given in the papers. 
 
 "By Jove !" cried Meadows, not recalling at 
 once the name of his former sailor as being the 
 same as the captain's ; "what a noble fellow that 
 pilot was! I must hunt him up, Evelyn, and 
 see if I can help him somehow. Why, he 
 saved your life !" The contractor almost gave 
 way at the thought that, but for Captain 
 Billy, he might have been sitting alone at his 
 breakfast-table, the light of his life gone out 
 and his lovely child, Evelyn, dead. "If I 
 could meet that man I'd do anything under 
 heaven for him !" he exclaimed. 
 
 Evelyn responded with enthusiasm, but she 
 was very pale, and her expression was inscru- 
 table. 
 
 Meadows had not been long in his office
 
 CAPTAIN BILLY. 97 
 
 down town, when Captain Billy Rust walked in 
 and said that he had come to answer an adver- 
 tisement for an assistant in some submarine 
 building work on the seashore. The captain 
 stated his qualifications, and said that he was 
 experienced. Meadows cross-examined him 
 severely and decided to engage him. 
 
 "Ah what is your name?" he asked sternly, 
 like a man whose function it was to catalogue 
 the human race. 
 
 "Captain Rust, sir William A. Rust." 
 
 Meadows sprang to his feet. Handsome, 
 tall, with long, high-boned cheeks and a wav- 
 ing mustache, the ferocity of which concealed 
 the real good-fellowship of his nature, he 
 looked at this juncture the very embodiment 
 of hearty kindness. "Captain Rust!" he 
 cried. "Then you are the man who saved my 
 daughter's life yesterday on the ferry !" 
 
 "I don't know anything about your daugh- 
 ter's life," said Captain Billy. 
 
 "My dear fellow," said Meadows, "I'm glad 
 to see you ! I had it in mind to find you to- 
 day. What can I do for you? Consider your 
 self engaged by me from this moment. But
 
 98 CAPTAIN BILLY. 
 
 isn't there something else I can do to show my 
 gratitude?" 
 
 "No, sir," said Captain Billy. "I ain't asking 
 for any gratitude." 
 
 Meadows knew enough to pause at that 
 point. But it was only a few days before Cap- 
 tain Billy was informed by his son that the 
 girl with whom he was in love was Miss 
 Evelyn Meadows. 
 
 "Look here," said he to Meadows soon after, 
 "you asked me if there was anything you could 
 do. I don't want nothing for myself, but I 
 hear that my boy Lon wants to marry your 
 Evelyn. I dont believe in 't, I'm free to say. 
 Howsomever, if they're both willin', suppose 
 we fix it up." 
 
 Meadows's philanthropy vanished on the 
 instant. "My daughter marry your son!" he 
 shrieked, his fierce mustache gaining a mo- 
 nopoly of his genial features. "You must be 
 crazy!" 
 
 "No, / aint crazy," said Captain Billy, "but 
 I guess Lon is. I'm goin' to stand by him, 
 though." 
 
 A violent outburst ensued from Meadows,
 
 CAPTAIN BILLY. 99 
 
 but Captain Billy remained quiet, and the ques- 
 tion was postponed. Meadows conferred with 
 Evelyn. 
 
 "This is all very nice," he said, "up to a cer- 
 tain point. But it was the captain who saved 
 your life, not Lon. You can't marry the cap- 
 tain, you know, because he has a wife already, 
 and has had for a good while." 
 
 "Like father, like son," Evelyn answered, 
 twisting the proverb : "/ like the son. 1 ' 
 
 So, much against the will of both Meadows- 
 and Captain Billy, the union of the two young 
 people was at length brought about. Captain 
 Billy consented to waive the dignity of his 
 class, and Mr. Meadows meekly surrendered 
 the privileges of the wealthy order. 
 
 And the ferry-boats went on, like shuttles 
 thrown from side to side, weaving and weaving 
 the web that unites two cities and mingles 
 people of all classes together. And it trans- 
 pired that Lon, who took service in the work 
 which his father and Mr. Meadows had in 
 hand, was a very efficient man of business and 
 became the mainstay of Mr. Meadows in his 
 office; while Captain Billy now master of a
 
 ioo CAPTAIN BILLY. 
 
 tug of his own had all he could do in superin- 
 tending the recovery of submerged vessels, or 
 walking at will all over the bottom of the 
 Sound in his elephantine diving-suit, to locate 
 the position of lost ships and cargoes. 
 
 Long afterward I met Captain Billy and 
 asked him about these occurrences. 
 
 "Oh yes," he said, "I remember. Darned 
 fool I was to keep my arm outside and get 
 it smashed! Might just as well have held it 
 inside." On being pressed for particulars he 
 referred to his old log-book, always punctil- 
 iously written up, though not required by any 
 authority. 
 
 "Le' me see," said Captain Billy, turning the 
 pages. "Here it is! December 7, left Brook- 
 lyn 12 M. Struck by barge. Went down 
 below and stopped leak" 
 
 That was all.
 
 MRS. WINTERROWD'S MUSICALE. 
 
 iTTHO'S Mrs. Winterrowd?" 
 W 
 
 There is a question that shocks me 
 as I write it down. Nevertheless, it is what my 
 friend McAloon (who had the misfortune to be 
 graduated from a Western college) asked me, 
 when I told him we had an invitation to her 
 musical affair of Wednesday evening, Jan- 
 uary 1 8. 
 
 Of course nobody else needs to be told 
 about her; but I had to explain to McAloon 
 that Mrs. Winterrowd, though not herself 
 famous, knew many famous people, and that, 
 although she was not the mother of her great- 
 grandfather, nor in any way responsible for 
 him, she had done the best she could for that 
 gentleman and for herself by being descended 
 from him, and was fully aware of her merito- 
 rious conduct. He, you remember, was no 
 other than General Killamy Matchett, an early 
 commander of the Valiant Horse Fencibles
 
 102 MRS. WINTERROWD'S MUSICALS. 
 
 (one of the first military troops formed in the 
 province of the Massachusetts), who won great 
 distinction by having predicted the revolt of 
 the colonies, and then dying comfortably at 
 home before the outbreak of hostilities. Mrs. 
 Winterrowd has, among other heirlooms, Gen- 
 eral Killamy's sword, with which he would 
 probably have slain many British oppressors 
 had he lived. 
 
 The Matchetts were very good at inherit- 
 ing or marrying property. They were distin- 
 guished, and it took all their time and energy 
 to supply the distinction ; therefore those who 
 married them had to furnish the funds. Mrs. 
 Winterrowd's husband is descended from a 
 fine old typical Boston merchant, and is 
 wealthy, of course. 
 
 When I had finished enlightening poor Mc- 
 Aloon on these points, "I feel a great deal 
 better," he announced ; "for, however insignifi- 
 cant I myself may be, I am now sure that there 
 is somebody in the world for whom it is worth 
 while that it should go on. But will you ex- 
 plain why it is called a musicale instead of a 
 music party, or simply a musical?"
 
 MRS. WINTERROWD'S MUSICALS. 103 
 
 "That is Mrs. Winterrowd's style, my dear 
 fellow," said I. "Don't you appreciate it? It 
 is like the mark of nobility implied in saying 
 \nv3ilide, instead of invalid. That single letter 
 e added to the word musical marks all the 
 difference between your hopeless Western 
 crudity and the refinement of centuries." 
 
 "I see," said my friend, meekly; and I think 
 he was prepared, after that, for the felicity in 
 store for him. 
 
 When the evening arrived, we repaired to 
 the dignified mansion on Commonwealth 
 Avenue iffTere this delightful party was to 
 take place. One_ of the very first persons I 
 
 "*3BW^t_- ^ *^ff 
 
 met in the drawfflpffcoms was Sophia Morne, a 
 very lovely girl of great attractiveness, whom I 
 had promised my companion much pleasure in 
 seeing. She is a little white, but not enough 
 so to detract from her peculiar beauty, like 
 that of an old portrait, always young. Her 
 dress also Avas white, with many clever Hues 
 breaking up the surface, and giving a chance 
 for artistic trimming, puffs, folds, and soft 
 shadows. Her hair is unlike almost anything 
 I have ever seen in others ; being brown, yet
 
 104 MS WINTERROWD'S MUSIC ALE. 
 
 with a kind of brightness about it that makes 
 it look as if some beam of light were playing 
 upon it, and just about to vary its hue a trifle. 
 She wore it drawn up from the forehead that 
 evening, and at the lower tips of her ears you 
 saw the gleam of very small topaz gems. All 
 this added power to the sweet, thoughtful 
 eyes, the plaintive repose of her mouth, and 
 the grace of those delicate cheeks which I 
 never can help fancying are made thin by 
 some unknown sadness, until I see her smile; 
 and then the notion takes flight. 
 
 I wonder what Planetsure, the eminent 
 scientist, thought of her as he stood there talk- 
 ing to her, with his hands, like relics of the 
 Stone Age, tightly clasped across the very 
 recent deposit of dress-coat that covered his 
 back? The two were very deep in some severe 
 discussion ; but Miss Morne bowed to me. I 
 confess I should have been unhappy if she had 
 not done so. 
 
 Our hostess, to whom we had said good- 
 evening, passed me just then, bearing Mc- 
 Aloon to the large room at the rear, where 
 the two pianos stood. I soon saw that she
 
 MRS. WINTERROWD'S MUSIC ALE. 105 
 
 was going to present him to Miss Fetters, the 
 brilliant authoress, whose books one ought not 
 to read without standing on glass bottles, to 
 lessen the electric shock. Turning away rap- 
 idly to avoid watching him in his perilous posi- 
 tion, I came upon the Reverend Griswold 
 Porbeck, with his mild smile and arrogant, 
 spectacled upper face. In fact, the apart- 
 ments were filled with people intellectually, 
 socially, or otherwise notable. Then here was 
 Mrs. Orton West, at whose house the meetings 
 of the Knotty Point Club are held, and Miss 
 Truesdale, secretary of the Women Engineers' 
 Society; Leverett, who published a poem of 
 eight lines in one of the magazines last 
 autumn, and has been so lionized by the ladies 
 ever since that he is afraid to print anything 
 more; also that charming Miss Mignon Stan- 
 low, the heiress, who looks so exquisite in her 
 half-mourning. Here too was Miss Yarrow, 
 the poet's daughter, who scanned all the 
 young men as if they were very imperfect 
 rhymes for her all except Jim Torringford, 
 who has grown a British beard, and has 
 become a most insufferable snob, since leaving
 
 io6 MRS. WINTERROWPS MUSICALE. 
 
 college. But even there, I remember, we used 
 to call him "the Bull pup," because of his trot- 
 ting after English models so subserviently. It 
 is not likely that all these people really knew 
 or cared much about music, but they wished it 
 to be understood that they did. 
 
 Suddenly there was a stir. Messrs. Rail and 
 Tando (two professionals, who, distinguished 
 as they are, were nevertheless immensely flat- 
 tered at being invited to perform here) were 
 seen seated at the upright pianos like leaders 
 of hostile forces in the transient hush before 
 battle. They were about to begin a duet. 
 With a blind crash the attack opened. Their 
 fingers plunged into the keys in a truly awful 
 manner, as if they were imbruing their hands 
 in human blood. They glared, almost snorted, 
 dug at the ivory, and as the pianos were 
 placed back to back seemed to threaten 
 plowing their way straight through the rose- 
 wood breastwork, and engaging in combat at 
 short range. When Rail flung his head back 
 in an agony of feeling, Tando leaned forward 
 over his key-board with eager exultation. 
 And when Tando bade fair to have everything
 
 MRS. WINTERROWD'S MUSICALS. 107 
 
 his own way, and was sweeping the field with 
 a succession of stormy martial chords, Rail 
 watched his opportunity and pounced down 
 with a sharp volley of high notes which com- 
 pletely routed his opponent. 
 
 When peace had been restored, I got Mac 
 away from Miss Fetters, and presented him to 
 Sophia Morne. 
 
 "And you are very musical in Cincinnati, 
 too?" she half queried, while her topaz ear- 
 rings gave a quick flash with the swift turn of 
 her head. "They even say that you are carry- 
 ing off the honors in that way now from Bos- 
 ton and New York." 
 
 "I see that they have hardly convinced you, 
 at any rate, Miss Morne," said he, noticing the 
 doubt in her voice. 
 
 "I don't know; I've never been there. I've 
 heard a great deal about it, though, from some 
 friends. And I should so like," she recom- 
 menced, with unforeseen enthusiasm, "to see 
 Cincin " 
 
 "Should you?" inquired my friend, at once 
 eagerly responsive, leaning forward impuls- 
 ively.
 
 108 MRS. WINTERROWD'S MUSICALS. 
 
 "I I think so at times," Sophia answered, 
 all at once eying him a little more distantly. 
 
 "You are fond of music," he resumed, in a 
 rapid, perfunctory tone. "What did you think 
 of the duet?" 
 
 Sophia said, candidly and with a little smile, 
 "I don't like it." 
 
 Hereupon McAloon and I confessed the 
 same. I saw that these two people would 
 soon come to a good understanding, and 
 never before that moment had I been fully 
 aware how handsome my young Westerner 
 was. 
 
 The situation must have impressed Mrs. 
 Winterrowd, too ; for had she not her niece 
 Bertha staying with her, for whom a brilliant 
 match was but a natural destiny? She came 
 up and interrupted. 
 
 "Miss Morne is a veritable protestant in 
 musical matters," she began. "She is always 
 trying to reform us ; she will never give up to 
 the orthodox opinion if she can help it. I 
 remember you were firmly opposed to Von 
 Billow," she added, turning to the charming 
 culprit.
 
 MRS. WINTERROWD'S MUSIC ALE. 109 
 
 My friend's eyes lighted again. "And you 
 prefer Rubinstein?" he asked. 
 
 Miss Morne was not afraid to give a quiet 
 assent. 
 
 Then began the usual patter about Joseffy, 
 Marie Krebs, Von Hammer, Van Pummel, 
 and the rest, which I have myself been 
 through so many times. I escaped to the 
 neighborhood of Miss Stanlow, observing at 
 the same time that Bertha Matchett had 
 moved nearer the group, with a friend. In a 
 moment or two more her aunt, accidentally 
 discovering her, had entrapped McAloon. 
 
 "What an unfortunate name?" exclaimed 
 Miss Stanlow, when I mentioned it to her. 
 
 I was surprised to find that the remark gave 
 me an unaccountable comfort, although I had 
 not known till that instant that I stood in 
 need of any. Could it be that I was the least 
 particle jealous of Mac? 
 
 "Ah, Miss Stanlow," I half sighed to the 
 graceful creature at my elbow, "why are we 
 forever talking about something and professing 
 to care for something that is really of secondary 
 moment? Don't you get dreadfully tired of it?"
 
 no MRS. WINTERROWD'S MUSIC ALE. ' 
 
 "I'll tell you the exact truth," said she. "I 
 get tired of almost everything except the 
 Diagonal." 
 
 I laughed, and yet I believed her. 
 
 "I hope you include your partner," I con- 
 tinued. "The last time I danced the Diagonal 
 was with you at Mrs. Shaw Stevenson's. Don't 
 you remember?" 
 
 Was it more than ordinary intention that 
 caused Miss Stanlow to answer, with a full, 
 dark glance, "I have not forgotten, Mr. Endi- 
 cott"? There is a species of subtle under- 
 standing between two good waltzers who are 
 in the habit of dancing together, unlike any 
 other rapport. It may lead to further sympa- 
 thies, or it may remain always exactly the 
 same. For a moment I fancied this pleasant 
 waltz sentiment of ours might be budding into 
 something else. (And why not? Mignon had 
 money enough for us both.) 
 
 "Ah, now we are to have the quartette," I 
 heard her saying in the midst of my transient 
 reverie. 
 
 The quartette had the effect of waking 
 everybody up. All the distinctively musical
 
 MRS. WINTERROWD'S MUSICALS. HI 
 
 people got together in groups and held ani- 
 mated confabulations. The words "opus," 
 "sequence," "high color," "polyphony," "shad- 
 ing," and the like, echoed on every side; and 
 young Stiles went about telling all the people 
 he hadn't said it to before, how exploded the 
 Beethoven mania was. 
 
 "One of the new interpretative composers," 
 Miss Stanlow murmured to me, with her half- 
 cynical smile, "ought to write a 'Conversa- 
 tion Symphony/ descriptive of musical criti- 
 cism in a drawing-room, translating it into 
 sound " 
 
 "And fury," I threw in. 
 
 "Signifying nothing?" queried my com- 
 panion. 
 
 At this point, however, we went down to 
 supper. Mac had succeeded in getting back 
 to Sophia Morne, whom he took down, and 
 Miss Stanlow and I, coming behind, could hear 
 them conversing in a tone of agreeable inti- 
 macy, which I didn't altogether relish. 
 
 "No," he was saying, "I quite agree with 
 you that this is not the pleasantest way to lis- 
 ten to music. One needs a little more soli-
 
 112 MRS. WINTERROWD'S MUSICALS. 
 
 tude. In fact, a single sympathetic companion 
 is enough. Don't you think so?" 
 
 "I'm not sure," was the answer. "But at 
 least that shows you don't demand a great 
 deal." 
 
 "It's well to be moderate," he laughed, 
 quietly. "Still, what I ask for is not so easily 
 found." 
 
 The supper was superb, and the Reverend 
 Porbeck, warmed with secular wine, enter- 
 tained a select group by descanting on Greek 
 music and old Church anthems (his favorite 
 theme at these parties, while Rail and Tando 
 cooled their jangling passions in plates of ice- 
 cream. Then we went upstairs again, and 
 had some more music. Last of all on the pro- 
 gramme came Virgin, our new composer a 
 most lovable fellow, though sad and ill 
 from his long struggle with popular indiffer- 
 ence. 
 
 "God pity a genius like Virgin," exclaimed 
 McAloon, as we walked home, "if he has to 
 wait for recognition from that whimsical 
 circle !" 
 
 "Then you didn't enjoy the party?" I in-
 
 MRS. WINTERROWD'S MUSICALS. 113 
 
 ferred. "Why not? Tell me what you 
 thought of the people." 
 
 "Well," said he, restraining his usual impetuos- 
 ity, "they were almost enthusiastic,after supper." 
 
 "Go on," I urged him. "But at least you'll 
 admit they were critical." 
 
 "Frankly," he replied, "I thought the com- 
 pany made a merit of their apathy ; and when 
 they at last began to feel and enjoy to a slight 
 extent, they flattered themselves they were 
 giving discriminating praise. Poor Virgin ! I 
 wish he'd go out to Cincinnati with me. I 
 wouldn't like to be in his shoes." 
 
 "By the way," I asked, "don't you compose 
 at all?" 
 
 "Hardly." 
 
 I forgot to mention, before, that Mac was 
 himself a pianist of great endowments; the 
 most brilliant amateur I think I ever heard ; 
 but he had forbidden me to let the fact loose 
 upon Boston. 
 
 We were crossing the bridge over the swan 
 pond in the Public Garden, when he burst out, 
 a good deal as if he were striking a full chord 
 on the piano :
 
 114 MRS. WINTERROWD'S MUSICALE. 
 
 "Great Heaven ! that girl's eyes were worth 
 all the melodies I ever heard." 
 
 I was not perfectly ingenuous, I suppose, in 
 asking, "Whose? Bertha Matchett's?" 
 
 "No; Miss Morne's. You haven't said a 
 word about her since we left Mrs. Winter- 
 rowd's," continued my emotional comrade, 
 almost with petulance. "Can you see, think, 
 and feel, and yet keep silence about such a 
 dream of a woman? Do you do this and pro- 
 fess to be alive?" 
 
 "I profess, but I hope I'm not really alive," 
 said I, "for in that case I'm a mistake not 
 easily repaired." 
 
 "That's your Boston way of keeping your 
 sentiments to yourself, I suppose," he retorted. 
 "But tell me something about Miss Morne, 
 can't you?" 
 
 I assured Mac that she was of excellent 
 family, but that "family" had nearly been her 
 father's ruin. His father had suddenly lost 
 his money, and the younger Morne had had an 
 opportunity to go to the West at a very favor- 
 able time, and enter the pork-packing business. 
 But his relatives had all opposed it, on the
 
 MRS. WINTERROWD'S MUSIC ALE. 115 
 
 ground that poverty and the scraps of a social 
 prestige in Boston were infinitely preferable to 
 seeking a new fortune in so questionable a 
 field. 
 
 "What business were the Mornes in?" asked 
 McAloon, rather gravely. 
 
 "It used to be called groceries, but on 
 Morne's account we now call it, in a general 
 way, 'importing.' " 
 
 "Oh!" 
 
 "He's doing better at this time than he 
 has heretofore," I went on. "He took the ad- 
 vice of his relatives, and has spent his whole 
 life and strength trying to cling to the edge of 
 fashionable society. I think it's been a hard 
 position for his daughter; but she has been 
 well treated." 
 
 He soon saw her again. I took him to call 
 at the house some days later. He didn't seem 
 to mind in the least that the white paint of the 
 old street door was blistered all over by age 
 into a fine crackle ; nor that Sophia's father 
 was a shallow old gentleman in an emaciated 
 coat, who wore a mildly alarmed expression, as 
 if forever fearing that somebody would remem-
 
 n6 MRS. WINTERROWD'S MUSICALS. 
 
 her that one wrong impulse of his youth, and 
 would get the impression that he had gone 
 into pork-packing after all. 
 
 Very soon Mac began to have ideas that 
 conflicted with mine about the disposition of 
 our evenings, and it ended in his going his 
 way, and my going mine. Of course I knew 
 what this meant. Meanwhile I was fortunate 
 enough to have another delightful evening of 
 waltzing with Miss Stanlow. 
 
 Mac pretended (so I thought) to be very 
 much occupied with some business ventures. 
 He was continually running down to Devon- 
 shire Street, and looking for the latest reports 
 of sales in the papers. It was hardly possible 
 that these interests should absorb his even- 
 ings; but one night when he gave me to 
 understand he was going to talk things over 
 with his broker at the Tremont House, I saun- 
 tered out toward Bowdoin Street, with some 
 intention of calling on Miss Morne. 
 
 As I came near the house I paused. Then 
 suddenly from within some penetrating notes 
 of a piano rolled forth. No, not "rolled ;" I 
 ought to say stalked, for they came like ghosts
 
 MRS. WINTERROWD'S MUSICALS. "7 
 
 to me. I felt my friend's hand in the touch. 
 He seemed to be working with those sounds a 
 spell of warning and disaster against me. 
 Oddly enough, I felt it impossible to seek ad- 
 mittance at the old crackle door after this. 
 
 "An unfortunate name," Miss Stanlow had 
 said, and I consoled myself with the words. 
 Do what he would at the piano my friend 
 could never throw any music into "Mrs. Mc- 
 Aloon ;" and I said to myself persuasively that 
 Sophia would never be induced to accept that 
 title. 
 
 It took very little time for the secret of Mac's 
 musical prowess to get abroad, after he had 
 betrayed it. Mrs. Winterrowd began to make 
 a tremendous fuss over the discovery. "I shall 
 never have any confidence in you again," she 
 declared to me, with playful rage, at Mrs. Or- 
 ton West's kettledrum. "You knew it all the 
 time, and ought to have told me. But I don't 
 believe you have a bit of music in your soul 
 no, not a bit." 
 
 But she did what she could by giving a din- 
 ner, and chaining him to the piano for exhibi- 
 tion after it. In fine, she made a lion of him,
 
 Il8 MRS. WINTERROWD'S MUSICALS. 
 
 insisted on his accompanying Bertha and her- 
 self to various entertainments, made him per- 
 form at a charity matine'e, and assumed the 
 part of having unearthed his genius, and even 
 of having pointed it out to Mac himself when 
 he was hardly conscious of possessing it. 
 
 Seeing this, certain old ladies of the Back 
 Bay settled it in their minds that he would 
 soon be offered up to Bertha Matchett. But 
 they were destined to enjoy a greater surprise. 
 One day when I had got back to our rooms 
 from a committee meeting at the club, and 
 was soothing my nerves with Apollinaris and a 
 cigarette, Mac came striding in under great 
 excitement. 
 
 "Endicott," he cried, in his nervous, musical 
 manner, closing and stretching his long fingers 
 as he glared at me, "you have a great many 
 fine girls in Boston." 
 
 "I don't need to be told that." 
 
 "Some of them are beautiful," he next re- 
 marked. 
 
 I again mildly assented. 
 
 "But only Miss Morne has a soul !" he wound 
 up.
 
 MRS. WINTERROWD'S MUSIC ALE. 119 
 
 Here I felt obliged to protest. "My dear 
 boy, you are aware that I have a sister here, / 
 several cousins, and " 
 
 "Oh, yes, yes," he said hurriedly, "I sup- 
 pose they have souls, some sort of souls that 
 is you know what I mean, don't you?" I'm 
 afraid I looked negative; but his eye fell on 
 the piano ; he darted at it, sat down, and swept 
 the keys with a wild sunny strain, which he 
 wouldn't take the trouble to finish ; and then 
 he whirled around and looked earnestly at me. 
 "The fact is," he said, "she has consented. 
 I'm going to marry her." 
 
 I threw away my cigarette and looked at him 
 seriously. 
 
 "Heaven and earth!" said he, jumping up. 
 "Does it it affect you so badly? What's the 
 matter, old fellow? You don't congratulate 
 me." 
 
 "I will, as soon as I've taken breath," said I. 
 (I was wondering how Sophia had reconciled 
 herself to the name.) "Here's my hand," 
 I continued. "Since you have won Miss 
 Morne's, take mine too." 
 
 "That's a queer form of congratulation," he
 
 120 MRS. WINTERROWD'S MUSIC ALE. 
 
 said, presently. "I wonder what it means?" 
 Then, in a solemn tone : " I think you cared 
 more for her than you ever told me." 
 
 "You jump at conclusions, Mac." 
 
 "But if you did," he went on, "why didn't 
 you take her before I came in your way?" 
 
 I hardly know what moved me to go on, but 
 I said : "Granting your assumption, if I had 
 asked her to have me, she couldn't have 
 afforded it." 
 
 McAloon's eyes grew smoky with battle. 
 "Do you mean to insult her, Endicott or me?" 
 
 "Neither. Take it andante cantabile. I 
 think Miss Morne is the loveliest creature in 
 the world, but I never offered myself to her 
 no. You know well enough, Mac, that I'm a 
 man of expensive habits, with a small and 
 droughty income." 
 
 My friend still looked displeased. " I don't 
 see anything in that," he said. 
 
 "But don't you understand, there are tra- 
 ditions duties to society? I've told you what 
 Morne sacrificed ; how he has struggled to 
 keep his place in our circle, and so on. You 
 don't imagine I want to put myself in the same
 
 MRS. WINTERROWD'S MUSICALS. 121 
 
 position? I dare say Miss Morne has had 
 enough of it, too. But with you why, the 
 whole affair is very different." 
 
 Mac's face darkened. The man's moods 
 changed as swiftly as those of a sonata. He 
 had entered the room in a whirl of delight, 
 suffered a disappointment, grown angry with 
 me ; and now he fell a prey to suspicion. 
 
 "So you think she is willing to marry me 
 because my father is rich?" he demanded. 
 
 "I say nothing of the kind. No, I don't 
 think it. It doesn't present itself to me in that 
 way at all." 
 
 "Nevertheless" he began, but walked away 
 to the window, and looked out in a threaten- 
 ing manner. "This is damnable, Endicott," he 
 muttered, suddenly coming back and looking 
 contemptuously at the Apollinaris bottle. 
 
 "What is?" 
 
 "I'm completely upset. After what you've 
 said, it must be so. At any rate, I shall never 
 feel certain. I've always thought it foolish to 
 bother myself with such ideas, but it does make 
 a great difference. If Sophia has been influ- 
 enced "
 
 122 MRS. WINTERROWD'S MUSICALS. 
 
 "Listen to me," I interrupted. "Why should 
 you inquire? You love Miss Morne. She has 
 accepted you. It is to be presumed that she 
 returns your feeling; and, without flattery, I 
 don't see why she shouldn't. There is no ob- 
 stacle to your union, so In fact, that's the 
 whole story." 
 
 But, "It's not so easily settled," he insisted, 
 and went off to his own room. 
 
 I was still thinking it over and trying to 
 analyze my own feelings (if I had any), when he 
 came in again, and after walking about a lit- 
 tle, halted by the fire-place. "That was so, 
 was it?" he began. "You never proposed to 
 her? If you had, it would have been better. 
 I should feel more confidence." 
 
 "Mac," said I, "I have just one thing to say, 
 and that is, drop your doubts. I'm not going 
 to discuss this subject with you any further." 
 
 "No, I didn't mean to," he returned, to my 
 surprise, apologetically. "I drifted back to it. 
 What I came in to speak about is quite 
 another thing. You mentioned your income 
 just now." 
 
 "Yes, but"
 
 MJRS. WINTERROWD'S MUSICALE. 123 
 
 "Wait a moment ; you'll see that has nothing 
 to do with it. I am surprised that you don't 
 improve your affairs." 
 
 "How?" 
 
 "By speculation. For the last month, while 
 I was uncertain whether Miss Morne would 
 have me, I have found I must have some ex- 
 citement, besides music, to distract me. So I 
 have been falling back on my business streak. 
 I took flyers copper, gold, railroads, what- 
 ever I could get into. The result is, with 
 what I've turned in and what I carry, I'm ten 
 thousand dollars better off than I was." 
 
 " 'Ten thousand!" 
 
 "Yes. And you can do the same." 
 
 "Nonsense. You know I can't risk any 
 money in that sort of thing." 
 
 "You needn't risk your own. I'll lend you 
 what you like." 
 
 "But if I should lose it " 
 
 "Never mind. As I tell you, I've made this 
 profit, and if I lose the whole, it wouldn't mat- 
 ter; so there's no sort of reason why you 
 shouldn't take a part, and lose it, if you prefer 
 to do that."
 
 124 MKS. WINTERROWD'S MUSICALS. 
 
 The proposition was so abrupt that I hardly 
 knew how to receive it. I could see, however, 
 that he was bent on my accepting it. So I 
 thanked him, and agreed to borrow two thou- 
 sand. 
 
 He gave me the sum in a draft on his father, 
 and we went down to the broker's in Devon- 
 shire Street, where I invested to that amount ; 
 but, from a perversity I couldn't wholly ac- 
 count for, I went very lightly into the mines 
 and railroads Mac had chosen. 
 
 For the next four days the state of the 
 market was, as Planetsure said when I de- 
 scribed it to him, like a geologic convulsion. 
 But my luck was astounding. On reviewing 
 my condition, I saw that my gains were very 
 nearly sixteen thousand dollars. 
 
 At the very moment when I was trying to 
 comprehend such good fortune, the broker 
 received notice from his bank that a telegram 
 had come, saying Mac's draft had been dis- 
 honored. 
 
 "What can it mean?" I exclaimed. 
 
 "Very extraordinary," said the broker, fin- 
 gering the note he had just read. "A man of
 
 MRS. WINTERROWD'S MUSIC ALE. 125 
 
 Mr. McAloon's standing! There must be 
 trouble ahead." 
 
 "And so I lose my investments?" I inquired. 
 
 "I should be glad to take them," said the 
 broker, who was a club man. "But you'd bet- 
 ter sell off enough to recover the two thousand 
 and commissions, and retain the rest." 
 
 "Sell off every penny's worth, then," I 
 besought him, "and give me what belongs 
 to me." 
 
 The order was carried out at the second 
 board. 
 
 "Your friend's stocks have fallen off badly," 
 observed the man of business, meanwhile. 
 "And now this dishonored draft " He drew 
 in his breath and looked puzzled. 
 
 "Yes, so I have observed. Mac has been 
 losing every day, while I've been gaining. It 
 is very queer luck." 
 
 My rapid sales caused me some loss; but 
 after paying what I owed, I came away with 
 about thirteen thousand. 
 
 Then I went in search of my friend. He 
 was alone in an upper room at the club, and 
 he too had received a telegram. It was from
 
 126 MRS. WINTERROWD'S MUSICALS. 
 
 his father, and ran thus : "Wheat combination 
 treacherously broken. Falling market has 
 cleaned me out." 
 
 "Cleaned him out!" I echoed. "That 
 means he's ruined, doesn't it? But it can't be. 
 I thought he was worth two or three millions." 
 
 "That doesn't make it any pleasanter," said 
 Mac, rather bitterly. "He was worth it, as 
 you say." 
 
 "Well, I've got a mere atom of a fortune 
 here in my pocket," said I drawing out the 
 broker's heavy check. Let me assist you." 
 And then I told him of the dishonored draft. 
 
 He smiled, with a wan look. "You don't 
 owe me anything, then. It's good of you to 
 offer help; but I've got something left. My 
 stocks have tumbled horribly, but" here he 
 figured rapidly with his pencil on the margin of 
 a newspaper "they still leave me something 
 like thirty-seven hundred altogether; and per- 
 haps they'll come up again." 
 
 "It's only fair," I insisted, "that I should 
 hand you enough to make us even, since I'm 
 indebted to you for all I have made." 
 
 Mac tore off the penciled margin, twisted
 
 MRS. WINTERROWD'S MUSICALS. 127 
 
 and crumpled it, and seemed to be thinking of 
 something else. "No, I'd rather not," he said, 
 at length, decisively. "But have you re- 
 flected, Endicott, that I shall now have an 
 opportunity to solve my doubts?" 
 
 Here was a man wrapped up in his passion ! 
 
 "No, I had hardly thought of that," I said. 
 
 "Well," he went on, in an altered tone, but 
 trying to appear cool, "I shall release Miss 
 Morne from her engagement send her a note 
 this very afternoon." 
 
 He darted, as he spoke, an almost fierce 
 glance at me, as if he held me responsible for 
 this state of things. 
 
 "Possibly you're right about the money," 
 said I, paying no attention to his manner, 
 "but you're utterly wrong about Miss Morne. 
 Why need you give her up?" 
 
 This he received with a grating laugh. "Oh, 
 you advise me not to, do you?" he inquired, 
 incredulously. 
 
 I could not doubt any longer that he had 
 been smitten with an insane jealousy of me. 
 "I don't give you any advice," was my answer. 
 "I merely asked you a question. It seemed
 
 128 MRS. WINTERROWD'S MUSICALS. 
 
 to me that, as you understand business, and 
 have some capital left, you could go on specu- 
 lating and recover yourself." 
 
 But the odd mixture of the artist, the 
 man of fancy, in this keen-witted Westerner 
 promptly negatived the notion. "It was an 
 excitement with me, not a trade," he declared. 
 "I can't afford it now. 
 
 I ceased to urge him 
 
 "Do me a favor," he requested, abruptly. 
 But if we had been on the stage, I should 
 have inferred from his aspect that his part 
 required him to stab me the next moment. 
 "When I have freed Sophia, go and ask her to 
 marry you." 
 
 "Mac, this is very distasteful," I remonstra- 
 ted, though it was exactly what I had been 
 thinking of. Surprise sometimes forces a man 
 to be a humbug. 
 
 "Very," he returned, sardonically. "Prob- 
 ably it is as much so to me as to you. But 
 I mean it. It will be a great satisfaction 
 to me." 
 
 "I should never think it, to look at you," I 
 observed, with some cruelty.
 
 MRS. WINTERROWD'S MUSICALS. 129 
 
 "Very well, then," he retorted, in a smoth- 
 ered tone, "consider that you would be inflict- 
 ing a savage wound on me if that pleases you 
 better. In either case you won't need much 
 urging, I see," he added, with a sneer. "Do 
 you agree?" 
 
 "I agree to retain the liberty that belongs to 
 me, nothing more," said I, now thoroughly 
 angry. And yet I pitied him. 
 
 When I was alone I began to think he 
 deserved a defeat. The question whether I 
 could administer that defeat next grew to have 
 a dangerous fascination. I fell asleep late at 
 night brooding over this ; and when I woke in 
 the morning I was filled with an ardent desire 
 to test it. 
 
 Mac appeared at breakfast exhausted and 
 unnerved. "I sent the note," he said shortly, 
 and relapsed into silence. After a while I 
 asked him whether he had any idea what he 
 should do in the future. 
 
 He held up his long hands. "Here's my 
 living," he said. 
 
 "What? Music?" 
 
 He nodded.
 
 13 MRS. WINTERROWD'S MUSICALE. 
 
 Neither of us wanted to talk. A constraint 
 almost like that between strangers had come 
 between us, and it was clearly better that we 
 should separate promptly. I therefore took 
 care to spend the day away from him. And a 
 very strange day it was. 
 
 Finally, when evening came, and I was on 
 my way to the old house with the white door, 
 I knew that I had resolved to offer myself to 
 Miss Morne. 
 
 It was a point of pride with her, I suppose, 
 to receive me, though she did not look in her 
 usual spirits, by any means. 
 
 "Of course you know of the misfortune," she 
 said at once "that Mac (she had adopted that 
 diminutive) has become a poor man?" 
 
 "Yes, and that something else has happened 
 also." 
 
 Her eyelids fell. "Then he told you what 
 he meant to do?" she responded, almost in a 
 whisper. 
 
 If one can pity and admire at the same 
 moment, that was what I did in watching the 
 soft shadowy blush upon her cheek. She was 
 dressed in pale brown silk, judiciously trimmed
 
 MRS. WINTERROWD'S MUSICALS. 131 
 
 with white lace of a heavy pattern ; three rose- 
 buds bloomed at her belt, and the color of the 
 pink ones was darkly repeated by a garnet pin 
 partly hidden in the lace near her throat. If 
 the costume had been expressly designed to 
 blush in, it could not have been better. 
 
 "Yes, he has confided in me," I answered. 
 "Are you willing, Miss Morne, to do the same?" 
 
 "What a very singular question!" said Miss 
 Morne, with something of sternness in her 
 eyes as she lifted them and glanced quickly at 
 me. "That would be a different thing alto- 
 gether. And what have I to confide?" 
 
 " I am anxious to know what you are going 
 to do." 
 
 "Going to do?" she smiled. "That's more 
 singular than the other question even. I 
 don't know why you should ask me these 
 things." 
 
 "I hope," said I, "you understand that I 
 wouldn't ask them without very special 
 reasons." 
 
 "Ah," she returned, dropping into a more 
 easy defense, "then he has sent you? That 
 was very wrong."
 
 132 MRS. WINTERROWD'S MUSIC ALE. 
 
 "No, he did not send me," I made answer, 
 embarrassed. 
 
 "You are mysterious." And again she 
 smiled. But the sadness I had been wont to 
 fancy in her cheeks was really there now, and 
 these faint smiles did not drive it away. "But 
 I will be frank, at any rate. Papa was great- 
 ly troubled at first, but I think he is rather 
 relieved now. He appeared to think that Mr. 
 McAloon would insist on the engagement, but 
 now he is convinced it won't be so." 
 
 What had convinced him, I asked myself? 
 Evidently his daughter's determination to 
 receive no overtures to a new engagement. 
 This, then, was in my favor. 
 
 I resumed: "Miss Morne, my reason for 
 those questions Ah, I came here this even- 
 ing" 
 
 But in the very act of uttering my purpose 
 I abandoned it. I can hardly describe the 
 feeling that arrested me. There was some- 
 thing atrocious in taking advantage of Mac's 
 misfortune, something abhorrent about having 
 thrown the dice, as it were, for this woman, 
 which I had been too much excited to compre-
 
 MKS. WINTERROWD'S MUSIC ALE. 133 
 
 hend until then. But it all revealed itself to 
 me at that instant. 
 
 "Ah, yes, do tell me what you came for. 
 It is so mysterious," said Miss Morne, with 
 innocent perplexity. 
 
 "What I want to say," I replied, as if con- 
 tinuing, "is that I think you may do Mac an 
 injustice. It was a generous impulse, no 
 doubt, that made him write that note, but I'm 
 sure he is regretting it at this moment passion- 
 ately. If you had seen his face at the club " 
 
 She threw out her hand with a brief gesture 
 of pain. " I would rather not hear this," she 
 said. 
 
 "Only let me say," I concluded, "that he 
 already has a plan in his head for putting him- 
 self in better circumstances. If you would 
 permit me to encourage him to come and 
 speak with you about it Oh, I know it's a 
 great liberty." 
 
 "It's very kind of you," she answered. "I 
 understand. The liberty I can forgive, Mr. 
 Endicott. But I have no message for for 
 him." 
 
 Mortified and rather puzzled, I talked a
 
 134 MRS. WINTERROWD'S MUSIC ALE. 
 
 little of other things, and then got up to go. 
 But as I did so I ventured to say, "Those rose- 
 buds are wonderfully fine. If you could for- 
 give two liberties in an evening, I should ask 
 for a bud." 
 
 "The tea-rose ?" 
 
 "No, the pink." She disengaged it and 
 gave it me. 
 
 "If Mac has been a trifle insane," I reflected, 
 as I walked home, "I have too"; and I was 
 quite at a loss to understand my own conduct 
 fully. As for Sophia, I likewise began to sus- 
 pect her. How account for her obdurate 
 unwillingness to have Mac come and make 
 amends for his note, unless she preferred to 
 lose him along with his money? 
 
 He was playing stormily on the piano as I 
 entered, but stopped and burst into violent 
 laughter on seeing me. "Sit down !" he cried. 
 "I have the oddest story to tell you." 
 
 "I have something to tell you, too," I inter- 
 posed. 
 
 But he insisted on my listening first. The 
 constraint that had cramped our intercourse 
 for a day or two seemed to have vanished.
 
 MRS. WINTERROWD'S MUSIC ALE, 135 
 
 "Where do you suppose I have been?" he 
 demanded. " I've been to see Mrs. Winter- 
 rowd. What of it? Well, you shall hear"; 
 and he proceeded to relate how he had called 
 in Commonwealth Avenue, and received Mrs. 
 Winterrowd's condolence on his father's failure. 
 
 "But I hope he will soon get over it," she 
 had said. 
 
 "The inconvenience is only temporary," Mac 
 had assured her. "As for me, it is a shock, 
 annoying and all that, but nothing more." 
 
 The patroness of music and lions expressed 
 her delight. 
 
 He went on to make formal acknowledg- 
 ment of many kindnesses during his stay in 
 Boston. "I don't know how to thank you for 
 giving me that opportunity to play at the 
 charity matine'e," said Mac ; and she took it in 
 good faith. "But, after so many favors, I am 
 emboldened to ask one more." 
 
 "Ah!" Mrs. Winterrowd raised her noble 
 eyebrows with a very charming expression. 
 
 "Yes, a very important one, a very serious 
 one," he explained, "in connection with your 
 niece."
 
 I3 6 MRS. WINTERROWD'S MUSIC ALE. 
 
 Here the lady became pleasantly and becom- 
 ingly grave. 
 
 "You will permit me, Mrs. Winterrowd, to 
 speak plainly of my admiration for Miss 
 Matchett. She is a very lovely young lady." 
 
 "Ah, as to that, we shall agree admirably," 
 answered Miss Matchett's aunt. 
 
 "The favor I have to ask may have an im- 
 portant influence on my future," said he. 
 
 There could no longer be any doubt. "Ah, 
 Mr. McAloon," replied Mrs. Winterrowd, "I 
 can easily understand that, and upon hers 
 too." 
 
 "You do me too much honor," said the 
 young man, humbly. 
 
 "But before we talk of this," she continued, 
 in a tone of most tender confidence, "don't 
 you think it would be well to hear more from 
 your father? It saves so much care to have 
 one's future clear." 
 
 "Ah, but that's precisely what I want to set- 
 tle now," said he. 
 
 "Naturally," said the matron, throwing her- 
 self lightly into the mood of youth. "Young 
 people feel that there is only one question of
 
 MRS. WIiVTERROWD'S MUSICALS. 137 
 
 importance to be settled, and in one sense that 
 is true. Believe me, I fully sympathize with 
 you, and I appreciate the import of this one 
 question. It might perhaps be answered now, 
 but my duty to Bertha, you know " 
 
 "Your duty, madam ! What has that to do 
 with my giving Miss Matchett music lessons?" 
 
 Mrs. Winterrowd returned his feigned aston- 
 ishment with a very real equivalent. "Music 
 lessons /" she cried, in horror. "You, Mr. Mc- 
 Aloon?" 
 
 "Undoubtedly. I must make my living in 
 that way, now, and it would have an important 
 influence on my success if you were to give me 
 your patronage." 
 
 "I see I have completely misunderstood 
 you. Then that is really to be your future ! 
 Very odd ; very odd." She already began to 
 scrutinize her former lion with a distant, 
 undervaluing air. But there was a vein of 
 Yankee sharpness under her superficial grand- 
 eur, and a bartering scheme had occurred to 
 her. "Possibly I can assist you," she began, 
 "but of course you did not "propose you had 
 not thought of compensation? The adver
 
 I3 MRS. WINTERROWD'S MUSICALS. 
 
 I mean, the reputation it would bring you 
 to be giving my niece instruction would repay 
 you for the time, I dare say." 
 
 "Unfortunately," answered Mac with a 
 touch of indolent magnificence, "my prices 
 must be rather high, and I could hardly afford 
 to enter into such an arrangement. We shall 
 have to give it up, I'm afraid." 
 
 "There's one city finished off, then," I .ex- 
 claimed, after hearing this recital. "You never 
 can do anything in Boston now." 
 
 "I don't want to, either," he declared vehe- 
 mently. 
 
 "I have been to see Miss Morne this even- 
 ing," I said, lighting a cigar. 
 
 All his gloom returned in a moment. 
 
 "But she won't have me," I added. 
 
 "She has refused you?" demanded he, 
 bounding to his feet, and clutching the piano 
 with one hand. 
 
 I hesitated ; then I said : "You seem to 
 take a special satisfaction in humiliating me. 
 You heard what I said. Of course it was 
 absurd to expect she would consider me. Are 
 you content to let the thing rest as it is?"
 
 MRS. WINTERROWD'S MUSICALE. 139 
 
 Mac pulled out his watch. "Confound it! 
 it's too late." 
 
 "What for?" 
 
 "To go to the Mornes," 
 
 "Allegretto finale!" I exclaimed. "Aren't 
 you rather rushing the thing? Apparently 
 you forget that you're not engaged any 
 longer." 
 
 "No, I don't," said my hasty friend, "but 
 I want to be. I can show Sophia that every- 
 thing may still go well if she that is, that I 
 shall make a success of some sort in music." 
 
 His doubt and jealousy had passed; the 
 transient cloud between himself and me was 
 dissolved; but I can't say I was altogether 
 pleased with this business of his retiring in my 
 favor for a day or two, and then fancying he 
 could resume his romance. "You have 
 offended her," I said. "It may not be so easy 
 as you imagine to put off and take on this 
 engagement." 
 
 But "Heaven helps fools like me," he assert- 
 ed, "and frustrates wise men like you, Endi- 
 cott." And I'm inclined to think he was 
 right.
 
 140 MRS, WINTERROWD'S MUSIC ALE. 
 
 When he had gone to see Sophia the next 
 day, I occupied his absence with a carefully 
 constructed theory of the impossible, to wit, 
 her becoming a music teacher's wife. When 
 he returned, my theory was nowhere. 
 
 "And is this the end," Mr. Morne lament- 
 ingly asked me one day, "for which I have 
 spent all my life trying to keep a position in 
 society?" But his asides to me and his plaints 
 to his daughter were of no avail. 
 
 Finding opposition useless, he tried to in- 
 duce his prospective son-in-law at least to stay 
 in Boston. 
 
 "I don't want to stay in a city," declared 
 Mac, "where, for all its delightfulness, I have 
 the example of poor neglected Virgin before 
 me, and where your best group thinks it a 
 favor to have 'treated Sophia well,' as Endi- 
 cott says they have." 
 
 Knowing his irritable genius, I pardoned 
 him, for my part. He went off with his bride 
 to Cincinnati, and now he writes me that he 
 makes a very good income. 
 
 I think Morne would like to follow too, but
 
 MA'S. WIXTERROWD'S MUSIC ALE. 141 
 
 he can't leave his business nor his place on the 
 edge of society. Miss Yarrow and Jim Tor- 
 ringford, who had at several different times 
 deigned to recognize Sophia, can not now 
 endure even the mention of her name ; and as 
 for Mrs. Winterrowd, she reproaches me for 
 ever having introduced Mac, who, she inti- 
 mates, was almost an untutored savage. 
 
 Miss Stanlow and I still continue to look 
 forward to dancing the Diagonal ; but the sat- 
 isfaction I take in that is divided with the 
 pleasure I have in my pink rosebud. 
 
 One question still proves extremely puzzling 
 to me : if I really loved Miss Morne, why did I 
 abstain from testing my chances? But here 
 the habit of a lifetime baffles me : I have been 
 repressing my emotions so long, that I posi- 
 tively can't tell what particular one I repressed 
 on that occasion.
 
 "UNFINISHED." 
 
 I. 
 
 WHAT most attracted the notice of Jervis 
 Faulder on going into the gallery of 
 Childs & Purvis, the picture dealers, was a 
 canvas presenting the full-length figure of a 
 tallish, spirited young lady in a black dress, 
 with some kind of timid, coy, dark bonnet on 
 her head. Not a downright, conclusive bon- 
 net, but one which seemed to have set out 
 with a foolish plan of covering up those beau- 
 tiful twists of pale chestnut hair, and then im- 
 pulsively to have given up the idea. It was 
 incomplete; and so was the painting. The 
 young lady in black started out from the 
 vague fumid tints of the background with won- 
 derful vigor, smiling as if with the surprise of 
 her own sweet advent. But the dress in por- 
 tions was only scumbled on with great haste, 
 and behold, one of her dainty hands was alto- 
 142
 
 " UNFINISHED." 1 43 
 
 gether missing. Jervis knew it must have 
 been dainty by reference to the other, which 
 was seen holding a wrinkled glove. Below, on 
 the frame, hung a card, bearing the word 
 "Unfinished." 
 
 But the picture was evidently a portrait, and 
 it was the work of a distinguished Boston 
 artist, whom, in order to give him a classical 
 air, we will call Venator. Faulder found the 
 mystery of the subject and the incompleteness 
 tantalizing, yet engaging. 
 
 "Have you seen that unfinished girl of Ven- 
 ator's?" he asked, when he called soon after on 
 his friend Mrs. Crayshaw, of Brookline, an 
 illustrious member of the social oligarchy. 
 
 Mrs. Crayshaw based her interest in por- 
 traits largely on the standing of their owners. 
 "Do you mean the picture," she inquired in 
 return, "or the lady herself?" 
 
 "The lady, by all means," said Faulder, 
 promptly. "Do you know her?" 
 
 "That I can't tell until I have seen the 
 painting. Of course, being by Venator, it's 
 quite possible ah, quite likely that I do 
 know her; that is, it must be very good."
 
 144 " UNFINISHED." 
 
 (She referred really to the social status of 
 the canvas.) 
 
 "You really ought to see it," Faulder urged. 
 "There's time now, if you drive into town. 
 We shall have the mellow afternoon light, 
 and " He paused, embarrassed, as if he had 
 nearly betrayed some interest deeper than that 
 of the idle connoisseur. 
 
 "I'll order the horses at once, and we'll go 
 together," said his friend. 
 
 But when they reached the gallery and 
 Faulder indicated the picture by a flash of the 
 eyes, Mrs. Crayshaw stood instantly still, with 
 a shock. A faint blush stole over her cool, 
 handsome face, as though she felt herself 
 unwillingly involved in a social impropriety. 
 "That?" (in subdued remonstrance) "why, 
 that's only Miss Hetwood. Miss what's that 
 odd name? oh, Candace; yes, Candace Het- 
 wood." 
 
 "It's a charming name, at any rate," said 
 Faulder. "Why do you say 'only'? Don't 
 you like her?" 
 
 "Neither like nor dislike," Mrs. Crayshaw 
 answered. "Her family were very obscure. I
 
 ' ' UNFINISHED. " 145 
 
 just happen to know her name because she's a 
 member of our congregation at St. Stephen's." 
 
 "Merely an impecunious fellow-worshiper, 
 eh?" 
 
 "Weak sarcasm," Mrs. Crayshaw remarked, 
 with playfully critical demeanor, "is a sign of 
 immaturity. But, I forgive youth most de- 
 lightful of faults ! The portrait is certainly a 
 good one. But the original could hardly inter- 
 est you : she's one of those girls who never 
 get beyond a certain stage require a second 
 baking." 
 
 "Human ceramics," muttered Faulder. 
 "She hasn't the true Elder-Brewster-teapot 
 mark, I suppose. But Venator doesn't seem 
 to mind. Is there any room left at St. Steph- 
 en's, Mrs. Crayshaw?" 
 
 "Our pew is always at your service," smiled 
 that accomplished matron, looking straight 
 through his well-cut waistcoat, and observing 
 the condition of his heart. 
 
 It was but a Sunday or two afterward that 
 Faulder repaired to the little Episcopal church 
 where Mrs. Crayshaw worshiped (and allowed 
 less fortunate beings to adore her). But he
 
 146 " UNFINISHED." 
 
 did not claim admission to her pew. In the 
 darkness of the church he could not at first 
 discover the face he was looking for. But 
 when the people rose rustling like an exten- 
 sive bed of artificial flowers to recite the 
 psalms of the day, a sudden ray from the outer 
 sunlight fell into the transept. Then Faulder 
 saw, bathed in the sunbeam, those fair cheeks 
 and brown eyes and the pale chestnut hair 
 which he already knew so well without having 
 beheld them. Truth compels the statement 
 that at this point he neglected his religious 
 duty, and the service dwindled to a bewilder- 
 ing monotone in his ears. But the assembly 
 soon sat down again, and Miss Hetwood once 
 more disappeared in the barren stretch of arti- 
 ficial flowers. Inconsistent though it seems, 
 the young man was surprised to find how 
 closely she resembled her own portrait. He 
 had expected to see her more prim and con- 
 ventional, with less artistic fire in her features, 
 less effect of a rapid sketch, and more of an air 
 of having been worked out in all details. But 
 he now perceived how exactly the painter's mode 
 of treatment was in keeping with the original.
 
 ' ' UNFINISHED. " 147 
 
 They had got as far as the Litany, when a 
 stir in one of the aisles caused him to lift his 
 bowed head, and this time he saw Miss Het- 
 wood moving from her pew ; an old gentleman, 
 apparently her father, leaning heavily on her 
 shoulder. Two gentlemen came to their 
 assistance, and Faulder also left his place to 
 follow, all moving out at the side door just as 
 the pastor and his flock were uttering the 
 petition, " and from sudden death, Good 
 Lord, deliver us" 
 
 "Can I assist you?" the young man asked, as 
 Mr. Hetwood was seated by the others on the 
 stone step outside. "I am a physician." 
 
 Candace received his offer with a glance of 
 swift gratitude; but though Faulder would 
 have liked nothing better than to go on gazing 
 into her frank brown eyes, he lost no time in 
 producing his pocket case and giving a restora- 
 tive to the pallid old gentleman, now quite 
 unconscious. 
 
 "Oh, do tell me, is it anything dangerous?" 
 Candace asked. 
 
 " I hardly think so," said Faulder, striving 
 to maintain a calm professional manner, for
 
 I 48 " UNFINISHED." 
 
 this unexpected contact somehow agitated him 
 more than he could have believed. "It's only 
 a fainting fit. See, he is opening his eyes 
 again. Your father, I presume, Miss Het- 
 wood?" 
 
 "Dear papa," cried she, bending over him, 
 "are you all right again?" Mr. Hetwood nod- 
 ded a feeble encouragement. Then she turned 
 to Faulder. "I see you knew our name," she 
 observed. 
 
 "Y yes; so I did. I forgot that." 
 
 "Forgot what?" Candace looked surprised. 
 
 "I beg your pardon," said he, stumblingly. 
 "Not your name, but that you didn't know 
 it I mean, know that I knew " And here 
 Faulder stopped, feeling that he was making 
 an idiotic exhibition of himself. 
 
 "At any rate, we are greatly indebted to 
 you," she said sweetly, ignoring his confusion. 
 
 "May I ask who this is?" said Mr. Hetwood, 
 looking up. 
 
 "I will give you a card. I trust you feel 
 quite well now?" Yet even while addressing 
 him, Faulder could not keep his eyes from 
 Candace.
 
 ' ' UNFINISHED. " 1 49 
 
 At that instant a carriage, for which one of 
 the other gentleman had gone, rolled up. Mr. 
 Hetwood was helped in ; he and his daughter 
 bowed to Faulder; and the interview, which 
 had barely begun, broke off abruptly. This 
 was provoking enough. The problem that 
 now presented itself was how to continue the 
 acquaintance. Being wealthy, our young phy- 
 sician had not yet taken the trouble to burden 
 himself with a practice, and so he found time 
 during the next few days to think a good deal 
 about Candace. He had not made up his 
 mind what to do, however, when chance again 
 favored him. Turning the corner of Winter 
 Street suddenly one afternoon, into Tremont, 
 he came upon the young lady herself, darkly 
 dressed, but bright and rosy in the frost-keen 
 air. If you have seen a Margoten rose or a 
 La France on the bush, when a breeze gently 
 ruffles the close-gathered petals, and if you 
 have noticed that there is a change of crim- 
 sons in the folds of the flower, which makes it 
 flush and whiten at the same time, you will 
 know how Candace looked just then. 
 
 Faulder lifted his hat. "Pardon me for
 
 150 " UNFINISHED." 
 
 stopping you," he said, "but 1 want to ask 
 after your father." 
 
 "Oh, he seems as well as ever," she an- 
 swered ; "and I think he wants to see you. 
 Can't you call some evening?" 
 
 "I should be delighted." 
 
 Before he could collect himself enough to 
 ask their address, she had bowed and gone on. 
 He turned to speak to her again, but she had 
 disappeared among the crowd, and he gave 
 it up. 
 
 "Is it always to be like this?" he wondered; 
 "always something fragmentary and incom- 
 plete in our meetings?" But he bethought 
 him of the sexton at St. Stephen's, and having 
 learned the address, he made his call the next 
 evening. 
 
 Both father and daughter were at home. 
 
 "I am glad to see you, doctor," said the old 
 gentleman. "We hurried off so the other day, 
 you must have thought us rude." 
 
 "Oh, not at all. As a stranger I had no 
 claim upon you." 
 
 "The name of Faulder, sir," returned Mr. 
 Hetwood, not in the best taste, "is too well
 
 ' ' UNFINISHED. " *S l 
 
 known in Boston for you to be a stranger. 
 Your family " 
 
 "I have myself heard a good deal about," 
 said Jervis, smiling. "It's an old subject, Mr. 
 Hetwood." 
 
 "But I'm curious," said the old gentleman, 
 "to learn how you came to hear of our name." 
 Jervis explained. But the mention of the por- 
 trait seemed to make Mr. Hetwood uneasy. 
 
 "How do you like being exhibited?" Faul- 
 der asked, turning to Candace. 
 
 "I don't like it a bit," she declared, informally. 
 
 "Shall you withdraw the picture then?" 
 
 Miss Hetwood flushed. "I can't," she said. 
 "It's not mine. It belongs to Venator." 
 
 He saw that he had forced a disagreeable 
 admission. "I don't understand his insisting 
 on anything that is disagreeable to you," he 
 observed. "And yet I ought to be grateful to 
 him for it, for without the picture I shouldn't 
 have made your acquaintance." 
 
 But Candace would not spare herself. "You 
 see," she continued, glancing around the room, 
 "we are poor, and can not afford such a paint- 
 ing as that."
 
 IS 2 "UNFINISHED." 
 
 "It ought to be yours, though," Faulder 
 asserted, a plan suddenly taking shape in his 
 mind. 
 
 He did not stay long; and on his going, 
 they asked him to come again. "I shall be 
 happy to have my sister call on you," he said 
 to Candace, "if you will permit her." 
 
 "But I'm not in society," she protested. 
 
 "All the more reason why you should 
 begin." 
 
 She hesitated, and then began a timid, 
 "Well, if you think" 
 
 "I do," said Faulder. "So we will call it 
 settled." 
 
 It was not settled at once, however, for 
 Miss Henrietta Faulder strongly objected when 
 her brother proposed it to her. Leaving this 
 difficulty to arrange itself through the play of 
 natural curiosity which he knew how to excite, 
 Jervis went off to see Venator. 
 
 II. 
 
 This painter, thriving on the patronage of a 
 rich and cultivated class that adored him, was 
 in a position to rail at their affectations or ego-
 
 " UNFINISHED." 1 5 3 
 
 tism with impunity. Meanwhile he lived in a 
 Bohemian way, occupying a bleak, lonely 
 studio at the top of a huge commercial build- 
 ing, and squeezing a comfortable income out 
 of his little color tubes. He was a man of 
 more than middle age, with deep-set eyes and 
 a long, careless, gray mustache. He received 
 the young physician with a bitter, piercing 
 glance that had no welcome in it, so that Jervis 
 hastened to introduce himself and his errand. 
 
 I want to buy your portrait of Miss Het- 
 wood," he stated, briefly. 
 
 "It isn't for sale," replied Venator, with a 
 kind of hiss from under his mustache. Then 
 striding across the bare floor, he disappeared 
 behind a canvas, which he stroked heavily with 
 his brush, as if it were some kind of watch-dog 
 that he was restraining for a moment. 
 
 " I thought possibly you would say so. But 
 I have become singularly interested in Miss 
 Hetwood, and besides " 
 
 "Ha! you know her, then," the artist ex- 
 claimed, rather melodramatically, emerging 
 from his concealment. 
 
 "A little. How came it that you had the
 
 154 " UNFINISHED. " 
 
 luck to find her, and she the good fortune to 
 be painted by you?" 
 
 Venator had once more disappeared behind 
 his easel. "That's right," he remarked, senten- 
 tiously ; "whittle your compliments fine at both 
 ends." He then appeared to forget that any 
 one was present, and worked at his picture in 
 silence. All at once he resumed, casually: 
 "One of the boys that study with me was 
 acquainted with her. We went out to see her 
 one day, and I could not sleep till I began the 
 portrait." 
 
 A spasm of alarm attacked Faulder. "Who 
 was the 'boy' you refer to?" he inquired. 
 
 "His name is Swinton." 
 
 Faulder knew that Swinton was a clever 
 young artist, who handled trees in a familiar 
 manner, and was pressing the cow into ser- 
 vice as a sort of pictorial and female Pegasus. 
 But Swinton's talent was greater than his 
 personal attractions, so that he gave no cause 
 for jealousy supposing that Faulder cared 
 to be jealous. After an awkward pause he 
 said : " I don't wonder at your enthusiasm, 
 but you must let me pay my tribute to the
 
 "UNFINISHED." 155 
 
 genius with which you have represented her. 
 This isn't a whittled compliment. It's a blunt 
 one." 
 
 The painter looked around the edge of the 
 canvas, suspecting a new light on his visitor. 
 This time his eyes betrayed good-fellowship. 
 "But it wasn't so much Miss Hetwood I was 
 enthusiastic about," he affirmed ; "it was the 
 painting of her." 
 
 "Is she only good as a portrait, then?" 
 Faulder queried. 
 
 "That depends on how you look at her," 
 said Venator. "As a woman there's more 
 nature than art in her, I should say. But 
 that's an advantage. If I were in love with 
 her, for example " He appeared not to think 
 the sentence worth finishing. 
 
 Faulder was annoyed. "It's hardly neces- 
 sary to discuss her in that way, I suppose," 
 said he. "Let us go back to business. It 
 strikes me that it would be fitting for Miss 
 Hetwood to own the picture herself. Will you 
 allow me to buy it on condition of presenting 
 it to her?" 
 
 Venator ceased working, but still remained
 
 IS 6 " UNFINISHED. " 
 
 out of view, except for his legs, which were 
 visible below the shelf on which his picture rest- 
 ed. The legs looked meditative. At length 
 he said, abruptly, "You're interfering." 
 
 Faulder blushed in astonishment, at this 
 indignity. "We'll agree that I am," he never- 
 theless answered. "Will you consider my pro- 
 posal?" 
 
 The artist got up and stalked about ner- 
 vously. "Tell me first what your interest in 
 all this is." 
 
 "I might if I could," returned the other. 
 "I'm not sure what it is yet." 
 
 "Well, then, I'll answer your proposition 
 with another: I'll keep the picture, and let 
 you take the young lady." 
 
 "I decline to pursue this strain, sir," retorted 
 Faulder. " I respect Miss Hetwood too much 
 to assume that she can be made over to any- 
 body by a word." 
 
 "You're a good deal impressed by her, I can 
 see," said the painter, with exasperating 
 satisfaction. "I'm serious, though, in saying 
 that I'll stand out of the way." 
 
 "Oh, I didn't know you were in the way."
 
 ' ' UNFINISHED." 157 
 
 Venator came closer, with a passionate look 
 in his eyes. "I was infatuated with her," he 
 declared, vehemently. "But what's the use? 
 It's not for me. I am too old ; I'm miserable. 
 Besides " 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 "There's something about her I don't know 
 what that always makes me uneasy. That's 
 the reason I couldn't finish my picture. But 
 it would be like losing a piece of my heart to 
 let that picture go, now." 
 
 "You decline my plan, then?" 
 
 "Absolutely." 
 
 Faulder contemplated the barren floor for a 
 while. Slowly he brought himself to put his 
 next question. "Suppose a peculiar case," he 
 began. "If relations were to change, if well, 
 to put it plainly, if Miss Hetwood should con- 
 sent to marry me, would you give up the por- 
 trait?" 
 
 "You !" exclaimed the artist ' 'you marry 
 her? You're incapable of it." 
 
 "Incapable!" echoed the young man, per- 
 fectly dazed. "What right have you to what 
 reason is there for your opinion?"
 
 158 " UNFINISHED. " 
 
 "Do you want it in all its nakedness?" de- 
 manded his sardonic vis-h-vis. "Well, then, 
 you strike me as too finical, too much devoted 
 to appearances, and too full of a certain kind 
 of Bostonism, to let yourself be carried that 
 far. Miss Hetwood will never accommodate 
 herself to your notions, and you never can 
 adapt yourself to her." He closed with a 
 somewhat fierce stare, which Faulder met by a 
 short laugh. 
 
 "There's only one thing more I wish to say," 
 remarked the latter, dryly. "Since you're so 
 confident of my incapacity, you can hardly re- 
 fuse the request I've just made." 
 
 Venator winced. He saw that he was cor- 
 nered. "Oh yes," he said, affecting careless- 
 ness; "of course, if she marries you, I'll let 
 you have it." 
 
 "Very well, I sha'n't forget," said Faulder. 
 "Good-morning." 
 
 It was with some bewilderment that, as he 
 made his way out, he recognized how he had 
 committed himself to the attitude of a suitor. 
 Certainly he had not defined his own mood be- 
 fore he entered the studio ; but it was rather a
 
 " UNFINISHED." 159 
 
 relief to him that he had been surprised into 
 doing so. 
 
 Several calls at the little house in Brookline, 
 however, failed to produce any material change 
 in the situation, except that he came to know 
 Candace better. She attempted to play on the 
 piano for him one evening, and plunged charac- 
 teristically into a Schubert impromptu. It 
 went off brilliantly at first, but before she could 
 get through, Candace stumbled wofully, and at 
 last left the piano stool in a fit of impatience, 
 while there remained many bars to play. " I 
 can't do it," she declared "I can't possibly." 
 
 Faulder was amused, and tried to make her 
 conclude, but she was not to be induced. 
 Another time she was at work on some 
 embroidery when he came ; but on his next 
 appearance he found that she had abandoned 
 it in the midst, and had begun a small water- 
 color painting of some flowers. This in its 
 turn was never finished. 
 
 "Why don't you carry something through?" 
 he inquired, disposed to take her to task. 
 
 "It's not in me," was her answer. "I never 
 could do anything thoroughly to the end. Up
 
 I 60 " UNFINISHED. " 
 
 to a certain point I can do very well, but if I 
 were to go on, I should spoil my beginning. So 
 what's the use of my trying to be complete?" 
 
 To Faulder this was a new idea. For all 
 that, he thought he would try to "form" her 
 mind somewhat ; so he investigated her reading. 
 Finding it fragmentary and sensational, he ad- 
 vised some volumes of Motley, and insisted 
 that she should read them to the very last 
 page as a discipline, which she promised to 
 attempt. He waited a few days, and when he 
 went again, Candace hailed him with impor- 
 tant news. 
 
 "I've had a visit from your sister to-day," 
 said she. 
 
 "Ah?" Faulder lifted his light eyebrows. 
 "How did you like her?" 
 
 "What a strange question ! I couldn't help 
 liking her a little, you know, when she was so 
 kind as to come and see me." 
 
 He smiled at her undiplomatic honesty. 
 "And what did she talk about?" 
 
 "Oh, everything: music she asked me if 
 I'd heard the new prima donna Tricoti ; and 
 science Darwin on earth-worms; and society
 
 ' ' UNFINISHED. " 1 6 1 
 
 made me feel how few people I knew. Oh, 
 Mr. Faulder" (she never would call him "Doc- 
 tor") "I see plainer than ever that I'm a 
 nobody." The poor girl seemed to be on the 
 point of breaking down in tearful catastrophe, 
 at the recollection of a doubtless trying inter- 
 view. 
 
 "But you mustn't mind my sister," said he. 
 "She's only a nobody too, mounted on stilts." 
 
 At this Candace burst into a cordial laugh. 
 "I forgot : there's something still more impor- 
 tant," she resumed. "Mrs. Crayshaw has in- 
 vited me to her next kettledrum." 
 
 As Faulder had privately asked Mrs. Cray- 
 shaw to do this, he was not much astonished. 
 
 "Shall you go?" he asked; and Candace 
 appearing undecided, he offered to escort her, 
 with his sister. 
 
 "Oh, it isn't that, so much," she explained ; 
 "but I'm afraid to go. I don't know anybody, 
 and I don't know anything." 
 
 He prevailed upon her to consent, however. 
 "And how comes on the Motley?" was his 
 next question. 
 
 "I shall never accomplish it," she answered,
 
 1 6 2 " UNFINISHED:' 
 
 desperately. "I've stuck in the first vol- 
 ume." 
 
 The young man had an inspiration. "Let 
 me read it aloud to you," he proposed. " Then 
 you'll get through." 
 
 Candace was delighted ; and they began. 
 But before they had concluded a single chap- 
 ter, Mr. Hetwood came in; and that stopped 
 the reading. 
 
 Candace went to the kettledrum not in 
 silk, but in a dress of white nuns' veiling (for 
 it was almost springtime). Scarcely any one 
 knew who she was, yet she drew decided 
 notice, and Mrs. Crayshaw in a burst of gener- 
 osity even declared that she was more beauti- 
 ful than her portrait. Still, Candace was not 
 at ease : she felt alone, and out of her element, 
 and was full of the petty awkwardnesses of 
 inexperience. Over and over she caught her- 
 self in some careless, half-slangy phrase, or in 
 saying something too direct and earnest, which 
 gave offense. And worst of all, she feared 
 that Faulder noticed her short-comings and 
 was displeased. She perceived that it was a 
 mistake attempting to move among these
 
 " UNFINISHED. " I 63 
 
 people. Impulsively, without even saying 
 good-afternoon to any one, she departed. 
 When Faulder, who had left her in the middle 
 of a conversation, came back to continue it, 
 he could not find her. He was vexed ; and to 
 increase his irritation he overheard his sister 
 and Mrs. Crayshaw discussing Miss Hetwood 
 in the most patronizing fashion. 
 
 "I can not understand," Henrietta said to 
 him afterward, "how you can maintain your 
 interest in this Miss Hetwood. She is not one 
 of our world at all, and never can be." 
 
 "Perhaps the decision of that question won't 
 be left to you," retorted her brother, with 
 Orphic darkness. 
 
 It was on the next day that he once more 
 presented himself before Candace. 
 
 "Don't say kettledrum to me /" she ex- 
 claimed. 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 "Oh, I've done with that sort of thing. I'd 
 rather live in a garret full of pictures, like Ven- 
 ator, than in society." 
 
 Faulder began to wonder if she had all along 
 cherished a secret attachment to the grim old
 
 1 64 " UNFINISHED." 
 
 artist. She seemed to be slipping out of his 
 grasp. "There may be another alternative 
 than the garret," he suggested. 
 
 "What one?" asked Candace, with indiffer- 
 ence. "By the way, you haven't seen my new 
 accomplishment. I'm making macrame lace." 
 
 "Ah, that will be very pretty! I'm thinking 
 of getting up a class for our Motley and some 
 other books ; and, while I read, you can make 
 lace." 
 
 He watched her a moment or two, as she 
 showed him the process. Suddenly she 
 dropped her work, saying : 
 
 " I can't do that knot. Do you see how?" 
 
 "I have some knack at tying," he answered. 
 Then they began to discuss different knots, 
 and he explained them to her. "I've helped 
 you with these," he said at length, in a timid 
 tone. "There is another, more important than 
 all, that you might help me with." 
 
 She looked puzzled at first; but he soon 
 made his meaning clear, as much by his gen- 
 eral behavior, and the way he looked into her 
 eyes, as by words. Impulsively he took one of 
 her hands, and though she did not resist, he
 
 ' ' UNFINISHED. " 165 
 
 as quickly released it. "No, not that one," he 
 exclaimed. "The other the unpainted one." 
 
 Half inclined to sob, Candace burst unex- 
 pectedly into laughter. "What in the world ! 
 the unpainted one?" 
 
 "I mean," he stammered, "the one that 
 wasn't in the picture. I want it now for my 
 own." 
 
 Venator kept his promise. As Faulder's 
 wife, Candace was a social success ; and it was 
 remarkable how Mrs. Crayshaw, Henrietta, and 
 the rest now discovered that what they had 
 before considered a want of "finish" was really 
 charming originality and refreshing naivete 1 . 
 Venator not only made a wedding present of 
 the portrait, but also offered to complete it. 
 
 "Not for the world," responded Faulder. 
 
 And so the picture remains, as Candace de- 
 clares, a symbol of their love, which is always 
 to be "unfinished."
 
 MARCH AND APRIL 
 
 I. 
 
 CURIOUSLY enough, April was born in 
 September. Old Major Maynadier (he 
 ought to have been named Grenadier), at pres- 
 ent retired on half pay, had married his wife in 
 an April, and was not ashamed to say that 
 that month was, of all the twelve, the dearest 
 to him in its associations. Therefore, with mili- 
 tary precision, he resolved that his first child 
 should receive in baptism the name given to 
 the fourth division of the calendar. It was ex- 
 ceedingly lucky that the first child proved to 
 be a girl ; because, if it had been a boy, the 
 Major's idea of discipline would not have per- 
 mitted any infraction of the order which he 
 had issued, and the boy would have had to 
 carry through life the title which the Major 
 had fixed upon. 
 
 166
 
 MARCH AND APRIL. 167 
 
 By an odd conjunction, Mr. Lowe, his next 
 neighbor on the banks of the Hudson (near 
 Yonkers), who was an intimate friend of the 
 Major's, had a boy, born a year before, whom 
 he had christened March, in compliment to an 
 aristocratic relative. 
 
 The Lowes and the Maynadiers saw a great 
 deal of each other; the members of the two 
 households going to and fro across the stretch 
 of lawn and fields and the quiet turnpike that 
 separated them, with as little ceremony as if 
 they all lived on one estate and belonged to a 
 single family. They never took the trouble to 
 balance the account of visits exchanged, but 
 gave and received hospitalities with that free- 
 dom which attaches to the gifts we most value 
 and are unwilling to mark with a price. The 
 quiet turnpike just mentioned was no obstacle 
 to this pleasant intercourse, though it divided 
 the Major's farm from Mr. Lowe's country 
 seat. But it was so very quiet that the town 
 decided to make a new road, which would be 
 more traveled, and abandon this one. The 
 new road was made ; the old one fell into dis- 
 use; but from the day that this happened, the
 
 1 68 MARCH AND APRIL. 
 
 boundary no longer a boundary so easily 
 crossed before, became the subject of dispute 
 between the two families, and separated them 
 as it never could have done while it remained 
 a highway. 
 
 The question was, to whom did the road 
 belong now that it was given up by the public? 
 According to law, of course, it reverted to the 
 original owner of the land, or his successor; 
 but the date of its construction was so far 
 back, in Revolutionary times, that it proved 
 hard to ascertain positively who the original 
 owner had been. A diligent searching of 
 titles ensued, with much thumbing of dusty 
 tomes at the Registry of Deeds, and collecting 
 of collateral evidence. But some of the old 
 landmarks by which the boundaries of the 
 properties had been described were missing 
 now, and the whole matter was involved in 
 just enough uncertainty to make each claimant 
 perfectly sure that he was in the right. When 
 things had reached this pass, Mr. Lowe came 
 over to call on the Major, one day, and met 
 that officer on the path to the front door. 
 
 "I had just started to go and see you," said
 
 MARCH AND APRIL. 169 
 
 Major Maynadier, politely, but without ex- 
 tending his hand or smiling. 
 
 "That's singular," said Lowe. "On the 
 same errand, I wonder?" 
 
 "I don't know," was the answer. "I was 
 going to speak about the ah the old road." 
 
 "So was I !" rejoined Lowe, in a hearty 
 tone, as if it were the most delightful of 
 topics. 
 
 He was a broad-chested, vigorous man, 
 whose cheeks glowed like rosy embers from 
 among the mingled black and ashen hues of 
 his beard ; while the beard, long and copious, 
 had a manner of growing that made it look as 
 if it were blown backward by a strong wind, 
 against which he was determined to prevail. 
 
 The Major, on the contrary, was rather thin ; 
 his face was cleared of all hairy impedimenta 
 except a small, severe mustache. But he was 
 as firm and upright as a palisade. Although 
 he might not be at his best in an attack, it was 
 evident that on the defensive he would hold 
 out forever. "Very well," he remarked, be- 
 coming more conciliatory than at first, "since 
 we have the same object in view "
 
 17 MARCH AND APRIL. 
 
 "Let us hope that the same views will be an 
 object to us," Lowe threw in, playfully. 
 
 "Suppose we step into the house," the 
 Major continued, feeling that the jest was ill- 
 timed, "and talk it over." 
 
 They betook themselves to the "office," which 
 in spite of its rigorous name,was a pleasant room, 
 furnished with books and having windows that 
 overlooked the Hudson. April was there a 
 bright-haired girl of eight years nestled in one 
 of the window-seats, reading a book. 
 
 "We shall have to disturb you, pet," said her 
 father. "Mr. Lowe and I are going to talk 
 business." 
 
 The child rose; a charming little thing she 
 was ; but the corners of her mouth showed her 
 disappointment. 
 
 "What! no kiss for your old uncle?" cried 
 Lowe, catching her on her way to the door. 
 "What are you reading, dear poetry? Why, 
 you don't need any poetry at your age." 
 
 "But I like it," said April. 
 
 "So do I," he rashly asserted. "At least, I like 
 you : and that will do just as well, won't it?" 
 
 So the small face was lost for a moment in
 
 MARCH AND APRIL. I? I 
 
 the cloud of Lowe's beard; and when the 
 cloud was withdrawn little April danced away 
 to the door, smiling. 
 
 Maynadier somehow felt that his friend was 
 taking advantage of him by this proceeding. 
 And yet, wasn't it perfectly natural and cus- 
 tomary? He sighed, without knowing it. 
 
 "Here is the map," he announced, sitting 
 down at the table. "I have looked up the whole 
 thing, and put signs here to show the old land- 
 marks. As a matter of fact, a careful measure- 
 ment has convinced me not only that the road 
 belongs to my farm, but that my rights extend a 
 little into your present inclosures. There was a 
 mistake made in running fences, long ago." 
 
 "Oh, come, Maynadier! isn't that a little 
 steep? Excuse me," Lowe added; "I mustn't 
 get ruffled. My desire is to consult amicably. 
 You may have made a mistake yourself, you 
 know. But, even admitting that you haven't, 
 you surely remember that when you bought 
 this estate I released a small claim which I had 
 on the Butternut field. I wanted you for a 
 neighbor, and preferred to be courteous." 
 
 "Certainly, Lowe, I remember. I was
 
 1 72 MARCH AND APRIL. 
 
 about to say that, in consideration of that, I 
 give up my claim to the strip of land I'm 
 speaking of. So we start square as to the road." 
 
 "But the road," said the other, leaning for- 
 ward with his blowy beard against his chest, 
 and looking resolute, "the road is as much 
 mine as yours. According to my view of it 
 the old line ran somewhat crooked, but, virtu- 
 ally, it gave the major part to me." 
 
 Maynadier regarded him with a grim smile. 
 
 "The Major part," he said, "is exactly mine." 
 
 Lowe laughed, but uneasily. 
 
 "I wasn't punning," he said ; "I didn't mean 
 that." 
 
 "But I did," said Maynardier doggedly. 
 
 "Well," resumed his neighbor, "let's see how 
 you make it out. What's this?" He put his finger 
 on the map. "The old 'tree scarred by lightning,' 
 mentioned in the ancient deeds? You know there 
 is no trace of it left. How can you locate it?" 
 
 The Major became reticent. 
 
 "I've got evidence enough," he declared. 
 
 "All right," said Lowe. "Suppose, now, I 
 were to show you a weak spot in your de- 
 fenses. You know the hollow by your gate?"
 
 MARCH AND APRIL. 1 73 
 
 "Yes, yes. What about it?" Maynadier in- 
 quired eagerly. 
 
 "Well, sir," Lowe replied, "I can prove that 
 my line should extend from the granite bowl- 
 der one furlong and two chains to that very 
 spot ; thence westerly " 
 
 "How can you?" demanded the Major. 
 
 "That's my affair," his friend answered, lean- 
 ing back with an obvious inclination to chuckle. 
 
 The Major sprang up, impatient. "Good 
 heavens!" he cried, sorrowfully. "Have we 
 gone so far that one old friend is concealing infor- 
 mation from the other, as if we were in court?" 
 
 "Not one old friend," Lowe pointed out, "but 
 two. We're both in the same box, Maynadier." 
 
 "Lord, yes ! the witness box, I should think," 
 groaned the Major. 
 
 "It is absurd," Lowe confessed, somewhat 
 touched. "Let us see. We have both got 
 along hitherto without owning the road. What 
 do you say to dropping the question, and leav- 
 ing the whole confounded lane as it is?" 
 
 "Impossible," was the reply. "If it's com- 
 mon property some one will invade it. Be- 
 sides, though we agreed, our children might not."
 
 174 MARCH AND APRIL. 
 
 "Ah, yes! the children," Lowe repeated, 
 thinking of his sturdy boy March, whose ruddy 
 cheeks and tawny hair, he had often thought, 
 would make a fine accompaniment to April's 
 more delicate beauty, if the two should con- 
 clude to be husband and wife by and by. 
 "Oh, well," he went on, growling a prelude to 
 concession, "it isn't worth while quarreling. 
 Don't let's be a pair of fools, old man !" He 
 didn't consider that he himself could be a fool 
 under any circumstances ; so it was rather gen- 
 erous to assume that he might possibly be. 
 
 "I admit that it's foolish in one sense," said 
 the Major, with pained dignity. "The land is 
 not much account, anyway." 
 
 "True," said Lowe, going to the fire and 
 warming his back, as if to thaw himself into 
 magnanimity. "Hang it! I'd almost as lief let 
 you have it all." 
 
 "Why, Lowe," exclaimed the other, "that's 
 more like your old self!" 
 
 " I say almost as lief," his friend proceeded. 
 "But that would hardly be fair. So I think 
 we'd better divide evenly." 
 
 Maynadier's face contracted with the invol-
 
 MARCH AND APRIL. 1 75 
 
 untary surmise that his neighbor was taking an 
 easy way out of a weak position. He turned 
 and gazed stonily through the window, his 
 eyes resting on the silent river, which seemed 
 to emblemize the stream of misunderstanding 
 that was slowly widening between his neighbor 
 and himself. 
 
 " I can't do it !" he exclaimed, at length. 
 "We should never be quite satisfied, either of 
 us. And then it wouldn't be right, you 
 know. I hate to have any difficulty with you, 
 Lowe, and would make a sacrifice to avoid it if 
 I could. But this is an affair of rights. One 
 of us ought to have the whole or nothing. 
 Which of us is it to be?" 
 
 "By George! It isn't going to be the one 
 that's not entitled to it," Lowe declared, set- 
 ting his teeth. He walked the length of the 
 room and back always with that appearance 
 of contending against an obstinate breeze. 
 "I've done all /could; and I'm bitterly disap- 
 pointed in you. Why, you won't yield an 
 inch ! You're about as pliable as a jack-knife 
 only one hinge in you, and when that moves 
 you cut whatever you come down upon. You
 
 176 MARCH AND APRIL. 
 
 want to cut it square off. That's what you're 
 going to do to our friendship." 
 
 The Major repressed his wrath, but it came 
 out plainly in his words: "Mr. Lowe, violence 
 isn't going to help us. If you want to dispute 
 my title, do so in the proper place and accord- 
 ing to the proper forms. The business-like 
 way is the legal way." 
 
 "Oh, yes!" retorted Lowe, "I know that. 
 You shall have plenty of 'the legal way' before 
 we get through. But the responsibility is not 
 mine only the land is," he flung back, after 
 gaining the threshold. 
 
 The door closed quietly behind the tumult 
 in which he rushed off. 
 
 He did not enter the house again for twelve 
 years. 
 
 The first phase of the combat, after this 
 interview, was that the Major continued to use 
 the old road as a means of communication with 
 the new turnpike, though Lowe had, on his 
 part, laid out a new driveway for his own 
 house. Accordingly, before long, Lowe re- 
 sorted to the courts, and obtained a tempo- 
 rary injunction forbidding the Major to use
 
 MARCH AND APRIL. 1 77 
 
 the road ; so that Maynadier had to open a 
 new approach to his farm. Then Lowe put 
 up signs at the two points where the old route 
 passed his territory, warning trespassers. His 
 antagonist immediately erected rival sign- 
 boards. Next, the Major executed a strategi- 
 cal movement. He pulled down his fence 
 which was a cheap post and rail construction, 
 quite old and out of repair along the whole 
 border on that side, so as to include the dis- 
 puted ground with his own. 
 
 Now, Lowe was in much better circumstan- 
 ces than his neighbor, and had an excellent 
 fence of iron to mark his side of the way : con- 
 sequently he was much averse to imitating the 
 enemy's tactics when destruction was resorted 
 to. But his case against Maynadier had, mean- 
 while, come to trial, and was proceeding very 
 slowly. He lost patience; could not endure 
 the quiet exultation with which the defendant 
 was seen, nearly every day, pacing about and 
 contemplating the little breadth of dirt which 
 he had added to his fields ; and the upshot was 
 that the iron fence had to come down, though 
 each separate stake in it inflicted a wound
 
 I? 8 MARCH AND APRIL. 
 
 upon the owner's mind. The limits of the 
 rival domains were now traced only by a few 
 stone sockets on Lowe's side, and by a row of 
 old tent-pegs on the Major's. But the plaintiff 
 at least gained the satisfaction of seeing that 
 the defendant no longer prowled along the 
 roadway with an air of proprietorship. 
 
 Such folly may seem incredible ; but a real 
 estate quarrel especially when the subject is 
 of petty dimensions must always be classed 
 among the acutest cases of disagreement. The 
 dumb earth, under such circumstances, has a 
 way of reasserting a primeval power over the 
 human clay that goes around asserting lordship 
 of the soil from which it was molded. 
 
 The Lowes, when speaking to acquaint- 
 ances, derisively alluded to the deserted high- 
 way as "the Major part." And the Maynadiers, 
 with equal sarcasm, called it the "Lowe-lands 
 very low indeed." 
 
 "It is amazing," said Mrs. Maynadier to 
 her husband, "that a man who seems so much 
 a gentleman as Mr. Lowe, and is so earnest a 
 Churchman, should have been so aggressive." 
 
 "Yes, it is," the Major assented. "After all,
 
 MARCH AND APRIL. 179 
 
 I shouldn't have pressed the matter very far 
 if he had simply allowed me to use the place 
 as a private drive." 
 
 "And then too," his wife rejoined, "he is 
 rich, and we are comparatively poor. He 
 doesn't really need the land." 
 
 "No," said the Major; "but what can you 
 expect ? Those wealthy people are very apt 
 to be like that." 
 
 On the other hand, Mrs. Lowe said to Mr. 
 Lowe: "It's always so, John. If you inter- 
 fere with another man so far as to help him, 
 he's sure to be ungrateful. The great mistake 
 was, your doing Major Maynadier that favor 
 about the Butternut field." 
 
 "I suppose it was," sighed Lowe. "I'm sure 
 this is a very small matter we're fighting 
 about; but there's a principle involved. He 
 wouldn't meet me half-way." Here Mr. Lowe 
 grasped more firmly the newspaper he had 
 been reading, and rustled it in a fashion sug- 
 gestive of an aroused moral sense. "I assure 
 you, my dear, I don't feel any bitterness. But 
 I'm going to beat him, if it takes five years!" 
 
 Thus the two families continued, in the
 
 l8o MARCH AND APRIL. 
 
 midst of strife, to be very forgiving toward 
 themselves. 
 
 They worshiped in the same church ; went 
 to see the same people; attended the same 
 parties, very often; but all direct intercourse 
 was broken off between them, and they ceased 
 to recognize each other. Maynadier, as well 
 as Lowe, had entertained a dream the future 
 union of his daughter and young March Lowe ; 
 but such a scheme as that was now out of the 
 question, and he shivered as he thought of the 
 mistake he might have made in encouraging it. 
 The children, of course, were instructed in 
 the mysteries of the dissension, so far as they 
 could understand them; and the struggle of 
 the two houses, with its blighting effect on 
 their own former friendship, overshadowed 
 everything else in its malign importance. It 
 took its place in their minds among the great 
 controversies of the world which they were 
 then studying the rivalry of Caesar with Pom- 
 pey, and the like; for children regard these 
 troubles more seriously and with more suf- 
 fering than we commonly remember that 
 they do.
 
 MARCH AND APRIL. l8l 
 
 Mr. Lowe won his case ; but it was carried 
 higher on exceptions, and ultimately was 
 started on its slow way to the Court of Ap- 
 peals. Then, too, the Major found an excuse 
 for bringing a suit as plaintiff against Lowe; 
 the proceedings were postponed; endless de- 
 lays occurred ; not only five years passed, but 
 ten ; and still the two men were locked in their 
 wrestlers' embrace, until it seemed that they 
 were likely to become petrified in that atti- 
 tude. 
 
 Meanwhile the disused road underwent 
 changes, and became a narrow belt of shaggy 
 growth between the two properties. Nature 
 had taken a hint, and, despite the leveling of 
 artificial barriers, had reared a makeshift bar- 
 rier on her own account. The obsolete ruts 
 were completely matted in grass and wild flow- 
 ers. Then shrubs sprang up; a haphazard 
 plantation of small trees was created. The 
 green-brier tangled its thorny vine and glossy 
 leaves over the larger growth; sharp-savored 
 barberries flourished by the stone remnants of 
 Lowe's fence ; and, being little molested there, 
 birds made their nests among the thickets.
 
 1 82 MARCH AND APRIL. 
 
 Finally, the wonted trail of human travel was 
 transformed into a winding tract of bloom and 
 branch, full of song and perfume, but rarely 
 invaded by the foot of man or woman. 
 
 By the time the frontier war had gone on 
 for nearly twelve years, it became so monot- 
 onous that the two belligerents grew languid 
 in its prosecution, and treated it as a weari- 
 some matter of course. But while the old 
 folks stood comparatively still, March and 
 April had been rapidly advancing to the dan- 
 gerous period when courtships may be ex- 
 pected ; and their parents showed a great anx- 
 iety to keep them out of each other's sight. 
 March was sent to St. Paul's School, in New 
 Hampshire; and when he came home for the 
 long holidays, either the Maynadiers rented 
 their place and went away, or else it happened 
 with suspicious regularity that April had to 
 make visits at a distance. At last March went 
 to Harvard and April was established at Vas- 
 sar. Naturally, she was a little the more rapid 
 in developing, and they both graduated at 
 about the same time ; but they had so seldom 
 been in the same place together, for several
 
 MARCH AND APRIL. 183 
 
 years past, that it would not have been aston- 
 ishing if they had not known each other on 
 meeting. And it was nearly as difficult for 
 them to meet as it would be for the prophetic 
 male and female figures of the old-fashioned 
 barometer, one of whom is always shut up 
 when the other is out. 
 
 The young man was decidedly handsome ; a 
 large, athletic fellow, with strong, frank feat- 
 ures, of whom his mother sometimes com- 
 plained that he was vehement to roughness. 
 At other times, however, he could be as gentle 
 as any one might wish. He liked to wear a 
 velvet coat and stalk around at his ease ; and 
 although he had tried the severest measures 
 for taming his leonine hair, even to cropping 
 it, he had given up the struggle and now 
 allowed it to tumble over his ears and forehead 
 as it would, in a way appropriate to his impet- 
 uous character. It was said that he was rather 
 wild at college ; rumors whereof coming to the 
 knowledge of the Major, that officer remarked 
 to his second-in-command : "We see now, my 
 dear, how fortunate it is that all possibility of 
 a match with Prillie was shut off long ago.
 
 1 84 MARCH AND APRIL. 
 
 Really, this quarrel may have been a good 
 providence." 
 
 "Yes," said Mrs. Maynadier, accepting the 
 opinion as it were on the point of her crochet 
 needle, and working it firmly into the texture 
 of an afghan she was making. "Oh, if it had 
 happened the other way !" 
 
 But in another respect the providence was 
 not so favorable. For the Major's litigation 
 had been a serious expense to him ; he could 
 not afford the depletion: his house and farm 
 had both been running down, growing more 
 and more shabby. 
 
 The two young people had their own opin- 
 ions of the complication. April, at the age of 
 ten, used to wish she were a boy so that she 
 could fight and thrash their neighbor's son; 
 she considered him, next to his father, the 
 most detestable person on earth. At present, 
 having had a liberal education, she exonerated 
 him entirely. March also, who had once been 
 consumed with rage and bitterness against the 
 Maynadiers, came back from college with a 
 nobly impartial mind, and was disposed to 
 smile indulgently upon the foolishness of his
 
 MARCH AND APRIL. 185 
 
 parents and their enemies. At the same time 
 both were anxious not to be disloyal to their 
 respective elders; and so they had to keep 
 these opinions to themselves. 
 
 That summer, when they had both just 
 graduated, the estrangement between them 
 was supposed to be so completely established 
 that precautions were relaxed. Lowe said to 
 his wife: " I'll be hanged if I'll live any longer 
 under this terrorism. March won't see any- 
 thing of the girl any way, and if he does, 
 there's no danger now. He must pass the 
 summer here." The Major arrived at a corre- 
 sponding decision. "I can't find a tenant for 
 the place this year," he said : "and, besides, 
 why should we always be running away or 
 sending Prillie away? It amounts simply to 
 being tyrannized over by this man Lowe. I 
 won't submit to it ! If he doesn't want to keep 
 his young cub here, I'll let him settle that for 
 himself." 
 
 Consequently, April stayed too; and the 
 two old gentlemen rejoiced in the idea that 
 they were offering a mutual defiance.
 
 1 86 MARCH AND APRIL. 
 
 II. 
 
 March strolled down to the remoter end of 
 the old lane one afternoon, carrying his gun 
 with the purpose of firing at a mark. Looking 
 for some suitable target, he came suddenly 
 upon the Major's forgotten trespass-signboard. 
 It was battered and defaced, and brought back 
 a boyish memory to him. "Funny thing!" he 
 said aloud; "I had almost forgotten the time 
 when I came down here and threw rocks at 
 that board. Gosh ! how I hated it then ! 
 Well, there's the M for Maynadier left yet: 
 that'll do first-rate for a mark, if I can only 
 get a clear range." His father's opposition 
 sign stood not far from the other, intact, but 
 he was averse to attacking that; so, after 
 selecting his position, he opened upon the M 
 with his breech-loader, and demolished it in a 
 few shots. After this, the amusement palled 
 upon him. He laid his gun aside, sat upon a 
 bank of sward, and began to meditate. He 
 could not help thinking that he had done an 
 absurd thing, in blazing away at the old sign-
 
 MARCH AND APRIL. 187 
 
 board, which he really had no right to mal- 
 treat. True, the whole situation between his 
 father and the Major was absurd ; but ought 
 he to allow himself to share in it? He won- 
 dered what April was like ; it was a long time 
 now since he had even caught a passing 
 glimpse of her. 
 
 Suddenly there was a rustling in the bushes 
 not far away, which caused him to spring up ; 
 and the next moment he beheld a young 
 woman's figure emerging from behind a leafy 
 covert, to pass across the space that intervened 
 before another thicket, on the way toward the 
 Major's house. A shape so lithe and graceful 
 that, clad as it was in a close dress of evanes- 
 cent green, it made him fancy for an instant 
 that the visible spirit of Springtime stood be- 
 fore him, waywardly returning out of season ! 
 March had been so noiseless, even in rising to 
 his feet, that the girl was within arm's length 
 before she saw him. With a quick turn of her 
 head she started, then stood still, trembling 
 inwardly as if in unison with the black-birch 
 sapling beside her, which still quivered from 
 the touch she had given it in passing.
 
 l MARCH AND APRIL. 
 
 March bowed, holding his little round cap 
 in his hand. "Miss Maynadier?" he said, with 
 a questioning inflection, though he was in no 
 manner of doubt. "I hope I didn't startle 
 you?" 
 
 With the faintest ripple of disdain on her 
 lips, April answered, "Oh, not not at all;" 
 her involuntary double negative giving truth- 
 fulness to the statement. 
 
 "I meant," said he, embarrassed for his own 
 part, "by my shooting. Did you hear the 
 gun?" 
 
 "Yes ; but I wasn't frightened ; I was some 
 distance away then. I I didn't know it was 
 you." 
 
 "Then you would have been frightened," he 
 queried, attempting to smile, "if you had 
 known who it was?" 
 
 "That doesn't follow," she returned, dis- 
 tantly. She gathered her dress in one hand, 
 to go. 
 
 "I thought no one ever came through here," 
 he said. "Otherwise I wouldn't have done 
 such a thing as to shoot." 
 
 "I seldom come," April informed him,
 
 MARCH AND APRIL. 189 
 
 coldly. "It only happened that I had been 
 down the road to see a poor woman ; and I 
 thought I was perfectly safe in walking on my 
 father's land." 
 
 A shadow seemed to cross the young man's 
 face, thrown from a threatening cloud ; but he 
 mustered resolution and dispelled it. "Don't 
 let us discuss the question of ownership," said 
 he. "Why should we keep that up?" 
 
 His expression was so candid and friendly, 
 she feared lest he should offer to shake hands 
 across the old roadway, and she answered in 
 haste: "It is very unfortunate that we have 
 met here, Mr. Lowe." 
 
 "The misfortune," he replied, "is that we 
 should meet so like strangers. But you may 
 be sure of one thing, Miss Maynadier: there is 
 no danger of my shooting anywhere in this 
 neighborhood again. Wherever you choose 
 to walk no matter who owns the land I shall 
 consider the place sacred." 
 
 It sounded fearfully bold ; he had not fore- 
 seen at all that he was about to speak so 
 strongly ; but he was always going head over 
 heels, and, besides, the magic of April's pres-
 
 19 MARCH AND APRIL. 
 
 ence somehow charmed the words from him 
 before he was aware. April herself was 
 thrilled by them ; but she said only, "You 
 seem to forget that we are strangers. We 
 really have no right to be talking here. I am 
 going." 
 
 Her 'voice was low and fluttering, like the 
 notes of a bird in the surprise and distress of 
 actual capture. 
 
 "Wait one moment," he pressed her. "Did 
 you notice the mark I had been firing at?" 
 
 "No oh, yes; that was it the old sign. I 
 saw it was freshly splintered. It's a shame to 
 destroy poor papa's property; for you must 
 admit that that belongs to him." And pretty 
 April flushed with an indignation which she 
 would have been glad to relieve by sobs. 
 
 "I do admit it," said March, with a contri- 
 tion that made him handsomer than ever; 
 "and I'm sony I did it. Please believe me, it 
 was purely thoughtless." 
 
 "Thank you," said April sweetly, brightening 
 again at once. "Another time you'd better 
 fire at your father's sign." Instantly after- 
 ward, to his astonishment, she fled at a run-
 
 MARCH AND APRIL. 191 
 
 ning pace and was out of sight, before he could 
 decide from the sound with which she ended 
 whether she was laughing or crying. 
 
 The interview had been so unexpected and 
 brief that he could have doubted her being 
 there at all. Was it really April whose voice 
 he had heard, or only the summer breeze mur- 
 muring over the verdant maize, patting the 
 little faces of the upturned leaves till they 
 smiled and shook in the sunlight? The sun 
 shone so brightly on the moving twigs and 
 branches among which she had stood, that he 
 was dazzled, and felt as if he had been convers- 
 ing with an illusion. 
 
 But there was no illusion about the hapless 
 target. A great row ensued when the Major 
 discovered what had been done to it. His 
 lawyer immediately wrote to Lowe's lawyer 
 demanding reparation, and Lowe's lawyer 
 wrote back a refusal; and there was every 
 prospect of a new minor suit for trespass and 
 damages. March promptly concluded that 
 April had told her father of their meeting and 
 his confession ; but it cut him to the heart to 
 think so. Evidently the encounter was not to
 
 I9 2 MARCH AND APRIL. 
 
 her a treasured, secret episode, as it was to 
 him. But why should she have been so mean 
 as to "tell on" him? That had not been her 
 custom when she was a little girl. He 
 stormed and complained about it to himself in 
 strict retirement, but presently reflected : "Oh, 
 well, we're not children now, and people 
 change so as they grow up. She's a woman, 
 too. Women don't understand honor in our 
 sense." In the end he took a daring resolve. 
 
 The Major, the next day, ran against a tor- 
 pedo in the shape of an innocent visiting-card 
 bearing the words "March Lowe." After the 
 first shock he inspected the seemingly explo- 
 sive card more closely, and began to think he 
 had mistaken its nature : it was probably a flag 
 of truce, bringing notice of surrender. "Show 
 the gentleman in," said he to the alarmed 
 servant. 
 
 March came in, quiet as a lamb. He had 
 brushed his belligerent hair into peaceful 
 order, and was dressed with punctilious perfec- 
 tion. He came to offer an apology for his 
 assault upon the non-combatant signboard, 
 and to say that he, not his father, was the
 
 MARCH AND APRIL. 193 
 
 offender ; it was his own affair, and he begged 
 to put up a new board at his own expense. 
 The Major was amazed, flustered, pleased, and 
 yet fearful that he might compromise himself 
 by accepting the offer. 
 
 "It shows an admirable disposition in you, 
 my boy pardon me Mr. March !" he said, at 
 last. "But er I think such a step will em- 
 barrass your relations ah at home." 
 
 "Never mind that, sir. I take the responsi- 
 bility, and I must insist on replacing this 
 property." 
 
 Finally the warrior agreed to the proposal. 
 
 "There is one thing more I wish to say, sir," 
 March continued. "You were informed of the 
 damage I did, but you do not seem to know 
 that I at once expressed my regret." 
 
 "To whom, then?" 
 
 "To your daughter, of course." 
 
 The Major stared aghast. 
 
 "Yes," said March ; "when she told you of 
 the offense, she ought to have told you of the 
 apology, too." 
 
 "My daughter, sir? She never told me at 
 all. It was one of my men found it out. But
 
 194 MARCH AND APRIL. 
 
 I should be glad to learn how you came to 
 speak to my daughter." 
 
 March saw, too late, the terrible mistake he 
 had made. 
 
 He stammered, and tried to avoid explana- 
 tion ; but the Major insisted. March's temper 
 rose; his hair also got out of order: he made a 
 defiant confession, and stood glaring at the 
 man who, it was now clear, could never be his 
 father-in-law. 
 
 "I see through your maneuver now!" cried 
 the old soldier, with a sardonic sniff, indicating 
 that he smelled gunpowder and liked it. "In- 
 gratiating yourself with me, eh? clandestine 
 meetings with my daughter take me in front 
 and flank at same time, eh? Well, sir, it stops 
 here. I refuse your overtures. I'll have noth- 
 ing to do with property restored at your 
 expense, young man. If it's restored at all, 
 your father's got to do it ; and, what's more, I 
 shall write to him to keep his son off here- 
 after." 
 
 "As if I were a dog, sir?" shouted the young 
 fellow, in a towering passion. "By thunder, if 
 you were not so old But I'll just tell you,
 
 MARCH AND APRIL. 195 
 
 no one can whistle me on or off, and I forbid 
 you to speak to me in that style." 
 
 "Forbid as much as you please," the Major 
 hurled back, scornfully. "It's cheap, for I 
 don't propose to speak to you at all." 
 
 "Nor I to you, sir! 
 
 And March went out like a lion, and drove 
 down the Major's avenue roaring. But he hit 
 upon an ingenious method of consoling him- 
 self. He repaired to the place where the signs 
 were, in the dead of night ; pulled up both his 
 father's and Maynadier's; carried them pain- 
 fully to the Hudson ; and dropped them into 
 its tide. No one could discover who had done 
 the deed ; and March was so loud in his denun- 
 ciations of the Major, that Lowe even forgave 
 him his disloyal advances to the enemy. 
 
 These events made poor April quite un- 
 happy. "But there's one thing gained," she 
 said to herself. "March will never think of 
 going near the old road now, because he won't 
 want to meet me ; so I can walk there as much 
 as I please." 
 
 With a wisdom matched only by hers, 
 March also divined that, in view of the renewed
 
 I9 6 MARCH AND APRIL. 
 
 hostilities, April would carefully avoid the 
 debatable ground, where there would be peril 
 of encountering him. He therefore took to 
 strolling through it, disconsolately, at frequent 
 intervals. 
 
 And they met, but were not frightened. 
 They met again and again, and talked, and 
 came to an excellent understanding. The wild 
 barrier sheltered them against observation from 
 either side, but it could not prevent a catbird 
 from watching them sharply while they 
 strolled along arm in arm ; and how that cat- 
 bird exerted himself to warble for them his 
 choicest variety of mocking songs ! There was 
 one kind of music he could not imitate, how- 
 ever that was the sweet, trustful murmur of 
 April's voice as she exchanged confidences 
 with March. On other days, when they could 
 get away long enough without attracting 
 notice, they would repair to a particularly 
 secluded spot, where March read aloud to her, 
 chiefly poetry, for which April, as he discov- 
 ered, had a great fondness. At this time their 
 special enthusiasm was for Philip Tyrwhitt, a 
 young New York poet, who had just "come
 
 MARCH AND APRIL. *97 
 
 out"; "a rosebud poet," March called him. 
 They pored over his volume with the greatest 
 delight, for its pages were suffused with the 
 matin glow of their own love, until he became 
 for them an inspired guide, a mythical divin- 
 ity, whom they imagined as living with ideal 
 grandeur in some higher atmosphere. The 
 bare truth is that, just then, Tyrwhitt having 
 with difficulty secured a brief vacation from 
 the hot city was staying at a small seaside 
 boarding-house where he paid five dollars a 
 week. But the lovers decided to write to him 
 separately, in care of his publishers, and tell 
 him what pleasure he had given them. Tyr- 
 whitt received the letters with joy; they did 
 not come together ; but he observed the pecu- 
 liar names, and, taking it for granted that, 
 being so unusual, they were assumed ones, he 
 did not answer the notes, but laid them away 
 among the few paper treasures that were the 
 only reward his book brought him. 
 
 Happy as they were, though, the young 
 pair suffered from not being able to see one 
 another as often as they wished, from the 
 great caution they had to observe. "There's
 
 198 MARCH AND APRIL. 
 
 only one way for it," March declared, tempestu- 
 ously ; "we shall have to get married, and let 
 the old folks make the best of it afterward." 
 
 April was terrified at the thought ; the flush 
 of hope in her cheeks faded away to a wind- 
 flower white, and she shook as though she 
 felt the chill of a wintry air. But this phe- 
 nomenon was only a natural incident of the 
 transition from a frost-bound state of things. 
 
 Every time they met, March urged the idea 
 with vehemence, and April resisted it. They 
 came nearly to the point of quarrel. "You are 
 so masterful," said she. "You insist so. You 
 don't seem to see what a terribly serious thing 
 it would be for me, how much more it involves 
 for me than for you. It's like tyranny on 
 your part." And he replied, "But, April, you 
 are so changeable ! One time you tell me that 
 everything depends on me, and that you never 
 can be happy until we have escaped from all 
 this mist of uncertainty; and then, when it 
 comes to the point, you veer around and 
 refuse to escape." So they went on fretting 
 together, until it seemed as though they were 
 going to supply a sequel to the disagreement
 
 MARCH AND APRIL. 199 
 
 of the elders. But then there came a Sunday 
 when they were in church. The two families 
 had pews in close neighborhood, both being 
 too proud to exchange them for others at a 
 greater distance ; and when the prayer went up 
 that all who were present should be delivered 
 from "envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharita- 
 bleness," it found an echo in the two young 
 hearts that repeated it almost as if it had been 
 uttered then for the first time. As they filed 
 out of the church, March and April managed 
 to exchange a glance of mutual trust and for- 
 giveness. 
 
 In a week or two a grand party was given at 
 the Lowes', to which everybody was invited 
 except the Maynadiers. March danced and 
 talked furiously, but was gloomy and ab- 
 stracted nevertheless ; and all the young ladies 
 who were there went away with the conviction 
 that he had been spoiled at college. The 
 Maynadiers, not to be outdone, summoned 
 local society to a ball in their run-down old 
 mansion a fortnight later, which, of course, the 
 Lowes were not asked to attend. But after 
 everybody else in the Lowe villa had gone to
 
 200 MARCH AND APRIL. 
 
 bed, a stalwart young man, wrapped in a 
 voluminous light cloak and finished off with a 
 slouch hat, strode forth and descended to the 
 old road, where, lying among the bushes, he 
 watched the lights and listened to the music 
 of the revelry in the Major's house, till the 
 last lamp-gleam in a certain window was extin- 
 guished. And April, sitting by that window 
 listened to the mournful chirring of the insects 
 in the grass and trees, which at this hour 
 sounded so melancholy and purposeless. The 
 insects supply a mournful refrain to the joyous 
 chant of summer, by way of contrast and com- 
 pensation. "But they are monotonous," 
 thought April. "They have only a single idea 
 to stick to their one little querulous note. 
 Ah, why should we human beings, who know 
 so much better, go on doing the same thing?" 
 
 For all this, she could not be persuaded to 
 take the step which, in her lover's opinion, 
 would settle everything. The whole summer 
 passed, and nothing decisive was done. When 
 winter came, March was regularly installed in 
 his father's office in New York ; but as soon as 
 April was sent down to the city to spend the
 
 MARCH AND APRIL. 2OI 
 
 season with some kind friends who were ambi- 
 tious to introduce her into society, he discov- 
 ered that it was impossible to attend to busi- 
 ness properly and go up to Yonkers every 
 night. So he took a lodging in town. April's 
 chaperon was so vigilant that, although the 
 young people several times found themselves 
 in the same room, at various entertainments, 
 they never could get a word apart. For March 
 to call was out of the question, and it was just 
 as impossible to communicate by letter. Alto- 
 gether or perhaps I should say, all alone 
 March grew exasperated under these trials of 
 his patience. Yet a trial still more severe was 
 in store for him. The matron in whose charge 
 April was placed bore sealed orders from the 
 Major, who could not afford to come to town 
 with his wife ; and those orders permitted a 
 moderate discretion. In pursuance thereof she 
 gave encouragement to an attractive young 
 gentleman by the name of Swan, who mani- 
 fested a great interest in Miss Maynadier. Do 
 not suppose that I am going to rehearse the 
 old tale of the hated rival whose heels loaded 
 with gold turn the scale. Swan was not as
 
 202 MARCH AND APRIL. 
 
 well off as March Lowe, but he was comfort- 
 ably provided for; he was also good, honest, 
 and agreeable a most dangerous combination. 
 And the Major and Mrs. Major were quite 
 agreed that it would be well to solve the prob- 
 lem of April's future by letting her nestle un- 
 der Swan's wing. Naturally, March got wind of 
 what was going on ; he heard of Swan's public 
 attentions and incessant visits ; and the stir that 
 they aroused in him all but carried him off his 
 feet. "What a frightful winter this is !" people 
 said, complaining of the weather. It was in- 
 deed very cold ; and if you had heard all of 
 March's tempestuous ejaculations, which he 
 hurled at the four corners of his room, you 
 would have said that the ominous rumblings 
 and whistlings around the chimney and the 
 windows of the dwelling where April abode 
 were simply the outcries of his discontent. 
 
 Hurrying across Fifth Avenue, one afternoon, 
 he met her coming up the fashionable thorough- 
 fare. It was one of those mild, yielding days 
 that show a willingness to glide over the verge 
 into spring-time. April came toward him in a 
 suit of gray, with edgings of soft, whitish fur
 
 MARCH AND APRIL. 203 
 
 around her throat and wrists, like the last lin- 
 gering drifts of snow. He took his place by 
 her side and walked on with her. 
 
 "Oh, you ought not to do this !" said she. 
 "We must never be seen together!" 
 
 No doubt it was an anachronism, a very 
 uncalendrical thing, for March and April to 
 appear in company; but March persisted in 
 keeping step with her until he had made a sharp 
 and clear declaration that, come what might, 
 he was resolved not to be thwarted by Swan, 
 and that he should go to visit her in the mat- 
 ron's den if she did not immediately consent to 
 elope with him. "Well, you know I can't pos- 
 sibly run away with you," said April plain- 
 tively; "so you will have to come and see me 
 there. But I I will write you when." 
 
 In due time he received her note of warning 
 and heeded it, seeking her door on an evening 
 when artless indisposition kept her at home 
 alone. This time March entered gruff and 
 threatening, like a lion again. He was fully 
 charged with freezing jealousy. "This man 
 Swan!" he exclaimed. "I want to have it 
 explained! If things go on as they are now,
 
 204 MARCH AND APRIL. 
 
 I shall believe no matter what you say that 
 you're going to many him." 
 
 But April was so unexpectedly sweet and 
 mild that he could not resist her blandish- 
 ments. His tawny mane was alarmingly ruf- 
 fled, but involuntarily he began to smooth 
 it down with his hand. April looked pale, but 
 she hesitated no longer. She promised to give 
 up bridesmaids and the reception and all the 
 rest, and marry him where and how he 
 pleased. "It's a pity," said he, "that that poet 
 of ours, Tyrwhitt, isn't a minister; for, if he 
 were, he would arrange to marry us, I'm sure, in 
 the thickets of the old roadway. There would 
 be something appropriate in that, wouldn't 
 there, April?" 
 
 The light rested deliciously on the pale-gold 
 hair above April's eyes as she looked up to 
 answer him. "How lovely that would be!" 
 she cried. But then in a breath's space she 
 moved her head ; the light was lost, and she 
 moaned : "It can't be so, and we can not 
 even stand up before the world and say that 
 we are one." 
 
 "Oh, well," March rejoined frigidly, and his
 
 MARCH AND APRIL. 205 
 
 voice was like an icicle dropped upon a flaming 
 columbine "if that's the way you feel, per- 
 haps we might as well give up everything." 
 
 "No, no," cried April, in a shower of tears, 
 "I can not give you up !" And so she fell 
 upon his shoulder. 
 
 When he left the house March was as gentle 
 as a lamb. Meanwhile Tyrwhitt, the poet, of 
 whom they had thought for an instant, was 
 on his way home to his lodgings, in worn-out 
 clothes, wondering how he was to live during 
 the next month. 
 
 It would be useless to detail the commotion 
 caused by the elopement. When the news 
 reached Mr. Lowe, that supposititious breeze 
 against which he had so long been striving 
 stopped instantly, and, figuratively speaking, 
 he fell prone forward, and became quiescent. 
 On the other hand, Major Maynadier, who had 
 faithfully stood bolt upright, toppled over and 
 fell backward. Such was the effect of a single 
 gust of impulse on the part of March. 
 
 The feud of the two families came to an 
 end. The Major and his friend discontinued
 
 206 MARCH AND APRIL. 
 
 their pending suits; a grand reconciliation 
 party was held ; and the unkempt growth 
 which had severed the adjoining estates was 
 cut down to a genteel hedge, completely oblit- 
 erating the whilom source of strife. Shortly 
 after the wedding celebration there appeared 
 in a magazine some verses by Philip Tyrwhitt, 
 entitled 
 
 MARCH AND APRIL. 
 
 March and April, hand in hand, 
 Wandered through the dreamy land ; 
 March with wild and careless bluster, 
 Like a warrior going to muster ; 
 April laughing, light and bland, 
 Holding flower-buds all a-cluster. 
 
 But, before the sun had set, 
 April's eyes with tears were wet ; 
 Ceased her rosy lips their smiling. 
 March, though eager in beguiling 
 All her fanciful regret, 
 Won her with his tender wiling. 
 
 Then together, hand in hand, 
 
 Glad again they roamed the land. 
 
 All the land was now awaking ; 
 
 Birds sang loudly, buds were breaking; 
 
 " This," said March, " was what I planned 
 
 For our bridal merry-making ! " 
 
 Most of the critics paid no attention to
 
 MARCH AND APRIL. 207 
 
 these modest stanzas ; but those who deigned 
 to comment on them in the daily papers 
 observed that it was simply absurd to conceive 
 of two spring months making their appearance 
 together. 
 
 "Do you think it absurd?" March asked his 
 wife, referring to one of these sagacious 
 notices. 
 
 "Just look me in the eyes and ask me that 
 again !" April answered. "But how do you 
 suppose Tyrwhitt knew?" 
 
 How indeed? He certainly never had met 
 either the bride or bridegroom, and knew noth- 
 ing of their history. Perhaps the names 
 signed to their tributary letters haunted him, 
 and prompted his invention. No one ever 
 fathomed the secret ; probably Tyrwhitt him- 
 self could not have explained how he came to 
 write those verses. Of one thing I am sure; 
 and this is, that we have here an accredited 
 instance of a poet's fantasy being carped at by 
 the critics but fully confirmed by the reality.
 
 "RAISING CAIN." 
 
 IT was probably a great surprise to Johnny 
 Oxhead to find himself born. At all events, 
 he continued to wear throughout life an aston- 
 ished and rather dazed expression, as if he had 
 never quite managed to make out why he was 
 in the world. 
 
 He was the son of humble parents, and had 
 good reason himself to be still humbler than 
 they ; for he did not even know who his par- 
 ents were. They doubtless had some clew to 
 their own identity, but he had none. When he 
 appeared in the world, they disappeared at 
 least, so far as their relation to him was con- 
 cerned. 
 
 Like Moses, he was found among the bul- 
 rushes not of the Nile, but of the Hacken- 
 sack in New Jersey where he had been left 
 with every prospect of closing a brief existence 
 as obscurely as he had begun it. There was 
 208
 
 "RAISING CW/AV 209 
 
 no convenient Pharaoh's daughter at hand to 
 rescue him ; but he was picked up by Oxhead, 
 a poor fellow, half fisherman and half day labor- 
 er, who happened to pass that way in his boat. 
 He had more children of his own than he 
 knew what to do with ; but, probably for that 
 very reason, took pity on the foundling, carried 
 him home, provided him with a name, and gave 
 him a start in life. Johnny stayed with him 
 until he was six years old. Then inheriting 
 a tendency to disappear, as his parents had 
 done he decamped to Jersey City, where he 
 entered upon a variegated and uncertain street- 
 boy career. 
 
 From bootblacking he rose to selling news- 
 papers, and by some mysterious process ab- 
 sorbed from them a slight knowledge of print. 
 His favorite reading was the head-lines ; these 
 were the easiest to grapple with. Being a 
 newsboy, he thought it a misfortune to have 
 papers in his hands long enough to peruse the 
 contents carefully; but he felt a keen profes- 
 sional joy in all accounts of violent crimes and 
 deadly disaster, and sometimes, when business 
 was over, paused to spell them out and ponder
 
 210 "RAISING CAIN" 
 
 them. "Fearful Loss of Life!" or "Horrible 
 Murder!" these were the phrases in which he 
 most delighted, for they generally had the 
 effect of increasing his limited income. 
 
 By degrees he became a sort of specialist in 
 this department. The most interesting thing 
 in the world, to him, was the variety of ways in 
 which human beings could be suddenly and 
 unpleasantly sent out of it; and he had not 
 the slightest doubt that this was the chief topic 
 in other people's minds. Seeing the promi- 
 nence given to these matters in the journals, 
 he naturally concluded that the proper study 
 of mankind was violent death. 
 
 Emigrating from Jersey to New York by 
 means of a free passage on a ferryboat, he be- 
 came a sort of authority among the small pat- 
 rons of the Newsboys' Home, on poisoning, 
 stabbing, highway robbery, railroad accidents, 
 mysterious murders and lynching. 
 
 "What are lynching, any way?" a little fellow 
 with pale and wizened cheeks and a meditative 
 turn of mind once asked him, at an evening 
 session of the boys with whom he consorted. 
 "Why do they call it that? somethin' like
 
 "RAISING CAIN:' 211 
 
 pinching, aint it? pinching the life out of a 
 feller?" 
 
 "No," said Johnny, with disdain. He had 
 thought over the point a good deal, and had 
 imagined an origin of the term, which he now 
 firmly believed to be a fact. "You see," he 
 went on,"there was a man onst who did a mean 
 thing somethin' goldarned mean I forget 
 what 'twas. But some other fellers got after 
 him for it. And he useter go round in a cart 
 what had a tailboard to it. Yer see? Well, 
 they got after him. They found out he done 
 it, and they caught him while he was drivin' 
 the cart ; and one feller he .just took the linch- 
 pin out of the tailboard and drove it into that 
 man's head and killed him. That's how they 
 come to call it linching!" 
 
 The meditative boy's face became, if possi- 
 ble, more wizened than before, with the intens- 
 ity of fascinated horror caused by this explana- 
 tion. One or two listeners made skeptical re- 
 marks, but they were promptly outvoted by 
 the others, because Johnny Oxhead was an 
 authority. 
 
 Nevertheless Johnny's life was a dreary
 
 212 "RAISING CAIN:' 
 
 and forlorn one. He was half-starved, and his 
 attempt to sustain nervous energy by subsist- 
 ing partly on cigar stumps and half-burned cig- 
 arettes picked up on the streets did not mate- 
 rially improve his health. To add to his misery 
 he found that, in spite of his wretched diet, he 
 was getting bigger every year ; and when he 
 arrived at sixteen he had outgrown his useful- 
 ness as a newsboy. The smaller boys, who 
 were continually coming from somewhere or 
 nowhere, and crowding into the business, 
 turned against him, and insisted on his get- 
 ting out of the way. At first, relying on his 
 superior size, he scorned and defied their 
 opposition. But he had no allies. All the 
 other big boys were branching into other lines 
 of work; and the small ones, humming around 
 him like a swarm of gnats, finally drove him 
 from the field. 
 
 He was reduced to taking occasional jobs as 
 a hooter, to carry "extras" through the city at 
 unwonted hours, shouting out: "Oh, the extra! 
 Read the extra!" He was always accompa- 
 nied by another hooter, of about his own size 
 and age; but while Oxhead yelled out the
 
 "RAISING CAIN." 213 
 
 words in a hoarse, agitated tone, his compan- 
 ion, at the other side of the street, repeated 
 them in a higher key, so as to produce an artis- 
 tic contrast. Oxhead's partner in the team 
 was Josh Ingalls, and they often achieved great 
 results as they went around the streets making 
 night hideous together. But the occupation 
 was too uncertain, and Oxhead, finding the 
 world against him, and this kind of life unprof- 
 itable, drifted to the docks, and became a long- 
 shoreman. 
 
 For several years he went on gaining a liveli- 
 hood in this employment. He worked fear- 
 fully hard, lodged wretchedly, had little to eat, 
 and was without home or friends. At times 
 he would be unable for weeks 'together to get 
 work ; and then he drifted along the docks or 
 through the streets leading to them, as a beg- 
 gar or tramp, with no place in which to lay 
 his head, and existing only by charity. Some 
 nights he slept in a corner on the wharves; 
 on other nights in cellar-ways or at the sta- 
 tion houses. When business revived again, he 
 resumed the old round of toil, getting kicks 
 and cuffs, a good many hard words and very
 
 214 "RAISING CAIN:' 
 
 small pay, for he was not a particularly 
 valuable hand. It is not to be wondered at 
 that the problem of life puzzled and troubled 
 him, or that his constitutional look of dull 
 surprise became more fixed than ever. 
 
 At last, in a dim way, a little ray of bright- 
 ness pierced the fog of misery in which he 
 existed. Several times in his work around the 
 steamers and canal-boats, he had seen and talked 
 with Ellen Skeeney, the daughter of a captain 
 of a coal-barge. Ellen was not a beauty, but 
 she was a tall, shapely girl, with a rather 
 pleasant face, and seemed to take a fancy to 
 him. Oxhead, on his part, fell in love with 
 her; at least, so far as he could tell for all his 
 ideas were vague and hazy he was in love 
 with her. He did not see her often, because 
 she lived with her family on the barge, and was 
 off on the river most of the time. But he be- 
 gan a sort of courtship, although his social 
 position was considered much inferior to hers; 
 and, apart from the girl's liking for him, he had 
 not much chance of success, unless old Skeeney 
 should secure him a place in the barge business 
 where he could work regularly.
 
 "RAISING CAIN." 215 
 
 At this juncture Josh Ingalls, his old partner 
 in "extra" hooting, reappeared. Oxhead had 
 not seen Josh for several years. They met 
 accidentally, and Josh, being very hard up, 
 asked for a little money. Oxhead happened 
 to have some, and loaned him a liberal sum 
 an entire dollar. In a few days he found that 
 Josh, too, had begun to engage himself for jobs 
 about the wharves and ships. Very soon they 
 became rivals in this line. Josh was smarter, 
 stronger, steadier than Oxhead, and frequently 
 displaced him. Moreover he came to know 
 Ellen Skeeney, and showed a tendency to sup- 
 plant Oxhead in her affections. 
 
 Worse still, he postponed payment of the 
 dollar loan so long that Oxhead began to grow 
 desperate about it. His mind frequently re- 
 verted to its old lore concerning the destruction 
 of human beings, and he considered whether, 
 if Josh still refused to return the dollar and 
 Ellen's heart, it would not be well to settle the 
 account by taking Josh's heart's blood as pay- 
 ment. This mode of settling the debt struck 
 him as being quite satisfactory. 
 
 Toward dusk, one day, he was passing from
 
 216 "RAISING CAIN." 
 
 one wharf to another along the heavy string- 
 piece at the inner end of the Cunard dock. He 
 had just heard from Ellen herself that she 
 had accepted an offer of marriage from Josh 
 Ingalls ; and as he roved along from dock to 
 dock, with no idea as to where he was going, 
 his thoughts were divided between a desire to 
 throw himself into the river and a fierce long- 
 ing to take bloody revenge upon Josh, if he 
 could find him. There was a high pile of lum- 
 ber heaped on the quay, leaving but a narrow 
 passage between it and the sheer edge of the 
 dock. He chose to take the narrow passage, 
 where he would for a moment be screened 
 from all observation. But just as he passed be- 
 hind the piled lumber he saw a figure sitting 
 under its shadow in the dusk, the figure of a 
 man, busily examining something that he held 
 in his hands. 
 
 It was Josh Ingalls, and he was engaged in 
 counting over a small bunch of soiled bank- 
 notes. He did not observe the approach of 
 his rival. 
 
 Like a flash, Oxhead darted upon him, 
 caught him by the throat, and wrenched away
 
 "RAISING CAIN: 217 
 
 the slender roll of bills. Ingalls grappled with 
 him, and they struggled furiously on the nar- 
 row space between the pile of lumber and the 
 edge of the stringpiece which overhung the 
 water. At first, so Oxhead afterward said, he 
 meant no more than to seize the money, take 
 his dollar, and keep the rest long enough to em- 
 barrass Ingalls in his engagement to Ellen. 
 This seemed to him a mild and justifiable re- 
 venge. But when their hand-to-hand struggle 
 began, it became a question which should throw 
 the other into the river. Oxhead was much 
 the more powerful of the two. They were en- 
 tirely concealed from scrutiny by the haap of 
 lumber on one side, and in two other directions 
 by the blank walls of the huge sheds on the 
 wharves inclosing the dock. 
 
 The fight was short Oxhead threw Ingalls ; 
 knelt upon him ; held him firmly by the throat 
 with one hand, and then, mad with rage, drew 
 a knife which he wore inside his belt, gave his 
 helpless enemy two or three savage stabs, and 
 then threw him heavily over into the water, 
 and listened to the dull, plunging sound and 
 momentary splash with which the body sank.
 
 2l8 "RAISING CAIN." 
 
 Oxhead was a murderer! He realized the 
 fact fully, on the instant. But, instead of re- 
 morse, a wild exultation swept through his 
 heart. For the first time in his life, it seemed 
 to him, he breathed and expanded as a full- 
 grown man. All the obscure sufferings of his 
 aimless and wretched career were made up for 
 by this one moment of triumph. Besides, he 
 was safe ! No one could have seen him doing 
 the deed. The only other presence there be- 
 sides himself and the corpse now floating in the 
 tide, was that of a big Cunard steamer, the prow 
 of which loomed up in a black and ugly way 
 through the gathering darkness. There was 
 a dim lamp burning above the deck, near 
 the bow, and the hawse-hole for the anchor 
 chain, close to the cutwater, seemed to stare 
 from the black hulk like a monstrous eye. But, 
 luckily, the eye had no power of sight. Never- 
 theless, Oxhead shuddered as he noticed the 
 resemblance. He began to feel restless, and 
 hurried from the spot. 
 
 He went forth with the brand of Cain on his 
 brow; but no one looking at him would have 
 suspected that it was there. He wore simply
 
 "RAISING CAIN." 219 
 
 the old look of dense perplexity which had al- 
 ways clouded his face. * * * There were no 
 blood-stains on his clothes. 
 
 He stuffed the paper money into his pocket 
 before he emerged from behind the lumber. 
 His sense of elation began to return presently. 
 He strolled about from one to another of the 
 longshoremen's convivial resorts, produced his 
 money with freedom, treated, drank, and was 
 as gay as he knew how to be. But before he 
 crept away to his squalid lodging he went back 
 once more to West Street, opposite the dock, 
 and, slouching along on the side furthest from 
 the river, watched to see if there were any stir 
 going on that might indicate the finding of the 
 body. Everything was quiet. He went to 
 bed. 
 
 The next morning the papers had accounts 
 of "Foul Play" and a ''Horrible Murder." Ox- 
 head, starting out early to get his cup of coffee 
 and plate *-A buckwheat cakes, heard a small 
 ragged Hoy calling out the words close by, and 
 at oner shrank back into the hall of his dingy 
 lodging. But, a little later, he ventured forth 
 again. What need had he to fear anything?
 
 220 "RAISING CAIN." 
 
 He did not even trouble himself to look at a 
 paper, until two or three hours afterward. 
 Then, slowly reading the report, he was startled 
 to find that a sailor on the Cunarder had seen 
 the fight and the killing, and had given a de- 
 scription of his appearance by which he might 
 possibly be traced. But he did not attempt 
 flight. He believed that he had had ample 
 cause for murdering Ingalls. He knew the 
 penalties of killing, but he knew also that mur- 
 derers are often acquitted. In any case, 
 he had done one of the deeds in which, he felt 
 sure, the world takes the most interest, and he 
 was not inclined to run away and lose all the 
 credit of his work. That evening, after toiling 
 along shore all day, he was arrested and locked 
 up in the Tombs. 
 
 Oxhead was now only 21. The reporters 
 brought into play various devices of rhetoric 
 pathos, horror, indignant virtue to emphasize 
 his adolescent depravity. The case attracted a 
 great deal of notice. "Yes, I done it, and I 
 had a right to," Oxhead declared with sullen 
 bluntness; and, instead of setting people 
 against him, this assertion appeared to win
 
 "RAISING CAIN." 221 
 
 sympathy. The story of his luckless love affair 
 came out. Many women called at the prison 
 to see him. Nearly every day he received 
 flowers from feminine sympathizers. 
 
 One morning the grated door of his cell was 
 opened, and a benign-looking maiden lady of 
 middle age and of high social position came in, 
 sat down, talked gently with him, and pro- 
 ceeded to read aloud to him for an hour from 
 an instructive book, very little of which he un- 
 derstood. But he appreciated her effort. He 
 had killed a man, and knew that he was wor- 
 thy of all the attention that the public had to 
 bestow upon him ; and he saw that this sweet 
 elderly maiden comprehended that fact. So he 
 forgave her for the dullness of the book. 
 
 A little fund was raised by his admirers, to 
 employ a good lawyer, and he was greatly 
 pleased by the serious, confidential interviews 
 which this gentleman held with him. He aston- 
 ished the lawyer on one occasion, though, by say- 
 ing to him in a burst of enthusiasm : "I'm only 
 a poor, uneddicated feller, fiut, I tell you what, 
 I never did expect to be a great public character 
 as I am now. This is the best part of my life !"
 
 222 "KAISING CAIN" 
 
 And, as he looked at things, this was true. 
 When his plea of justifiable homicide had failed 
 and he had been condemned to be hanged, his 
 lot became still more favored. He was treated 
 with tender and even pathetic consideration. 
 More flowers came. "What a pity they can't 
 keep fresh for my coffin," sighed Oxhead, gaz- 
 ing at them ; and he exacted a promise from 
 the sheriff that he would have a special little 
 bunch of flowers provided as an adornment for 
 his "casket." The benign maiden lady of high 
 social position came and read to him again, 
 nearly every day, and a spiritual adviser also 
 visited him and began a forcing process to de- 
 velop his soul and save it, by a sort of hot- 
 house process, before it should be too late. 
 
 In short, Oxhead had never until this period 
 known what it was to have rest and leisure and 
 enjoyment. He read with laborious attention 
 all that was said about him in the papers, and 
 looked back with pride at the ascent he had 
 made from his own former humble place as a 
 newsboy. There was only one drawback upon 
 his comfort and gratification : that was, the re- 
 quest of the clergyman and the benign maiden
 
 "RAISING CAIN." 223 
 
 lady that he should acknowledge his act in kill- 
 ing Ingalls to have been wrong, and repent of 
 it. But as the day of execution drew near he 
 saw that it would make things more peace- 
 ful and add greatly to his personal comfort 
 if he consented to gratify them; and accord- 
 ingly he did so. Then there was a petition to 
 the Governor for his pardon, which Oxhead 
 generously and impartially encouraged. Even 
 Ellen Skeeney, with copious tears and a 
 strong sense of her own nobleness in do- 
 ing so, signed the petition. But it was of no 
 avail. 
 
 When the day of execution arrived Oxhead 
 ate a "hearty breakfast," according to the or- 
 thodox practice of all redeemed murderers, 
 although he was a little disappointed at the 
 small space allowed him in the morning papers. 
 He knew that some of them would give a col- 
 umn or more to the description of his last 
 moments the next day, when he would no 
 longer be in a position to read the news. But 
 he ascended the gallows cheerfully. From 
 that height he was able to view at a glance 
 the wonderful progress he had made from ob-
 
 224 "RAISING CAIN:' 
 
 scurity to his present proud eminence. A 
 prayer was made ; the drop was sprung ; and 
 Oxhead shot up still higher. 
 
 The process of "raising Cain" had been com- 
 pleted.
 
 IN A MARKET WAGON. 
 
 IT was in a spirit of wayward adventure that 
 I set out, one evening in early autumn, to 
 
 walk from F to the little town of L . 
 
 The night was gusty and overcast, and before 
 I had gone more than two miles, a chill and 
 noiseless rain began to fall through the lugu- 
 brious darkness. I increased my pace to a run, 
 as the road descended into the wooded hollow 
 that lay before me, and pressed forward at a 
 jog-trot through the moist lowland, under the 
 overhanging masses of huge maples and chest- 
 nuts, and between solemn lines of silent pines. 
 I think I might go through many regions, walk 
 many nights, without encountering any scene 
 or situation that should give a sense of soli- 
 tude more complete and melancholy than that 
 which here came over me. I was wet to the 
 skin, but glowing from my long run, before 
 225
 
 226 IN A MARKET WAGON. 
 
 I came upon the first house that had lain in 
 my path for a mile : it broke in some measure 
 the spell of solitude in which I had for a space 
 been enveloped. After that, I encountered 
 dwellings pretty frequently, and even passed 
 through two villages (of which I did not know 
 the names, for it was my first experience of the 
 route, and I had not even consulted a map) 
 but the air of weird remoteness still clung 
 around me. 
 
 Much that I saw in passing has now escaped 
 me ; but, as I recall the road, under that dim 
 illumination of the fleeting, watery sky, I see 
 before me at one point a sudden bend, with 
 white railings on either side, at the elbow; 
 and hear again the hoarse rush of a falling 
 stream. A house stood on the left ; the stream, 
 as I found on drawing nearer, made its fall on 
 the right, and then shot beneath the road, 
 where the white railings were. A slender cur- 
 rent had been diverted into a high trough 
 beyond the little bridge. I stopped there, 
 and, hollowing my hand, dipped up a shallow 
 draught from where the water trickled out of 
 the duct into the trough. It was sweet, but at
 
 IN A MARKET WAGON. 227 
 
 the same time warm and oppressive ; like the 
 night, for it had now ceased raining. Indeed, 
 I was in a mood to believe that it bore some 
 deep affinity with the peculiar mood of the 
 atmosphere, the curious circumstance of my 
 adventurous presence in this spot, and the un- 
 certainty as to whither I should extend my 
 wandering, and how terminate it, before the 
 sunrise of the following morning. I could 
 have fancied it a stream not flowing from com- 
 mon springs, but a charmed distillation from 
 some rock-hidden still, sent hither for my 
 special need, to fortify me for adventures yet 
 to come. It smacked of home-made mystery. 
 
 Next, after a long interval, there was an 
 episode of pretty villas by the roadside, with 
 gardens trim-kept, so far as they could be seen, 
 and a late light in a library-window, one of 
 the drawn-up curtains of which admitted the 
 hurrying pedestrian to a transient glimpse of 
 the interior. After that, houses began to 
 appear in groups here and there ; gradually the 
 rumbling of a wagon made itself heard on a 
 neighboring road which presently converged 
 with the one I was on ; and at last I entered
 
 228 IN A MARKET WAGON. 
 
 the town. It was silent, and hardly a light 
 appeared in the whole place. Suddenly a 
 light wagon, containing a merry party, clashed 
 toward me from the darkness of a winding 
 street; deposited one of its company at a 
 house, the door of which was shut with a loud 
 clap, as he entered; and then rolled away 
 again. I looked up at the church-steeple, but 
 could not distinguish the hour; and it was too 
 dark to see my watch-face. Then I stretched 
 myself on a bench in the little green triangle in 
 front of the church, and considered with myself 
 the strange possibility of passing the night 
 there. 
 
 In a little while, however, I walked on faster, 
 and came to a large inn, which was close-shut 
 and darkened. At this moment, a small 
 wagon, creaking in a slow, dry manner, came up 
 behind me, and halted by the tall and power- 
 ful pump placed by the roadside, between the 
 house and its open stable-yard. A pair of 
 sleepy men with a lantern were pottering about, 
 and, on the owner of the wagon asking them 
 whether many wagons had already passed, be- 
 came a little livelier; so that I put some ques-
 
 IN A MARKET WAGON. 229 
 
 tions. Finding there was but little chance of 
 securing a resting-place here, I determined to 
 follow out what had all along formed a possible 
 extension of my plan. 
 
 "Can you take me to the city, if you're going 
 that way?" I asked of the wagoner. 
 
 "Well, I don't know," he said, giving his 
 trousers a slight, slow tap with his stubby and 
 lashless whip. "I shan't get there till day- 
 break." 
 
 "Never mind," I said, "I'm in no hurry. 
 And I would just as lief pay you what I should 
 have given for a lodging here, if you'll take 
 me." 
 
 The farmer went to his wagon, and worked 
 at the seat he had arranged for himself. 
 
 "It don't make any odds to me," he said 
 presently. "Though I don't go very fast, and 
 I don't know whether you'll find anything very 
 comfortable to sit on." 
 
 So it was arranged. I jumped up, and estab- 
 lished myself on the hard board laid across 
 at the front, bracing my back against a barrel 
 of early apples, and resting my foot on the 
 traces in front. The horse was soon rested and
 
 2 30 Iff A MARKET WAGON. 
 
 refreshed, so far as the possibility lay open to 
 him at all, and we started off, at a slow pace ; 
 the animal striking the broad, hard highway 
 with heavy footfalls, and the wheels ever crack- 
 ling wearily on their axles. For a time, our talk 
 was dispersed and immaterial. But at last we 
 drew up by a little tavern in which a hospitable 
 light was glowing, and from which came strains 
 of a desultory fiddle. Being by this time well 
 chilled from the previous rain, and my inactive 
 state during the drive thus far, I followed the 
 wagoner's lead, through a dingy room in which 
 some red-faced young men in black clothes were 
 diverting themselves with a riddle, and a double- 
 shuffle executed by one more accomplished than 
 the rest, into a smaller and brighter apartment 
 beyond, where we were soon obsequiously at- 
 tended, and served with warming liquor. 
 
 Here first I had an opportunity fully and 
 distinctly to survey my companion. He was a 
 short man, with a red face, a sort of blunted 
 nose, and dusty, tired eyelids, and white hair 
 it was almost wholly white. When he mounted 
 the wagon again, he was more disposed to con- 
 versation than before.
 
 IN A MARKET WAGON. 231 
 
 "Yes, it's hard," he said, quietly, in answer 
 to an observation of mine; "it is a hard life. 
 Three times a week, now, I get up at mid- 
 night, and come down to market. Well, I'm 
 getting old. Used to do it every morning; but 
 I'm too old, now, for that. Get up, Robin." 
 
 And he smote the horse with his ineffectual 
 whip. 
 
 "Hard on the horse," pursued the wagoner, 
 "working in the field, I can't spare him, and 
 then goin' to market." He gave a low grunt 
 of luxurious fatigue, as if to relieve the un- 
 speaking horse; and presently whipped him 
 again. 
 
 We went on talking of the vicissitudes in his 
 trade. 
 
 "Well," said he, "I don't know but I shall 
 have to hire a man, next year, if I can get the 
 money together. It don't hardly pay, as it is. 
 Just make the ends lap over, and no more. 
 My son was with me one year, on the farm, and 
 it was a great help. I've felt it more, since." 
 
 "And he's married, now, I suppose," said I. 
 
 "No," the farmer answered, in a dull tone, 
 "he's dead."
 
 232 IN A MARKET WAGON. 
 
 I can not tell what passed immediately after 
 that. It was no case for prompt response; and 
 yet, I may have made one. The fanner had 
 summed up, in his two syllables, the total re- 
 sult of life, so far as he was concerned in it. 
 There was something in his whole tone which 
 conveyed this ; and his estimate of the calamity 
 was beyond comment or correction, then. But 
 some quality of the speechless night-hour 
 helped us. The impulse of pity, and the sup- 
 pressed yearning for fresh and ever-renewed 
 sympathy, met, and in their meeting formed a 
 bond between us for the time being, at least. 
 The darkness shielded this broken and sorrow- 
 smitten soul, still decently proud and shy in 
 the showing of its grief: he sought relief in 
 speaking to me And this was what I heard 
 that night, moving slowly on the road, amid 
 the petty clatter of our wagon, and interrupted 
 from time to time by a flick of the whip, or an 
 ejaculation to the horse. 
 
 "It was his twenty-first birthday. I don't 
 know why it should have come just then; but 
 it did. That was the way the Almighty had
 
 IN A MARKET WAGON. 233 
 
 fixed it, I suppose. And it was down at the 
 pond near where you told me you live. There's 
 where he was drowned. 
 
 "Well, sir, it seems strange, now, to look 
 back on 'em all, those twenty-one years ! If 
 you haven't any children, you can't tell what 
 it is. But I say to you, sir, when the child has 
 once come, you ain't the same man, any more ; 
 you're that child, then, as much as anything 
 else. If he dies, you don't exactly die, I 
 know that ; but it ain't much better. Well, I 
 saw that boy growing up from the little bit of 
 a thing he was at first, all the way till he was a 
 man, piece by piece, changing from a boy into 
 a young man, so that you couldn't tell hardly 
 where one left off and the other joined on; 
 and then, all at once, he goes off, brave and 
 happy as ever, and that's the end of it. Just a 
 little pleasure party of three or four of his 
 friends and himself going off to bathe ; and he 
 got drowned. 
 
 "I was twenty-one myself, when I got en- 
 gaged to be married. Just his age! I wasn't 
 married for several years after that, though. 
 And then it was a good while before we had
 
 234 IN A MARKET WAGON. 
 
 the baby. Well, I suppose you may say all my 
 life, until he was born, was a sort of leading up 
 to that. And now it seems a good many years 
 to have lived, before I had a son. I didn't use 
 to think so. I don't think, any way, I ever 
 thought of it at all, while he was alive. But 
 things change ; it seems, now, as if all those 
 years had been wasted. Why, they only led 
 up to his being born, and now he's dead ! 
 
 "But it does me good, after all, to look back 
 on my life, and see how I lived it up to then 
 all for him, without hardly knowing it ; and 
 then, after he came, how I lived for him pur- 
 posely, every day, and didn't often have my 
 thoughts off him. We was pretty careful of 
 him, always. We never had but him. He was 
 a good boy, from the start, only just wild 
 enough to show he had a spirit. But we was 
 all the tenderer with him. Folks say a child 
 is too good to live, sometimes. I don't be- 
 lieve it. I don't see why he couldn't have 
 lived, why he wouldn't have been living now, 
 if he hadn't happened to have got drowned. 
 You see, he did live twenty-one years. So that 
 wasn't the reason. But, even if I wasn't par-
 
 IN A MARKET WAGON. 235 
 
 ticularly afraid of his dying, it was just the 
 same as if I had been, as far as taking care of 
 him goes. He was a good learner, and we sent 
 him to school straight along; only I had to 
 look out he didn't work over-hard. I don't 
 know what he'd have been, if he'd lived. He 
 was too full of real go, to keep on farmin'. 
 He'd have done it, if I'd said so. But what I 
 wanted was to make money enough to let him 
 go his own way. Somehow, money seemed to 
 come easier in those days, when we wanted it 
 for his bringing-up ; though, of course, we had 
 bad years, too. But that was before the war. 
 
 "He went to the war, too. I don't suppose 
 it was any harder for us than it was for lots of 
 folks at the same time ; but I tell you it was a 
 terrible burden. There he was gone three full 
 years, and only once he came back on a fur- 
 lough ; and all that time not a thing his mother 
 could do for him, except knit stockings and 
 hem shirts, and once or twice she managed to 
 get a box of good things for him. Now when 
 I think of it, there have been plenty of times 
 that I didn't see him at all, whole winters 
 when he was off to school and academy, and I
 
 236 IN A MARKET WAGON. 
 
 never saw him ; and then those three years at 
 the war. Fully one-quarter of his life I didn't 
 see him, counting in odd days, I guess. And I 
 suppose I'd ought to have got used to it. But 
 it ha'n't made any difference ; I miss him just 
 the same. I pretty near gave him up, that 
 while he was at the war. And it does seem 
 strange he shouldn't have got hurt, all the while. 
 He was in a good many battles, too, and down 
 in those places where they had the fever so 
 bad; and yet he came home all right. Maybe 
 that was what made it all the harder, when 
 something did happen afterward. 
 
 "My wife, she says perhaps it was wrong to 
 have been so rejoiced over his coming safe 
 home ; that we didn't think enough of what 
 others had suffered that had lost their children 
 in the war. Perhaps it was a judgment on us; 
 I don't pretend to say it wa'n't. What I do 
 know is, it was harder than ever to lose him, 
 when we'd just got him back. Somehow it's 
 strange he should have died just that way. It 
 was a beautiful day; you wouldn't have ex- 
 pected anything so sad was going to happen. 
 The grass so green, and sky shon' blue as ever
 
 7.V A MARKET WAGON. 237 
 
 any other summer day ; but he got his death of 
 it, for all that. Sometimes I see it all before 
 me just that way as if I had been there when it 
 happened ; though I've never been to the pond 
 since. Don't think I ever shall go. But I see 
 him a-goin' into the bright, calm water, tall and 
 slim, though he had a good broad chest and a 
 stout back, just as full of life and fun as he 
 could be ; and then I remember how he looked 
 when they brought him home. Nobody could 
 tell just how it happened. The boys was so 
 frightened, they couldn't tell it straight. Well, 
 I don't wonder. Who could tell how such a 
 thing happened? It's no use; it wouldn't make 
 it any better; he couldn't have come alive again. 
 "Yes, it was a great help, as I was saying, to 
 have him on the farm that one year. He was 
 a good hand. That's what I was thinking of, 
 when I began talking to you about it. Most 
 likely I shall have to get a hired man, next 
 spring. I was thinking of having another horse ; 
 Robin's pretty stiff. I need a new one, pretty 
 bad. But I guess I shall have to put the money 
 into a hired hand. Go 'long, Robin ; seems to 
 me you're awful dull to-night."
 
 238 IN A MARKET WAGON. 
 
 Before the first morning twilight crept along 
 the highway, I had left the farmer. Our roads 
 diverged ; I leaped down from my rough seat 
 beside him ; I have never seen him since. For 
 a little while, I heard the wooden rattling of his 
 modest cart, as he drove on toward the city 
 by another way from that which I followed. 
 Then the sound died away. But when the 
 sunrise appeared, floating in over the sea and 
 crowded city, I thought of him still. It was a 
 dawn fairer, as it chanced, than many fair 
 dawns I have known. The sky in the east was 
 set thick with clear-cut clouds of fresh crimson, 
 drifting in long lines with their points against 
 the wind, and separated each from each by slen- 
 der rifts of gray. As yet, only an occasional 
 vehicle of clumsy sort clattered over the pave- 
 ments ; and in the intervals of quiet, a dim and 
 multitudinous whisper seemed to pervade the 
 air, as of the ocean softly breathing in a dream. 
 The farmer was by this time breakfasting in 
 a dingy refreshment-stand of low price, near 
 the scene of his impending business. In an 
 hour, market would begin. 
 
 THE END.
 
 A 000 031 829 5
 
 Ill i