^uL^ue^^L^^f-^^o(A^ 
 
THE EXILES - 
 
 AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 BY 
 
 RICHARD HARDING DAVIS 
 
 / 
 ILLUSTRATED 
 
 NEW YORK AND LONDON 
 
 HAR PER & BROTHERS 
 
 PUBLISHERS 
 
CopjTight, 1894, by HARPKR & BROTHERS. 
 
 All rights reterved. 
 
TO 
 
 MY FRIEND 
 J. DAVIS BRODHEAD 
 
 220842 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE EXILES 1 
 
 THE WRITING ON THE WALL ...... 67 
 
 THE RIGHT OF WAY 94 
 
 HIS BAD ANGEL 121 
 
 THE BOY ORATOR OP ZEPATA CITY .... 154 
 
 THE ROMANCE IN THE LIFE OF HEFTY BURKE 173 
 
 AN ANONYMOUS LETTER . ... 201 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 RICHARD HARDING DAVIS Frontispiece 
 
 STOPPING FOR HALF-HOURS AT A TIME BEFORE 
 
 A BAZAAR" Facing page 16 
 
 " TO BE SHUT OFF FROM ALL OF THAT " . . " " 28 
 
 THE BOAR-HUNT " u 40 
 
 EXHIBIT " A " CHARLECOTE HOUSE WITHOUT THE 
 
 BARRIER " " 100 
 
 " YOU CAN T GO THROUGH THERE, SIR ! " . . " " 106 
 
 THE ATTACK ON THE BARRIER " " 110 
 
 "MURRAY CLUNG TO THE SLEDGE-HAMMER" . . " "114 
 
 WE ARRIVED AT THE BRIDGE " " 118 
 
 " HOPELESSNESS AND REMORSE WERE THE MEAN 
 ING OF THE MUSIC" " " 146 
 
 "THE GENTLEMEN OF THE JURY SAT QUITE MO 
 TIONLESS" " " 170 
 
 " THERE, NOW, DON T YOU TAKE ON SO " . . " " 172 
 
 "BURKE WATCHED HER WITH A DEEP INTEREST" " " 184 
 
 " l AM NOT GOOD AT SAYING THINGS ". . . " " 190 
 
 " DO YOU KNOW THAT YOU HAVE AN ENEMY? " " " 212 
 
 "VAN BIBBER PUT HIS HAT FIRMLY ON HIS 
 
 HEAD" , " " 218 
 
THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
THE EXILES 
 
 THE greatest number of people in the world 
 prefer the most highly civilized places of the 
 world, because they know what sort of things 
 are going to happen there, and because they also 
 know by experience that those are the sort of 
 things they like. A very few people prefer bar 
 barous and utterly uncivilized portions of the 
 globe for the reason that they receive while there 
 new impressions, and because they like the unex 
 pected better than a routine of existence, no mat 
 ter how pleasant that routine may be. But the 
 most interesting places of all to study are those 
 in which the savage and the cultivated man lie 
 down together and try to live together in unity. 
 This is so because we can learn from such places 
 just how far a man of cultivation lapses into bar 
 barism when he associates with savages, and how 
 far the remnants of his former civilization will 
 have influence upon the barbarians among whom 
 he has come to live. 
 
 There are many such colonies as these, and 
 they are the most picturesque plague-spots on the 
 
% /*: :TH;E . tfX lLES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 globe. You will find them in New Zealand and 
 at Yokohama, in Algiers, Tunis, and Tangier, and 
 scattered thickly all along the South American 
 coast-line wherever the law of extradition obtains 
 not, and where public opinion, which is one of 
 the things a colony can do longest without, is un 
 known. These are the unofficial Botany Bays and 
 Melillas of the world, where the criminal goes of 
 his own accord, and not because his government 
 has urged him to do so and paid his passage there. 
 This is the story of a young man who went to 
 such a place for the benefit he hoped it would be 
 to his health, and not because he had robbed any 
 one, or done a young girl an injury. He was the 
 only son of Judge Henry Howard Holcombe, of 
 New York. That was all that it was generally 
 considered necessary to say of him. It was not, 
 however, quite enough, for, while his father had 
 had nothing but the right and the good of his 
 State and country to think about, the son was fur 
 ther occupied by trying to live up to his father s 
 name. Young Holcombe was impressed by this 
 fact from his earliest childhood. It rested upon 
 him while at Harvard and during his years at the 
 law school, and it went with him into society and 
 into the courts of law. When he rose to plead a 
 case he did not forget, nor did those present for 
 get, that his father while alive hu^ crowded tho^" 
 same halls with silent, earnest listeners ; and 
 when he addressed a mass - meeting at Cooper 
 Union, or spoke from the back of a cart in the 
 
THE EXILES 5 
 
 East Side, some one was sure to refer to the fact 
 that this last speaker was the son of the man who 
 was mobbed because he had dared to be an aboli 
 tionist, and who later had received the veneration 
 of a great city for his bitter fight against Tweed 
 and his followers. 
 
 Young Holcombe was an earnest member of 
 every reform club and citizens league, and his 
 distinguished name gave weight as a director to 
 charitable organizations and free kindergartens. 
 He had inherited his hatred of Tammany Hall, 
 and was unrelenting in his war upon it and its 
 handiwork, and he spoke of it and of its immedi 
 ate downfall with the bated breath of one who, 
 though amazed at the wickedness of the thing he 
 fights, is not discouraged nor afraid. And he 
 would listen to no half-measures. Had not his 
 grandfather quarrelled with Henry Clay, and so 
 shaken the friendship of a lifetime, because of 
 a great compromise which he could not counte 
 nance ? And was his grandson to truckle and 
 make deals with this hideous octopus that was 
 sucking the life-blood from the city s veins? Had 
 he not but yesterday distributed six hundred circu 
 lars, calling for honest government, to six hundred 
 possible voters, all the way up Fourth Avenue? 
 and when some flippant one had said that he might 
 ^ave hired a messenger-boy to have done it for 
 mm and so saved his energies for something less 
 mechanical, he had rebuked the speaker with a re 
 proachful stare and turned away in silence. 
 
6 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 Life was terribly earnest to young Holcombe, 
 and he regarded it from the point of view of one 
 who looks down upon it from the judge s bench, 
 and listens with a frown to those who plead its 
 cause. He was not fooled by it ; he was alive to 
 its wickedness and its evasions. He would tell 
 you that he knew for a fact that the window man 
 in his district was a cousin of the Tammany can 
 didate, and that the contractor who had the clean 
 ing of the street to do was a brother-in-law of one 
 of the Hall s sachems, and that the policeman on 
 his beat had not been in the country eight months. 
 He spoke of these damning facts with the air of 
 one who simply tells you that much, that you 
 should see how terrible the whole thing really 
 was, and what he could tell if he wished. 
 
 In his own profession he recognized the trials 
 of law-breakers only as experiments, which went 
 to establish and explain a general principle. And 
 prisoners were not men to him, but merely the 
 exceptions that proved the excellence of a rule. 
 Holcombe would defend the lowest creature or 
 the most outrageous of murderers, not because 
 the man was a human being fighting for his lib 
 erty or life, but because he wished to see if cer 
 tain evidence would be admitted in the trial of 
 such a case. Of one of his clients the judge, who 
 had a daughter of his own, said, when he sen 
 tenced him, " Were there many more such men 
 as you in the world, the women of this land would 
 pray to God to be left childless." And when 
 
THE EXILES 7 
 
 some one asked Holcombe, with ill-concealed dis 
 gust, how he came to defend the man, he replied: 
 " I wished to show the unreliability of expert tes 
 timony from medical men. Yes ; they tell me the 
 man was a very bad lot." 
 
 It was measures, not men, to Holcombe, and law 
 and order were his twin goddesses, and " no com 
 promise " his watchword. 
 
 " You can elect your man if you ll give me two 
 thousand dollars to refit our club -room with," 
 one of his political acquaintances once said to 
 him. "We ve five hundred voters on the rolls 
 now, and the members vote as one man. You d 
 be saving the city twenty times that much if you 
 keep Croker s man out of the job. You know 
 that as well as I do." 
 
 "The city can better afford to lose twenty 
 thousand dollars," Holcombe answered, " than 
 we can afford to give a two-cent stamp for cor 
 ruption." 
 
 "All right," said the heeler; "all right, Mr. 
 Holcombe. Go on. Fight em your own way. 
 If they d agree to fight you with pamphlets and 
 circulars you d stand a chance, sir ; but as long as 
 they give out money and you give out reading- 
 matter to people that can t read, they ll win, and 
 I naturally want to be on the winning side." 
 
 When the club to which Holcombe belonged 
 finally succeeded in getting the Police Commis 
 sioners indicted for blackmailing gambling-houses, 
 Holcombe was, as a matter of course and of public 
 
8 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 congratulation, on the side of the law ; and as As 
 sistant District- Attorney a position given him on 
 account of his father s name and in the hope that 
 it would shut his mouth distinguished himself 
 nobly. 
 
 Of the four commissioners, three were con 
 victed the fourth, Patrick Meakim, with ad 
 mirable foresight having fled to that country 
 from which few criminals return, and which is 
 vaguely set forth in the newspapers as " parts 
 unknown." 
 
 The trial had been a severe one upon the zeal 
 ous Mr. Holcombe, who found himself at the end 
 of it in a very bad way, with nerves unstrung and 
 brain so fagged that he assented without question 
 when his doctor exiled him from New York by 
 ordering a sea voyage, with change of environ 
 ment and rest at the other end of it. Some one 
 else suggested the northern coast of Africa and 
 Tangier, and Holcombe wrote minute directions 
 to the secretaries of all of his reform clubs urging 
 continued efforts on the part of his fellow-work 
 ers, and sailed away one cold winter s morning 
 for Gibraltar. The great sea laid its hold upon 
 him, and the winds from the south thawed the 
 cold in his bones, and the sun cheered his tired 
 spirit. He stretched himself at full length read 
 ing those books which one puts off reading until 
 illness gives one the right to do so, and so far as 
 in him lay obeyed his doctor s first command, 
 that he should forget New York and all that 
 
THE EXILES 9 
 
 pertained to it. By the time he had reached the 
 Rock he was up and ready to drift farther into 
 the lazy irresponsible life of the Mediterranean 
 coast, and he had forgotten his struggles against 
 municipal misrule, and was at times for hours to 
 gether utterly oblivious of his own personality. 
 
 A dumpy, fat little steamer rolled itself along 
 like a sailor on shore from Gibraltar to Tangier, 
 and Holcombe, leaning over the rail of its quar 
 ter-deck, smiled down at the chattering group of 
 Arabs and Moors stretched on their rugs beneath 
 him. A half-naked negro, pulling at the dates in 
 the basket between his bare legs, held up a hand 
 ful to him with a laugh, and Holcombe laughed 
 back and emptied the cigarettes in his case on 
 top of him, and laughed again as the ship s crew 
 and the deck passengers scrambled over one an 
 other and shook out their voluminous robes in 
 search of them. He felt at ease with the world 
 and with himself, and turned his eyes to the white 
 walls of Tangier with a pleasure so complete 
 that it shut out even the thought that it was a 
 pleasure. 
 
 The town seemed one continuous mass of white 
 stucco, with each flat low-lying roof so close to 
 the other that the narrow streets left no trace. 
 To the left of it the yellow coast -line and the 
 green olive-trees and palms stretched up against 
 the sky, and beneath him scores of shrieking 
 blacks fought in their boats for a place beside 
 the steamer s companion-way. He jumped into 
 
10 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 one of these open wherries and fell sprawling 
 among his baggage, and laughed lightly as a boy 
 as the boatman set him on his feet again, and then 
 threw them from under him with a quick stroke of 
 the oars. The high, narrow pier was crowded with 
 excited customs officers in ragged uniforms and 
 dirty turbans, and with a few foreign residents 
 looking for arriving passengers. Holcombe had 
 his feet on the upper steps of the ladder, and was 
 ascending slowly. There was a fat, heavily built 
 man in blue serge leaning across the railing of the 
 pier. He was looking down, and as his eyes met 
 Holcombe s face his own straightened into lines 
 of amazement and most evident terror. Holcombe 
 stopped at the sight, and stared back wondering. 
 And then the lapping waters beneath him and the 
 white town at his side faded away, and he was 
 back in the hot, crowded court -room with this 
 man s face before him. Meakim, the fourth of the 
 Police Commissioners, confronted him, and saw in 
 his presence nothing but a menace to himself. 
 
 Holcombe came up the last steps of the stairs, 
 and stopped at their top. His instinct and life s 
 tradition made him despise the man, and to this 
 was added the selfish disgust that his holiday 
 should have been so soon robbed of its character 
 by this reminder of all that he had been told to 
 put behind him. 
 
 Meakim swept off his hat as though it were 
 hurting him, and showed the great drops of sweat 
 on his forehead. 
 
THE EXILES 11 
 
 " For God s sake !" the man panted, " you 
 can t touch me here, Mr. Holcombe. I m safe 
 here ; they told me I d be. You can t take me. 
 You can t touch me." 
 
 Holcombe stared at the man coldly, and with a 
 touch of pity and contempt. "That is quite 
 right, Mr. Meakim," he said. "The law cannot 
 reach you here." 
 
 " Then what do you want with me ?" the man 
 demanded, forgetful in his terror of anything 
 but his own safety. 
 
 Holcombe turned upon him sharply. " I am 
 not here on your account, Mr. Meakim," he said. 
 "You need not feel the least uneasiness, and," 
 he added, dropping his voice as he noticed that 
 others were drawing near, "if you keep out of 
 my way, I shall certainly keep out of yours." 
 
 The Police Commissioner gave a short laugh 
 partly of bravado and partly at his own sudden 
 terror. " I didn t know," he said, breathing with 
 relief. " I thought you d come after me. You 
 don t wonder you give me a turn, do you ? I was 
 scared." He fanned himself with his straw hat, 
 and ran his tongue over his lips. " Going to 
 be here some time, Mr. District Attorney?" he 
 added, with grave politeness. 
 
 Holcombe could not help but smile at the ab 
 surdity of it. It was so like what he would have 
 expected of Meakim and his class to give every 
 office-holder his full title. " No, Mr. Police Com 
 missioner," he answered, grimly, and nodding to 
 
12 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 his boatmen, pushed his way after them and his 
 trunks along the pier. 
 
 Meakim was waiting for him as he left the 
 custom-house. He touched his hat, and bent the 
 whole upper part of his fat body in an awkward 
 bow. "Excuse me, Mr. District Attorney," he 
 began. 
 
 " Oh, drop that, will you ?" snapped Holcombe. 
 " Now, what is it you want, Meakim?" 
 
 " I was only going to say," answered the fugi 
 tive, with some offended dignity, "that as I ve 
 been here longer than you, I could perhaps give 
 you pointers about the hotels. Fve tried em all, 
 and they re no good, but the Albion s the best." 
 
 " Thank you, I m sure," said Holcombe. " But 
 I have been told to go to the Isabella." 
 
 "Well, that s pretty good, too," Meakim an 
 swered, " if you don t mind the tables. They keep 
 you awake most of the night, though, and " 
 
 " The tables ? I beg your pardon," said Hol 
 combe, stiffly. 
 
 " Not the eatin tables ; the roulette tables," 
 corrected Meakim. " Of course," he continued, 
 grinning, " if you re fond of the game, Mr. Hol 
 combe, it s handy having them in the same house, 
 but I can steer you against a better one back of 
 the French Consulate. Those at the Hotel Isa 
 bella s crooked." 
 
 Holcombe stopped uncertainly. " I don t know 
 just what to do," he said. " I think I shall wait 
 until I can see our consul here." 
 
THE EXILES 13 
 
 "Oh, he ll send you to the Isabella," said Mea- 
 kim, cheerfully. "He gets two hundred dollars 
 a week for protecting the proprietor, so he natu 
 rally caps for the house." 
 
 Holcombe opened his mouth to express himself, 
 but closed it again, and then asked, with some 
 misgivings, of the hotel of which Meakim had 
 first spoken. 
 
 "Oh, the Albion. Most all the swells go there. 
 It s English, and they cook you a good beefsteak. 
 And the boys generally drop in for table d hote. 
 You see, that s the worst of this place, Mr. Hol 
 combe ; there s nowhere to go evenings no club- 
 rooms nor theatre nor nothing ; only the smok 
 ing-room of the hotel or that gambling - house ; 
 and they spring a double naught on you if there s 
 more than a dollar up." 
 
 Holcombe still stood irresolute, his porters ey 
 ing him from under their burdens, and the run 
 ners from the different hotels plucking at his 
 sleeve. 
 
 " There s some very good people at the Albion," 
 urged the Police Commissioner, "and three or 
 four of em s New-Yorkers. There s the Mor 
 rises and Ropes, the Consul-General, and Lloyd 
 Carroll" 
 
 " Lloyd Carroll !" exclaimed Holcombe. 
 
 " Yes," said Meakim, with a smile, " he s here." 
 He looked at Holcombe curiously for a moment, 
 and then exclaimed, with a laugh of intelligence, 
 "Why, sure enough, you were Mr. Thatcher s 
 
14 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 lawyer in that case, weren t you ? It was you got 
 him his divorce ?" 
 
 Holcombe nodded. 
 
 "Carroll was the man that made it possible, 
 wasn t he ?" 
 
 Holcombe chafed under this catechism. "He 
 was one of a dozen, I believe," he said; but as he 
 moved away he turned and asked : " And Mrs. 
 Thatcher. What has become of her ?" 
 
 The Police Commissioner did not answer at 
 once, but glanced up at Holcombe from under 
 his half -shut eyes with a look in which there was 
 a mixture of curiosity and of amusement. " You 
 don t mean to say, Mr. Holcombe," he began, slow 
 ly, with the patronage of the older man and with 
 a touch of remonstrance in his tone, " that you re 
 still with the husband in that case ?" 
 
 Holcombe looked coldly over Mr. Meakim s 
 head. "I have only a purely professional inter 
 est in any one of them,* he said. " They struck 
 me as a particularly nasty lot. Good-morning, 
 sir." 
 
 " Well," Meakim called after him, " you needn t 
 see nothing of them if you don t want to. You 
 can get rooms to yourself." 
 
 Holcombe did get rooms to himself, with a bal 
 cony overlooking the bay, and arranged with the 
 proprietor of the Albion to have his dinner served 
 at a separate table. As others had done this be 
 fore, no one regarded it as an affront upon his 
 society, and several people in the hotel made ad- 
 
THE EXILES 15 
 
 vances to him, which he received politely but 
 coldly. For the first week of his visit the town 
 interested him greatly, increasing its hold upon 
 him unconsciously to himself. He was restless 
 and curious to see it all, and rushed his guide 
 from one of the few show-places to the next with 
 an energy which left that fat Oriental panting. 
 
 But after three days Holcombe climbed the 
 streets more leisurely, stopping for half-hours at a 
 time before a bazaar, or sent away his guide alto 
 gether, and stretched himself luxuriously on the 
 broad wall of the fortifications. The sun beat 
 down upon him, and wrapped him into drowsiness. 
 From far afield came the unceasing murmur of the 
 market-place and the bazaars, and the occasional 
 cries of the priests from the minarets; the dark 
 blue sea danced and flashed beyond the white mar 
 gin of the town and its protecting reef of rocks 
 where the sea-weed rose and fell, and above his 
 head the buzzards swept heavily, and called to one 
 another with harsh, frightened cries. At his side 
 lay the dusty road, hemmed in by walls of cactus, 
 and along its narrow length came lines of patient 
 little donkeys with jangling necklaces, led by wild- 
 looking men from the farm-lands and the desert, 
 and women muffled and shapeless, with only their 
 bare feet showing, who looked at him curiously 
 or meaningly from over the protecting cloth, and 
 passed on, leaving him startled and wondering. 
 He began to find that the books he had brought 
 wearied him. The sight of the type alone was 
 
16 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 enough to make him close the covers and start 
 up restlessly to look for something less absorb 
 ing. He found this on every hand, in the lazy 
 patience of the bazaars and of the markets, where 
 the chief service of all was that of only standing 
 and waiting, and in the farm-lands behind Tan 
 gier, where half-naked slaves drove great horned 
 buffalo, and turned back the soft, chocolate-col 
 ored sod with a wooden plough. But it was a 
 solitary, selfish holiday, and Holcombe found him 
 self wanting certain ones at home to bear him 
 company, and was surprised to find that of these 
 none were the men nor the women with whom his 
 interests in the city of New York were the most 
 closely connected. They were rather foolish peo 
 ple, men at whom he had laughed and whom he 
 had rather pitied for having made him do so, and 
 women he had looked at distantly as of a kind he 
 might understand when his work was over and 
 he wished to be amused. The young girls to 
 whom he was in the habit of pouring out his de 
 nunciations of evil, and from whom he was accus 
 tomed to receive advice and moral support, he 
 could not place in this landscape. He felt uneas 
 ily that they would not allow him to enjoy it his 
 own way; they would consider the Moor histor 
 ically as the invader of Catholic Europe, and 
 would be shocked at the lack of proper sanita 
 tion, and would see the mud. As for himself, he 
 had risen above seeing the mud. He looked up 
 now at the broken line of the roof-tops against 
 
THE EXILES 17 
 
 the blue sky, and when a hooded figure drew 
 back from his glance he found himself murmur 
 ing the words of an Eastern song he had read 
 in a book of Indian stories: 
 
 Alone upon the house-tops, to the north 
 
 I turn and watch the lightning in the sky, 
 The glamour of thy footsteps in the north. 
 Come back to me, Beloved, or I die! 
 
 "Below my feet the still bazaar is laid. 
 Far, far below, the weary camels lie " 
 
 Holcombe laughed and shrugged his shoulders. 
 He had stopped half-way down the hill on which 
 stands the Bashaw s palace, and the whole of 
 Tangier lay below him like a great cemetery of 
 white marble. The moon was shining clearly 
 over the town and the sea, and a soft wind from 
 the sandy farm-lands came to him and played 
 about him like the fragrance of a garden. Some 
 thing moved in him that he did not recognize, 
 but which was strangely pleasant, and which ran 
 to his brain like the taste of a strong liqueur. It 
 came to him that he was alone among strangers, 
 and that what he did now would be known but to 
 himself and to these strangers. What it was that 
 he wished to do he did not know, but he felt a 
 sudden lifting up and freedom from restraint. 
 The spirit of adventure awoke in him and tugged 
 at his sleeve, and he was conscious of a desire to 
 gratify it and to put it to the test. 
 
18 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 " Alone upon the house-tops, " he began. Then 
 he laughed and clambered hurriedly down the 
 steep hill - side. " It s the moonlight," he ex 
 plained to the blank walls and overhanging lat 
 tices, " and the place and the music of the song. 
 It might be one of the Arabian nights, and I 
 Haroun al Raschid. And if I don t get back to 
 the hotel I shall make a fool of myself." 
 
 He reached the Albion very warm and breath 
 less, with stumbling and groping in the dark, and 
 instead of going immediately to bed told the 
 waiter to bring him some cool drink out on the 
 terrace of the smoking-room. There were two 
 men sitting there in the moonlight, and as he 
 came forward one of them nodded to him si 
 lently. 
 
 " Oh, good-evening, Mr. .Meakim !" Holcombe 
 said, gayly, with the spirit of the night still upon 
 him. " I ve been having adventures." He laughed, 
 and stooped to brush the dirt from his knicker 
 bockers and stockings. " I went up to the palace 
 to see the town by moonlight, and tried to inid 
 my way back alone, and fell down three times." 
 
 Meakim shook his head gravely. " You d bet 
 ter be careful at night, sir," he said. "The 
 governor has just said that the Sultan won t be 
 responsible for the lives of foreigners at night 
 1 unless accompanied by soldier and lantern. " 
 
 " Yes, and the legations sent word that they 
 wouldn t have it," broke in the other man. "They 
 said they d hold him responsible anyway." 
 
THE EXILES 19 
 
 There was a silence, and Meakim moved in 
 some slight uneasiness. "Mr. Holcombe, do you 
 know Mr. Carroll ?" he said. 
 
 Carroll half rose from his chair, but Holcombe 
 was dragging another towards him, and so did 
 not have a hand to give him. 
 
 " How are you, Carroll ?" he said, pleasantly. 
 
 The night was warm, and Holcombe was tired 
 after his rambles, and so he sank back in the low 
 wicker chair contentedly enough, and when the 
 first cool drink was finished he clapped his hands 
 for another, and then another, while the two men 
 sat at the table beside him and avoided such topics 
 as would be unfair to any of them. 
 
 " And yet," said Holcombe, after the first half- 
 hour had passed, " there must be a few agreeable 
 people here. I am sure I saw some very nice-look 
 ing women to-day coming in from the fox-hunt. 
 And very well gotten up, too, in Karki habits. 
 And the men were handsome, decent - looking 
 chaps Englishmen, I think." 
 
 " Who does he mean ? Were you at the meet 
 to-day ?" asked Carroll. 
 
 The Tammany chieftain said no, that he did not 
 r ide n ot after foxes, in any event. " But I saw 
 Mrs. Hornby and her sister coming back," he said. 
 " They had on those linen habits." 
 
 "Well, now, there s a woman who illustrates 
 just what I have been saying," continued Carroll. 
 "You picked her out as a self-respecting, nice- 
 looking girl and so she is but she wouldn t like 
 
20 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 to have to tell all she knows. No, they are all 
 pretty much alike. They wear low-neck frocks, 
 and the men put on evening dress for dinner, and 
 they ride after foxes, and they drop in to five- 
 o clock tea, and they all play that they re a lot of 
 gilded saints, and it s one of the rules of the game 
 that you must believe in the next man, so that he 
 will believe in you. I m breaking the rules my 
 self now, because I say * they when I ought to 
 say we. We re none of us here for our health, 
 Holcombe, but it pleases us to pretend we are. It s 
 a sort of give and take. We all sit around at din 
 ner-parties and srnile and chatter, and those Eng 
 lish talk about the latest news from * town, and 
 how they mean to run back for the season or the 
 hunting. But they know they don t dare go back, 
 and they know that everybody at the table knows 
 it, and that the servants behind them know it. 
 But it s more easy that way. There s only a few 
 of us here, and we ve got to hang together or we d 
 go crazy." 
 
 "That s so," said Meakim, approvingly. "It 
 makes it more sociable." 
 
 " It s a funny place," continued Carroll. The 
 wine had loosened his tongue, and it was some 
 thing to him to be able to talk to one of his own 
 people again, and to speak from their point of 
 view, so that the man who had gone through St. 
 Paul s and Harvard with him would see it as such 
 a man should. "It s a funny place, because, in 
 spite of the fact that it s a prison, you grow to like 
 
THE EXILES 21 
 
 it for its freedom. You can do things here you 
 can t do in New York, and pretty much every 
 thing goes there, or it used to, where I hung out. 
 But here you re just your own master, and there s 
 no law and no religion and no relations nor news 
 papers to poke into what you do nor how you live. 
 You can understand what I mean if you ve ever 
 tried living in the West. I used to feel the same 
 way the year I was ranching in Texas. My fam 
 ily sent me out there to put me out of temptation; 
 but I concluded I d rather drink myself to death 
 on good whiskey at Del s than on the stuff we got 
 on the range, so I pulled my freight and came 
 East again. But while I was there I was a little 
 king. I was just as good as the next man, and he 
 was no better than me. And though the life was 
 rough, and it was cold and lonely, there was some 
 thing in being your own boss that made you stick 
 it out there longer than anything else did. It was 
 like this, Holcombe." Carroll half rose from his 
 chair and marked what he said with his finger. 
 " Every time I took a step and my gun bumped 
 against my hip, I d straighten up and feel good 
 and look for trouble. There was nobody to appeal 
 to ; it was just between me and him, and no one 
 else had any say about it. Well, that s what it s 
 like here. You see men come to Tangier on the 
 run, flying from detectives or husbands or bank 
 directors, men who have lived perfectly decent, 
 commonplace lives up to the time they made their 
 one bad break which," Carroll added, in polite 
 
22 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 parenthesis, with a deprecatory wave of his hand 
 towards Meakim and himself, " we are all likely 
 to do some time, aren t we ?" 
 
 " Just so," said Meakim. 
 
 "Of course," assented the District Attorney. 
 
 " But as soon as he reaches this place, Holcombe," 
 continued Carroll, "he begins to show just how 
 bad he is. It all comes out all his viciousness 
 and rottenness and blackguardism. There is noth 
 ing to shame it, and there is no one to blame him, 
 and no one is in a position to throw the first stone." 
 Carroll dropped his voice and pulled his chair for 
 ward with a glance over his shoulder. "One of 
 those men you saw riding in from the meet to 
 day. Now, he s a German officer, and he s here 
 for forging a note or cheating at cards or some 
 thing quiet and gentlemanly, nothing that shows 
 him to be a brute or a beast. But fast week he 
 had old Mulley Wazzam buy him a slave girl in 
 Fez, and bring her out to his house in the suburbs. 
 It seems that the girl was i-n love with a soldier in 
 the Sultan s body-guard at Fez, and tried to run 
 away to join him, and this man met her quite by 
 accident as she was making her way south across 
 the sand-hills. He was whip that day, and was 
 hurrying out to the meet alone. He had some 
 words with the girl first, and then took his whip 
 it was one of those with the long lash to it; you 
 know what I mean and cut her to pieces with it, 
 riding her down on his pony when she tried to 
 run, and heading her off and lashing her around 
 
THE EXILES 23 
 
 the legs and body until she fell; then he rode on 
 in his damn pink coat to join the ladies at Mango s 
 Drift, where the meet was, and some Riffs found 
 her bleeding to death behind the sand-hills. That 
 man held a commission in the Emperor s own body 
 guard, and that s what Tangier did for him" 
 
 Holcombe glanced at Meakim to see if he 
 would verify this, but Meakim s lips were tightly 
 pressed around his cigar, and his eyes were half 
 closed. 
 
 "And what was done about it?" Holcombe 
 asked, hoarsely. 
 
 Carroll laughed, and shrugged his shoulders. 
 " Why, I tell you, and you whisper it to the next 
 man, and we pretend not to believe it, and call 
 the Riffs liars. As I say, we re none of us. here 
 for our health, Holcombe, and a public opinion 
 that s manufactured by declassee women and men 
 who have run off with somebody else s money 
 and somebody else s wife isn t strong enough to 
 try a man for beating his own slave." 
 
 " But the Moors themselves ?" protested Hol 
 combe. "And the Sultan? She s one of his 
 subjects, isn t she?" 
 
 " She s a woman, and women don t count for 
 much in the East, you know; and as for the Sul 
 tan, he s an ignorant black savage. When the 
 English wanted to blow up those rocks off the 
 western coast, the Sultan wouldn t let them. He 
 said Allah had placed them there for some good 
 reason of His own, and it was not for man to in- 
 
24 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STOEIES 
 
 terfere with the works of God. That s the sort 
 of a Sultan he is." Carroll rose suddenly and 
 walked into the smoking - room, leaving the two 
 men looking at each other in silence. 
 
 " That s right," said Meakim, after a pause. " He 
 give it to you just as it is, but I never knew him 
 to kick about it before. We re a fair field for 
 missionary work, Mr. Holcombe, all of us at 
 least, some of us are." He glanced up as Carroll 
 came back from out of the lighted room with an 
 alert, brisk step. His manner had changed in his 
 absence. 
 
 "Some of the ladies have come over for a bit 
 of supper," he said. " Mrs. Hornby and her sister 
 and Captain Reese. The chefs got some birds 
 for us, and I ve put a couple of bottles on ice. It 
 will be like Del s hey ? A small hot bird and a 
 large cold bottle. They sent me out to ask you 
 to join us. They re in our rooms." Meakim rose 
 leisurely and lit a fresh cigar, but Holcombe 
 moved uneasily in his chair. "You ll come, 
 won t you ?" Carroll asked. " I d like you to 
 meet my wife." 
 
 Holcombe rose irresolutely and looked at his 
 watch. " I m afraid it s too late for me," he said, 
 without raising his face. " You see, I m here for 
 my health. I" 
 
 " I beg your pardon," said Carroll, sharply. 
 
 " Nonsense, Carroll ! " said Holcombe. " I 
 didn t mean that. I meant it literally. I can t 
 risk midnight suppers yet. My doctor s orders 
 
THE EXILES 25 
 
 are to go to bed at nine, and it s past twelve 
 now. Some other time, if you ll be so good; but 
 it s long after my bedtime, and " 
 
 " Oh, certainly," said Carroll, quietly, as he 
 turned away. " Are you coming, Meakim ?" 
 
 Meakim lifted his half - empty glass from the 
 table and tasted it slowly until Carroll had left 
 them, then he put the glass down, and glanced 
 aside to where Holcombe sat looking out over the 
 silent city. Holcombe raised his eyes and stared 
 at him steadily. 
 
 " Mr. Holcombe " the fugitive began. 
 
 " Yes," replied the lawyer. 
 
 Meakim shook his head. " Nothing," he said. 
 " Good-night, sir." 
 
 Holcombe s rooms were on the floor above Car 
 roll s, and the laughter of the latter s guests and 
 the tinkling of glasses and silver came to him as 
 he stepped out upon his balcony. But for this the 
 night was very still. The sea beat leisurely on 
 the rocks, and the waves ran up the sandy coast 
 with a sound as of some one sweeping. The music 
 of women s laughter came up to him suddenly, 
 and he wondered hotly if they were laughing at 
 him. He assured himself that it was a matter of 
 indifference to him if they were. And with this 
 he had a wish that they would not think of him 
 as holding himself aloof. One of the women be 
 gan to sing to a guitar, and to the accompaniment 
 of this a man and a young girl came out upon the 
 balcony below, and spoke to each other in low, 
 
26 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 earnest tones, which seemed to carry with them 
 the feeling of a caress. Holcombe could not hear 
 what they said, but he could see the curve of the 
 woman s white shoulders and the light of her 
 companion s cigar as he leaned upon the rail with 
 his back to the moonlight and looked into her 
 face. Holcombe felt a sudden touch of loneliness 
 and of being very far from home. He shivered 
 slightly as though from the cold, and stepping in 
 side closed the window gently behind him. 
 
 Although Holcombe met Carroll several times 
 during the following day, the latter obviously 
 avoided him, and it was not until late in the after 
 noon that Holcombe was given a chance to speak 
 to him again. Carroll was coming down the only 
 street on a run, jumping from one rough stone to 
 another, and with his face lighted up with excite 
 ment. He hailed Holcombe from a distance with 
 a wave of the hand. " There s an American man- 
 of-war in the bay," he cried ; " one of the new 
 ones. We saw her flag from the hotel. Come 
 on !" Holcombe followed as a matter of course, 
 as Carroll evidently expected that he would, and 
 they reached the end of the landing-pier togeth 
 er, just as the ship of war ran up and broke the 
 square red flag of Morocco from her main-mast 
 and fired her salute. 
 
 " They ll be sending a boat in by-and-by," said 
 Carroll, " and we ll have a talk with the men." 
 His enthusiasm touched his companion also, and 
 the sight of the floating atom of the great country 
 
THE EXILES 27 
 
 that was his moved him strongly, as though it were 
 a personal message from home. It came to him 
 like the familiar stamp, and a familiar handwrit 
 ing on a letter in a far-away land, and made him 
 feel how dear his own country was to him and 
 how much he needed it. They were leaning side 
 by side upon the rail watching the ship s screws 
 turning the blue waters white, and the men run 
 ning about the deck, and the blue-coated figures 
 on the bridge. Holcombe turned to point out 
 the vessel s name to Carroll, and found that his 
 companion s eyes were half closed and filled with 
 tears. 
 
 Carroll laughed consciously and coughed. "We 
 kept it up a bit too late last night," he said, "and 
 I m feeling nervous this morning, and the sight of 
 the flag and those boys from home knocked me 
 out." He paused for a moment, frowning through 
 his tears and with his brow drawn up into many 
 wrinkles. " It s a terrible thing, Holcombe," he 
 began again, fiercely, " to be shut off from all of 
 that." He threw out his hand with a sudden gest 
 ure towards the man-of-war. Holcombe looked 
 down at the water and laid his hand lightly on his 
 companion s shoulder. Carroll drew away and 
 shook his head. " I don t want any sympathy," 
 he said, kindly. " I m not crying the baby act. 
 But you don t know, and I don t believe anybody 
 else knows, what I ve gone through and what I ve 
 suffered. You don t like me, Holcombe, and you 
 don t like my class, but I want to tell you some- 
 
28 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 thing about my coming here. I want you to set 
 them right about it at home. And I don t care 
 whether it interests you or not," he said, with 
 quick offence ; " I want you to listen. It s about 
 my w r ife." 
 
 Holcombe bowed his head gravely. 
 
 " You got Thatcher his divorce," Carroll con 
 tinued. "And you know that he would never 
 have got it but for me, and that everybody ex 
 pected that I would marry Mrs. Thatcher when 
 the thing was over. And I didn t, and everybody 
 said I was a blackguard, and I was. It was bad 
 enough before, but I made it worse by not doing 
 the only thing that could make it any better. 
 Why I didn t do it I don t know. I had some 
 grand ideas of reform about that time, I think, 
 and I thought I owed my people something, and 
 that by not making Mrs. Thatcher my mother s 
 daughter I would be saving her and my sisters. 
 It was remorse, I guess, and I didn t see things 
 straight. I know now what I should have done. 
 Well, I left her and she went her own way, and a 
 great many people felt sorry for her, and were 
 good to her not your people, nor my people; but 
 enough were good to her to make her see as much 
 of the world as she had used to. She never loved 
 Thatcher, and she never loved any of the men 
 you brought into that trial except one, and he 
 treated her like a cur. That was myself. Well, 
 what with trying to please my family, and loving 
 Alice Thatcher all the time and not seeing her, and 
 
THE EXILES 29 
 
 hating her too for bringing me into all that notori 
 ety for I blamed the worn an, of course, as a man al 
 ways will I got to drinking, and then this scrape 
 came and I had to run. I don t care anything 
 about that row now, or what you believe about 
 it. I m here, shut off from my home, and that s a 
 worse punishment than any damn lawyers can in 
 vent. And the man s well again. He saw I was 
 drunk ; but I wasn t so drunk that I didn t know 
 he was trying to do me, and I pounded him just 
 as they say I did, and I m sorry now I didn t kill 
 him." 
 
 Holcombe stirred uneasily, and the man at his 
 side lowered his voice and went on more calmly : 
 
 " If I hadn t been a gentleman, Holcombe, or if 
 it had been another cabman he d fought with, 
 there wouldn t have been any trouble about it. 
 But he thought he could get big money out of 
 me, and his friends told him to press it until he 
 was paid to pull out, and I hadn t the money, and 
 so I had to break bail and run. Well, you ve 
 seen the place. You ve been here long enough 
 to know what it s like, and what I ve had to go 
 through. Nobody wrote me, and nobody came 
 to see me ; not one of my own sisters even, though 
 they ve been in the Riviera all this spring not a 
 day s journey away. Sometimes a man turned 
 up that I knew, but it was almost worse than not 
 seeing any one. It only made me more homesick 
 when he d gone. And for weeks I used to walk 
 up and down that beach there alone late in the 
 
30 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 night, until I got to thinking that the waves were 
 talking to me, arid I got queer in my head. I 
 had to fight it just as I used to have to fight 
 against whiskey, and to talk fast so that I wouldn t 
 think. And I tried to kill myself hunting, and 
 only got a broken collar-bone for my pains. Well, 
 all this time Alice was living in Paris and New 
 York. I heard that some English captain was 
 going to marry her, and then I read in the Paris 
 Herald that she was settled in the American colo 
 ny there, and one day it gave a list of the people 
 who d been to a reception she gave. She could 
 go where she pleased, and she had money in her 
 own right, you know ; and she was being revenged 
 on me every day. And I was here knowing it, 
 and loving her worse than I ever loved anything 
 on earth, and having lost the right to tell her so, 
 and not able to go to her. Then one day some 
 chap turned up from here and told her about me, 
 and about how miserable I was, and how well I 
 was being punished. He thought it would please 
 her, I suppose. I don t know who he was, but I 
 guess he was in love with her himself. And then 
 the papers had it that I was down with the fever 
 here, and she read about it. I was ill for a time, 
 and I hoped it was going to carry me off decent 
 ly, but I got up in a week or two, and one day I 
 crawled down here where we re standing now to 
 watch the boat come in. I was pretty weak from 
 my illness, and I was bluer than I had ever been, 
 and I didn t see anything but blackness and bit- 
 
THE EXILES 31 
 
 terness for me anywhere. I turned around when 
 the passengers reached the pier, and I saw a 
 woman coming up those stairs. Her figure and 
 her shoulders were so like Alice s that my heart 
 went right up into my throat, and I couldn t 
 breathe for it. I just stood still staring, and 
 when she reached the top of the steps she looked 
 up, breathing with the climb, and laughing ; and 
 she says, l Lloyd, I ve come to see you. And I 
 I was that lonely and weak that I grabbed her 
 hand, and leaned back against the railing, and cried 
 there before the whole of them. I don t think 
 she expected it exactly, because she didn t know 
 what to do, and just patted me on the shoulder, 
 and said, I thought I d run down to cheer you 
 up a bit ; and I ve brought Mrs. Scott with me 
 to chaperone us. And I said, without stopping 
 to think : You wouldn t have needed any chap 
 eron, Alice, if I hadn t been a cur and a fool. 
 If I had only asked what I can t ask of you now ; 
 and, Holcombe, she flushed just like a little girl, 
 and laughed, and said, Oh, will you, Lloyd? 
 And you see that ugly iron chapel up there, with 
 the corrugated zinc roof and the wooden cross on 
 it, next to the mosque ? Well, that s where we 
 went first, right from this wharf before I let her 
 go to a hotel, and old Ridley, the English rector, 
 he married us, and we had a civil marriage too. 
 That s what she did for me. She had the whole 
 wide globe to live in, and she gave it up to 
 come to Tangier, because I had no other place 
 
32 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 but Tangier, and she s made my life for me, and 
 I m happier here than I ever was before any 
 where, and sometimes I think I hope that she 
 is, too." Carroll s lips moved slightly, and his 
 hands trembled on the rail. He coughed, and his 
 voice was gentler when he spoke again. " And 
 so," he added, " that s why I felt it last night 
 when you refused to meet her. You were right, 
 I know, from your way of thinking, but we ve 
 grown careless down here, and we look at things 
 differently." 
 
 Holcombe did not speak, but put his arm across 
 the other s shoulder, and this time Carroll did not 
 shake it off. Holcombe pointed with his hand to 
 a tall, handsome woman with heavy yellow hair 
 who was coming towards them, with her hands 
 in the pockets of her reefer. " There is Mrs. Car 
 roll now," he said. " Won t you present me, and 
 then we can row out and see the man-of-war?" 
 
 II 
 
 The officers returned their visit during the day, 
 and the American Consul-Gen eral asked them all 
 to a reception the following afternoon. The en 
 tire colony came to this, and Holcombe met many 
 people, and drank tea with several ladies in riding- 
 habits, and iced drinks with all of the men. He 
 found it very amusing, and the situation appealed 
 
THE EXILES 33 
 
 strongly to his somewhat latent sense of humor. 
 That evening in writing to his sister he told of 
 his rapid recovery in health, and of the possi 
 bility of his returning to civilization. 
 
 " There was a reception this afternoon at the 
 Consul-General s," he wrote, " given to the offi 
 cers of our man-of-war, and I found myself in 
 some rather remarkable company. The consul 
 himself has become rich by selling his protection 
 for two hundred dollars to every wealthy Moor 
 who wishes to escape the forced loans which the 
 Sultan is in the habit of imposing on the faithful. 
 For five hundred dollars he will furnish any one 
 of them with a piece of stamped paper accred 
 iting him as minister plenipotentiary from the 
 United States to the Sultan s court. Of course the 
 Sultan never receives them, and whatever object 
 they may have had in taking the long journey to 
 Fez is never accomplished. Some day some one 
 of them will find out how he has been tricked, 
 and will return to have the consul assassinated. 
 This will be a serious loss to our diplomatic ser 
 vice. The consul s wife is a fat German woman 
 who formerly kept a hotel here. Her brother 
 has it now, and runs it as an annex to a gam 
 bling-house. Pat Meakim, the police commis 
 sioner that I indicted, but who jumped his bail, 
 introduced me at the reception to the men, with 
 apparently great self-satisfaction, as * the pride 
 of the New York Bar, and Mrs. Carroll, for 
 whose husband I obtained a divorce, showed her 
 
34 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 gratitude by presenting me to the ladies. It was 
 a distinctly Gilbertian situation, and the people 
 to whom they introduced me were quite as pict 
 uresquely disreputable as themselves. So you 
 see" 
 
 Holcombe stopped here and read over what he 
 had written, and then tore up the letter. The 
 one he sent in its place said he was getting bet 
 ter, but that the climate was not so mild as he 
 had expected it would be. 
 
 Holcombe engaged the entire first floor of the 
 hotel the next day, and entertained the officers 
 and the residents at breakfast, and the Admiral 
 made a speech and said how grateful it was to 
 him and to his officers to find that wherever they 
 might touch, there were some few Americans 
 ready to welcome them as the representatives of 
 the flag they all so unselfishly loved, and of the 
 land they still so proudly called "home." Car 
 roll, turning his wine-glass slowly between his 
 fingers, raised his eyes to catch Holcombe s, and 
 winked at him from behind the curtain of the 
 smoke of his cigar, and Holcombe smiled grimly, 
 and winked back, with the result that Meakim, 
 who had intercepted the signalling, choked on 
 his champagne, and had to be pounded violent 
 ly on the back. Holcombe s breakfast established 
 him as a man of means and one who could enter 
 tain properly, and after that his society was count 
 ed upon for every hour of the day. He offered 
 money as prizes for the ship s crew to row and 
 
THE EXILES 35 
 
 swim after, he gave a purse for a cross-country 
 pony race, open to members of the Calpe and Tan 
 gier hunts, and organized picnics and riding par 
 ties innumerable. He was forced at last to hire 
 a soldier to drive away the beggars when he 
 walked abroad. He found it easy to be rich in 
 a place where he was giving over two hundred 
 copper coins for an English shilling, and he dis 
 tributed his largesses recklessly and with a lack 
 of discrimination entirely opposed to the precepts 
 of his organized charities at home. He found it 
 so much more amusing to throw a handful of cop 
 pers to a crowd of fat naked children than to 
 write a check for the Society of Suppression of 
 Cruelty to the same beneficiaries. 
 
 " You shouldn t give those fellows money," 
 the Consul-General once remonstrated with him ; 
 " the fact that they re blind is only a proof that 
 they have been thieves. When they catch a man 
 stealing here they hold his head back, and pass a 
 hot iron in front of his eyes. That s why the lids 
 are drawn taut that way. You shouldn t encour 
 age them." 
 
 " Perhaps they re not all thieves," said the 
 District Attorney, cheerfully, as he hit the circle 
 around him with a handful of coppers ; " but 
 there is no doubt about it that they re all blind. 
 Which is the more to be pitied," he asked the 
 Consul-General, "the man who has still to be 
 found out and who can see, or the one who has 
 been exposed and who is blind?" 
 
36 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 "How should he know?" said Carroll, laugh 
 ing. " He s never been blind, and he still holds 
 his job." 
 
 "I don t think that s very funny," said the 
 Consul-General. 
 
 A week of pig-sticking came to end Holcombe s 
 stay in Tangier, and he threw himself into it and 
 into the freedom of its life with a zest that made 
 even the Englishman speak of him as a good fel 
 low. He chanced to overhear this, and stopped 
 to consider what it meant. No one had ever 
 called him a good fellow at home, but then his 
 life had not offered him the chance to show what 
 sort of a good fellow he might be, and as Judge 
 Holcombe s son certain things had been debarred 
 him. Here he was only the richest tourist since 
 Farwell, the diamond smuggler from Amsterdam, 
 had touched there in his yacht. 
 
 The week of boar-hunting was spent out-of- 
 doors, on horseback, and in tents ; the women in 
 two wide circular ones, and the men in another, 
 with a mess tent, which they shared in common, 
 pitched between them. They had only one change 
 of clothes each, one wet and one dry, and they 
 were in the saddle from nine in the morning un 
 til late at night, when they gathered in a wide 
 circle around the wood-fire and played banjoes 
 and listened to stories. Holcombe grew as red 
 as a sailor, and jumped his horse over gaping 
 crevasses in the hard sun-baked earth as reck 
 lessly as though there were nothing in this world 
 
THE EXILES 37 
 
 so well worth sacrificing one s life for as to be 
 the first in at a dumb brute s death. He was on 
 friendly terms with them all now with Miss 
 Terrill, the young girl who had been awakened 
 by night and told to leave Monte Carlo before 
 daybreak, and with Mrs. Darhah, who would an 
 swer to Lady Taunton if so addressed, and with 
 Andrews, the Scotch bank clerk, and Ollid the 
 boy officer from Gibraltar, who had found some 
 difficulty in making the mess account balance. 
 They were all his very good friends, and he was 
 especially courteous and attentive to Miss Ter- 
 rill s wants and interests, and fixed her stirrup 
 and once let her pass him to charge the boar in 
 his place. She was a silently distant young 
 woman, and strangely gentle for one who had 
 had to leave a place, and such a place, between 
 days ; and her hair, which was very fine and 
 light, ran away from under her white helmet in 
 disconnected curls. At night, Holcombe used to 
 watch her from out of the shadow when the fire 
 light lit up the circle and the tips of the palms 
 above them, and when the story-teller s voice was 
 accompanied by bursts of occasional laughter from 
 the dragomen in the grove beyond, and the stamp 
 ing and neighing of the horses at their pickets, 
 and the unceasing chorus of the insect life about 
 them. She used to sit on one of the rugs with 
 her hands clasped about her knees, and with her 
 head resting on Mrs. Hornby s broad shoulder, 
 looking down into the embers of the fire, and 
 
38 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 with the story of her life written on her girl s 
 face as irrevocably as though old age had set its 
 seal there. Holcombe was kind to them all now, 
 even to Meakim, when that gentleman rode lei 
 surely out to the camp with the mail and the 
 latest Paris Herald, which was their one bond 
 of union with the great outside world. 
 
 Carroll sat smoking his pipe one night, and 
 bending forward over the fire to get its light on 
 the pages of the latest copy of this paper. Sud 
 denly he dropped it between his knees. " I say, 
 Holcombe," he cried, " here s news ! Winthrop 
 Allen has absconded with three hundred thou 
 sand dollars, and no one knows where." 
 
 Holcombe was sitting on the other side of the 
 fire, prying at the rowel of his spur with a hunt 
 ing-knife. He raised his head and laughed. 
 "Another good man gone wrong, hey?" he said. 
 
 Carroll lowered the paper slowly to his knee 
 and stared curiously through the smoky light 
 to where Holcombe sat intent on the rowel of his 
 spur. It apparently absorbed his entire atten 
 tion, and his last remark had been an uncon 
 sciously natural one. Carroll smiled grimly as 
 he folded the paper across his knee. " Now are 
 the mighty fallen, indeed," he murmured. He 
 told Meakim of it a few minutes later, and they 
 both marvelled. " It s just as I told him, isn t it, 
 and he wouldn t believe me. It s the place and 
 the people. Two weeks ago he would have raged. 
 Why, Meakim, you know Allen Winthrop Al- 
 
THE EXILES 39 
 
 ]en? He s one of Holcombe s own sort; older 
 than he is, but one of his own people ; belongs 
 to the same clubs ; and to the same family, I 
 think, and yet Harry took it just as a matter of 
 course, with no more interest than if I d said 
 that Allen was going to be married." 
 
 Meakim gave a low, comfortable laugh of con 
 tent. " It makes me smile," he chuckled, " every 
 time I think of him the day he came up them 
 stairs. He scared me half to death, he did, and 
 then he says, just as stiff as you please, If you ll 
 leave me alone, Mr. Meakim, I ll not trouble you. 
 And now it s Meakim this, and Meakim that, 
 and have a drink, Meakim, just as thick as 
 thieves. I have to laugh whenever I think of it 
 now. If you ll leave me alone, I ll not trouble 
 you, Mr. Meakim. " 
 
 Carroll pursed his lips and looked up at the 
 broad expanse of purple heavens with the white 
 stars shining through. " It s rather a pity, too, in 
 a way," he said, slowly. " He was all the Public 
 Opinion we had, and now that he s thrown up the 
 part, why " 
 
 The pig -sticking came to an end finally, and 
 Holcombe distinguished himself by taking his 
 first fall, and under romantic circumstr es. He 
 was in an open place, with Mrs. Carroll at the edge 
 of the brush to his right, and Miss Terrill guard 
 ing any approach from the left. They were too 
 far apart to speak to one another, and sat quite 
 still and alert to any noise as the beaters closed in 
 
40 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 around them. There was a sharp rustle in the 
 reeds, and the boar broke out of it some hundred 
 feet ahead of Holcombe. He went after it at a 
 gallop, headed it off, and ran it fairly on his spear 
 point as it came towards him ; but as he drew his 
 lance clear his horse came down, falling across 
 him, and for the instant knocking him breathless. 
 It was all over in a moment. He raised his head 
 to see the boar turn and charge him ; he saw where 
 his spear point had torn the lower lip from the 
 long tusks, and that the blood was pouring down 
 its flank. He tried to draw out his legs, but the 
 pony lay fairly across him, kicking and struggling, 
 and held him in a vise. So he closed his eyes and 
 covered his head with his arms, and crouched in 
 a heap waiting. There was the quick beat of a 
 pony s hoofs on the hard soil, and the rush of the 
 boar within a foot of his head, and when he looked 
 up he saw Miss Terrill twisting her pony s head 
 around to charge the boar again, and heard her 
 shout " Let me have him !" to Mrs. Carroll. 
 
 Mrs. Carroll came towards Holcombe with her 
 spear pointed dangerously high ; she stopped at 
 his side and drew in her rein sharply. " Why 
 don t you get up? are you hurt?" she said. 
 " Wait; lie still," she commanded, "or he ll tramp 
 .on you. I ll get him off." She slipped from her 
 saddle and dragged Holcombe s pony to his feet. 
 Holcombe stood up unsteadily, pale through his 
 tan from the pain of the fall and the moment of 
 fear. 
 
THE EXILES 41 
 
 " That was nasty," said Mrs. Carroll, with a 
 quick breath. She was quite as pale as he. 
 
 Hoi combe wiped the dirt from his hair and the 
 side of his face, and looked past her to where 
 Miss Terrill was surveying the dead boar from 
 her saddle, while her pony reared and shied, quiv 
 ering with excitement beneath her. Holcombe 
 mounted stiffly and rode towards her. " I am 
 very much obliged to you," he said. "If you 
 hadn t come " 
 
 The girl laughed shortly, and shook her head 
 without looking at him. " Why, not at all," she 
 interrupted, quickly. " I would have come just 
 as fast if you hadn t been there." She turned in 
 her saddle and looked at him frankly. " I was 
 glad to see you go down," she said, " for it gave 
 me the first good chance I ve had. Are you hurt ?" 
 
 Holcombe drew himself up stiffly, regardless of 
 the pain in his neck and shoulder. "No, I m all 
 right, thank you," he answered. "At the same 
 time," he called after her as she moved away to 
 meet the others, "you did save me from being 
 torn up, whether you like it or not." 
 
 Mrs. Carroll was looking after the girl with ob 
 servant, comprehending eyes. She turned to Hol 
 combe with a smile. "There are a few things 
 you have still to learn, Mr. Holcombe," she said, 
 bowing in her saddle mockingly, and dropping 
 the point of her spear to him as an adversary does 
 in salute. "And perhaps," she added, " it is just 
 as well that there are." 
 
 4 
 
42 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 Ilolcombe trotted after her in some concern. 
 "I wonder what she means?" he said. "I won 
 der if I were rude ?" 
 
 The pig-sticking ended with a long luncheon 
 before the ride back to town, at which every 
 thing that could be eaten or drunk was put on the 
 table, in order, as Meakim explained, that there 
 would be less to carry back. He met Ilolcombe 
 that same evening after the cavalcade had reached 
 Tangier as the latter came down the stairs of the 
 Albion. Ilolcombe was in fresh raiment and 
 cleanly shaven, and with the radiant air of one 
 who had had his first comfortable bath in a week. 
 
 Meakim confronted him with a smiling counte 
 nance. " Who do you think come to-night on the 
 mail-boat ?" he asked. 
 
 "I don t know. Who?" 
 
 " Winthrop Allen, with six trunks," said Mea 
 kim, with the triumphant air of one who brings 
 important news. 
 
 "No, really now," said Holcombe, laughing. 
 " The old hypocrite ! I wonder what he ll say 
 when he sees me. I wish I could stay over an 
 other boat, just to remind him of the last time we 
 met. What a fraud he is ! It was at the club, 
 and he was congratulating me on my noble efforts 
 in the cause of justice, arid all that sort of thing. 
 He said I was a public benefactor. And at that 
 time he must have already speculated away 
 about half of what he had stolen of other people s 
 money. I d like to tease him about it." 
 
THE EXILES 43 
 
 " What trial was that ?" asked Meakim. 
 
 Holcombe laughed and shook his head as he 
 moved on down the stairs. "Don t ask embar 
 rassing questions, Meakim," he said. "It was 
 one you won t forget in a hurry." 
 
 " Oh !" said Meakim, with a grin. " All right. 
 There s some mail for you in the office." 
 
 " Thank you," said Holcombe. 
 
 A few hours later Carroll was watching the 
 roulette wheel in the gambling-hall of the Isa 
 bella when he saw Meakim come in out of the 
 darkness, and stand staring in the doorway, blink 
 ing at the lights and mopping his face. He had 
 been running, and was visibly excited. Carroll 
 crossed over to him and pushed him out into the 
 quiet of the terrace. " What is it ?" he asked. 
 
 "Have you seen Holcombe?" Meakim de 
 manded in reply. 
 
 " Not since this afternoon. Why?" 
 
 Meakim breathed heavily, and fanned himself 
 with his hat. " Well, he s after Wintbrop Allen, 
 that s all," he panted. " And when he finds him 
 there s going to be a muss. The boy s gone crazy. 
 He s not safe." 
 
 "Why? What do you mean? What s Allen 
 done to him ?" 
 
 " Nothing to him, but to a friend of his. He 
 got a letter to-night in the mail that came with 
 Allen. It was from his sister. She wrote him all 
 the latest news about Allen, and give him fits 
 
44 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 for robbing an old lady who s been kind to her. 
 She wanted that Holcombe should come right 
 back and see what could be done about it. She 
 didn t know, of course, that Allen was coming 
 here. The old lady kept a private school on Fifth 
 Avenue, and Allen had charge of her savings." 
 
 "What is her name ?" Carroll asked. 
 
 " Field, I think. Martha Field was" 
 
 "The dirty blackguard!" cried Carroll. He 
 turned sharply away and returned again to seize 
 Meakim s arm. "Go on," he demanded. "What 
 did she say?" 
 
 " You know her too, do you ?" said Meakirn, 
 shaking his head sympathetically. " Well, that s 
 all. She used to teach his sister. She seems to 
 be a sort of fashionable " 
 
 "I know," said Carroll, roughly. "She taught 
 my sister. She teaches everybody s sister. She s 
 the sweetest, simplest old soul that ever lived. 
 Holcombe s dead right to be angry. She almost 
 lived at their house when his sister was ill." 
 
 " Tut ! you don t say ?" commented Meakin, 
 gravely. "Well, his sister s pretty near crazy 
 about it. He give me the letter to read. It got 
 me all stirred up. It was just writ in blood. She 
 must be a fine girl, his sister. She says this Miss 
 Martha s money was the last thing Allen took. 
 He didn t use her stuff to speculate with, but 
 cashed it in just before he sailed and took it with 
 him for spending-money. His sister says she s 
 too proud to take help, and she s too old to work." 
 
THE EXILES 45 
 
 " How much did he take ?" 
 
 " Sixty thousand. She d been saving for over 
 forty years." 
 
 Carroll s mind took a sudden turn. " And Hoi- 
 combe ?" he demanded, eagerly. "What is he 
 going to do ? Nothing silly, I hope." 
 
 "Well, that s just it. That s why I come to 
 find you," Meakim answered, uneasily. " I don t 
 want him to qualify for no Criminal Stakes. I 
 got no reason to love him either But you 
 know " he ended, impotently. 
 
 "Yes, I understand," said Carroll. "That s 
 what I meant. Confound the boy, why didn t 
 he stay in his law courts! What did he say?" 
 
 " Oh, he just raged around. He said he d tell 
 Allen there was an extradition treaty that Allen 
 didn t know about, and that if Allen didn t give 
 him the sixty thousand he d put it in force and 
 make him go back and stand trial." 
 
 " Compounding a felony, is he ?" 
 
 " No, nothing of the sort," said Meakim, indig 
 nantly. " There isn t any extradition treaty, so 
 he wouldn t be doing anything wrong except ly 
 ing a bit." 
 
 " Well, it s blackmail, anyway." 
 
 " What, blackmail a man like Allen ? Huh ! 
 He s fair game, if there ever was any. But it 
 won t work with him, that s what I m afraid of. 
 He s too cunning to be taken in by it, he is. He 
 had good legal advice before he came here, or he 
 wouldn t have come." 
 
46 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 Carroll was pacing up and down the terrace. 
 He stopped and spoke over his shoulder. " Does 
 Holcombe think Allen has the money with him?" 
 he asked. 
 
 " Yes, he s sure of it. That s what makes him 
 so keen. He says Allen wouldn t dare bank it 
 at Gibraltar, because if he ever went over there 
 to draw on it he would get caught, so he must 
 have brought it with him here. And he got 
 here so late that Holcombe believes it s in Al 
 len s rooms now, and he s like a dog that smells 
 a rat, after it. Allen wasn t in when he went 
 up to his room, and he s started out hunting 
 for him, and if he don t find him I shouldn t be a 
 bit surprised if he broke into the room and just 
 took it." 
 
 " For God s sake !" cried Carroll. "He wouldn t 
 do that ?" 
 
 Meakim pulled and fingered at his heavy watch- 
 chain and laughed doubtfully. "I don t know," 
 he said. " He wouldn t have done it three 
 months ago, but he s picked up a great deal since 
 then since he has been with us. He s asking for 
 Captain Reese, too." 
 
 " What s he want with that blackguard ?" 
 
 " I don t know; he didn t tell me." 
 
 " Come," said Carroll, quickly. " We must stop 
 him." He ran lightly down the steps of the ter 
 race to the beach, with Meakim waddling heavily 
 after him. " He s got too much at stake, Mea 
 kim," he said, in half apology, as they tramped 
 
THE EXILES 47 
 
 through the sand. "He mustn t spoil it. We 
 won t let him." 
 
 Holcombe had searched the circuit of Tangier s 
 small extent with fruitless effort, his anger in 
 creasing momentarily and feeding on each fresh 
 disappointment. When he had failed to find the 
 man he sought in any place, he returned to the 
 hotel and pushed open the door of the smoking- 
 room as fiercely as though he meant to take those 
 within by surprise. 
 
 "Has Mr. Allen returned ?" he demanded. "Or 
 Captain Reese ?" The attendant thought not, but 
 he would go and see. " No," Holcombe said, " I 
 will look for myself." He sprang up the stairs to 
 the third floor, and turned down a passage to a 
 door at its farthest end. Here he stopped and 
 knocked gently. " Reese," he called ; " Reese !" 
 There was no response to his summons, and he 
 knocked again, with more impatience, and then 
 cautiously turned the handle of the door, and, push 
 ing it forward, stepped into the room. " Reese," 
 he said, softly, "it s Holcombe. Are you here?" 
 The room was dark except for the light from the 
 hall, which shone dimly past him and fell upon a 
 gun- rack hanging on the wall opposite. Hol 
 combe hurried towards this and ran his hands 
 over it, and passed on quickly from that to the 
 mantel and the tables, stumbling over chairs and 
 riding-boots as he groped about, and tripping on 
 the skin of some animal that lay stretched upon 
 the floor. He felt his way around the entire cir- 
 
48 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 cuit of the room, and halted near the door with an 
 exclamation of disappointment. By this time his 
 eyes had become accustomed to the darkness, and 
 he noted the white surface of the bed in a far 
 corner and ran quickly towards it, groping with 
 his hands about the posts at its head. He closed 
 his fingers with a quick gasp of satisfaction on a 
 leather belt that hung from it, heavy with car 
 tridges and a revolver that swung from its holder. 
 Holcombe pulled this out and jerked back the 
 lever, spinning the cylinder around under the 
 edge of his thumb. He felt the grease of each 
 cartridge as it passed under his nail. The re 
 volver was loaded in each chamber, and Holcombe 
 slipped it into the pocket of his coat and crept 
 out of the room, closing the door softly behind 
 him. He met no one in the hall or on the stairs, 
 and passed on quickly to a room on the second 
 floor. There was a light in this room which 
 showed through the transom and under the crack 
 at the floor, and there was a sound of some one 
 moving about within. Holcombe knocked gently 
 and waited. 
 
 The movement on the other side of the door 
 ceased, and after a pause a voice asked who was 
 there. Holcombe hesitated a second before an 
 swering, and then said, " It is a servant, sir, with 
 a note for Mr. Allen." 
 
 At the sound of some one moving towards the 
 door from within, Holcombe threw his shoulder 
 against the panel and pressed forward. There 
 
THE EXILES 49 
 
 was the click of the key turning in the lock and 
 of the withdrawal of a bolt, and the door was 
 partly opened. Holcorabe pushed it back with 
 his shoulder, and, stepping quickly inside, closed 
 it again behind him. 
 
 The man within, into whose presence he had 
 forced himself, confronted him with a look of 
 some alarm, which increased in surprise as he 
 recognized his visitor. "Why, Holcombe!" he 
 exclaimed. He looked past him as though ex 
 pecting some one else to follow. " I thought it 
 was a servant," he said. 
 
 Holcombe made no answer, but surveyed the 
 other closely, and with a smile of content. The 
 man before him was of erect carriage, with white 
 hair and whiskers, cut after an English fashion 
 which left the mouth and chin clean shaven. He 
 was of severe and dignified appearance, and 
 though standing as he was in dishabille still gave 
 in his bearing the look of an elderly gentleman 
 who had lived a self-respecting, well-cared-for, 
 and well-ordered life. The room about him was 
 littered with the contents of opened trunks and 
 uncorded boxes. He had been interrupted in the 
 task of unpacking and arranging these posses 
 sions, but he stepped unresentf ully towards the 
 bed where his coat lay, and pulled it on, feeling 
 at the open collar of his shirt, and giving a glance 
 of apology towards the disorder of the apart 
 ment. 
 
 " The night was so warm," he said, in explana- 
 
50 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 tion. " I have been trying to get things to rights. 
 I He was speaking in some obvious embar 
 rassment, and looked uncertainly towards the in 
 truder for help. But Holcombe made no explana 
 tion, and gave him no greeting. " I heard in the 
 hotel that you were here," the other continued, 
 still striving to cover up the difficulty of the situ 
 ation, " and I am sorry to hear that you are going 
 so soon." He stopped, and as Holcombe still con 
 tinued smiling, drew himself up stiffly. The look 
 on his face hardened into one of offended dignity. 
 
 " Really, Mr. Holcombe," he said, sharply, and 
 with strong annoyance in his tone, " if you have 
 forced yourself into this room for no other pur 
 pose than to stand there and laugh, I must ask 
 you to leave it. You may not be conscious of it, 
 but your manner is offensive." He turned im 
 patiently to the table, and began rearranging the 
 papers upon it. Holcombe shifted the weight of 
 his body as it rested against the door from one 
 shoulder-blade to the other and closed his hands 
 over the door-knob behind him. 
 
 " I had a letter to-night from home about you, 
 Allen," he began, comfortably. "The person who 
 wrote it was anxious that I should return to New 
 York, and set things working in the District At 
 torney s office in order to bring you back. It 
 isn t you they want so much as " 
 
 "How dare you?" cried the embezzler, sternly, 
 in the voice with which one might interrupt an 
 other in words of shocking blasphemy. 
 
THE EXILES 51 
 
 " How dare I what?" asked Holcombe. 
 " How dare you refer to my misfortune ? You 
 of all others " He stopped, and looked at his 
 visitor with flashing eyes. "I thought you a 
 gentleman," he said, reproachfully ; " I thought 
 you a man of the world, a man who in spite of 
 your office, official position, or, rather, on account 
 of it, could feel and understand the a terrible 
 position in which I am placed, and that you 
 would show consideration. Instead of which," he 
 cried, his voice rising in indignation, " you have 
 come apparently to mock at me. If the instinct 
 of a gentleman does not teach you to be silent, I 
 shall have to force you to respect my feelings. 
 You can leave the room, sir. Now, at once." He 
 pointed with his arm at the door against which 
 Holcombe was leaning, the fingers of his out 
 stretched hand trembling visibly. 
 
 " Nonsense. Your misfortune ! What rot !" 
 Holcombe growled resentfully. His eyes wandered 
 around the room as though looking for some one 
 who might enjoy the situation with him, and then 
 returned to Allen s face. " You mustn t talk like 
 that to me," he said, in serious remonstrance. 
 " A man who has robbed people who trusted him 
 for three years, as you have done, can t afford to 
 talk of his misfortune. You were too long about 
 it, Allen. You had too many chances to put it 
 back. You ve no feelings to be hurt. Besides, if 
 you have, I m in a hurry, and I ve not the time to 
 consider them. Now, what I want of you is 
 
52 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 " Mr. Holcombe," interrupted the other, ear. 
 nestly. 
 
 " Sir," replied the visitor. 
 
 " Mr. Holcombe," began Allen, slowly, and with 
 impressive gravity, " I do not want any words 
 with you about this, or with any one else. I am 
 here owing to a combination of circumstances 
 which have led me through hopeless, endless 
 trouble. What I have gone through with no 
 body knows. That is something^no one but I can 
 ever understand. But that is now at an end. I 
 have taken refuge in flight and safety, where 
 another might have remained and compromised 
 and suffered ; but I am a weaker brother, and 
 as for punishment, my own conscience, which has 
 punished me so terribly in the past, will continue 
 to do so in the future. I am greatly to be pitied, 
 Mr. Holcombe, greatly to be pitied. And no one 
 knows that better than yourself. You know the 
 value of the position I held in New York city, 
 and how well I was suited to it, and it to me. 
 And now I am robbed of it all. I am an exile in 
 this wilderness. Surely, Mr. Holcombe, this is 
 not the place nor the time when you should in 
 sult me by recalling the " 
 
 " You contemptible hypocrite," said Holcombe, 
 slowly. " What an ass you must think I am ! 
 Now, listen to me." 
 
 " No, you listen to me," thundered the other. 
 He stepped menacingly forward, his chest heav 
 ing under his open shirt, and his fingers opening 
 
THE EXILES 53 
 
 and closing at his side. " Leave the room, I tell 
 you," he cried, " or I shall call the servants and 
 make you!" He paused with a short, mocking 
 laugh. "Who do you think I am ?" he asked ; 
 " a child that you can insult and jibe at ? I m 
 not a prisoner in the box for you to browbeat 
 and bully, Mr. District Attorney. You seem to 
 forget that I am out of your jurisdiction now." 
 
 He waited, and his manner seemed to invite 
 Holcombe to make some angry answer to his 
 tone, but the young man remained grimly silent. 
 
 " You are a very important young person at 
 home, Harry," Allen went on, mockingly. " But 
 New York State laws do not reach as far as 
 Africa." 
 
 " Quite right ; that s it exactly," said Hol 
 combe, with cheerful alacrity. " I m glad you 
 have grasped the situation so soon. That makes 
 it easier for me. Now, what I have been trying 
 to tell you is this. I received a letter about you 
 to-night. It seems that before leaving New York 
 you converted bonds and mortgages belonging to 
 Miss Martha Field, which she had intrusted to 
 you, into ready money. And that you took this 
 money with you. Now, as this is the first place 
 you have stopped since leaving New York, except 
 Gibraltar, where you could not have banked it, 
 you must have it with you now, here in this 
 town, in this hotel, possibly in this room. What 
 else you have belonging to other poor devils and 
 corporations does not concern me. It s yours as 
 
54 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STOHIES 
 
 far as I mean to do anything about it. But this 
 sixty thousand dollars which belongs to Miss 
 Field, who is the best, purest, and kindest woman 
 I have ever known, and who has given away more 
 money than you ever stole, is going back with me 
 to-morrow to New York." Holcombe leaned for 
 ward as he spoke, and rapped with his knuckles 
 on the table. Allen confronted him in amaze 
 ment, in which there was not so much surprise at 
 what the other threatened to do as at the fact 
 that it was he who had proposed doing it. 
 
 " I don t understand," he said, slowly, with the 
 air of a bewildered child. 
 
 "It s plain enough," replied the other, impa 
 tiently. "I tell you I want sixty thousand dol 
 lars of the money you have with you. You can 
 understand that, can t you ?" 
 
 " But how ?" expostulated Allen. " You don t 
 mean to rob me, do you, Harry ?" he asked, with 
 a laugh. 
 
 " You re a very stupid person for so clever a 
 one," Holcombe said, impatiently. " You must 
 give me sixty thousand dollars and if you don t, 
 I ll take it. Come, now, where is it in that 
 box?" He pointed with his finger towards a 
 square travelling-case covered with black leather 
 that stood open on the table filled with papers 
 and blue envelopes. 
 
 "Take it!" exclaimed Allen. "You, Henry 
 Holcombe ? Is it you who are speaking ? Do I 
 hear you ?" He looked at Holcombe with eyes 
 
THE EXILES 55 
 
 full of genuine wonder and a touch of fear. As 
 he spoke his hand reached out mechanically and 
 drew the leather-bound box towards him. 
 
 "Ah, it is in that box, then," said Holcombe, in 
 a quiet, grave tone. " Now count it out, and be 
 quick." 
 
 "Are you drunk?" cried the other, fiercely. 
 " Do you propose to turn highwayman and thief? 
 What do you mean ?" Holcombe reached quick 
 ly across the table towards the box, but the other 
 drew it back, snapping the lid down, and hugging 
 it close against his breast. " If you move, Hol 
 combe," he cried, in a voice of terror and warn 
 ing, "I ll call the people of the house and and 
 expose you." 
 
 " Expose me, you idiot," returned Helcombe, 
 fiercely. " How dare you talk to me like that !" 
 
 Allen dragged the table more evenly between 
 them, as a general works on his defences even 
 while he parleys with the enemy. " It s you who 
 are the idiot !" he cried. " Suppose you could 
 overcome me, which would be harder than you 
 think, what are you going to do with the money ? 
 Do you suppose I d let you leave this country 
 with it ? Do you imagine for a moment that I 
 would give it up without raising my hand ? I d 
 have you dragged to prison from your bed this 
 very night, or I d have you seized as you set your 
 foot upon the wharf. I would appeal to our 
 Consul-General. As far as he knows, I am as 
 worthy of protection as you are yourself, and, fail- 
 
56 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STOKIES 
 
 ing him, I d appeal to the law of the land." He 
 stopped for want of breath, and then began again 
 with the air of one who finds encouragement in 
 the sound of his own voice. " They may not under 
 stand extradition here, Holcombe," he said, " but 
 a thief is a thief all the world over. What you 
 may be in New York isn t going to help you here ; 
 neither is your father s name. To these people 
 you would be only a hotel thief who forces his 
 way into other men s rooms at night and " 
 
 " You poor thing," interrupted Holcombe. 
 "Do you know where you are?" he demanded. 
 " You talk, Allen, as though we were within 
 sound of the cable-cars on Broadway. This hotel 
 is not the Brunswick, and this Consul-General 
 you speak of is another blackguard who knows 
 that a word from me at Washington, on my re 
 turn, or a letter from here would lose him his 
 place and his liberty. He s as much of a rascal 
 as any of them, and he knows that I know it and 
 that I may use that knowledge. lie won t help 
 you. And as for the law of the land " Hoi- 
 combe s voice rose and broke in a mocking laugh 
 " there is no law of the land. That s why you re 
 here! You are in a place populated by exiles 
 and outlaws like yourself, who have preyed upon 
 society until society has turned and frightened 
 each of them off like a dog with his tail between 
 his legs. Don t give yourself confidence, Allen. 
 That s all you are, that s all we are two dogs 
 fighting for a stolen bone. The man who rules 
 
THE EXILES 57 
 
 you here is an ignorant negro, debauched and 
 vicious and a fanatic. He is shut off from every 
 one, even to the approach of a British ambassador. 
 And what do you suppose he cares for a dog 
 of a Christian like you, who has been robbed in 
 a hotel by another Christian ? And these others. 
 Do you suppose they care ? Call out cry for 
 help, and tell them that you have half a million 
 dollars in this room, and they will fall on you 
 and strip you of every cent of it, and leave you 
 to walk the beach for work. Now, what are you 
 going to do? Will you give me the money I 
 want to take back where it belongs, or will you 
 call for help and lose it all ?" 
 
 The two men confronted each other across the 
 narrow length of the table. The blood had run 
 to Holcombe s face, but the face of the other was 
 drawn and pale with fear. 
 
 " You can t frighten me," he gasped, rallying 
 his courage with an effort of the will. " You are 
 talking nonsense. This is a respectable hotel ; it 
 isn t a den of thieves. You are trying to frighten 
 me out of the money with your lies and your 
 lawyer s tricks, but you will find that I am not so 
 easily fooled. You are dealing with a man, Hoi- 
 combe, who suffered to get what he has, and who 
 doesn t mean to let it go without a fight for it. 
 Come near me, I warn you, and I shall call for 
 help." 
 
 Holcombe backed slowly away from the table 
 and tossed up his hands with the gesture of one 
 
58 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 who gives up his argument. " You will have it, 
 will you ?" he muttered, grimly. " Very well, 
 you shall fight for it." He turned quickly and 
 drove in the bolt of the door and placed his shoul 
 ders over the electric button in the wall. " I have 
 warned you," he said, softly. " I have told you 
 where you are, and that you have nothing to ex 
 pect from the outside. You are absolutely in my 
 power to do with as I please." He stopped, and, 
 without moving his eyes from Allen s face, drew 
 the revolver from the pocket of his coat. His 
 manner was so terrible that Allen gazed at him, 
 breathing faintly, and with his eyes fixed in hor 
 rible fascination. " There is no law," Holcombe 
 repeated, softly. " There is no help for you now 
 or later. It is a question of two men locked in a 
 room with a table and sixty thousand dollars be 
 tween them. That is the situation. Two men 
 and sixty thousand dollars. We have returned to 
 first principles, Allen. It is a man against a man, 
 and there is no Court of Appeal." 
 
 Allen s breath came back to him with a gasp, 
 as though he had been shocked with a sudden 
 downpour of icy water. 
 
 "There is!" he cried. "There is a Court of 
 Appeal. For God s sake, wait. I appeal to Henry 
 Holcombe, to Judge Holcombe s son. I appeal 
 to your good name, Harry, to your fame in the 
 world. Think what you are doing ; for the love 
 of God, don t murder me. I m a criminal, I know, 
 but not what you would be, Holcombe ; not that. 
 
T1IE EXILES 50 
 
 You are mad or drunk. You wouldn t, you couldn t 
 doit. Think of it! Tow, Henry Holcom be. You" 
 
 The fingers of Holeombe s hand moved and 
 tightened around the butt of the pistol, the sweat 
 sprang from the pores of his palm. He raised the 
 revolver and pointed it. " My sin s on my own 
 head," he said. "Give me the money." 
 
 The older man glanced fearfully back of him 
 at the open window, through which a sea breeze 
 moved the palms outside, so that they seemed to 
 whisper together as though aghast at the scene 
 before them. The window was three stories from 
 the ground, and Allen s eyes returned to the stern 
 face of the younger man. As they stood silent 
 there came to them the sound of some one moving 
 in the hall, and of men s voices whispering to 
 gether. Allen s face lit with a sudden radiance 
 of hope, and Ilolcombe s arm moved uncertainly. 
 
 " I fancy," he said, iu a whisper, " that those are 
 my friends. They have some idea of my purpose, 
 and they have come to learn more. If you call, 
 I will let them in, and they will strangle you into 
 silence until I get the money." 
 
 The two men eyed each other steadily, the older 
 seeming to weigh the possible truth of Holcombe s 
 last words in his mind. Holcombe broke the 
 silence in a lighter tone. 
 
 " Playing the policeman is a new role to me," 
 he said, "and I warn you that I have but little 
 patience ; and, besides, my hand is getting tired, 
 and this thing is at full cock." 
 
60 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 Allen, for the first time, lowered the box upon 
 the table and drew from, it a bundle of notes bound 
 together with elastic bandages. Holcombe s eyes 
 lighted as brightly at the sight as though the notes 
 were for his own private pleasures in the future. 
 
 " Be quick !" he said. " I cannot be responsible 
 for the men outside." 
 
 Allen bent over the money, his face drawing 
 into closer and sharper lines as the amount grew, 
 under his fingers, to the sum Holcombe had de 
 manded, 
 
 " Sixty thousand !" he said, in a voice of des 
 perate calm, 
 
 " Good !" whispered Holcombe. " Pass it over 
 to me. I hope I have taken the most of what you 
 have," he said, as he shoved the notes into his 
 pocket ; " but this is something. Now I warn 
 you," he added, as he lowered the trigger of the 
 revolver and put it out of sight, "that any at 
 tempt to regain this will be futile. I am sur 
 rounded by friends ; no one knows you or cares 
 about you. I shall sleep in my room to-night 
 without precaution, for I know that the money is 
 now mine. Nothing you can do will recall it. 
 Your cue is silence and secrecy as to what you 
 have lost and as to what you still have with you." 
 
 He stopped in some confusion, interrupted by a 
 sharp knock at the door and two voices calling 
 his name. Allen shrank back in terror. 
 
 " You coward !" he hissed. " You promised 
 me you d be content with what you have." Hoi- 
 
THE EXILES 61 
 
 combe looked at him in Amazement. " And now 
 your accomplices are to have their share, too, are 
 they ?" the embezzler whispered, fiercely. " You 
 lied to me ; you mean to take it all." 
 
 Holcombe, for an answer, drew back the bolt, 
 but so softly that the sound of his voice drowned 
 the noise it made. 
 
 " No, not to-night," he said, briskly, so that the 
 sound of his voice penetrated into the hall be 
 yond. "I mustn t stop any longer, I m keeping 
 you up. It has been very pleasant to have heard 
 all that news from home. It was such a chance, 
 my seeing you before I sailed. Good-night." He 
 paused and pretended to listen. " No, Allen, I 
 don t think it s a servant," he said. " It s some of 
 my friends looking for me. This is my last night 
 on shore, you see." He threw open the door and 
 confronted Meakim and Carroll as they stood in 
 some confusion in the dark hall. " Yes, it is some 
 of my friends," Holcombe continued. " I ll be 
 with you in a minute," he said to them. Then 
 he turned, and, crossing the room in their sight, 
 shook Allen by the hand, and bade him good 
 night and good-bye. 
 
 The embezzler s revulsion of feeling was so 
 keen and the relief so great that he was able to 
 smile as Holcombe turned and left him. " I wish 
 you a pleasant voyage," he said, faintly. 
 
 Then Holcombe shut the door on him, closing 
 him out from their sight. He placed his hands on 
 a shoulder of each of the two men, and jumped 
 
62 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 step by step down the stairs like a boy as they 
 descended silently in front of him. At the foot 
 of the stairs Carroll turned and confronted him 
 sternly, staring him in the face. Meakim at one 
 side eyed him curiously. 
 
 " Well ?" said Carroll, with one hand upon Hoi- 
 combe s wrist. 
 
 Holcombe shook his hand free, laughing. 
 " Well," he answered, " I persuaded him to 
 make restitution." 
 
 " You persuaded him !" exclaimed Carroll, im 
 patiently. " How ?" 
 
 Holcombe s eyes avoided those of the two in 
 quisitors. He drew a long breath, and then burst 
 into a loud fit of hysterical laughter. The two 
 men surveyed him grimly. " I argued with him, 
 of course," said Holcombe, gayly. " That is my 
 business, man ; you forget that I am a District 
 Attorney 
 
 " We didn t forget it," said Carroll, fiercely. 
 " Did you f What did you do ?" 
 
 Holcombe backed away up the stairs shaking 
 his head and laughing. " I shall never tell you," 
 he said. He pointed with his hand down the 
 second flight of stairs. " Meet me in the smoking- 
 room," he continued. " I will be there in a min 
 ute, and we will have a banquet. Ask the others 
 to come. I have something to do first." 
 
 The two men turned reluctantly away, and con 
 tinued on down the stairs without speaking and 
 with their faces filled with doubt. Holcombe ran 
 
THE EXILES 63 
 
 first to Reese s room and replaced the pistol in its 
 holder. He was trembling as he threw the thing 
 from him, and had barely reached his own room 
 and closed the door when a sudden faintness over 
 came him. The weight he had laid on his nerves 
 was gone and the laughter had departed from his 
 face. He stood looking back at what he had es 
 caped as a man reprieved at the steps of the gal 
 lows turns his head to glance at the rope he has 
 cheated. Holcombe tossed the bundle of notes 
 upon the table and took an unsteady step across 
 the room. Then he turned suddenly and threw 
 himself upon his knees and buried his face in the 
 pillow. 
 
 The sun rose the next morning on a cool, beau 
 tiful day, and the consul s boat, with the Ameri 
 can flag trailing from the stern, rose and fell on 
 the bluest of blue waters as it carried Holcombe 
 and his friends to the steamer s side. 
 
 " We are going to miss you very much," Mrs. 
 Carroll said. " I hope you won t forget to send 
 us word of yourself." 
 
 Miss Terrill said nothing. She was leaning over 
 the side trailing her hand in the water, and watch 
 ing it run between her slim pink fingers. She 
 raised her eyes to find Holcombe looking at her 
 intently with a strange expression of wistfulness 
 and pity, at which she smiled brightly back at 
 him, and began to plan vivaciously with Captain 
 Reese for a ride that same afternoon. 
 
 They separated over the steamer s deck, and 
 
64 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 Meakim, for the hundredth time, and in the lack 
 of conversation which comes at such moments, 
 offered Hoi combe a fresh cigar. 
 
 " But I have got eight of yours now," said Hoi- 
 combe. 
 
 " That s all right ; put it in your pocket," said 
 the Tammany chieftain, "and smoke it after din 
 ner. You ll need em. They re better than those 
 you ll get on the steamer, and they never went 
 through a custom-house." 
 
 Holcombe cleared his throat in some slight em 
 barrassment. "Is there anything I can do for 
 you in New York, Meakim ?" he asked. " Any 
 body I can see, or to whom I can deliver a mes 
 sage?" 
 
 " No," said Meakim. " I write pretty often. 
 Don t you worry about me," he added, gratefully. 
 " I ll be back there some day myself, when the 
 law of limitation lets me." 
 
 Holcombe laughed. " Well," he said, " I d be 
 glad to do something for you if you d let me know 
 what you d like." 
 
 Meakim put his hands behind his back and 
 puffed meditatively on his cigar, rolling it be 
 tween his lips with his tongue. Then he turned 
 it between his fingers and tossed the ashes over 
 the side of the boat. He gave a little sigh, and 
 then frowned at having done so. " I ll tell you 
 what you can do for me, Holcombe," he said, 
 smiling. " Some night I wish you would go down 
 to Fourteenth Street, some night this spring, when 
 
THE EXILES 65 
 
 the boys are sitting out on the steps in front of 
 the Hall, and just take a drink for me at Ed Lai- 
 ly s ; just for luck. Will you? That s what I d 
 like to do. I don t know nothing better than 
 Fourteenth Street of a summer evening, with all 
 the people crowding into Pastor s on one side of 
 the Hall, and the Third Avenue L cars running 
 by on the other. That s a gay sight ; ain t it now ? 
 With all the girls coming in and out of Theiss s, 
 and the sidewalks crowded. One of them warm 
 nights when they have to have the windows open, 
 and you can hear the music in at Pastor s, and the 
 audience clapping their hands. That s great, isn t 
 it ? Well," he laughed and shook his head. " I ll 
 be back there some day, won t I," he said, wist 
 fully, " and hear it for myself." 
 
 " Carroll," said Holcombe, drawing the former 
 to one side, " suppose I see this cabman when I 
 reach home, and get him to withdraw the charge, 
 or agree not to turn up when it comes to trial." 
 
 Carroll s face clouded in an instant. " Now, 
 listen to me, Holcombe," he said. " You let my 
 dirty work alone. There s lots of my friends who 
 have nothing better to do than just that. You 
 have something better to do, and you leave me 
 and my rows to others. I like you for what you 
 are, and not for what you can do for me. I don t 
 mean that I don t appreciate your offer, but it 
 shouldn t have come from an Assistant District 
 Attorney to a fugitive criminal." 
 
 " What nonsense ! " said Holcombe. 
 
60 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 " Don t say that ; don t say that !" said Carroll, 
 quickly, as though it hurt him. " You wouldn t 
 have said it a month aero." 
 
 O 
 
 Ilolcombe eyed the other with an alert, confi 
 dent smile. "No, Carroll," he answered, "I would 
 not." He put his hand on the other s shoulder 
 with a suggestion in his manner of his former 
 self, and with a touch of patronage. "I have 
 learned a great deal in a month," he said. "Seven 
 battles were won in seven days once. All my life 
 I have been fighting causes, Carroll, and princi 
 ples. I have been working with laws against law 
 breakers. I have never yet fought a man. It was 
 not poor old Meakim, the individual, I prosecuted, 
 but the corrupt politician. Now, here I have been 
 thrown with men and women on as equal terms as 
 a crew of sailors cast away upon a desert island. 
 We were each a law unto himself. And I have 
 been brought face to face, and for the first time 
 in my life, not with principles of conduct, not with 
 causes, and not with laws, but with my fellow- 
 
THE WRITING ON THE WALL 
 
 IMMEN PASHA S dinner was given to Miss Page, 
 although it was ostensibly in honor of the British 
 Minister, whose wife sat on Immen s right, and 
 tested that Oriental s composed politeness great 
 ly. But at times he would turn to Miss Page, 
 and she would murmur with him in French, and 
 he would have his reward. The condition upon 
 which Miss Page had come to the dinner was that 
 it should be an Oriental one through out, and so the 
 table was accordingly of silver, and each strange, 
 sticky course was served in a golden bowl, and 
 each fork and spoon bore a ruby and a diamond 
 in its handle. 
 
 " Diamonds and rubies are my jewels," Immen 
 explained simply, as one would say, "Blue and 
 yellow are my racing colors," or that such a sen 
 tence was the motto of his family. 
 
 A native orchestra played from a balcony of 
 heavily carved wood that stretched across one 
 end of the room, and behind a lattice beneath it 
 shone the bright eyes of Immen s wife, who was 
 politely supposed to have already departed for 
 Alexandria, but who in reality was looking with 
 wonder and misgivings upon the bold women, 
 
68 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 with naked faces and shoulders, who sat at her 
 husband s side, and talked to hirn without wait 
 ing for him to give them leave. 
 
 Miss Page and her family had been spending 
 the winter in Qairo 4 and were to leave in the 
 week. The hot weather, or what passes for hot 
 weather in Cairo, had arrived, and the last of 
 Cook s dahabeahs was hurrying back down the 
 Nile, and a few of the court had already gone 
 to Alexandria, and in two weeks the Khedive 
 would follow. It had been a delightful winter, 
 and Helen Page had enjoyed it in what was to 
 her a new way. She had reached that stage when 
 everything in life has found its true value. There 
 was for her no more marking up or marking down. 
 If it would not sell for that it should not leave 
 her, or if it cost so much it was not worth seek 
 ing after, and she let it go. She still enjoyed 
 dances and functions ; but the dances had to be 
 very well done, and the functions had to come in 
 the natural order of things. She knew what 
 bored her and what amused her, and she knew 
 the worth of a cabinet minister s conversation and 
 the value of a few words from royalty, and of a 
 day with her brother hunting for bargains in the 
 bazaars. She had arrived. 
 
 She left the officers of the Army of Occupation 
 to her sister, who was just out, and of that age 
 when the man who leads the cotillon was of much 
 more immediate importance than the gentleman 
 with the star on his coat, who could tell her sis- 
 
THE WRITING ON THE WALL 69 
 
 ter when the Italians would move over the Alps, 
 or the tall senators in Washington who related 
 such amusing stories and who told things to 
 Helen of such importance that she would sit with 
 her eyes cast down so that people might not see 
 how interested she was. That might be worth 
 while to Helen, but to her sister the young Eng 
 lish officers on polo ponies and the rides to the 
 ostrich farm and golf at the base of the pyramids 
 were much more entertaining. So it happened 
 occasionally when Helen and her good-looking 
 brother were treasure-hunting on the Mouski that 
 they would have to jump out of the way of a yell 
 ing outrunner in black and gold and see their 
 sister roll by seated high in a cart with an Ara 
 bian pony in the shafts and an English subaltern 
 at her side. 
 
 Once when this happened her brother looked 
 after the cart with a smile, and said, indulgently 
 and with that tolerance for youth which only a 
 Harvard Junior can feel : 
 
 " Wouldn t you like to be as young as that, 
 Helen ?" 
 
 His sister exclaimed, indignantly: " Well, upon 
 rny word ! And how old do you suppose I 
 am?" 
 
 " I don t know," the brother answered, una 
 bashed. " The last time* I asked you, you were 
 nineteen. That was years ago." 
 
 " Only four years. Does that make me so very 
 old?" 
 
70 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 " But you ve seen such a lot, and you ve been 
 around so much and all that," he argued. " That s 
 what makes people old. Helen, don t you ever 
 intend to get married ?" 
 
 " Never," said the sister. "I am going to live 
 with you, and keep you from falling in love with 
 a nicer girl than myself, and we will promise each 
 other never to marry, but just to go about like 
 this always, and explore places and have advent 
 ures." 
 
 Young Page laughed indulgently. " Very 
 well," he said. He had had hopes at one time 
 that his sister would take a fancy to his room 
 mate, who played next to him on the foot-ball 
 eleven ; but that gentleman had never really ap 
 preciated her, although he had once said that her 
 photograph was the finest thing he had ever seen. 
 
 He used to stand in front of it when he was filling 
 I 
 
 his pipe and survey it critically, with his head on 
 one side, and Page had considered this a very good 
 sign. It was after this that the announcement in 
 the papers of his sister s engagement to a young 
 English duke had made her brother wonder if that 
 perhaps would not be even a better thing for him, 
 as it would give him such grand opportunities for 
 shooting over his brother-in-law s preserves. And 
 from that time on he rather discouraged his room 
 mate in cherishing secret hopes. 
 
 He had not heard of the young Englishman 
 lately, so he inquired, jocosely and with what he 
 considered rare discretion and subtlety : " If you 
 
THE WRITING ON THE WALL 71 
 
 were to marry a duke, Helen, should I still call 
 you just plain Helen, or would you make me say 
 Your Grace, as the servants do ?" 
 
 Helen stopped, ankle-deep in the mud of the ba 
 zaars, and surveyed him with such evident amuse 
 ment that he laughed in some embarrassment. 
 "You could never truthfully call me plain Helen, 
 Ted," she said, " and you will never have the 
 chance to call me the other thing." 
 
 "Oh!" said her brother, meekly, "that s how 
 it is, is it?" 
 
 " Yes, that s how it is," his sister echoed him. 
 
 The man who sat on Miss Page s left at Immen 
 Pasha s dinner was Prince Panine, the Russian 
 First Secretary. He had known Miss Page in 
 Washington when he was an attache of the Rus 
 sian legation there, and had been bold enough to 
 ask her to marry him. When she declined to do 
 so, he took it hardly, and 1 said unpleasant things 
 about her, which, in time, came back to her. She 
 bore him no ill-will for this; but he did not ap 
 peal to her as a delightful dinner companion. 
 It was different with the Russian, for it was his 
 pride that had been hurt by her refusal rather 
 than his heart, and he thought this the sweet 
 moment of his revenge. He now could show 
 the woman who had refused him when he was 
 an insignificant attache that it was the prospec 
 tive head of a powerful and noble Russian fam 
 ily and a possible ambassador that she had over 
 looked. 
 
72 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 He felt the value of the situation keenly. It 
 inspired him as a good part inspires the actor, 
 and he smiled at his own thoughts, and twisted 
 his pointed beard, and bridled and bowed his 
 head like a pretty woman. Miss Page at first 
 did not notice him at all. She was intent on 
 what Immen was telling her of some extrava 
 gance of Ismail Pasha s, in whose cabinet he had 
 served ; but when he had ceased, and turned with 
 a sigh to the English matron, Miss Page moved 
 in her chair, and surveyed Panine with smiling 
 good-nature. 
 
 " It is very nice to see you again," she said, 
 comfortably ; " but they tell me, Prince, that you 
 are such a dangerous personage now. I am really 
 rather afraid of you." 
 
 The Russian bowed his head and smiled grim 
 ly. "You did not find me dangerous once," he 
 said. 
 
 But she looked past him, and continued as 
 though he had not spoken. " I never thought you 
 would take the service so seriously," she went on. 
 " Why, you will be a minister very soon now, 
 shall you not ?" 
 
 Panine looked at her sternly, as though he was 
 in doubt as to her being serious. " Some one has 
 told you?" he asked, frowning. 
 
 " No," she said, lightly. " But it is about time, 
 is it not? What were you in Washington? Sec 
 ond Secretary, I think?" 
 
 " It is not a matter of years," the Russian an- 
 
THE WRITING ON THE WALL 73 
 
 swered, stiffly " at least, it is not so with some 
 men. It is true I am still a secretary, but our 
 chief has been away, and what is it that you 
 have for a proverb when the cat s away the 
 mice eh?" He lifted his eyebrows, and then 
 glanced quickly up and down the length of the 
 table, as though to give her the impression that 
 he was fearful of having been overheard. Miss 
 Page did not apparently notice this by-play. She 
 laughed, and then interrupted herself to listen to 
 something that was being said across the table 
 before she answered him. 
 
 "So," she said, "you have been plotting and 
 conspiring again, have you, arid we are to have a 
 crisis? You are all just alike." She laughed in 
 dulgently. "It is so absurd," she said. 
 
 Panine s frown was quite genuine now. "Ah, 
 so," he said, with mocking politeness, "you think 
 it absurd? Yes," he added, " you are quite right. 
 It is nothing, just a game, and, as you say, quite 
 absurd quite absurd. You relieve me," he added. 
 "I had feared perhaps you had learned some 
 thing. Even the most experienced in our service 
 is sometimes indiscreet, when it is a beautiful 
 woman to whom he talks." 
 
 Her eyes closed for an instant, which was a 
 trick they had when she was annoyed or bored, 
 and she turned to Immen with a smile. The Rus 
 sian sipped deeply from his glass and scowled. 
 He felt that he was not making that sort of an 
 impression which the situation should have called 
 
74 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 forth. The girl did not yet seem to appreciate 
 what she had given up. 
 
 Miss Page turned to him again. " We are to 
 have a most amusing evening," she said; "did you 
 know ? Immen is going to have Bannerman in to 
 do his tricks for us." 
 
 " The mind-reader ?" 
 
 " Yes. Have you ever seen him ?" 
 
 Panine answered, in the tone of one who is 
 tolerant of the amusements of others, that he 
 had seen the fellow once when he had performed 
 before the King of Greece. " He made us all 
 look rather ridiculous and undignified," he said. 
 "I do not think that I like the court jester of 
 modern times." 
 
 "You must be very careful," Miss Page laughed, 
 " or he will read all of your secrets, and then we 
 will know what mischief you have been 
 
 " I beg your pardon !" interrupted the Russian, 
 quickly. He gave her a warning glance. " They 
 will hear you," he explained. 
 
 The girl tossed her head with a shrug of impa 
 tience. "Quelle pose !" she said. "Why are you 
 not amusing, as you used to be? Are you always 
 mysterious now? And when are you Russians go 
 ing to embrace France, and how soon will your 
 fleet be in the Bosporus, and do you still draw 
 little maps of Constantinople on the backs of 
 your visiting-cards ? Oh, it is such an old, old 
 story." 
 
 "Just as you say," replied Panine, without 
 
THE WRITING ON THE WALL 75 
 
 showing any sense of injury. "It is an old story; 
 it is like the shepherd-boy who kept calling that 
 the wolf was coming, is it not ?" 
 
 "Exactly," consented the girl, "except that the 
 Russian specimen of wolf never comes." 
 
 Panine smiled and nodded his head. " Do you 
 know something, Miss Page?" he said. "You 
 should have been in a secret service. You should 
 have been a diplomat." 
 
 " I don t think I like that," said the girl, slow 
 ly, " though you probably meant that I should. 
 Why?" 
 
 "Because the methods you adopt in finding out 
 what you wish to know are the ones which will 
 make you sure to learn. Make little of another s 
 secret, Miss Page, or of another s knowledge, and 
 he is sure to tell you what he knows, because he 
 is piqued and wishes to show you how important 
 it is or how important he is." 
 
 "My dear Prince," said the girl, patiently, 
 " I have not the least desire to know your se 
 crets. I have no methods. I am quite inno 
 cent of trying to find out anything. You do 
 yourself entirely too much honor. Even if 
 you had a secret, it would make me most un 
 comfortable if I thought you had it about you, 
 and especially if I imagined you intended to let 
 it escape." 
 
 "You treat me this way," said the Russian, 
 quickly, and lowering his voice, " because you 
 still even now look at me as a boy. You think 
 
76 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 that I have been doing nothing these five years; 
 that I am still copying despatches and translat 
 ing reports. But that is past. I send despatches 
 myself now, and in a short time my government 
 and every government will know that I have not 
 been idle. What I am doing now will be the talk 
 of the whole diplomatic world." 
 
 The man leaned forward and poured out his 
 words in a low and intense whisper. He was 
 mortified, and his pride cut to the heart at the 
 coldness of the woman beside him. Had she 
 begged for his confidence he could have with 
 held it easily, as his caution would have taken 
 alarm at her entreaties ; but her silent indiffer 
 ence to him and to what he knew was of mo 
 mentous importance piqued and unnerved him. 
 He was sure she was discreet ; it was the one 
 quality that every man and woman unhesitating 
 ly allowed to her ;- arid more than that, she was 
 very beautiful. A man will tell a discreet wom 
 an a great deal, and when she has added to this 
 virtue great beauty, he is liable to tell her every 
 thing, unless she stops him. 
 
 " There are those here at this table," continued 
 Panine, with his eyes bent on his plate, " who are 
 in danger. In a week, in a day, the crisis at 
 which you laugh will come, and some of those 
 who are here to-night will not dine with us 
 again." 
 
 Miss Page considered that it was now quite 
 time for him to stop. "I had no idea you were 
 
THE WRITING ON THE WALL 77 
 
 serious," she said, haughtily. " Who gave you 
 the right to confide in me?" 
 
 She turned for relief to Immen, but he was 
 deep in conversation with his neighbor, so she 
 became silent, and interested herself in the dish 
 before her. "Do you know what this is?" she 
 asked Panine, in a lighter tone. " I have been 
 studying very hard since I have been here, but I 
 never seem to learn the names of anything use 
 ful." 
 
 Panine was biting at his finger-nail. He had 
 worked himself up into a fever of excitement. 
 For months his thoughts had been on one theme, 
 and in working out what was to be for him a 
 great coup, which was to place him at the head 
 of a legation and cover his coat with French and 
 Russian orders. He could think of nothing else, 
 and he could not now contain himself. 
 
 "You know the situation here," he went on, 
 anxiously, as though she had not previously 
 checked him. " It is three to one, if you went 
 less with your English friends, and saw more 
 of us, you would feel less confident, you would 
 have less of their arrogance and intolerance of 
 the enemy. It is not wise to despise an enemy. 
 What would you think if the Dual Control, 
 which is not a Dual Control, should be revived, 
 but with this important difference, that it shall 
 be France and Russia, and not France and Eng 
 land, who are to guide the future of these Egyp 
 tians ?" 
 
78 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 Miss Page glanced with a smile down the table 
 to where the English Consul-General sat, large, 
 broad-shouldered, and aggressive - looking even 
 over his sweetmeats. He caught her eye, and 
 smiled pleasantly. 
 
 " That is not a very thrilling idea," she said. 
 " It seems to me it has been in the air for some 
 time. Not that I follow politics at all," she add 
 ed, quickly, " but every one knows that ; it is cer 
 tainly not new." 
 
 "The idea, no; but the carrying out of it, yes," 
 said the Russian. He leaned forward and tow 
 ards her quickly, and before she could draw her 
 head away had whispered to her a few words in 
 English, which was the safest tongue he could 
 have used in that company. Then he drew back, 
 his eyes brilliant with triumph and excitement, 
 and noted the effect of his words. 
 
 The girl s face had paled, and her eyes were 
 wide open, as though she had seen something 
 that shocked her, and she even made a move 
 ment as though she would push back her chair 
 and leave the table. But as the color came to 
 her cheeks her self-possession returned to her, 
 and she bent her body forward and said across 
 the table to one of the English women oppo 
 site: 
 
 "I hear you are going to sail with us next 
 week. That will be very nice. I hope it will be 
 smooth between here and Brindisi." 
 
 Panine exclaimed under his breath, and whig- 
 
THE WRITING ON THE WALL 70 
 
 pered something between his fingers as he twist 
 ed them in his pointed beard. 
 
 There were many people at the reception which 
 followed the dinner; wise-looking judges of the 
 Mixed Courts and their wives and native princes, 
 secretaries of the many diplomatic agencies, and 
 an abundance of scarlet mess jackets on officers 
 of the Army of Occupation. They outshone even 
 the women in the brilliancy of their apparel, with 
 their broad bands of gold braid and rows of tiny 
 brass buttons. They outshone the men, too, in 
 the ruddy tan of their faces, burned by the sun 
 of the Soudan and roughened by the fine sand of 
 the desert. 
 
 They were a handsome, arrogant-looking group; 
 some with the fez, which seemed strangely out of 
 place on their yellow hair, and which showed that 
 they served the Khedive, and others with strips 
 of tiny ribbons across their breasts to show that 
 they had served the Queen, and each of these 
 Englishmen moved about with the uneasy, self- 
 assertive air of one who knows that he is wel 
 comed through necessity, and only because he 
 holds his place in the society about him by force 
 of arms. 
 
 Bannerman, the English mind -reader, busied 
 himself in selecting a committee, and the others 
 seated themselves on the divans around the room 
 and discussed the self-possessed young woman 
 with the yellow -dyed hair who served as the 
 
80 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES - 
 
 mind-reader s assistant, and to whom he referred 
 as "my ward." They all agreed that he was cer 
 tainly very clever, and as an entertainer a decided 
 relief after the amateur musicians of doubtful 
 talent who had been forced upon them at other 
 houses. 
 
 Banrierman showed how some one else had 
 stabbed the Austrian Minister in the back with 
 a paper-knife, after first having discovered it hid 
 den in a pot of palms in the garden. And his as 
 sistant, at his command, described rings and coins 
 and pocket-pieces held up before her blindfolded 
 eyes. Then Bannerman read the numbers on an 
 English bank-note, chalking them out on a black 
 board, and rearranged groups and tableaux which 
 had been previously stage-managed and separated 
 during his absence from the room. He was ex 
 tremely easy and clever, and smiled an offensive 
 ly humble smile as each exhibition was rewarded 
 by enthusiastic approbation. Nothing quite so 
 out of the common had been given them during 
 the season. Magicians they had in plenty; they 
 could be found on the terrace of Shepheard s any 
 afternoon, but there was something almost un 
 canny in the successes of this English adventurer, 
 which was slightly spoiled by his self-assurance, 
 by the rows of medals on his coat, and the bar 
 barous jewels on his short, fat fingers. 
 
 Hoffmeyer Bey, a German in the Egyptian ser 
 vice, took it very seriously. 
 
 "I should like to ask you, sir," he demanded, 
 
THE WETTING ON THE WALL 81 
 
 as though the mind - reader were on trial, and 
 gazing at him grimly through round spectacles, 
 " whether you claim to will the young lady to 
 say what these articles are which you hold up, or 
 whether you claim to communicate with her by 
 thought-transference." 
 
 Some of the subalterns nudged each other and 
 grinned at this. They did not know how the 
 trick was done, but they did know that it was a 
 trick. You could not impose on them. 
 
 " I should answer that, sir, in this way," said 
 the showman, glibly: "I should say that it is an 
 exhibition of both will-power and of thought-trans 
 ference. You observe, ladies and gentlemen, that 
 I do not even approach my assistant, so that it is 
 not muscle-reading I depend upon, which is a very 
 different thing from mind-reading, and which ne 
 cessitates actual contact. I see whatever it is 
 that you wish described. My mind is working 
 in sympathy with my ward s, and I will her to 
 tell of what I am thinking. If I did not keep 
 my mind on the object, she could give no descrip 
 tion of it whatsoever." 
 
 Colonel Royce raised his finger. "Eh could 
 she give a description of it if you merely thought 
 of it, but didn t say anything ?" he demanded. 
 
 Miss Page, who was sitting at Immen s side 
 in a far corner, smiled and shrugged her shoul 
 ders. 
 
 " Why don t they let the poor man alone ?" she 
 said. " It is a very good trick, and is all the more 
 
82 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 amusing because we think it is not a trick. Why 
 insist on seeing the wheels go round?" 
 
 " Oh, he will explain," said the old Pasha, smil 
 ing. " C est son metier. He has been asked these 
 same questions before. He is quite prepared for 
 them, and in a contest of argument I imagine the 
 fakir would be more than a match for our mili 
 tary friend. The colonel, they tell me, is more 
 at home in a saddle than in a salon." 
 
 " The best test I could possibly submit to you," 
 said Bannerman, " and one which would show you 
 that there is no collusion between myself and my 
 assistant, is one that I call The writing on the 
 wall. I will take any one you please to select as 
 my subject, and make him or her write a sentence 
 on this blackboard in a language which he or she 
 does not understand. I will not dictate what the 
 subject writes. I simply claim to be able to make 
 him write it in a language which he does not know. 
 If I can do this, you must admit that I have the 
 power to will another to read what is in my mind, 
 just as I am able to read what is in his mind. I 
 think that is the just conclusion. I act in the 
 test simply as a translator. The subject thinks 
 of a sentence or phrase, and I translate it in my 
 own mind, and force him by will-power alone to 
 write it in a language with which he is absolutely 
 unfamiliar. All I ask is that I may be allowed to 
 blindfold whoever assists me in this, in order that 
 he may not have his attention distracted, and to 
 be allowed to hold his hand." 
 
THE WRITING ON THE WALL 
 
 "Will you please say that all over again?" 
 commanded Colonel Royce. 
 
 Bannerman explained his test once more, and 
 there was a general murmur of incredulity and 
 of whispered persiflage on the part of the subal 
 terns. 
 
 " If he can make you write three words in cor 
 rect French, Ted," said his younger sister, " I ll 
 believe he s a spook." 
 
 The English Minister turned to his American 
 confrere with a smile. " That sounds rather h> 
 teresting," he said. " How will he do it ?" 
 
 The American was sitting with his lips puck 
 ered and with his eyes half closed. "I was just 
 trying to think," he said, doubtfully. " Of course 
 it is a trick. I don t believe in thought transfer 
 ence myself. He either moves his assistant s hand, 
 and makes him think that he is doing it himself 
 when he is not, or the assistant does what the 
 little boy did. There is no other way." 
 
 "What did the little boy do? Is that an 
 American story ?" said the Englishman, smiling. 
 
 " Oh, the little boy lied," explained the Consul- 
 General. 
 
 Bannerman stood in the centre of the room, 
 weighing a broad silk scarf in his hands. " There 
 is too much light for my purpose," he said; "it 
 prevents my concentrating my thoughts. Would 
 you mind having two or three of those lamps placed 
 outside, if you please ? Thank you." 
 
 The lamps were carried out, and the room was 
 
84 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 now left in an appropriate half-light, which came 
 mysteriously from under red globes. There was 
 an interested silence. 
 
 Bannerman stood weighing the handkerchief in 
 the palms of his hands and glancing slowly around 
 the surrounding rows of faces. His eyes rested 
 finally on the farther corner, where Helen Page 
 sat in an alcove with the English woman who 
 was to sail with her the week following. They 
 were whispering together busily, and Immen Pa 
 sha had turned his shoulder to them so that they 
 might speak the more freely. Bannerman walked 
 directly towards them without speaking or mak 
 ing any sound, but as he came forward Miss Page 
 turned her head sharply, and looked at him in 
 quiringly as though he had already addressed her. 
 He stood immediately before her and bowed. 
 
 " Will you be so good as to assist me in this ?" 
 he asked. He bowed again, smiling as he did so, 
 with so assured an air that Immen rose and placed 
 himself between them. 
 
 "No," he answered for her. "You must ask 
 some one else." 
 
 "I should be very much gratified if this young 
 lady would assist me," said the adventurer, ear 
 nestly, but in so low a tone that those at the other 
 end of the room could hear nothing. " I am quite 
 confident I could succeed with her. It is a most 
 difficult experiment." 
 
 Miss Page shook her head slightly. "Thank 
 you, no," she said. 
 
THE WRITING ON THE WALL 85 
 
 She turned to her friend and began speaking 
 with her again as though nothing had interrupted 
 them. The mind-reader made no second effort to 
 address her, neither did he move away, but stood 
 perfectly still, looking at her curiously and fixed 
 ly. The girl stopped as though some one had 
 touched her to attract her attention, and, looking 
 up, met the eyes of the mind-reader fixed upon 
 hers. The man took courage from the silence in 
 the room, which showed him that his choice had 
 been a popular one, and that the girl whose money 
 arid beauty and brains had in their different fash 
 ion interested different people was a personage of 
 whom they wished to see more in a new part. Even 
 Immen himself stood aside now ; he, too, was curi 
 ous to see how she would acquit herself. 
 
 " Come," said the man, in a low tone. The girl 
 stared at him in surprise and drew back. 
 
 She turned to Immen. " What does he want 
 with me ?" she said. 
 
 " It is nothing, madam," answered Bannerman, 
 quickly, before the older man could speak to her ; 
 " merely to write a sentence on the blackboard. 
 Anything that comes into your head, and I shall 
 will you to write it in any language I please." 
 
 The girl s face wore a troubled, puzzled look, 
 and instead of turning her eyes away, she contin 
 ued staring at the man as though she were trying 
 to recollect whether she had ever seen him before. 
 
 He drew away from her slowly, and with his 
 eyes still fixed on hers. " You will assist me," he 
 
86 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 said. And this time it was not in a tone of in 
 quiry that he spoke, but of command. 
 
 The girl rose suddenly, and stood uncertainly, 
 looking around the room as though to test its feel 
 ing towards her. She saw the English Minister 
 (as that Consul-General was called by courtesy) 
 smiling at her encouragingly, she saw Panine in a 
 doorway, posed against the red curtains, scowling 
 to himself, and she saw her brother and sister, 
 surrounded by a full staff of scarlet jackets, en 
 joying her discomfiture. She took a step back as 
 though to resume her place in the alcove, but the 
 mind-reader put out his hand, and she, to the sur 
 prise of all, took it, staring at him as she did so, 
 as though to read in his face how he had been able 
 to make her give it to him. 
 
 " You understand French, of course," the man 
 said, in a low tone, but the room was so still now 
 that every one could hear. The girl nodded, 
 without taking her eyes from his. " And Italian 
 yes ; and German yes ; and a little Spanish 
 perhaps yes no ? Is that all ?" The girl nodded 
 again. 
 
 " Very good. You shall write in Arabic." 
 
 The Egyptians and the English looked at each 
 other and smiled, but the tone of the man was so 
 full of confidence that their faces filled again with 
 intent interest. Carefully and deftly Bannerman 
 drew the silk scarf across the girl s forehead, but 
 she raised her hands and unwound it and dropped 
 it on the floor. 
 
THE WRITING ON THE WALL 8? 
 
 "I will not be blindfolded," she said. "I can 
 keep my eyes closed without it." 
 
 "Humph !" commented a subaltern. He made 
 a grimace as though he had tasted something un 
 pleasant. 
 
 " What is it ?" asked the next man. " Did you 
 see a ghost ?" 
 
 " Yes ; an enlisted man we shot in Burmah. 
 He did the same thing. It reminded me of it." 
 
 " She does take it rather seriously," whispered 
 the other. 
 
 The blackboard hung like a curtain at one end 
 of the room. There was no light near it, and it 
 formed a black background against which Helen 
 Page s figure and head stood out distinctly. She 
 was a very beautiful woman, with great masses 
 of black hair, which she wore back from her fore 
 head. Her face was lovely rather than classic, and 
 typically American in its frank confidence of her 
 own innocence and of others towards her, and in 
 its cleverness. She wore a gown of black satin, 
 covered with tiny glittering spangles, that fitted 
 her figure closely, leaving her arms and shoulders 
 bare. It was a most unusual gown, and strongly 
 suggestive of things theatrical, like a Columbine 
 in mourning, or the wicked fairy who rises through 
 a trap in the pantomime. On another woman it 
 would have been bold, but on her it only made the 
 face above it appear more lovely and innocent by 
 contrast. It was as incongruous as a girl s face 
 in a suit of armor. 
 
But the costume fitted the moment with pecul 
 iar appropriateness, and as the girl raised her bare 
 arm to write, she looked like a blind prophetess 
 or a beautiful witch, who might transform them 
 all into four-footed animals. She appeared so well 
 standing in outline against the background, with 
 the lights playing over the spangles, that both the 
 men and the women present were more intent 
 upon her than upon what she was about to do. 
 Bannerman congratulated himself on his good fort 
 une. He was enough of a showman to feel the 
 effect she had produced, and, like a clever stage- 
 manager, left to her the centre of the stage, while 
 he kept his own person in the background of the 
 picture. 
 
 " Are you ready ?" he asked. 
 
 The girl s left arm hung straight at her side, 
 with the palm turned out, so that the tips of her 
 fingers touched those of the mind -reader as he 
 stood with bowed head behind her. Miss Page 
 moved her right hand slightly in assent. 
 
 And then, as though some subtle contact had 
 been established between them by which the two 
 individual minds moved in common, her right arm 
 raised itself, and she began to grope across the 
 board with a piece of chalk as though to find the 
 starting-point. Her hand stopped high above her 
 head, and the chalk scratched on the board and 
 left behind it a queer jumble of Arabic figures. 
 The arm rested in mid-air, and the girl s face, with 
 her eyes still closed, bowed itself, as though she 
 
THE WKITING ON THE WALL 83 
 
 were listening and waiting for further instruc 
 tion. 
 
 Bannerman glanced past her to the writing on 
 the board. He turned his face to the audience, 
 without losing his hold on the girl s finger-tips, 
 and translated aloud, " His Excellency " There 
 were many present entitled to that prefix, and 
 several who had already recognized it as it was 
 written out before them. There was no question 
 but that the sentence, so far, was in the most cor 
 rect Arabic. 
 
 " He has established what he claims to do al 
 ready," whispered Hoffmeyer Bey to Banner- 
 man s ward. The girl nodded her head. Her lips 
 were parted, and she was breathing quickly. 
 
 The chalk moved again, hesitated, and stopped. 
 The mind-reader read over to himself what was 
 written. There was a strange look on his face 
 which told nothing, but there was something dep 
 recatory in his tone as he said aloud, "His Excel 
 lency, the British Minister " 
 
 There was a movement in the surrounding cir 
 cle as though they had each felt that the affair 
 had taken on a more intimate and personal com 
 plexion. And though each assured himself that 
 what was to follow was but a compliment from 
 the English showman to the English lord, there 
 was something so uneasy in the manner of 
 the mind -reader that the fancy of each took 
 alarm, and the interest of all became deeply en 
 gaged. 
 
90 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 The girl still stood trancelike and with bowed 
 head, while her arm moved across the black sur 
 face of the board, but in the bearing of the mind- 
 reader there was the dismay of one who finds the 
 matter in hand growing beyond his control, and 
 with this there was the touch of fear. It was in 
 a tone so low that it barely penetrated the length 
 of the room that he read the broken phrase which 
 followed " visits the opera to-morrow night " 
 he said. 
 
 As he pronounced these words there was a sud 
 den movement in the circle about him, coming 
 from no one person, and yet so apparent in its 
 significance that each looked furtively at his neigh 
 bor, and dropped his eyes, or turned them anxious 
 ly towards the blackboard. Bannerman raised his 
 body, and straightened himself as though he was 
 about to speak further, but the scratching and 
 tapping of the chalk upon the board interrupted 
 him, and he dropped his head. It was as though 
 he did not wish to see the completion of his 
 work. 
 
 The voice of the young American Minister from 
 the back of the room broke the tense stillness of 
 the moment. He gave a long indrawn sigh of ap 
 preciation. * Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin," he 
 quoted, mockingly. 
 
 " Silence !" HofFmeyer Bey commanded, half 
 rising from the divan. And the silence he com 
 manded answered him. The air of the room 
 seemed charged with electricity. It was as though 
 
THE WRITING ON THE WALL 91 
 
 every one present were part of a huge battery; 
 but no one moved. The scratching on the board 
 ceased. The girl s arm dropped to her side, and 
 the chalk fell and broke upon the floor. 
 
 Bannerman raised his eyes and read the com 
 pleted phrase in a voice in which fear and a cer 
 tain exultation were strangely blended. 
 
 " His Excellency the British Minister," he trans 
 lated, " visits the opera to-morrow-night at the risk 
 of his life." 
 
 His voice died away as though afraid of its own 
 daring, and there was complete stillness. 
 
 Then Imrnen Pasha stepped quickly into the 
 centre of the room. "Bring back those lights," 
 he commanded. He strode hastily to where the 
 mind-reader stood, picking up the scarf Miss Page 
 had dropped upon the floor as be did so, and draw 
 ing it across the surface of the board. 
 
 Miss Page opened her eyes, and closed them 
 again as though they were heavy with sleep. She 
 shivered slightly like one awakening, and ran her 
 left hand up and down her other arm. Immen 
 Pasha s movements as he swept the board caused 
 her to raise her head, and her interest seemed to 
 awaken. 
 
 " Oh, how curious !" she said. " Did I write 
 that?" 
 
 The sound of her voice seemed to set free a spell 
 that had been put upon the room., and there was a 
 sudden chorus of nervous laughter and of general 
 exclamation, above which could be heard the voice 
 
92 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 of the British Minister, saying : " No ; he was be 
 fore my time ; but I remember Maskelyne and 
 Cook at their place in Piccadilly, and they were 
 most amusing. They used to 
 
 The boyish faces of the English subalterns had 
 grown masklike and expressionless. They uncon 
 sciously drew together in little groups of red, 
 and, discovering this, instantly parted again. The 
 diplomats were smiling and chattering volubly ; 
 the native Egyptians alone maintained their pla 
 cidity of manner. Immen Pasha pushed his way 
 hurriedly to the side of the English Minister s 
 wife. 
 
 "There is a supper," he said, bowing gravely. 
 "It has been awaiting us some time. Will you 
 allow me ?" 
 
 The English woman smiled distantly, and flut 
 tered her fan. " It is so late," she said, " I am 
 afraid we shall have to ask you to let us go." 
 
 Through the open windows of the street below 
 could be heard the voices of the servants calling 
 for the British Minister s carriage, and it seemed to 
 be for all an alarming signal of departure. So 
 hastily did they make their adieux that it seemed 
 as though each one feared to be left among the 
 last. 
 
 Young Page overtook Prince Panine as the 
 latter was hurrying on towards the Khedival 
 Club. " Going my way, Panine ?" he asked. " I 
 say," he went on, " what a shame it broke up so 
 soon ! Immen had a fine supper for us, and I am 
 
THE WRITING ON THE WALL 93 
 
 hungry. Helen and that mind-reading chap spoiled 
 the whole evening between them." 
 
 Panine turned his head and surveyed his young 
 companion in the darkness. " Yes," he said, " be 
 tween them they spoiled several things." 
 
THE RIGHT OF WAY 
 
 ^ HIS is a true story, and 
 one that is intended to 
 illustrate a characteristic of 
 the English people. It shows, 
 I think, to what lengths an 
 Englishman will go to gain 
 his rights, when an American 
 would say, " Oh, what is the 
 use?" or, "Never mind." One 
 of the reasons England is such 
 a comfortable place in which 
 to live is due to the fact that 
 the English people have this peculiar habit of 
 fighting for their rights, by letters to the Times, 
 or by taking the numbers of cabmen and police 
 men and appearing against them in the morn 
 ing, or by sending war -ships into strange har 
 bors where the window-panes of some English 
 merchants have been smashed. If there were 
 elevated roads in London, the clerk who lives in 
 Kensington would not hang and swing from a 
 strap on his way to and from the city. He would 
 see that he was given the seat for which he had 
 paid. The American is too busy and too good- 
 
THE RIGHT OF WAY 95 
 
 natured to fight for his rights, so he continues to 
 stand from Rector Street to Harlem, and to walk 
 over unclean streets, and sees the beautiful green 
 park at the Battery taken from him and turned 
 into a railroad terminus. He will learn, in time, 
 that the reason the Englishman has better roads 
 and better streets and better protection for his life 
 and property is because he " makes a kick about 
 it," and protests and growls and is generally dis 
 agreeable until he gets what he wants. Good 
 nature is not always a virtue, and sometimes the 
 easy-going person is a very selfish one, too. Equal 
 ly strong with his desire to have his rights is the 
 Englishman s deference for the rights of others. 
 He shows this deference by respecting the Eng 
 lish law, which makes those rights good. There 
 was a young woman in England who told me that 
 she and seven or eight other young people had 
 tramped in single file through a gentleman s din 
 ing-room one evening, while he and his guests 
 were at dinner, in order to establish a right of 
 way. The Englishman had built his house on a 
 meadow directly across a pathway that had been 
 used for centuries, and once a year the young 
 people of the neighboring estates marched across 
 his lawn, and up his stairs, and through his house, 
 in order that he should remember that the right 
 of way still existed. She was an exceedingly shy 
 and well-bred young person, and of a family quite 
 as old as the right of way, but it apparently did 
 not strike her that she was rude in tramping 
 
96 THE EXILES, AXD OTHER STORIES 
 
 through a stranger s house, or, indeed, that she 
 was doing anything but a public duty. And the 
 interesting point of the story to me was that the 
 English householder, instead of getting a Win 
 chester and driving the young trespassers off of 
 his lawn, should have had so full an appreciation 
 of their right to question his right that he simply 
 bit his lips and went to law about it. 
 
 There was an Irishman in the same county who 
 lived in a small cottage on an estate, and who was 
 in the habit of crossing from it to another through 
 the gateway of a very distinguished and noble 
 gentleman. He had done this for twenty years, 
 and when the noble gentleman came into some 
 more money and hung two fine iron gates be 
 tween the posts, the Irish laborer took a crow-bar 
 and broke the hinges on which they hung, and 
 tramped over them on his way. He was put in 
 jail for this for a month, at the end of which time 
 he went after his crow-bar and tore the gates down 
 again. When he had been in jail five times in 
 six months, the people round about took up his 
 case, and the right of way was declared a just 
 one, and the gates came down forever. The 
 Englishman will go further than this; he will not 
 only fight for his rights, but he will fight for some 
 other man s rights ; he will go out of his road to 
 tramp through a gentleman s property simply be 
 cause the people in the neighborhood are disputing 
 for right of way with him. I heard of three young 
 barristers when I was in London who went on a 
 
THE RIGHT OF WAY 97 
 
 walking-tour, and who laid out their route entire 
 ly with the purpose in view of taking in all the 
 disputed rights of way in the counties through 
 which they passed, and who cheerfully sacrificed 
 themselves for the good of others by forcing their 
 way into houses and across private grounds and 
 by tearing down hedges. 
 
 This brings me to the particular right-of-way 
 case in which I was involved, and of which I 
 was appointed chronicler. I have been somewhat 
 tardy in bringing the true story of this inglorious 
 Oxford movement to the attention of the world ; 
 but now that it is to be written it will be given 
 fully and with all possible detail, as befits so im 
 portant an event in the history of the struggles 
 for English liberty. 
 
 The Balliol Eight had bumped the boat in front 
 that day, and were celebrating the fact with a 
 dinner. I remember this dinner very well, be 
 cause each of the eight had come to me in a 
 friendly way during the afternoon, and had told 
 me not to dress for dinner, as only bounders and 
 cads wore dress clothes at a " wine." I accord 
 ingly came in flannels, and found the entire eight 
 in the proper garments of evening, and with a 
 pained and surprised look at my appearance, and 
 when I demanded with some indignation why 
 they had put me in such a position, they all de 
 nied ever having spoken to me at any time on the 
 subject of dress, and apologized for my appear 
 ance to the other guests by explaining that I 
 
98 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 came from America, where evening dress was 
 unknown. The guests accepted this as an in 
 teresting fact, and the eight grinned together in 
 unison at the success of what they considered a 
 very subtle practical joke. But I had my re 
 venge, as they were still in training for Henley, 
 and could eat nothing but cold meat, and so were 
 forced to look on at the celebration of their vic 
 tory by the only men present who had in no pos 
 sible way contributed towards it. It was near 
 the close of the dinner when the Hon. Hubert 
 Howard, who pulled bow that day, rapped for 
 silence, and when he had obtained it, announced 
 gravely that he was looking for volunteers to 
 join him in an expedition which promised much 
 excitement, possible danger, and the ultimate 
 success of which would bring liberty to many 
 British subjects. Having gained the centre of 
 the stage by this declaration, he stood up and 
 further explained himself. He began with the 
 deliberation of one who has a long story before 
 him, and who means to tell it with all possible 
 detail. 
 
 " Last summer," he began, " a chap named Cur- 
 zon started to row from Stratford to Warwick 
 with Harry Farmer, the gentleman on my right, 
 whose work at stroke, I may add parenthetically, 
 so largely contributed to our success of this after 
 noon." Mr. Farmer blushed at this and bowed his 
 head, and everybody except the boy who wanted 
 Farmer s place in the boat rapped with his knife- 
 
THE RIGHT OF WAY 99 
 
 handle and cried " Hear ! hear !" in patronizing 
 tones. 
 
 " They rowed about seven miles," Howard con 
 tinued, " until they were stopped by a barrier of 
 chains and iron rods across the river at Charle- 
 cote. The Charlecote estate, as you know, be 
 longs to the Lucy family, and their land runs on 
 both banks of the Avon. They keep deer there, 
 and they claim that the excursionists from War 
 wick and Stratford, who row up and down the 
 river, frighten these deer. As you may remember, 
 the Lucys were always very particular about their 
 deer; they, or one of them, had Shakespeare him 
 self up for killing a deer, and so handed them 
 selves down to an inglorious immortality. Well, 
 they ve put this iron barrier up now to keep the 
 boats out, and they ve marked the river that 
 runs through their lands Private Water. When 
 Farmer and Curzon discovered it, they rowed back 
 to a village and borrowed some tools and broke 
 the barrier down, and rowed on into the private 
 water, for which the agent of the estate took 
 Farmer s name, and told him he would summon 
 him to the high courts for trespass and destruc 
 tion of private property. That was just a year 
 ago this June, and they haven t summoned him 
 yet, and they never will. And why? Why, be 
 cause they are afraid, because they know they ve 
 no more right to block that thoroughfare than 
 they have to build a wall across the Strand. Sup 
 pose a man owned a house on both sides of -the 
 
100 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 Strand, th.it wouldn t give him the right to run 
 a fence between his two properties, would it ? Of 
 course it wouldn t. Well, that s what these peo 
 ple have done. Now we have been correspond 
 ing with the Stratford Rowing Club, and they 
 tell us that the barrier has been built up again, 
 and they want to know if we won t go there and 
 break it down. They re afraid to do it them 
 selves, you see, because they live too near to 
 Charlecote, and the Lucys might make it unpleas 
 ant for them. So Farmer and I are going down 
 there to-morrow or next day to tear down that 
 barrier, and any other gentleman who wants to 
 sacrifice himself for the sake of liberty can come 
 witli us. I call for volunteers." 
 
 There was much confusion and questioning and 
 mocking laughter. 
 
 "Right on our side?" demanded Howard. 
 "There never was a case with so much right 
 on one side. It is overbalanced with right. And 
 we ve documents and pictures and things, and 
 we re going to nail the documents to a church 
 door. There s a precedent for that; and I speak 
 to address the populace. Mr. - - here," point 
 ing to the father of one of the crew, "is an attor 
 ney, and though he won t let his son go with us, 
 he ll be our legal adviser, and Davis will be 
 chronicler and treasurer. Davis, you Americans 
 are always talking about your love of liberty, and 
 here s a chance to exhibit it. Besides, somebody 
 must be treasurer, or we can t go." 
 
THE RIGHT OF WAY 101 
 
 I temporized by saying that I should like to 
 hear from the legal adviser now instead of later, 
 when his advice would not perhaps be so valu 
 able. The legal adviser smiled, and asked what 
 these documents of Howard s might be. 
 
 " One of them is an order in Privy Council, 
 issued by Charles II., declaring that the Avon 
 must be kept clear and open from Coventry to 
 the Severn; and we ve got an old engraving of 
 Charlecote which proves conclusively that there 
 was no barrier there as late as 1790 ; and we also 
 have indirect backing in the fact that the Earl of 
 Warwick had to get an act of Parliament passed 
 before he could put up a barrier at Warwick 
 Castle, which is a step the Lucys have never 
 taken." 
 
 The legal adviser, after a pause, asked if How 
 ard rested his case there, and on the Honorable 
 Hubert s replying that he did, the legal adviser 
 instantly withdrew from it. "I don t believe 
 you really want an attorney," he said, "though 
 you ll need one badly enough before you get 
 through." 
 
 But they were not at all frightened, and to the 
 American there was something particularly amus 
 ing in the idea of destroying a gentleman s pri 
 vate property on the strength of a document is 
 sued three hundred years back in the past. I 
 wanted to see what an English householder would 
 do under the circumstances ; I could guess how 
 the American householder would act. So it was 
 
102 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 agreed that I should supply the money to bai 
 them out in case of their being arrested, if they 
 would supply the copies of the order in council 
 arid the weapons for the attack. I was also to act 
 as photographer and chronicler of the expedition, 
 and to help enroll two other men. Further than 
 this I refused to strike a blow for the cause of 
 British liberty; but as it turned out we all had to 
 strike several blows. 
 
 We went down to jStratford third class, with 
 three sledge - hammers and three crow-bars in a 
 green -baize cricket - bag, at which the guards 
 would make a grab, and then drop it with a crash 
 upon the platform, with the final conviction, as we 
 drew out of the station, that they had fallen upon 
 a kit of burglar s tools. There were five in the 
 party Howard and Farmer, T. P. Rogers, the 
 Captain of the Eight, and Murray, all of Balliol 
 College, and myself. There was another man 
 coming, who had been asked chiefly on account of 
 his name, but he overslept himself, and so missed 
 all the glory. Howard tried to get several other 
 titles for the same reason, as he thought he would 
 impress the police ; but their owners strangely 
 enough objected, and for the same reason, saying 
 that the police were about the last people they 
 had any desire to impress. We told them they 
 had no sporting blood, and when they read this 
 they will be sorry they did not take the chance 
 we gave them to add further lustre to their an 
 cient and distinguished names. We called our- 
 
THE RIGHT OF WAY 103 
 
 selves the Sons of Liberty, and when we arrived 
 at Stratford distributed our orders in council from 
 the top of the coach, and left them at the doors of 
 several houses belonging to gentlemen connected 
 with the local government and the Stratford Row 
 ing Club. There was no church on our way to 
 the river, so Howard could not nail one of the 
 orders to its door, and we were in too much of 
 a hurry to wait for him while he addressed the 
 populace. 
 
 "Little they know," Howard said, as he pulled 
 away in the boat we had hired at the landing, 
 "as they go idly by, that we are going to 
 strike a blow for their rights and liberties. To 
 them we are merely a party of rowing-men out 
 for a lark, and that bag which is filled with 
 destruction contains nothing more terrible than 
 luncheon." 
 
 We all wished that it did contain nothing 
 more terrible than luncheon before we had 
 rowed very far, for the Avon seemed to run 
 uphill, and at places we all had to get overboard 
 to lighten the boat, and to pull her over the 
 shoals, while we stood knee -deep in the water. 
 By two o clock we had covered five of the seven 
 miles before us, and had eaten and rested at a 
 little village where the innkeeper was very rude 
 to us. 
 
 "There again," said Howard, "you see the 
 ingratitude which makes martyrs. The inn 
 keeper doesn t know that we are going to in- 
 
104 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 crease his Sunday trade for travellers at least 
 two pounds a week. He thinks we are a lot of 
 vagabonds, and now that I come to look at the 
 rest of you, I don t much blame him. But it is 
 always thus with great reformers. They suffer 
 that others may reap the benefit. To obtain lib 
 erty" 
 
 " Oh, look where you are steering us to !" cried 
 Rogers, " and don t talk so much." 
 
 " You re getting rattled, T. P.," Howard called 
 back cheerfully. " It s not too late to drop out if 
 you choose." 
 
 We were all rather silent. The rich green 
 banks lay level on either side of us, uninhabited 
 save for an occasional fisherman dozing beneath 
 a bunch of willows and for the birds that sang to 
 us across the meadows. And only half a mile 
 ahead we saw a row of great trees and an old 
 water-mill, which, so Farmer explained to us in a 
 whisper as though he was afraid the birds might 
 overhear him, marked our near approach to the 
 Charlecote lands. 
 
 " It s only another bend of the river now, and 
 then you can see the barrier yourselves. There 
 will be no one about," he added, with great indif 
 ference "at least, I think not. The barrier is 
 over a quarter of a mile from the house, and the 
 family seldom walk there. We can hack it down 
 and get away again," he added, reassuringly, " be 
 fore they know what is going on." 
 
 We all looked more cheerful. 
 
1 THERE, NOW, DON T YOU TAKE ON SO " 
 
THE RIGHT OF WAY 105 
 
 " Let s go on to Warwick and break down that 
 barrier, too," cried Howard. " We might as well 
 make a clean sweep of the river while we re out. 
 What do you think ?" 
 
 None of us said what we thought.. We were 
 rather quiet, all save Howard, whose delight and 
 excitement were rising visibly. 
 
 " Now look again, Farmer," he cried, as the 
 boat swung around the bend ; " can you see it 
 from here ?" Farmer, who was sitting in the 
 bow, stood up, and the Sons of Liberty rested on 
 their oars and waited. " Yes," he cried, excitedly, 
 " I can see it ; we are almost on it. They ve built 
 it up again, and then oh, I say " His voice 
 changed and died out so suddenly that we all 
 scrambled to our feet to see for ourselves without 
 waiting for an explanation. 
 
 What we saw, two hundred yards ahead of us, 
 was a barrier of iron rods and chains swung be 
 tween heavy wooden posts that rose three feet 
 above the water-line, and the level turf stretching 
 away from one bank to a thick woods, and from 
 the other to a great mansion. But the turf be 
 tween the barrier and the house was covered with 
 tents and marquees, and overrun with workmen 
 who were digging and hammering and filling the 
 place with life and movement. Instead of find 
 ing our barrier at a deserted bend of the river, 
 hidden by overhanging bushes, we had come upon 
 it apparently in the only populated spot upon the 
 Avon, and we stood silent and dumfounded like 
 
106 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 criminals caught in a trap. Tt was Howard who 
 was the first to speak. 
 
 " I say," he exclaimed, delightedly, " we are go 
 ing to have an audience, aren t we ? I must say, 
 Farmer, it was rather civil of you to send them 
 word." 
 
 " They re making ready for an agricultural fair, 
 or a lawn-party, or something," growled Farmer. 
 " How could I know that ? What shall we do 
 now?" 
 
 " Do ?" said Murray. " What do you suppose ? 
 We haven t travelled four hours in a third-class 
 compartment, and rowed seven miles uphill, to 
 go back again, have we?" 
 
 "Now, then," cried Howard, clutching the tiller- 
 ropes around him. " Pull up to it in style. Live 
 ly, now. Bump her right into it." They fell 
 back in their places and shot at a racing pace 
 over the last stretch that lay between them and 
 the private water ; when they came to the bar 
 rier they slowed up, and, unshipping their oars, 
 ran the boat up broadside against it. " Make 
 her fast there at both ends," Howard commanded, 
 standing up and laughing with excitement. "You 
 mustn t land. If you did, they would have us up 
 for trespass. We must attack it from the boat." 
 "Wait a minute," I shouted back; "I want 
 those orders in council put up first." 
 
 "Quite right," answered Howard. "Farmer, 
 run along the barrier and put one up on that tree 
 where they can see it." 
 
" YOU CAN T GO THROUGH THERE, SIR ! " 
 
EXHIBIT "B." 
 March 9, 163 5. 
 
 OKDER OF THE KING IN COUNCIL. 
 
 Sec : Wimlebank this day acquainted his Majesty, sit 
 ting in Council, that Wm. Sandys, of Fladbury, co. Worces 
 ter, had undertaken at his own cost to make the river 
 Avon passable from Severn, where that river falls in near 
 Tewkesbury, through counties Worcester, Gloucester, and 
 Warwick, unto or near Coventry, and that he has been 
 already at great charge therein ; also that Mr. Sandys in 
 tends to make passable a good part of the river Teme ly 
 ing towards Ludlpw, whereby the said counties may be 
 better supplied with wood, iron, and pit coals which they 
 want. It was ordered that commissions should be issued 
 to persons of quality in each of the said counties, author 
 izing them to see that all persons interested in any lands, 
 soil, mill, or other thing adjoining the rivers aforesaid be 
 reasonably compounded with, and to call before them 
 such persons as shall not be content to accept reasonable 
 recompence for their estates whereof use is necessarily to 
 be made. In such case the Commissioners are to assess 
 such recompence to be given by Sandys as shall be just ; 
 and if in a business so well approved by his Majesty the 
 Commissioners find any persons factious or opposing, they 
 are to certify their names to the board that such further 
 order may be taken as shall be just. Lastly the Attorney 
 General is to give his special furtherance in this under 
 taking. 
 See CALENDAR OF STATE PAPERS. 
 
 Edited by Bruce. 
 Longmans, 1866. 
 
 S on A CORPORATION RECORDS. AVON NAVIGATION. 
 
 Council Book C. p. 126. 
 
 At a Hall held 9 January 1635. " At this Hall a Writinge 
 passed under o r Comon Scale unto W m Sandis esq. testify 
 ing V approbation comendacon and alowance of the mak- 
 inge of the River of Avon passible for bringinge of Wares 
 from sondrye places to this boroughe of Stratford." 
 
 do p. 200. Hall held 1 Oct. 1641. " M r . W m . Sandes is to 
 have the Comon Scale to a peticon to be Drawne by M r 
 Dighton for assistance in his navigacon and for mendinge 
 the highewaies." 
 
108 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 Farmer stepped over the side and on to the 
 barrier, and worked his way along it as a sailor 
 runs out on the bowsprit. When he had reached 
 the bank farthest from the house and from the 
 workmen, he nailed the order in council upon a 
 tree which stood so close to the water s edge that 
 it was used as a support for the barrier. It had 
 all been done in a second of time, but one of the 
 workmen on the estate had seen us coming and 
 had run down to the edge of the bank to meet us. 
 
 " You can t go through there, sir," he called, 
 waving with his hand. " That s private water, 
 sir." 
 
 T. P. Rogers was on his knees working at the 
 straps of the cricket -bag; he pulled out the 
 sledge-hammers and held them up, and Howard 
 swung one blindly and struck the lock of the 
 gate that formed the centre of the barrier. The 
 lock rattled, but the gate stood like a stone wall. 
 
 " First blood for us," Howard claimed. " Now, 
 all together !" 
 
 The workman dropped his shovel and started 
 on a run towards the house, calling to his mates. 
 Some of them followed him, and others ran down 
 to the water s edge and consulted together in 
 great uncertainty. They were the first persons 
 to show me that day that an Englishman knows 
 when it is not his place to interfere, and that all 
 things, even the resisting of an assault, must be 
 done decently and with due regard for law and 
 order. All of the Sons of Liberty had crow-bars 
 
THE RIGHT OF WAY 109 
 
 or hammers in their hands now, and were striking 
 frantically but impotently at the swinging chains. 
 But as they were doing no possible damage, I ad 
 vised them to stop until they could pick out the 
 vulnerable point of the barrier, and while they 
 were doing this I photographed them. The pict 
 ure shows them when this photograph was being 
 taken. 
 
 Each of us had an entirely different idea as to 
 how the barrier should be attacked, and we were 
 all shouting at once, and telling each other to 
 " Hit it there, where it joins," or " Here, give it 
 to me," or " I ll show you, let me have it," and 
 " It is no use prying at that, knock it off with the 
 sledge." 
 
 It was most exciting, and as the crow-bars struck 
 the iron chains and the sledges rang on the gate 
 way, the sparks flew brilliantly, so that one might 
 have thought they were fighting their way out of 
 prison instead of into a stretch of pretty water. 
 They had changed the soft summer quiet of the 
 Avon into the noisy clangor of a blacksmith- 
 shop. 
 
 "How long did it take you to get this thing 
 down last time, Farmer ?" Howard gasped be 
 tween strokes. 
 
 "An hour," said Farmer, who had lost his crow 
 bar overooard, and was holding on to a post to 
 steady the boat. 
 
 "An hour!" gasped Howard. "And we have 
 to do it in five minutes." The Sons of Liberty 
 
110 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 were not used to sledges or crow-bars, and the 
 boat rocked so violently as they swung their bod 
 ies for each stroke that the water poured over the 
 sides, and one crow-bar after another was jerked 
 out of their hands and shot with a splash to the 
 bottom of the river. The bank was crowded now 
 with workmen and the servants of the Lucy house 
 hold. A grave young man, who looked as though 
 he might be the agent of the estate, was the first 
 to arrive. He bit his nails and grinned feebly, 
 and then frowned sternly in much indecision. He 
 was followed closely by half a dozen stable-boys 
 in gaiters, and the butler and underservants strug 
 gling into their coats as they ran. They all 
 prowled up and down the bank like animals in 
 a cage, not two oars length from us, or gath 
 ered in groups and whispered and laughed ner 
 vously. At every second stroke of the flying ham 
 mers they turned their heads to look back at the 
 house. 
 
 " You fellows had better hurry," I said. " Some 
 body s coming soon who means to do something. 
 They re waiting for him." 
 
 There was only one small hammer and a mean 
 little crow-bar left to us now, and the four colle 
 gians stopped for lack of weapons and gazed hope 
 lessly at the barrier, panting and covered with 
 muddy water and perspiration. 
 
 As each hammer or crow-bar had disappeared 
 I had called to the boys to jump in after it ; but 
 they, in spite of the fact that they were already 
 
THE RIGHT OF WAY 111 
 
 wet and in dirty cricket flannels that would not 
 have been hurt by a bath, had looked at me scorn 
 fully and made no answer. Now that the attack 
 had stopped altogether, I besought them again. 
 But Rogers only growled and asked if I wanted 
 to drown him. 
 
 " I thought anybody could swim under water," 
 I explained. 
 
 " Can you ?" Rogers demanded. 
 
 " Why, yes," I answered, injudiciously. 
 
 "Then pull your clothes off and get over there, 
 quick," cried Murray, who was the largest of 
 them, " or we will throw you over. Jump now !" 
 
 There was at this time about forty people on 
 the bank, and among them a dozen house-maids in 
 white caps, chaperoned by a fat cook who was 
 fanning herself, after her run, with a large check 
 ered apron. I was going that evening to a coun 
 try-house where I knew no one as yet, and was 
 not, in consequence, dressed in shrunken cricket 
 flannels. So for these two reasons I hesitated. 
 
 "Come, jump," said Howard ; "you ve got to 
 help too." 
 
 Whenever a crow-bar had been carried away the 
 crowd on the bank had cheered and jumped up 
 and down with satisfaction, but when I got up 
 and began to pull off my clothes there was an in 
 terested silence, and a hasty stampede on the part 
 of the women, whose modesty and desire to see 
 the outcome of the attack on the barrier pulled 
 them both ways. It was very cold in the Avon, 
 
112 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 and the barrier had caught innumerable brandies 
 of trees on their way down-stream and had drop 
 ped them to the bottom, where they felt to the 
 touch exactly like water-snakes, and suggested 
 man-traps, though why any one should put a 
 man-trap eight feet under water I cannot now 
 imagine, but while I was crawling around feeling 
 for sledge-hammers it seemed the most natural 
 
 O 
 
 and probable thing for a person to do. I got all 
 of the weapons but one, and as each showed above 
 the water the boys yelled, and the crowd cheered 
 too, as it promised more entertainment for them. 
 Then they hauled me over the side and went at 
 the gate again more carefully, so carefully, in 
 deed, that once, when Murray lost his balance, 
 he, sooner than let the hammer go, let himself go, 
 and the result was that the force of the blow and 
 the hammer s weight pulled him forward, and he 
 hung himself up over the barrier as a horse does 
 over a fence, with the important difference that 
 all of the upper part of Murray s long body was 
 under water while his legs were kicking wildly 
 in the air. We pulled him back again, sputtering 
 and coughing and with green moss and twigs 
 and leaves sticking in his ears and hair, so that 
 he looked like a water - nymph. We were all 
 fighting the gate now, for they had given me a 
 hammer that I might get warm again, and the 
 lock was nearly gone; then two chains fell to the 
 bottom, and the lock broke and the gate swung 
 back, and with a triumphant yell we pulled and 
 
THE RIGHT OF WAY 113 
 
 pushed our boat head -forward into the private 
 water. We were not a moment too soon, for 
 across the lawn came a galloping cob swinging a 
 dog-cart behind him with three men clinging to 
 its top, and going at such a pace that the cart 
 rocked like a skiff at sea. They were the three 
 largest men I had ever seen. They were dressed 
 in keepers knickerbockers and velveteen, and of 
 course I, being an American, expected they would 
 begin to shoot as they reached the bank. I sup 
 posed from what I had read of game-keepers in 
 Kingsley s novels that they would probably carry 
 shot-guns with sawed- off barrels, such as poachers 
 affect, and while carefully steering the boat into 
 the private water I was wondering how far a shot 
 gun would carry, and whether sawing off the bar 
 rels would not make the shot scatter over a very 
 large surface. Howard, being an Englishman, 
 knew perfectly well that no one would shoot us, 
 so he hailed their approach gayly. 
 
 " Now it s getting exciting," he said. " Shall 
 we stop here and fight em, or go on to Warwick 
 and break down the other barrier ?" 
 
 We admired his spirit very much, but we point 
 ed out that we had established our point by de 
 stroying the barricade and entering the private 
 water, and that it was now a case for lawyers to 
 settle. So, in spite of Howard s remonstrances, 
 the boys pulled the boat s head around towards 
 Stratford. The keepers sprang from the cart 
 into a punt, and six of the grooms and servants 
 
114 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 tumbled in after them, and with a single oar 
 shoved after us in pursuit. 
 
 " Let s stop and board them," said Howard, 
 who was sitting impotently in the bow. But 
 Farmer said to go on, but not to hurry, or they 
 would think we were running away. " Keep the 
 stroke you have got, and talk about the weather," 
 he said. But our dignified and leisurely departure 
 went for nothing, for the first thing the keepers 
 went for was the order in council. They were 
 evidently not going to attack any one until they 
 had read and digested this brief, and they judged 
 that the piece of paper fluttering on the tree was 
 ours. It served us as the child thrown to the 
 wolves served the men in the sleigh, for by the 
 time the keepers had puzzled it out, and what 
 possible bearing it had on our destruction of 
 their barrier, we had lighted our pipes and drifted 
 gracefully out of sight around the bend. 
 
 " Such a lot of muffs I never did see," said 
 Howard, who was in full mutiny. " Why didn t 
 you row up alongside and bang them with the 
 oars ?" 
 
 " What s the good ?" said Murray. " The bar 
 rier s down, isn t it ? There were forty of them, 
 and they d have thrown us in a horse-pond, most 
 likely ; and that s not dignified. What s the use 
 of rowing with keepers ? Tisn t their barrier." 
 
 " Use ?" said Howard. " Well, we d have been 
 arrested for one thing, and I could have made a 
 speech too," 
 
MURRAY CLUNG TO THE SLEDGE-HAMMER 
 
THE RIGHT OP WAY 115 
 
 We lay on our oars and let the boat run with 
 the rapid current, which was now with us, and we 
 felt like patriots and heroes as the people in the 
 occasional villages hurried to the banks to ask if 
 the barrier was down, and on hearing that it was, 
 started off with a shout to tell their neighbors. 
 Then the boats of the Stratford Rowing Club be 
 gan to appear, and the occupants asked the same 
 question, and said, " That s good," and laughed 
 at our muddy garments and dripping hair. 
 
 " We ll have a grand reception when we get to 
 Stratford," said Howard, gleefully. "It will be 
 all over the town by that time. Those orders of 
 council we threw out will have stirred up their 
 curiosity." 
 
 There was a nice old gentleman fishing from 
 a punt about a mile from Stratford, and he re 
 garded our dishevelled and disreputable appear 
 ance as we drifted towards him. "Are you the 
 gentlemen," he inquired, doubtfully, " who went 
 up to Charlecote to destroy the barrier ?" 
 
 We said that we were. He regarded his bob 
 bing float with interest, and then called after us, 
 without raising his head : 
 
 "They re waiting to give you a reception at 
 the bridge. They will be glad to see you." 
 
 "Do you hear that?" asked Howard, trium 
 phantly. 
 
 There was something about the nice old gentle 
 man s manner that I did not fancy, and I said I 
 thought we had much better tie the boat up to a 
 
116 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 tree and make a run across country until we struck 
 a railroad station. " We can telegraph the man 
 where his boat is," I said, "and send the money 
 by mail. I don t want a reception." 
 
 But Howard would not hear of it. " Why, that s 
 the best part ; that s our reward," he remonstrated. 
 
 " He wants to address the populace," said Far 
 mer. "Let him alone." The bridge was black 
 with people, and many more were grouped along 
 the wharf and far up the bank. 
 
 "There must be a boat-race on," I suggested, 
 "and they re waiting for the finish." 
 
 "They re waiting for us!" shouted Howard, as 
 we turned the last bend. " Isn t it glorious ?" he 
 chuckled. 
 
 But Farmer, who was pulling bow and looking 
 over his shoulder, suddenly threw himself for 
 ward on his oar. " Stop back her!" he shouted. 
 " Look at the police !" 
 
 The entire constabulary force of Stratford was 
 gathered in brave array at the edge of the water, 
 with an inspector at their head, and our friends 
 the game-keepers and the nervous agent drawn 
 up beside them. A cob, smothered with lather 
 and with heaving sides, was standing on the bridge 
 hitched to a dog-cart, and told the story. 
 
 "They ve beaten us," said Howard. "If we 
 had rowed instead of drifting, we should have 
 won easily." 
 
 We paddled up to the wharf, and the crowd on 
 the bridge cheered. Howard stood up and took 
 
THE EIGHT OF WAY 117 
 
 off his cap to the inspector. " Are you going to 
 arrest us, Mr. Policeman ?" he asked. 
 
 " We are," said that dignitary. 
 
 " Then we must ask you to stand just as you are 
 for a minute until we photograph you. I have 
 never been arrested, and I must have the pictures 
 of the men who do it as souvenirs. Move up 
 close," he said to us over his shoulder, " so that 
 Davis can get a good focus; but don t get too 
 close," he added, hastily, " or they ll grab us with 
 a boat-hook." 
 
 We snapped the shutter at them several times 
 from a safe distance, much to their disgust, but 
 to the delight of the crowd, in whose eyes we 
 were martyrs. The attitude of the inspector was 
 strongly suggestive of an old hen on a bank wor 
 rying over young ducklings in the water. 
 
 " Are you coming out to us, sir," said Howard, 
 " or do we have to come in to you ?" 
 
 "Come, now, no nonsense," said the inspector; 
 " we ve been here long enough." So we ran the 
 boat to the bank and gave ourselves up. The in 
 spector and the agent whispered together and the 
 game-keeper pointed at each of us. 
 
 " All of them ?" said the inspector. 
 
 " All of them," repeated the agent. 
 
 My hopes of reaching the country-house at 
 which I was promised began to grow infinitesi- 
 mally small, and I fingered nervously at the bail- 
 money in my pocket. " You are not a Stratford 
 man ?" said the inspector to Howard. 
 
118 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 Howard replied in a very loud tone that he was 
 not, but that that made no difference, as the lib 
 erties and rights of the people of Stratford were 
 as dear to him as though he had always lived 
 among them. The men in the back of the crowd 
 said " ear ! ear !" at this, and some boys on the 
 bridge who were too far off to know what was 
 going on, leaned over the railing and shouted 
 " Hoorar." The inspector frowned angrily and 
 took out an imposing-looking blank book. 
 
 " Where do you live ?" he asked, " if you live 
 anywhere, and what s your name ?" Howard gave 
 his name, and Balliol College, Oxford, as his ad 
 dress. The reporters, who were looking over the 
 inspector s shoulder as he wrote, whispered to 
 him eagerly at this, and he stared at Howard s 
 muddy garments and disreputable appearance and 
 shook his head. 
 
 "This gentleman says that you re the son of 
 Such a Person. Is that so ?" he asked. 
 
 " Well, what if it is ?" said Howard. " I say," 
 he went on, eagerly turning to us, "this is my 
 chance, isn t it ; now I ivill address the populace." 
 There was a broad row-boat turned bottom up, 
 and Howard sprang on that and waved his hat at 
 the crowd. " Gentlemen," he said, " the inspec 
 tor has shown surprise that we should come all 
 the way from Oxford to break down a barrier. 
 We would go twice as far for as good a purpose. 
 This gentleman without any shoes on has come 
 all the way from America to do it, and we are 
 
THE RIGHT OP WAY 119 
 
 glad and proud of what we have done. We are 
 going to fight this case from court to court until 
 it reaches the House of Lords, and then," he said, 
 suddenly running up to the keeper and patting 
 him on his broad chest, to which Howard s hand 
 could just reach, "this keeper and I will walk up 
 hand in hand to the bar of the House together 
 and settle this thing between us." 
 
 The crowd cheered, and we applauded, and ev 
 erybody laughed except the keeper, who was so 
 overcome with the idea of walking hand in hand 
 with a peer s son to the very bar of the House of 
 Lords that he could only grin helplessly and rub 
 one knickerbockered leg against the other. Then 
 the inspector took the other names, and as T. P. 
 was Captain of the Eight and a very famous man 
 indeed, and as each man save myself gave Balliol 
 College, Oxford, as his address, the crowd contin 
 ued to laugh and cheer, and the inspector to look 
 worried and confused. 
 
 " It certainly is a queer lark for gentlemen like 
 you," he remonstrated, resentfully, " to come all 
 that way just to break the peace and dressed 
 like that, too !" he added, as if that were criminal 
 enough in itself. 
 
 The agent seemed to regret having mustered 
 such a show of force, and assured us with infinite 
 politeness that our names and not our persons 
 would be quite sufficient for his purpose. So he 
 and the keepers drove off in the cart, and the 
 towns-people took us to the Red Lion, w r here they 
 
120 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 gave us things to drink and made us fine speech 
 es, and organized committees to take up subscrip 
 tions and to fight our case. 
 
 That ends this famous story, which tells how 
 William Shakespeare was avenged, and the lib 
 erties of the Stratford Boating Club recognized. 
 But I grieve to relate that after I left England 
 Farmer was summoned to appear before the High 
 Court, where our order in council and our engrav- 
 
 ino- of the Charlecote estate without the barrier 
 
 & 
 
 made no impression whatsoever, strange as it may 
 appear, upon the judges, who smiled our attorney 
 out of court, and made us pay eighty pounds for 
 sacrificing ourselves upon the altar of liberty. And 
 this in spite of the assurances from all parts of the 
 country which we had received by telegraph and 
 through the papers that we had done well. 
 
 But the cruelest cut of all, perhaps, is that in 
 Oxford, where this great movement of reform 
 originated, there are some who say that it was 
 not for the sacred cause of liberty that we broke 
 down the barrier, but in a trivial spirit of mis 
 chief. And thus are the motives of all great re 
 formers misunderstood. 
 
HIS BAD ANGEL 
 
 THE Ingrams were on their way home, and were 
 only waiting in London until it was time to take 
 the steamer from Southampton. Alice Ingram had 
 seen Thorold s name on one of the bills that ad 
 vertised the two-hundredth night of his new opera, 
 and on the chance sent a note to the theatre, ask 
 ing him to call at t-he Albemarle the next after 
 noon. She had not seen him since early in the 
 spring, in Paris, when he had seemed in a fair way 
 of being spoiled, and the reports kind friends had 
 given her of him since were not encouraging. 
 
 Thorold was one of the Thorolds of Salem. All 
 of his immediate ancestors had been born in Sa 
 lem, and had gone back there to be buried, but 
 had lived in Boston and on the Continent. The 
 family had no particular characteristics, except 
 the invariable good looks of its members and 
 their strong Puritanism, which they had inherit 
 ed, and which had developed itself in the case of 
 the women into something very like prudery, and 
 which had made prigs of the men. Their discreet 
 actions and well-regulated lives had always shown 
 as strong a family likeness as had their fine pro 
 files, and when " Archie " Thorold developed into 
 
122 THIS EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 a musical genius he was looked upon with suspi 
 cion as the only member of the family whose con 
 duct before the world needed the slightest expla 
 nation. 
 
 He developed this taste very early in his life, 
 and composed Christmas anthems and hymn tunes 
 at the age of fifteen, at which time he was play 
 ing the organ in the Episcopal church at jSalern. 
 Later, while at Harvard, lie wrote the music fof 
 the Hasty Pudding theatricals; and two of the 
 comic songs of that production, notably "The 
 Night that McManus went Broke," were sung all 
 over the United States. Thorold s elder brothers 
 did not regard this as fame, and hoped he would 
 give up writing music of any class after leaving 
 college ; but he went off to Baireuth, and from 
 there to Munich, from which place they heard of 
 him occasionally as being very busy studying 
 thorough-bass. He returned each winter, and 
 went to dances with his sisters in a perfectly ra 
 tional and charming way ; but he was off again 
 in the spring, and when next they heard of him 
 Lady Maud Anstey s amateurs and some officers 
 had played and sung in a cantata he had written 
 them for a charity entertainment ; and a romantic 
 opera, called " The Crusaders," of which he had 
 written both score and book, was about to be 
 produced in Paris. This met with success in 
 London, and later in New York as well, and his 
 family finally, on the first night of the opera s 
 production in Boston, experienced the sensation 
 
HIS BAD ANGEL 123 
 
 of seeing one of their number leading an or 
 chestra. It was a marked social as well as theat 
 rical event, and Thorold looked very young and 
 very much in earnest as he leaned forward and 
 beat his baton at the violins and scowled at the 
 ladies of the chorus. It was after this that he 
 wrote " The Well of Truth." 
 
 This was a love-song, and almost any one with 
 the most indifferent voice could make others with 
 any feeling weep or sigh as it was sung to them. 
 When Thorold sang it himself at the Tavern 
 Club or in the drawing-rooms, without any roll 
 ing of the eyes or any show of interest save a 
 deep scrutiny of the keys, every woman in the 
 room felt he was singing it at her, and every man 
 present thought that if he had that voice and a 
 face like that he could win love honestly from 
 any one. Young women sang "The Well of 
 Truth " to pianos and parlor organs all over the 
 country, and older people requested it for encores, 
 as it seemed to bring back to them something of 
 their youth ; and even when it had been scat 
 tered abroad by street organs and rearranged to 
 waltz time it lost nothing of its popularity, but 
 seemed to gain in favor as it grew older and 
 more familiar. 
 
 By the time Thorold s second opera had been 
 produced people had grown tired of saying what 
 a wonder it was his head was not turned, and 
 wanted something new to say, so they said it was 
 such a pity so nice a boy allowed himself to be 
 
124 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 spoiled, and the critics and paragraphers who had 
 stumbled over one another in their haste to be 
 among the first to recognize the new composer 
 now hastened to point out that the young genius 
 who had awakened to find himself famous had 
 never quite recovered from the shock. Thorold 
 had not given much weight to the papers at the 
 first, and so did not mind their change of tone at 
 the last, or their hints that he was repeating him 
 self, and that he was, after all, only a clever 
 plagiarist, and had too retentive a memory. This 
 had been said of better men than he. But he did 
 mind what his friends said, for he believed that 
 they could be actuated only by interest in his 
 best self, and he was at that time engaged in 
 watching his best self critically to see how well 
 it was withstanding this sudden shock of admira 
 tion and easily given sympathy. He had a not 
 very original theory, for which his Puritan an 
 cestors were responsible, that the quality of his 
 work depended on the quality of his own life, 
 and that as he cheapened himself and took life 
 less seriously, so his work would become less pure 
 and strong, and would show to all the world his 
 each easy step from grace. No one gave him 
 credit for such theories ; he, naturally, did not 
 exploit them, and he had set his rules of life so 
 much higher than his neighbors had found it con 
 venient to place theirs that they could not follow 
 him. Had he married and become the master of 
 one household, as his brothers had done, he would 
 
HIS BAD AXGEL 125 
 
 have found bis principles much more easy to 
 carry out than he did in the atmosphere and so 
 ciety into which his work and his sudden celeb 
 rity led him. But his friends did not consider 
 this either. 
 
 " Confound my Puritan ancestors, anyway !" 
 he said one day to Alice Ingram. "It s all their 
 doing. They gave me an artistic temperament 
 and an iron-bound conscience, and expect me to 
 decide which one of them is going to win. They 
 won t compromise, of course." 
 
 "That s right," said Miss Ingram, relentlessly. 
 " Put all the blame on your ancestors. Of course 
 you have no responsibilities." 
 
 " Alice," Thorold protested, meekly, " don t you 
 think a Good Angel might occasionally be sym 
 pathetic ?" 
 
 " You know I don t like being called a Good 
 Angel," Miss Ingram answered. " It sounds like 
 such a horrid sort of a person ; and, besides, you 
 get sympathy enough from silly girls, and a lot 
 of married women who ought to know better." 
 
 This was in Paris. Since then the world, as 
 far as the world could judge, went very well with 
 Archibald Thorold ; but Miss Ingram, through 
 mutual friends and from his infrequent letters, 
 knew that a struggle was going on between the 
 artistic temperament and the Puritan conscience, 
 and she was very sad as to the result. It seemed 
 to her that the very fact that the world was so 
 ready to excuse so much in so charming and brill- 
 
126 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 iant a young man for the work he had done made 
 it all the more necessary for him to keep himseL 
 untarnished from the world, and to refuse to ac 
 cept its indulgences, because they were so easily 
 given. 
 
 It was this quality in Alice Ingram that at 
 tracted Thorold. She had appealed to him when 
 he had first met her, just as she had appealed to 
 many other men, through her cleverness and her 
 remarkable beauty; but what had fascinated him 
 the most, and what had kept him true to her in 
 thought, if not in deed, was her unrelenting qual 
 ity the fact that she never excused a weakness 
 in herself or in others, that she would have no 
 compromises, and that, as he protested, she would 
 " never let up on him " when he offered excuses. 
 Whether it was that in the past she had broken 
 somebody s heart, or half a dozen hearts, and was 
 repentant, or whether some one had broken her 
 heart and she was wise, he did not know or care. 
 It was not her past which interested him, and 
 his interest in her future was problematical. He 
 would not go to her unworthily, and yet life was 
 made so very easy for him as he was. He be 
 lieved that it was this unrelenting quality which 
 made him regard her more seriously than he did 
 other women, and he thought that if she should 
 ever fail him in this, her great beauty and her 
 mind would count for nothing, and she would be 
 come to him like any other of the half-dozen 
 women he knew best. 
 
HIS BAD ANGEL 127 
 
 He was standing as she entered the room, look 
 ing out of the window, and she noticed how tired 
 he looked and dissatisfied and pale. Generally 
 when he met her he came towards her quickly 
 enough, and held her hand longer than was neces 
 sary, but to-day he simply turned and nodded 
 and smiled oddly at her, as though he were rather 
 more curious to see her than glad. So she walked 
 over beside him, and they stood looking out at 
 the carriages and hansoms on Piccadilly. 
 
 "It is very nice to see you again," she said. 
 " It was just a chance I saw your name in large 
 red letters at Waterloo Station as we came in." 
 He was regarding her intently, as though he were 
 trying to recollect where he had seen her before. 
 "I didn t know whether you could come or not," 
 she went on. " You are in such demand now, they 
 tell me." 
 
 " Of course you know very well," he said, with 
 that directness which was one of his most sat 
 isfactory qualities, "that I would have come, 
 whether I had had engagements or not. But I 
 had meant not to come at first." 
 
 " Oh, you had meant not to at first !" she- re 
 peated. She sat down behind the tea things, and 
 began moving them about. He seemed to her 
 to be laboring under a mood or some excitement, 
 and she thought it best to give him time to de 
 velop it. 
 
 " Yes," he said, slowly and distinctly, " I 
 thought I would not come, because I did not 
 
128 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 want to introduce you to the kind of man you 
 do not care to know." 
 
 " How tragic!" she said. "May I make you 
 some tea ?" 
 
 " I did not mean to be tragic," he went on, im 
 passively. " It is quite true. I am not at all the 
 man you used to know. No one can know that 
 better than I. And I had so much liking for you 
 and for the man you used to know that I 
 thought it would be kinder to us both if I let you 
 go home without seeing me again." 
 
 " But you did come." 
 
 "Yes, I came," he answered, after some mo 
 ments consideration, " because, I suppose, I still 
 believe in miracles, and because I had a forlorn 
 hope that if I could get a good strong tonic and 
 my conscience could have an electric shock, it 
 might begin to work again. It was just a chance. 
 I hadn t much reason to believe it would." 
 
 She occupied herself for some little time with 
 the cups in front of her, and said: " Of course it 
 is very manly and brave in you to tell me this 
 to say, * Here I am in a very bad way, and if you 
 cannot help me no one can. That makes it so 
 pleasant for me. Of course you have no respon 
 sibility in the matter at all. It is something you 
 cannot possibly mend. What a baby it is !" 
 
 "No," he said, doubtfully, as though he had 
 been weighing her words and had found them 
 wanting, " it is not the least use. It doesn t hurt 
 me at all. It sounds like something I had learned 
 
HIS BAD ANGEL 129 
 
 at school. I had hoped it would. 1 have gone so 
 far now, or I have gone so low, that I can quite 
 recognize the force of all the arguments on the 
 other side, and go the wrong way without a 
 pang." He looked up and smiled. "It is too 
 late. I am quite hopeless. " 
 
 " You are quite changed," she said, dryly. 
 
 "Changed! Thank you." He laughed un 
 pleasantly. " That is the mildest word any one 
 has used yet. But I ve really no right to com 
 plain ; the strongest things they say are quite 
 true." 
 
 " What 1 all they say ?" 
 
 " Well, if the particular stories they have told 
 you are not true, others equally discreditable are. 
 It s the same thing." 
 
 She rested her chin on the knuckles of her 
 hand and studied him for some time. He looked 
 back at her without wavering and without in 
 terest. 
 
 I think/ she said, " he has been sitting up 
 very late at night, and has not had sleep enough ; 
 he has been playing and working too hard, and he 
 has been t-aking himself too seriously. Of course," 
 she added, with the air of one who wishes to be 
 quite fair, " there are some things a man must go 
 through with which we women go around." 
 
 " Thank you," Thorold said, grimly. " You are 
 very good, but I have excuses enough. I can sup 
 ply them myself. 3 
 
 The girl showed no sign of annoyance at this, 
 
130 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 but still regarded him thoughtfully. "The omy 
 saving clause I see," she said, " is your saying you 
 hoped something might step in to help you. Of 
 course, if a man wants to be saved from himself 
 he has won half the fight, and he must win the 
 other half, too. JSTo young woman is going to 
 do it." 
 
 "The pathetic part of it is," he answered, "that 
 I don t want to be helped or to be saved. I said 
 I did, but I don t, really. I like it better as it is. 
 And it only makes it worse to pretend to be any 
 better than I am, and to cheat myself and my 
 friends into thinking I am. A man is no better 
 than what he wishes to be at his worst moment. 
 You cannot judge him by what he happens to 
 want to be when he is worked up to do great 
 things and inspired by other people. I like to 
 waste my time and to have no responsibilities, 
 and I like dangling in boudoirs better than work 
 ing, and I like the cheap admiration of a lot of 
 fools better than the esteem of a few friends; and 
 I can t, for the life of me, see why I should live a 
 lie to them and myself, and cover up the true bad 
 ness that s in me. And I am not going to any 
 longer. If I cared to be fine and strong, it would 
 be natural enough and easj*- to be so; and if I don t 
 care for that, it is only hypocrisy and waste of 
 time to be anything that looks like it. I came 
 here to-day to tell you this myself, so that there 
 could be no longer any doubt in your mind, and 
 I don t want you to waste any more thought or 
 
HIS BAD ANGEL 131 
 
 friendship on anyone as unworthy of both as my 
 self I felt I was deceiving you, and I wanted you 
 to know. That s why I came. I never deceived 
 you before, and I wished you to know I want 
 you to be disgusted with me and understand me 
 just as I am. The man you knew is gone, and 
 you" 
 
 Miss Ingrain stood up, and clasped her hands 
 quickly in front of her. " What have I to do with 
 it?" she said, coldly. "You are not answerable 
 to me." 
 
 She crossed the room to the window, and then 
 faced him again. "Listen to me, Archie," she said. 
 "This may be a mood or a pose, or it may be that 
 you are only run down and overworked and ner 
 vous, and are exaggerating these wickednesses you 
 hint of." He was about to interrupt her, but she 
 raised her hand for him to let her continue. "But 
 you cannot afford to do it too often. It is not a 
 pretty pose, and were I not a long-suffering lady, 
 I would not tolerate it for a moment. It takes all 
 the affection I have for you and all my patience 
 not to accept you at your word, and tell my peo 
 ple you are not the sort of young man they should 
 allow their daughter to see. But I think we know 
 each other pretty well now, and I think there is 
 more overwork and late hours in this than any 
 thing else. But you cannot keep it up too long. 
 Bad habits are just as hard to overcome at the 
 end as good habits, and even Balzac s twenty-five 
 years of virtue which cannot be overcome in a day, 
 
132 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 can be overcome in a year. And if you will live 
 in a bad atmosphere you cannot expect to be as 
 strong and healthy as you would be if you lived 
 in the open air. I don t think it is worse than 
 that. You have allowed yourself to stay in a bad 
 atmosphere which does not agree with you. Don t 
 be afraid to run away. I have a great regard for 
 the man who runs away. If you are wise, and the 
 boy I know, you will pack your things to-night 
 and sail with us to-morrow, and leave all these 
 women and worldly young men behind you. Come 
 and play with me on the steamer, and spend the 
 summer with all your old friends at the old places, 
 where no one thinks you re a great man, and where 
 you won t see your picture in all the shop win 
 dows. That s really what you need. What do 
 you say ?" She stopped and looked at him, but he 
 made no response, and she hurried on, as though 
 to cover up the fact that she had failed to move 
 him. "I can t understand some women, "she cried, 
 impatiently ; " they fall in love with a man be 
 cause he is good and strong, and then they at 
 once begin to pull down the very things they 
 most admire in him. And I cannot understand 
 your sex either. You are such v children. You 
 make such problems and difficulties out of noth 
 ing. Why, it is as simple as animal alphabets. 
 A is an ape, and B is a bear. That s all it is 
 just animal pictures. There is no question of 
 which to choose, or there shouldn t be, for a man 
 like you. What is the admiration of a lot of silly 
 
HIS BAD ANGEL 133 
 
 women to the friendship of such friends as you 
 have, who care for the best that is in you ? How 
 can you tell me there is any question about it or 
 of which to choose ?" 
 
 Thorold stood up smiling, and shook his head. 
 " I tell you it is no use, Alice," he said. " I am 
 honestly not worth it. I ve given up, and I m 
 going my own way. All these things you say 
 have lost their meaning. They don t reach me. 
 It is like some one talking a language I have for 
 gotten. You needn t think it didn t hurt at first 
 when I saw which way I was going, but it doesn t 
 hurt now. I like it, and do it because I like it, 
 and I am not going to pretend I don t. I am 
 pleasing myself entirely. Don t look at me like 
 that. I m not worth troubling about. I m not 
 worth a thought from you, Alice." He stopped, 
 and added, sharply, " Certainly not tears." 
 
 " I m not ashamed of my tears, if there are any 
 in my eyes," the girl answered; " but," she added, 
 slowly, " I should think you would be." 
 
 " I m not," he said, simply. " Think of it I m 
 not ! That s what I ve come to. And yet," he 
 added, with a sudden exclamation, " there was a 
 time when every word you spoke meant 
 
 " Stop ! don t !" she said, breathlessly, and hold 
 ing her hands before her, " don t ! How could 
 you ?" 
 
 Thorold took a step backward and bit his lip, 
 and so stood, with his face flushing, and with his 
 eyes bent towards the floor. Then he raised his 
 
134 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 head and smiled grimly. " That, I should think," 
 he said, "would convince you of the truth of all 
 I have said. I can t go much lower than that, can 
 I?" He did not look at her again, but turned and 
 left the room without trying to take her hand or 
 saying good-bye. When he reached the street he 
 stepped into a hansom at the door and sank back 
 on the cushions with a laugh. " That was my last 
 chance," he murmured, grimly. "It has failed, 
 and now I can go to the devil with a perfectly 
 clear conscience." He raised the lid of the han 
 som with his stick. " To St. John s Wood," he 
 said to the driver. 
 
 Miss Beatrice or "Trix" Gvvynn, who lived 
 next door to Mrs. Inness, out St. John s Wood 
 way, posed for the great artists and all of the 
 fashionable photographers. You saw her repro 
 duced in many paintings at the different exhibi 
 tions as a very English-looking Greek maiden, 
 with fluffy yellow hair and round baby-like eyes. 
 She was very much of a fool. She lived in a 
 little house shut off from the world by a big wall, 
 and she was understood to enjoy an income from 
 the sale of her photographs, on which income she 
 kept a brougham. She had two very dear friends, 
 the beautiful Mrs. Inness and Captain Cathcart, a 
 very brave and good-natured but simple-souled 
 gentleman and officer of the Inniskillen Dragoons. 
 
 "I can t stop, thanks," Thorold said. "I just 
 came to see if you and Cathcart would come in to 
 supper at my rooms to-night; and I should be 
 
HIS BAD ANGEL 135 
 
 very glad if you would bring your friend Mrs. 
 Inness with you ; that is, you know, if she will 
 not mind ray not knowing her. Or I ll book you 
 a box at the piece to-night, if you like, and I ll 
 join you there. Perhaps that would be better, 
 and we can make the supper an after-thought. 
 Mrs. Inness might prefer it that way." 
 
 " Oh, Mildred won t mind," said Miss Gwynn, 
 lazily. " She ll come if I ask her ; and then, be 
 sides, she s just dotty to meet you. She told me, 
 when I said I d met you, that she d rather " 
 
 " Well, that s all right, then," Thorold inter 
 rupted, hastily. " It s very good of you to come. 
 Tell Cathcart to ask for the box as he goes in." 
 
 There were several things Thorold had prom 
 ised himself if he ever let everything go, and 
 now that he had determined to let everything go 
 he wanted to begin with them at once, and make 
 going back an impossibility. Mrs. Inness was 
 not one of the things he had promised himself, 
 but she would serve as well as another. He had 
 seen her often, and had heard of her, of course. 
 She was a very beautiful woman of large, grace 
 ful figure, who looked more like an Italian, in 
 spite of her yellow hair, than an English woman, 
 and she carried herself so well that she should 
 have been a duchess instead of what she was. 
 Her husband was, or had been, an officer in India, 
 where he had died, or where she had left him 
 still living : no one of her acquaintances was 
 particular enough to know or care which. She 
 
136 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 sat at Thorold s right at supper, and smiled upon 
 him encouragingly. She was very much pleased 
 with everything, and assured him that his chef 
 was as much of a master of his art as his master 
 was of his. 
 
 "I and my cook thank you," said Thorold, 
 gravely. 
 
 "Mildred always goes wrong when she tries to 
 be grand," Miss Gwynn whispered to Cathcart. 
 " I tell her to just sit still and let them look, and 
 not talk." 
 
 Cathcart laughed good-naturedly, and asked 
 Thorold s servant over his shoulder to pass the 
 lobster. 
 
 " And now," Miss Beatrice went on, wickedly, 
 "she s telling him her anecdotes of the aristoc 
 racy. That s the way she always begins with a 
 new man. She lays siege to him. I don t bother 
 with em, I don t." 
 
 Cathcart answered with a heavy bow and a 
 whisper, which caused the young model to wave 
 her fork at him playfully and say, " Oh, you, you 
 don t count." 
 
 Mrs. Inness had tried several moves ; openly 
 expressed admiration for his work did not seem to 
 answer. Either Thorold had had a surfeit of it 
 or wanted it more highly spiced, for he did not 
 seem to heed it. So she adopted a politely fash 
 ionable tone, and talked of the great people of the 
 hour and of their escapades, until she suspected 
 from a light in Thorold s eyes that he was already 
 
HIS BAD ANGEL 137 
 
 intimately familiar with what had come to her at 
 second hand, and that he knew it had come to her 
 at second hand. So she became herself, and was 
 bold and amusing and daring and familiar. Tho- 
 rold watched her without attempting to conceal 
 his admiration, not for her, but for her beauty, 
 which was unquestionable. It was of the impe 
 rious stamp that invited criticism because it did 
 not fear it. He liked the curve of her neck and 
 the way it sat upon her shoulders, and the waves 
 of her heavy yellow hair. Her stories bored him. 
 But it seemed to him, now that it was written 
 that he was not to appreciate his good angels, he 
 must make the most of his bad angels, and this 
 one was no worse nor no better than the rest, and 
 she was certainly wonderfully good to look at. 
 " If you are ready," he said, " we will take the 
 coffee in the other room." He brought it and the 
 liqueurs in himself, and sent his man down-stairs. 
 It was a darkly furnished room, lit by candles 
 under red shades, and strewn with furs and heavy 
 rugs. It was part of the ideal apartments of a 
 young Englishman, from whom Thorold rented 
 it while the owner was off yachting, and it was 
 filled with the relics of his former voyages and the 
 tributes of bazaars and bric-a-brac shops. There 
 were great divans heaped with cushions, and huge 
 leather chairs, and arms, and rows of miniatures, 
 and blue and white saucers, and cabinets of ivory 
 from India filled with old silver and pretty trifles 
 from the Paris shops ; and the smart dinner gowns 
 
138 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STOIIIES 
 
 of the women as they moved from cabinet to pict 
 ure, exclaiming over the treasures of the room, 
 gave to it just the life and color it most needed. 
 
 Cathcart sank into one of the big leather chairs 
 with a sigh of content. " Jolly sort of place this, 
 Thorold," he said. 
 
 Mrs. Inness poured out some brandy for her 
 self, but Miss Gwynn went back to the dining- 
 room, and returned carrying the champagne in 
 its bucket, and placed it beside her on the floor. 
 
 " This is Liberty Hall, is it not ?" she said. " I 
 fancied so. You d better tell your man to have 
 some more of this ready. The captain and I 
 like it." 
 
 When Thorold returned, Mrs. Inness was at the 
 piano playing the pas de quatre from the Gaiety, 
 and Miss Gwynn was holding her skirts daintily 
 and dancing in the centre of the room. Cathcart 
 laughed from the recesses of the big chair. 
 
 " I tell her it s a shame she doesn t go on the 
 stage, Thorold. She can dance as well as Lind 
 or Sylvia Grey now, and she s only had five 
 lessons." 
 
 Mrs. Inness rose from the piano in apparent con 
 fusion. " I don t know what Mr. Thorold will 
 think of our taking possession in this way," she 
 exclaimed. 
 
 " Oh, don t stop," said the American. " It s 
 very pretty." 
 
 But the woman refused. She confessed to an 
 awe of her host which she could not explain, and 
 
HIS BAD ANGEL 139 
 
 which troubled her in consequence. She could 
 not understand him. 
 
 Thorold rolled up some of the rugs, leaving a 
 bare place on the floor, and sitting down before 
 the piano, began a Spanish bolero, to which the 
 model danced, after a moment s hesitation, with 
 a pretty recklessness that left her panting, and 
 called out a round of applause. 
 
 " That was very good indeed," Thorold said. 
 
 " It makes me dry," the girl answered. " Did 
 you see about that champagne ?" 
 
 She went over to one of the little Turkish tables 
 and took a cigarette from a box and lit it, blowing 
 the smoke away with a laugh of content. Tho 
 rold handed the box to Mrs. Inness, but she shook 
 her head. 
 
 " Oh, go on, Mildred. Don t be stiff," said Miss 
 Gwynn. " We re all friends here." 
 
 " Yes, Mrs. Inness," Thorold repeated, " we re 
 all friends here." 
 
 He smiled grimly at this as he walked back into 
 the dining-room for the champagne. He was dis 
 tinctly conscious that he was not having a good 
 time. He argued that this was so because the 
 impressions of the afternoon still hung upon him, 
 and that when they had worn away he would be 
 in a more appreciative mood. He congratulated 
 himself that there would be no more such scenes 
 in the future. Still, he was annoyed that his 
 guests, whom he himself had selected, should en 
 joy themselves and that he should not. He as- 
 
140 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 sured himself that it was not the twenty-five years 
 of virtue that was asserting itself, but that it was 
 simply because the people were vulgar that they 
 were unattractive. He paused for a moment in 
 the darkened room with the bottle in his hand, 
 trying to analyze what it was that was wrong in 
 him. From the other room, beyond the portiere, 
 came the pop of a soda-water bottle, and Miss 
 Gwynn s shrill laugh and Cathcart s comfortable 
 bass. They seemed to be making themselves very 
 much at home. 
 
 " What a prig I am !" Thorold said, impatiently. 
 He decided swiftly that he was much too superior 
 a person, and that if he meant to enjoy his new 
 freedom he must crush the rising protests of past 
 tastes and traditions and give himself to the pres 
 ent. He came into the room smiling. 
 
 "Sing us something, Miss Gwynn," he said. 
 
 Miss Gwynn demurred, shyly. "I wouldn t 
 dare, before you," she said ; and then, to show 
 how little she meant this, she sat down and ran 
 her fingers over the keys of the piano, 
 sing you something of Ivette Guilbert s," she 
 said, over her shoulder. " My French is beastly, 
 but I have to sing them in French, so that Cath- 
 cart won t understand." 
 
 " Oh, don t, Trix," said Mrs. Inness. " They re 
 
 so low." 
 
 Thorold caught himself smiling at this, and to 
 find that Mrs. Inness had her own ideas of pro 
 priety. Then he corrected himself, mentally for 
 
HIS BAD ANGEL 141 
 
 still criticising and posing as a superior being. 
 He was sick and disgusted with it all and with 
 himself. The girl at the piano was singing with 
 none of Guilbert s innocence of manner, but was 
 giving each line its full meaning. Mrs. Inness 
 laughed, and looked consciously at the floor ; 
 Cathcart approved doubtfully, and suggested as 
 a compromise a song from the music-halls. 
 
 " No," said Miss Gwynn ; " I ve been funny 
 long enough. Let Thorold play something. I 
 want to be audience now." 
 
 " Oh, do, Mr. Thorold," said Mrs. Inness, effu 
 sively. 
 
 " Play us a lot of things," said the model 
 " the things you play to the swells." 
 
 Cathcart scrambled out of the arm-chair. "I 
 say, Thorold," he said, " if you wouldn t mind, 
 I d like it awfully if you d sing that Well of 
 Truth. I d like to hear you do it yourself. I d 
 like to say I d heard you." 
 
 Every instinct and taste of which Thorold was 
 possessed was offended and rose in rebellion as 
 they spoke to him. He hated them, and he hated 
 himself for having brought them to this room. 
 The wickedness of Mayfair and not of Bohemia, 
 he determined, would be his dissipation in the 
 future. He could at least choose his associates, 
 as heretofore, and he was not unmindful that 
 there were those of his own class a little more 
 wicked than Mrs. Inness, if not so beautiful. 
 " What a child I am !" he exclaimed. He reit- 
 
142 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 erated to himself that he had chosen his own 
 way. The best and strongest help for good that 
 had ever come into his life had, so he believed, 
 failed him, had ceased to move him that very day; 
 and he thought, in his inexperience, that what he 
 needed now was to make going back, or the 
 thought of going back, an impossibility. 
 
 And then there came to him an inspiration. 
 In the three months in which the Puritan con 
 science and the artistic temperament had been 
 struggling for the mastery he had written and 
 composed the music for a song. He called it 
 " The Days that are Gone." The song was the 
 expression of all that had been going on in his 
 mind ; it meant to him the story of what he had 
 gone through, and through which he was still 
 going all that he had lost, all his doubts, and 
 regret for what was lost. He had not sung it to 
 any one. He had even locked the doors when he 
 sang it alone ; for it had been written when he 
 was feeling more deeply than he had ever felt 
 before, and he guarded it for that reason, even 
 while his artistic judgment assured him that it 
 was, as a work of art, the strongest thing he had 
 ever written. It seemed to him now that if he 
 could bring himself to sing that song to these 
 people he would shame the best that was in him 
 and the best that had ever come from him, that 
 he would mock the thing that meant most to 
 him, and that if he cast it before these swine no 
 other sentiment or principle or tradition of his life 
 
HIS BAD ANGEL 143 
 
 could lay claim to recognition. He turned impul 
 sively towards his guests, smiling strangely. 
 
 " I want you to hear a new song I ve written. 
 It s not a funny song ; it s rather the other way. 
 It s about some one, a man or a woman, who 
 However, I ll sing it, and then you ll know what 
 it s about. I ll sing you some funny ones after I 
 have finished it." 
 
 There was a murmur of delighted interest, and 
 a rustle of silks as the women settled themselves 
 to listen. 
 
 " Wait till I get a light, will you ?" said Cath- 
 cart. He reached out of the recesses of the chair, 
 and leaning forward to one of the little tables, 
 struck a match. 
 
 Thorold placed his own cigar carefully on the 
 glass rim of one of the candles beside the music- 
 rack, and, as he waited, turned a smiling coun 
 tenance upon his audience. The soldier s red- 
 bronzed face was showing in the light of the 
 flaring wax ; it was content, and marked with 
 pleasurable anticipation. On the floor at his side 
 Miss Gwynn had thrown one of the cushions, 
 and had seated herself upon it, leaning her head 
 against the arm of Cathcart s chair. She smiled 
 
 O 
 
 up brightly at Thorold as he looked at her, and 
 posed herself in an attitude that might have been 
 titled " Expectancy " or " Waiting," as though 
 she felt the eye of the artist or of the camera 
 upon her. In the centre of the room Mrs. Inness 
 sat, or rather reclined, on the broad arm of one 
 
144 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 of the big leather chairs, leaning back, with one 
 bare arm thrown behind her head, and with the 
 other holding a glass, which she rested lightly on 
 her knee. Her attitude showed her figure and 
 almost every line of her body, from the point of 
 her slippered toe, with which she tapped the floor, 
 to the top of her well - poised head. It was a 
 graceful, indolent, and obviously meditated pose, 
 which Thorold observed with cynical approval. 
 The woman, catching his eye, raised the glass 
 from her knee, and bent her head gracefully, 
 smiling as she did so with half - closed eyes. 
 Thorold laughed shortly, and struck the opening 
 chord of his song. The words could have been 
 sung by either a man or a woman. It began by 
 telling of the days of the past, the days that were 
 gone ; and the accompaniment suggested the 
 brightness of sunshine and of running streams 
 and rustling leaves, of the "lost Eden of our 
 innocence " and of sweet content ; then it merged 
 suddenly into braver and more powerful strains 
 as the words spoke of ambitions and hopes and of 
 great deeds for the life in the future. 
 
 Thorold had a very good voice, full of dra 
 matic feeling and power, and every word he sang 
 came to the listener s ear bearing its proper em 
 phasis as sharp and sure as the lines of an actor s 
 soliloquy. 
 
 He began contemptuously, but the artist in 
 him made it impossible for him to do aught else 
 but sing the song well. The music changed to 
 
HIS BAD ANGEL 145 
 
 low mutterings, and the words told of doubts and 
 trouble, and then broke out into passionate regret 
 and agony of spirit. One could almost see the 
 beads of sweat upon the face of the suppliant. 
 It was a cry for peace and rest, and return to the 
 quiet streams and gentle shade. Thorold had 
 forgotten himself and his audience. His voice 
 rose and met the rising wail of the music ; it told 
 of wasted days, of unresting and feverish search- 
 ings for happiness and relief from thought, of 
 the sting of dead desires, and of the mockery of 
 pleasure. The music grew in volume, and filled 
 the room with a great cry of mourning, eerie, 
 awful, and despairing. Hopelessness and remorse 
 were the meaning of the music and of the words 
 the impotent cry for the days that could not 
 come again, the futile regret for the chances 
 that had passed and that had not been taken ; 
 and then the voice of the singer sank and died 
 away with one low deep cry, as though despair 
 ing of succor or relief, without faith and with 
 out hope, and the music running on ended in a 
 wild crash that sounded like the laughter of those 
 already lost, mocking at those just fallen. The 
 room was strangely silent. 
 
 Thorold reached for his cigar and relit it at the 
 candle. He puffed it back into a flame again, 
 and then, as no one moved, turned slowly tow 
 ards his guests. Cathcart sat just as he had 
 last noticed him, leaning forward with the half- 
 burned match still in his hand. He had not moved. 
 
146 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 His shoulders were stooped, and he was staring 
 out across the half-lit room with a pitiful, uncom 
 prehending look in his eyes like that of a child 
 in trouble. The fat fingers that held his cigar 
 trembled on his knees. 
 
 The girl at his feet was staring up at Thorold 
 with wide-open eyes, pleading and terrified. Her 
 lips were quivering. And then as Thorold smiled 
 she did the only natural thing she had ever done in 
 her short, silly, artificial life, and, turning swiftly, 
 threw herself across Cathcart s knees and burst 
 into a wild torrent of tears. 
 
 Thorold sprang up with an exclamation that 
 was half anger and half apology. He turned 
 towards the older woman of the two for some ex 
 planation, and then sank back again slowly be 
 fore the piano. Mrs. Inness had not altered her 
 position, but the meaning, languishing smile was 
 gone, and had changed to one of frank, open- 
 eyed amusement. She was looking at him as 
 though she had known him for a long time in the 
 past, but as though he had but just then disclosed 
 himself. Her awe of .him that he himself had 
 noticed earlier in the evening had fallen from 
 her like a cloak, and she was smiling at him 
 familiarly and with a look of perfect understand 
 ing arid equality. Thorold turned away his eyes 
 and struck the keys resentfully. What had this 
 woman to do with him ? Mrs. Inness rose leisure 
 ly, and swept smiling across the room towards 
 him. She leaned one bare elbow on the piano, 
 
HIS BAD ANGEL 147 
 
 and placed the band of the other arm on her hip 
 with the arm akimbo and her head thrown back. 
 In her right hand she he.d the glass, and with 
 the forefinger of the same hand she pointed at 
 Thorold. She was not a very tall woman, but 
 she seemed to tower above him as he sat looking 
 up at her, his fingers wandering over the keys. 
 Her attitude was too easy to be graceful, and to 
 Thorold it seemed to have a touch of menace in 
 it and of insolence. She nodded her head at him, 
 smiling strangely between half-closed eyelids. 
 
 " And you," she said at last, speaking slowly, 
 and smiling with each word, "you re Archibald 
 Thorold, are you ? You re the man who wrote 
 The Well of Truth, and the oratorios, and those 
 operas the curates go to see. What a jolly fraud 
 you are !" She laughed easily, and touched the 
 glass to her lips, and then pushed it away from 
 her across the piano. " You re the man who writes 
 the songs the little girls cry over, all about Love 
 and the Ideal. Oh, I know ! I ve sung them and 
 cried over them, too. And now here you are, just 
 like anybody else aren t you ? Just an every 
 day, common, ordinary man." 
 
 Thorold pressed heavily on the keys beneath 
 his fingers. "I do not think, Mrs. Inness," he 
 said, stiffly, " that I ever posed as being anything 
 else." 
 
 " Perhaps not," the woman went on, easily. 
 "Perhaps not. But why aren t you different? 
 Why are you just like all the other Johnnies?" 
 
148 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 She rested her chin on the palm of her hand, and 
 looked into his with frank, wide-open eyes. And 
 yet Thorold doubted her frankness, and looked 
 up at her uneasily. 
 
 "I don t think I understand you," he said, with 
 severe politeness. 
 
 " Oh yes, you do," she laughed, lightly. " You 
 know you re not like them. I don t mean your 
 being a swell, but the rest of it." She turned 
 and pointed her hand towards the corner where 
 Cathcart sat in the semi-darkness patting the girl s 
 curls as they rested on his knee. She had sobbed 
 herself to sleep, or was pretending to sleep, and 
 the man was puffing softly on his cigar and look 
 ing down at her. " You see," said Mrs. Inness, 
 " if you re able to make Cathcart look as though 
 he had seen a ghost, and to send Beatrice Gwynn 
 off into hysterics with remorse, you must be dif 
 ferent from most Johnnies. And you ve made 
 me cry many a time. And I know a girl, a sick 
 girl, down in Kent. I used to play and sing your 
 songs to her when I was down there, and she 
 well ! she thinks you re a gilded saint." 
 
 " Drop it, will you !" Thorold said. He half 
 rose from the chair, but the woman touched him 
 familiarly on the shoulder and pushed him down. 
 
 "No; you listen to me," she said. Her eyes 
 were brilliant, and she had ceased smiling. " I 
 want to talk to you; I ve wanted to know you for 
 a long time. Why," she said, laughing uneasily, 
 u I ve got a dozen pictures of you in my house 
 
HIS BAD ANGEL 149 
 
 now: I sent to the States for them. Yes, I did; 
 and I m no more keen about you than a lot more 
 of other women I know. I ve thought if I could 
 meet a man like you I mean, you know," she ex 
 plained, "the sort of man I thought you were 
 that things would be better, or worse, for it. You 
 see," she said, laughing unmirthfully, "you never 
 know just who is counting on you in this world 
 do you ? A chap like you has responsibilities ; 
 but you re quite right to shove them over. You 
 have a livelier time, I fancy don t you ? than 
 if you bothered with them." She stopped and 
 looked down, with her lips pressed together, and 
 breathing heavily. "But it s hard on the others 
 sometimes on that sick girl I was telling you 
 about, for instance. I guess if she knew, it would 
 about kill her. And it s hard on me." Thorold s 
 cigar was out, and the candles on either side of the 
 piano had sunk to their sockets, and were sputter 
 ing in wavering, uncertain flashes. " That s what 
 you did for me," the woman went on, bitterly. 
 Her voice chilled Thorold as -it came from above 
 like the falling of cold rain upon his bare head. 
 " I counted on you," she said. " I used to think 
 that as long as there was one man left who be 
 lieved in us we weren t so bad, that there was a 
 chance of our getting better or our getting back. 
 I ve sung those songs of yours, and they sort of 
 comforted me. They made me feel there was 
 something good in me too, and I could have loved 
 the man who made me feel that, the man who 
 
250 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 wrote those songs, if I had met him. I could 
 have done anything for him anything. I d have 
 been different for him if he had wanted me 
 to, and now now I can t." Her voice had risen 
 suddenly, but she lowered it again into a sharp, 
 fierce whisper. " I can t. Now that I ve met 
 you I can t. I wish I d never seen you. I d 
 rather be a fool, believing there was one man who 
 was different different from all the rest of you. 
 I hate you !" she whispered ; "I hate you ! I d 
 made so much of you. I counted on you so, and 
 you re no better than Cathcart there not so 
 good, for he doesn t preach one thing and live 
 another. He doesn t pretend to be any better 
 than he is and you, oh! you you don t want to 
 be as good as you are. You ve fooled them all 
 haven t you ? You ve been very clever. Aren t 
 you pleased with it ? Aren t you proud ?" Her 
 voice broke with a sob, and she turned swiftly 
 away and swept out of the room into the hall be 
 yond. 
 
 Thorold sat quite motionless. His head was 
 bent, and his fingers still rested on the silent keys. 
 All he had ever said to himself, or all that others 
 had said to him, had never come to him as had 
 the words of this woman, whose name was "as 
 common as the Paris road," and whom he had de 
 spised himself for admiring, even while he pitied 
 her. He was sore, bruised, and sick, as though he 
 had been pelted with stones and pointed at on a 
 pillory. Outside, the birds in the Park across the 
 
HIS BAD ANGEL 151 
 
 street were chirping violently, and the early sun 
 came stealing between the cracks of the blinds 
 into the smoke-laden room. 
 
 Thorold rose stiffly and uncertainly, as though 
 he had been sitting there a very long time, and 
 followed her. 
 
 A tall white figure, muffled and unrecognizable, 
 confronted him in the gray half-light of the hall. 
 "Well?" she .said. 
 
 Thorold went to the door and threw it open, let 
 ting in the sunlight, and giving them a strangely 
 foreign and unfair^liar air. It was as if the night 
 just over were far back in the past. 
 
 " Mrs. Inness," he said, " you won t understand 
 me, I am afraid. But I want you to know that, 
 though I have disappointed you, you have helped 
 me a great deal. I think I owe it to you to tell 
 you this. We never know, as you say, how much 
 we depend on others, and we can never tell from 
 what source that help we most need will come." 
 
 "I don t understand," the woman said. 
 
 "Never mind," Thorold answered, gently. "It 
 is something that you have helped another, is it 
 not ?" 
 
 Cathcart and the girl came into the hall, and 
 Cathcart stepped into the street and beckoned to 
 the line of hansoms drawn up by the railings un 
 der the overhanging branches of the Park. 
 
 "I m sorry I made such an ass of myself, Tho 
 rold," the soldier said, "but that song of yours 
 was a bit creepy, now, wasn t it ?" 
 
152 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 The model stretched a slim white hand out from 
 the mass of swan s-down, and as Thorold took it 
 in his own, she stooped and kissed his hand, and 
 then ran down the steps, laughing, to where Cath- 
 cart stood waiting beside the hansom. Thorold 
 helped Mrs. Inness into the next, and gave her 
 number to the driver, but she called to him to 
 wait. She pushed the doors away and leaned 
 forward, gathering the cloak up about her bare 
 throat. 
 
 " You are angry with me," she said. Her eyes 
 were wet and pleading. " You will never forgive 
 me. I don t know why I spoke as I did. I was 
 a fool because I don t want you to hate me. I 
 want you to forgive me, and come to see me, in 
 spite of all I said." 
 
 " There is nothing to forgive, Mrs. Inness," Tho 
 rold answered, earnestly. "I tell you, you have 
 done me a great service. You have helped me 
 very much." 
 
 " Oh, I know," she interrupted, impatiently. 
 " You say that, but you are angry. Don t think 
 of what I said. Forget it and forgive me, and 
 come and see me." 
 
 Thorold smiled. He could not help it, for the 
 way seemed so clear now. 
 
 " I am very sorry," he said, " but really I can t. 
 You see, I m leaving town. I sail for America 
 this morning with some friends from Southamp 
 ton." 
 
 The woman sank back against the cushions, 
 
HIS BAD ANGEL 153 
 
 with her face hid from him in the high collar of 
 her cloak. Thorold stood motionless upon the 
 curb, watching the hansom as it swept away, 
 echoing down the empty, sunlit street. When it 
 had disappeared, he turned slowly and walked 
 back soberly into the darkened rooms. The can 
 dles were still burning, and the empty bottles and 
 the ashes of half -burned cigars lay scattered over 
 the floor and tables. Thorold opened the blinds, 
 letting in the sunlight upon the disorder and de 
 bris of the night just over. He surveyed the room 
 curiously, and for the last time. "And it was 
 here," he said, gravely, "that I entertained an 
 angel unawares." 
 
THE BOY ORATOU OF ZEPATA CITY 
 
 THE day was cruelly hot, with unwarranted 
 gusts of wind which swept the red dust in fierce 
 eddies in at one end of Main Street and out at the 
 other, and waltzed fantastically across the prairie. 
 When they had passed, human beings opened their 
 eyes again to blink hopelessly at the white sun, 
 and swore or gasped, as their nature moved them. 
 There were very few human beings in the streets, 
 either in Houston Avenue, where there were dwell 
 ing-houses, or in the business quarter on Main 
 Street. They were all at the new court-house, 
 and every one possessed of proper civic pride was 
 either in the packed court-room itself, or standing 
 on the high steps outside, or pacing the long, 
 freshly kalsomined corridors, where there was 
 shade and less dust. It was an eventful day in the 
 history of Zepata City. The court-house had been 
 long in coming, the appropriation had been denied 
 again and again; but at last it stood a proud and 
 hideous fact, like a gray prison, towering above 
 the bare, undecorated brick stores and the frame 
 houses on the prairie around it, new, raw, and 
 cheap, from the tin statue on the dome to the 
 stucco round its base already cracking with the 
 
THE BOY ORATOR OF ZEPATA CITY 155 
 
 sun. Piles of lumber and scaffolding and the lime 
 beds the builders had left still lay on the unsodded 
 square, and the bursts of wind drove the shavings 
 across it, as they had done since the first day of 
 building, when the Hon. Horatio Macon, who had 
 worked for the appropriation, had laid the corner 
 stone and received the homage of his constituents. 
 
 It seemed a particularly happy and appropriate 
 circumstance that the first business in the new 
 court-room should be of itself of an important and 
 momentous nature, something that dealt not only 
 with the present but with the past of Zepata, and 
 that the trial of so celebrated an individual as Abe 
 Barrow should open the court-house with eclat, as 
 Emma Abbott, who had come all the way from 
 San Antonio to do it, had opened the new opera- 
 house the year before. The District Attorney had 
 said it would not take very long to dispose of 
 Barrow s case, but he had promised it would be an 
 interesting if brief trial, and the court-room was 
 filled even to the open windows, where men sat 
 crowded together, with the perspiration running 
 down their faces, and the red dust settling and 
 turning white upon their shoulders. 
 
 Abe Barrow, the prisoner, had been as closely 
 associated with the early history of Zepata as 
 Colonel Macon himself, and was as widely known; 
 he had killed in his day several of the Zepata 
 citizens, and two visiting brother-desperadoes, and 
 the corner where his gambling-house had stood 
 was still known as Barrow s Corner, to the regret 
 
156 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 of the druggist who had opened a shop there. 
 Ten years before, the murder of Deputy-Sheriff 
 Welsh had led him to the penitentiary, and a 
 month previous to the opening of the new court 
 house he had been freed, and arrested at the prison 
 gate to stand trial for the murder of Hubert 
 Thompson. The fight with Thompson had been 
 a fair fight so those said who remembered it 
 and Thompson was a man they could well spare; 
 but the case against Barrow had been prepared 
 during his incarceration by the new and youthful 
 District Attorney, " Judge " Henry Harvey, and 
 as it offered a fitting sacrifice for the dedication 
 of the new temple of justice, the people were satis 
 fied and grateful. 
 
 The court-room was as bare of ornament as the 
 cell from which the prisoner had just been taken. 
 There was an imitation walnut clock at the back 
 of the Judge s hair-cloth sofa, his revolving chair, 
 and his high desk. This was the only ornament. 
 Below was the green table of the District Attor 
 ney, upon which rested his papers and law-books 
 and his high hat. To one side sat the jury, ranch- 
 owners and prominent citizens, proud of having to 
 serve on this the first day; and on the other the 
 prisoner in his box. Around them gathered the 
 citizens of Zepata in close rows, crowded together 
 on unpainted benches; back of them more citizens 
 standing and a few awed Mexicans; and around 
 all the whitewashed walls. Colonel John Stogart, 
 of Dallas, the prisoner s attorney, procured obvi- 
 
THE BOY ORATOR OF ZEPATA CITY 157 
 
 ously at great expense, no one knew by whom, 
 and Barrow s wife, a thin yellow-faced woman in 
 a mean-fitting showy gown, sat among the local 
 celebrities at the District Attorney s elbow. She 
 was the only woman in the room. 
 
 Colonel Stogart s speech had been good. The 
 citizens were glad it had been so good ; it had kept 
 up the general tone of excellence, and it was well 
 that the best lawyer of Dallas should be present 
 on this occasion, and that he should have made 
 what the citizens of Zepata were proud to believe 
 was one of the efforts of his life. As they said, 
 a court-house such as this one was not open for 
 business every day. It was also proper that Judge 
 Truax, who was a real Judge, and not one by 
 courtesy only, as was the young District Attorney, 
 should sit upon the bench. He also was associ 
 ated with the early days and with the marvellous 
 growth of Zepata City. He had taught the young 
 District Attorney much of what he knew, and his 
 long white hair and silver-rimmed spectacles gave 
 dignity and the appearance of calm justice to the 
 bare room and to the heated words of the rival 
 orators. 
 
 Colonel Stogart ceased speaking, and the District 
 Attorney sucked in his upper lip with a nervous 
 impatient sigh as he recognized that the visiting 
 attorney had proved murder in the second degree, 
 and that an execution in the jail-yard would not 
 follow as a fitting sequence. 
 
 But he was determined that so far as in him lay 
 
158 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 he would at least send his man back to the peni 
 tentiary for the remainder of his life. 
 
 Young Harry Harvey, "The Boy Orator of 
 Zepata City," as he was called, was very dear to 
 the people of that booming town. In their eyes 
 he was one of the most promising young men in 
 the whole great unwieldy State of Texas, and the 
 boy orator thought they were probably right, but 
 he was far too clever to let them see it. He was 
 clever in his words and in his deeds and in his ap 
 pearance. And he dressed much more carefully 
 than any other man in town, with a frock-coat and 
 a white tie winter and summer, and a fine high hat. 
 That he was slight and short of stature was some 
 thing he could not help, and was his greatest, 
 keenest regret, and that Napoleon was also short 
 and slight did not serve to satisfy him or to make 
 his regret less continual. What availed the sharply 
 cut, smoothly shaven face and the eyes that flashed 
 when he was moved, or the bell-like voice, if every 
 unlettered ranchman or ranger could place both 
 hands on his shoulders and look down at him from 
 heights above? But they forgot this and he for 
 got it before he had reached the peroration of his 
 closing speech. They saw only the Harry Harvey 
 they knew and adored moving and rousing them 
 with his voice, trembling with indignation when 
 he wished to tremble, playing all his best tricks 
 in his best manner, and cutting the air with sharp, 
 cruel words when he was pleased to be righteously 
 just. 
 
 
THE BOY ORATOR OF ZEPATA CITY 159 
 
 The young District Attorney turned slowly on 
 his heels, and swept the court-room carelessly with 
 a glance of the clever black eyes. The moment 
 was his. He saw all the men he knew the men 
 who made his little world crowding silently for 
 ward, forgetful of the heat, of the suffocating 
 crush of those about them, of the wind that rattled 
 the doors in the corridors, and conscious only of 
 him. He saw his old preceptor watching keenly 
 from the bench, with a steady glance of perfect 
 appreciation, such as that with which one actor in 
 the box compliments the other on the stage. He 
 saw the rival attorney the great lawyer from the 
 great city nervously smiling, with a look of confi 
 dence that told the lack of it; and he saw the face 
 of the prisoner grim and set and hopelessly defiant. 
 The boy orator allowed his uplifted arm to fall 
 until the fingers pointed at the prisoner. 
 
 " This man," he said, and as he spoke even the 
 wind in the corridors hushed for the moment, " is 
 no part or parcel of Zepata City of to-day. He 
 comes to us a relic of the past a past that has 
 brought honor to many, wealth to some, and 
 which is dear to all of us who love the completed 
 purpose of their work ; a past that was full of 
 hardships and glorious efforts in the face of daily 
 disappointments, embitterments, and rebuffs. But 
 the part this man played in that past lives only in 
 the rude court records of that day, in the tradi 
 tions of the gambling-hell and the saloons, and on 
 the head -stones of his victims. He was one of 
 
160 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 the excrescences of that unsettled period, an un 
 happy evil an inevitable evil, I might almost 
 say, as the Mexican horse-thieves and the prairie 
 fires and the Indian outbreaks were inevitable, as 
 our fathers who built this beautiful city knew to 
 their cost. The same chance that was given to 
 them to make a home for themselves in the wil 
 derness, to help others to make their homes, to 
 assist the civilization and progress not only of 
 this city, but of the whole Lone Star State, was 
 given to him, and he refused it, and blocked the 
 way of others, and kept back the march of prog 
 ress, until to-day, civilization, which has waxed 
 great and strong not on account of him, remem 
 ber, but in spite of him sweeps him out of its 
 way, and crushes him and his fellows." 
 
 The young District Attorney allowed his arm 
 to drop, and turned to the jury, leaning easily 
 with his bent knuckles on the table. 
 
 " Gentlemen," he said, in his pleasant tones of 
 every-day politeness, " the bad man has become 
 an unknown quantity in Zepata City and in the 
 State of Texas. It lies with you to see that he 
 remains so. He went out of existence with the 
 blanket Indian and the buffalo. He is dead, and 
 he must not be resurrected. He was a picturesque 
 evil of those early days, but civilization has no 
 use for him, and it has killed him, as the railroads 
 and the barb - wire fence have killed the cowboy. 
 He does not belong here ; he does not fit in; he is 
 not wanted. We want men who can breed good 
 
THE BOY ORATOR OF ZEPATA CITY 161 
 
 cattle, who can build manufactories and open 
 banks ; storekeepers who can undersell those of 
 other cities; and professional men who know their 
 business. We do not want desperadoes and bad 
 men and faro-dealers and men who are quick on 
 the trigger. A foolish and morbid publicity has 
 cloaked men of this class with a notoriety which 
 cheap and pernicious literature has greatly helped 
 to disseminate. They have been made romantic 
 when they were brutal, brave when they were 
 foolhardy, heroes when they were only bullies and 
 blackguards. This man, Abe Barrow, the pris 
 oner at the bar, belongs to that class. He enjoys 
 and has enjoyed a reputation as a * bad man, a 
 desperate and brutal ruffian. Free him to-day, 
 and you set a premium on such reputations ; 
 acquit him of this crime, and you encourage oth 
 ers to like evil. Let him go, and he will walk the 
 streets with a swagger, and boast that you were 
 afraid to touch him afraid, gentlemen and 
 children and women will point after him as the 
 man who has sent nine others into eternity, and 
 who yet walks the streets a free man. And he 
 will become, in the eyes of the young and the 
 weak, a hero and a god. This is unfortunate, but 
 it is true. 
 
 Now, gentlemen, we want to keep the streets 
 of this city so safe that a woman can walk them 
 at midnight without fear of insult, and a man can 
 express his opinion on the corner without being 
 shot in the back for doing so." 
 
162 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 The District Attorney turned from the jury 
 with a bow, and faced Judge Truax. 
 
 " For the last ten years, your honor, this man, 
 Abner Barrow, has been serving a term of im 
 prisonment in the State penitentiary ; I ask you 
 to send him back there again for the remainder 
 of his life. It will be the better place for him, 
 and we will be happier in knowing we have done 
 our duty in placing him there. Abe Barrow is 
 out of date. He has missed step with the march 
 of progress, and has been out of step for ten 
 years, and it is best for all that he should remain 
 out of it until he, who has sent nine other men 
 unprepared to meet their God " 
 
 "He is not on trial for the murder of nine 
 men," interrupted Colonel Stogart, springing from 
 his chair, "but for the justifiable killing of one, 
 and I demand, your honor, that " 
 
 " has sent nine other men to meet their Maker," 
 continued the District Attorney, " meets with the 
 awful judgment of a higher court than this." 
 
 Colonel Stogart smiled scornfully at the plati 
 tude, and sat down with an expressive shrug ; 
 but no one noticed him. 
 
 The District Attorney raised his arm and faced 
 the court - room. " It cannot be said of us" he 
 cried, " that we have sat idle in the market-place. 
 We have advanced and advanced in the last ten 
 years, until we have reached the very foremost 
 place with civilized people. This Rip Van Winkle 
 of the past returns to find a city where he left a 
 
THE BOY ORATOR OF ZEPATA CITY 163 
 
 prairie town, a bank where he spun his roulette 
 wheel, this magnificent court-house instead of a 
 vigilance committee. And what is his part in 
 this new court-house, which to-day, for the first 
 time, throws open its doors to protect the just and 
 to punish the unjust? 
 
 " Is he there in the box among those honorable 
 men, the gentlemen of the jury? Is he in that 
 great crowd of intelligent, public-spirited citizens 
 who make the bone and sinew of this our fair 
 city ? Is he on the honored bench dispensing 
 justice, and making the intricacies of the law 
 straight ? No, gentlemen ; he has no part in our 
 triumph. He is there, in the prisoners pen, an 
 outlaw, a convicted murderer, and an unconvicted 
 assassin, the last of his race the bullies and bad 
 men of the border a thing to be forgotten and 
 put away forever from the sight of man. He 
 has outlasted his time ; he is a superfluity and an 
 outrage on our reign of decency and order. And 
 I ask you, gentlemen, to put him away where he 
 will not hear the voice of man nor children s 
 laughter, nor see a woman smile, where he will 
 not even see the face of the warden who feeds 
 him, nor sunlight except as it is filtered through 
 the iron bars of a jail. Bury him with the 
 bitter past, with the lawlessness that has gone 
 that has gone, thank God and which must not 
 return. Place him in the cell where he belongs, 
 and whence, had justice been done, he would 
 never have been taken alive." 
 
164 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 The District Attorney sat down suddenly, with 
 a quick nod to the Judge and the jury, and fum 
 bled over his papers with nervous fingers. Pie 
 was keenly conscious, and excited with the fer 
 vor of his own words. He heard the reluctantly 
 hushed applause and the whispers of the crowd, 
 and noted the quick and combined movement of 
 the jury with a selfish sweet pleasure, which 
 showed itself only in the tightening of the lips 
 and nostrils. Those nearest him tugged at his 
 sleeve and shook hands with him. He remem 
 bered this afterwards as one of the rewards of 
 the moment. He turned the documents before 
 him over and scribbled words upon a piece of 
 paper and read a passage in an open law-book. 
 He did this quite mechanically, and was conscious 
 of nothing until the foreman pronounced the 
 prisoner at the bar guilty of murder in the sec 
 ond degree. 
 
 Judge Truax leaned across his desk and said, 
 simply, that it lay in his power to sentence the 
 prisoner to not less than two years confinement 
 in the State penitentiary or for the remainder of 
 his life. 
 
 "Before I deliver sentence on you, Abner Bar 
 row," he said, with an old man s kind severity, 
 " is there anything you have to say on your own 
 behalf ?" 
 
 The District Attorney turned his face, as did 
 all the others, but he did not see the prisoner. 
 He still saw himself holding the court-room with 
 
THE BOY OKATOR OF ZEPATA CITY 165 
 
 a spell, and heard his own periods ringing against 
 the whitewashed ceiling. The others saw a tall, 
 broad-shouldered man leaning heavily forward 
 over the bar of the prisoner s box. His face was 
 white with the prison tan, markedly so in con 
 trast with those sunburnt by the wind and sun 
 turned towards him, and pinched and hollow- 
 eyed and worn. When he spoke, his voice had 
 the huskiness which comes from non-use, and 
 cracked and broke like a child s. 
 
 "I don t know, Judge, 1 he said, hesitatingly, 
 and staring stupidly at the mass of faces in the 
 well beneath him, " that I have anything to say- 
 in my own behalf. I don t know as it would be 
 any use. I guess what the gentleman said about 
 me is all there is to say. He put it about right. 
 I ve had my fun, and I ve got to pay for it that 
 is, I thought it was fun at the time. I am not 
 going to cry any baby act and beg off, or any 
 thing, if that s what you mean. But there is 
 something I d like to say if I thought you would 
 believe me." He frowned down at the green ta 
 ble as though the words he wanted would not 
 come, and his eyes wandered from one face to 
 another, until they rested upon the bowed head 
 of the only woman in the room. They remained 
 there for some short time, and then Barrow drew 
 in his breath more quickly, and turned with some 
 thing like a show of confidence to the jury. 
 
 " All that man said of me is true," he said. He 
 gave a toss of his hands as a man throws away 
 
166 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STOEIES 
 
 the reins. "I admit all he says. I am a back 
 number ; I am out of date ; I was a loafer and a 
 blackguard. I never shot any man in the back, 
 nor I never assassinated no one; but that s neither 
 here nor there. I m not in a place where I can 
 expect people to pick out their words; but, as he 
 says, I am a bad lot. He says I have enjoyed a 
 reputation as a desperado. I am not bragging of 
 that ; I just ask you to remember that he said it. 
 Remember it of me. I was not the sort to back 
 down to man or beast, and I m not now. I am 
 not backing down now ; I m taking my punish 
 ment. Whatever you please to make it, I ll take 
 it ; and that," he went on, more slowly, " makes 
 it harder for me to ask what I want to ask, and 
 make you all believe I am not asking it for my 
 self." 
 
 He stopped, and the silence in the room seemed 
 to give him some faint encouragement of sym 
 pathy, though it was rather the silence of curi 
 osity. 
 
 Colonel Stogart gave a stern look upward, and 
 asked the prisoner s wife, in a whisper, if she 
 knew what her husband meant to say, but she 
 shook her head. She did not know. The District 
 Attorney smiled indulgently at the prisoner and 
 at the men about him, but they were watching 
 the prisoner. 
 
 "That man there," said Barrow, pointing with 
 one gaunt hand at the boy attorney, " told you 
 I had no part or parcel in this city or in this 
 
THE BOY OllATOR OP ZEPATA CITY 167 
 
 world ; that I belonged to the past; that I had 
 ought to be dead. Now that s not so. I have 
 just one thing that belongs to this city and this 
 world and to me; one thing that I couldn t take 
 to jail with me, and that I ll have to leave behind 
 me when I go back to it. I mean my wife." 
 
 The prisoner stopped, and looked so steadily at 
 one place below him that those in the back of the 
 court guessed for the first time that Mrs. Barrow 
 was in the room, and craned forward to look at 
 her, and there was a moment of confusion and a 
 murmur of " Get back there !" " Sit still !" The 
 prisoner turned to Judge Truax again and squared 
 his broad shoulders, making the more conspicuous 
 his narrow and sunken chest. 
 
 " You, sir," he said, quietly, with a change from 
 the tone of braggadocio with which he had begun 
 to speak, " remember her, sir, when I married 
 her, twelve years ago. She was Henry Holman s 
 daughter, he who owned the San lago Ranch and 
 the triangle brand. I took her from the home 
 she had with her father against that gentleman s 
 wishes, sir, to live with me over my dance-hall at 
 the Silver Star. You may remember her as she 
 was then. She gave up everything a woman 
 ought to have to come to me. She thought she 
 was going to be happy with me ; that s why she 
 come, I guess. Maybe she was happy for about 
 two weeks. After that first two weeks her life, 
 sir, was a hell, and I made it a hell. I was drunk 
 most of the time, or sleeping it off, and ugly- 
 
168 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 tempered when I was sober. There was shooting 
 and carrying on all day and night down-stairs, 
 and she didn t dare to leave her room. Besides 
 that, she cared for me, and she was afraid every 
 minute I was going to get killed. That s the way 
 she lived for two years. Respectable women 
 wouldn t speak to her because she was my wife ; 
 even them that were friends of hers when she lived 
 on the ranch wouldn t speak to her on the street 
 and she had no children. That was her life ; she 
 lived alone over the dance-hall ; and sometimes 
 when I was drunk I beat her." 
 
 The man s white face reddened slowly as he 
 said this ; and he stopped, and then continued 
 more quickly, with his eyes still fixed on those of 
 the Judge : 
 
 "At the end of two years I killed Welsh, and 
 they sent me to the penitentiary for ten years, 
 and she was free. She could have gone back to 
 her folks and got a divorce if she d wanted to, 
 and never seen me again. It was an escape most 
 women M gone down on their knees and thanked 
 their Maker for, and blessed the day they d been 
 freed from a blackguardly drunken brute. 
 
 " But what did this woman do my wife, the 
 woman I misused and beat and dragged down in 
 the mud with me ? She was too mighty proud to 
 go back to her people or to the friends who shook 
 her when she was in trouble ; and she sold -out the 
 place, and bought a ranch with the money, and 
 worked it by herself, worked it day and night, 
 
THE BOY ORATOR OF ZEPATA CITY 169 
 
 until in ten years she had made herself an old 
 woman, as you see she is to-day. 
 
 "And for what? To get me free again; to 
 bring me things to eat in jail, and picture papers 
 and tobacco when she was living on bacon and 
 potatoes, and drinking alkali water working to 
 pay for a lawyer to fight for me to pay for the 
 best lawyer ! She worked in the fields with her 
 own hands, planting and ploughing, working as I 
 never worked for myself in my whole lazy, rotten 
 life. That s what that woman there did for me." 
 
 The man stopped suddenly, and turned with a 
 puzzled look towards where his wife sat, for she 
 had dropped her head on the table in front of her, 
 and he had heard her sobbing. 
 
 "And what I want to ask of you, sir, is to let 
 me have two years out of jail to show her how I 
 feel about it. I ask you not to send me back for 
 life, sir. Give me just two years two years of 
 my life while I have some strength left to work 
 for her as she worked for me. I only want to 
 show her how I care for her now. I had the 
 chance, and I wouldn t take it ; and now, sir, I 
 want to show her that I know and understand 
 now, when it s too late. It s all I ve thought of 
 when I was in jail, to be able to see her sitting in 
 her own kitchen with her hands folded, and me 
 working and sweating in the fields for her work 
 ing till every bone ached, trying to make it up 
 to her. 
 
 ".And I can t !" the man cried, suddenly, losing 
 
170 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STOKIES 
 
 the control he had forced upon himself, and toss 
 ing his hands up above his head, and with his 
 eyes fixed hopelessly on the bowed head below 
 him. " I can t! It s too late. It s too late !" 
 
 He turned and faced the crowd and the District 
 Attorney defiantly. 
 
 "I m not crying for the men I killed. They re 
 dead. I can t bring them back. But she s not 
 dead, and I treated her worse than I treated them. 
 She never harmed me, nor got in my way, nor 
 angered me. And now, when I want to do what 
 I can for her in the little time that s left, he tells 
 you I m a relic of the past, that civilization s 
 too good for me, that you must bury me until it s 
 time to bury me for good. Just when I ve got 
 something I must live for, something I ve got to 
 do. Don t you believe me ? Don t you under 
 stand ?" 
 
 He turned again towards the Judge, and beat 
 the rail before him impotently with his wasted 
 hand. " Don t send me back for life !" he cried. 
 "Give me a few years to work for her two years, 
 one year to show her what I feel here, what I 
 never felt for her before. Look at her, gentle 
 men. Look how worn she is and poorly, and look 
 at her hands, and you men must feel how I feel. 
 I don t ask you for myself. I don t want to go 
 free on my own account. I am asking it for that 
 woman yes, and for myself, too. I am playing 
 to get back, gentlemen. I ve lost what I had, 
 and I want to get back ; and," he cried, queru- 
 
THE BOY ORATOR OF ZEPATA CITY ,171 
 
 lously, "the game keeps going against me. It s 
 only a few years freedom I want. Send me back 
 for thirty years, but not for life. My God ! Judge, 
 don t bury me alive, as that man asked you to. 
 I m not civilized, maybe ; ways have changed. 
 You are not the man I knew ; you are all stran 
 gers to me. But I could learn. I wouldn t 
 bother you in the old way. I only want to live 
 with her. I won t harm the rest of you. Give 
 me this last chance. Let me prove that what I m 
 saying is true." 
 
 The man stopped and stood, opening and shut 
 ting his hands upon the rail, and searching with 
 desperate eagerness from face to face, as one who 
 has staked all he has watches the wheel spinning 
 his fortune away. The gentlemen of the jury sat 
 quite motionless, looking straight ahead at the 
 blinding sun, which came through the high un 
 curtained windows opposite. Outside, the wind 
 banged the shutters against the wall, and whistled 
 up the street and round the tin corners of the 
 building, but inside, the room was very silent. 
 The Mexicans at the door, who could not under 
 stand, looked curiously at the faces of the men 
 around them, and made sure that they had missed 
 something of much importance. For a moment 
 no one moved, until there was a sudden stir around 
 the District Attorney s table, and the men stepped 
 aside and let the woman pass them and throw 
 herself against the prisoner s box. The prisoner 
 bent his tall gaunt figure over the rail, and as the 
 
172 THE EXILES, AND OTIIEK STORIES 
 
 woman pressed his one hand against her face, 
 touched her shoulders with the other awkwardly. 
 
 " There, now," he whispered, soothingly, "don t 
 von take on so. Now you know how I feel, it s 
 all right ; don t take on." 
 
 Judge Truax looked at the paper on his desk 
 for some seconds, and raised his head, coughing 
 as he did so. "It lies " Judge Truax began, 
 and then stopped, and began again, in a more cer 
 tain tone : " It lies at the discretion of this Court 
 to sentence the prisoner to a term of imprison 
 ment of two years, or for an indefinite period, 
 or for life. Owing to On account of certain 
 circumstances which were have arisen this sen 
 tence is suspended. This court stands adjourned." 
 
 As he finished he sprang out of his chair im 
 pulsively, and with a quick authoritative nod to 
 the young District Attorney, came quickly down 
 the steps of the platform. Young Harvey met 
 him at the foot with wide-open eyes. 
 
 The older man hesitated, and placed his hand 
 upon the District Attorney s shoulder. " Harry," 
 he said. His voice was shaken, and his hand 
 trembled on the arm of his protege, for he was 
 an old man and easily moved. " Harry, my boy," 
 he said, "do you think you could go to Austin 
 and repeat the speech that man made to the Gov 
 ernor?" 
 
 The boy orator laughed, and took one of the 
 older man s hands in one of his and pressed it 
 quickly. "I d like d d well to try," he said. 
 
THE ROMANCE IN THE LIFE OF HEFTY 
 BURKE 
 
 HEFTY BUKKE was a young man of honest 
 countenance and godlike figure, who had been 
 born by some mischance in the Fourth Ward, 
 instead of in a more exclusive neighborhood, 
 where he would later in life have been able to 
 show off the godlike figure in a frock-coat. Hav 
 ing been born on the East River front, he had 
 followed the river for a livelihood ever since, and 
 could swim when other children of his age were 
 learning to walk about alone. This fact had been 
 demonstrated only by accident, but was vouched 
 for by those who had seen him at the age of three 
 jump out of his father s arms over the railing of 
 an excursion-boat, and paddle around in the water 
 until dragged out of it at the end of a boat-hook. 
 
 At the age of twenty-five he was making small 
 sums of money by backing himself to win in 
 swimming races, and had been given numerous 
 medals for saving life. This latter recreation he 
 regarded only as a divertisement. He did not 
 make a business of it, and it was not to him a 
 matter of serious moment, like the winning of 
 long-distance championships. But neither of these 
 
174 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 performances made him wealthy, and it was most 
 necessary that he should become so in order that 
 he might marry Miss Mary Casey, the daughter 
 of the janitor of the Mount Blanc Flats. Hefty 
 was very much in love with her, and had urged 
 her to marry him and live on the little money 
 he could earn, but Miss Casey was a thoughtful 
 young person, and thoroughly appreciated her own 
 value. She wished him to show his love by ap 
 preciating it also. It is sometimes difficult to 
 express the magnitude of one s love by one s 
 wages, and Hefty found this true, but Miss Casey 
 saw no excuse in it. They had been engaged for 
 over a year. 
 
 But while it was difficult for him to earn money, 
 it was as easy for him to drag a drowning man 
 from death to the pier-head as for you to guide a 
 blind man from one sidewalk to the other, or a 
 girl across a ballroom ; and his manner in doing 
 the one thing was as matter-of-fact, and as little 
 self-conscious, as yours would probably be in per 
 forming the other. If the drowning person strug 
 gled, he ducked her, if it chanced to be a woman; 
 or, if it were a man, drew away an arm s-length 
 and trod water until he had posed his victim prop 
 erly, when he would strike him once between the 
 eyes, and then slip him over his shoulder like a 
 bag of meal, and sweep in with him to a firm 
 mooring. 
 
 There was not, accordingly, the least hesitation 
 in the movements of Mr. Burke when the daughter 
 
THE ROMANCE OF HEFTY BURKE 175 
 
 of Sefior Juan Alvarez failed to place her foot on 
 the lower rung of the accommodation-ladder, and 
 sank between the port side of the tramp steamer 
 Liverpool and the Liverpool s long-boat. There 
 was no one left in the Liverpool s long-boat to 
 go after her, because her father, who had rowed 
 it over from the slip, had mounted the ship s lad 
 der first, and was trying to balance himself on it, 
 and at the same time hold the long-boat back 
 against a turning tide that strove to wrench it 
 out of his hands. Mr. Burke was at this moment 
 tacking around the stern of the steamer in a cat- 
 
 c3 
 
 boat. There was no time to go about and chase 
 the broad white hat that rose for an instant at 
 the foot of the ladder, so when he heard the fa 
 ther scream he dropped his sheet and tiller and 
 dived over the boat s rail to leeward, leaving her 
 reeling and careening impotently in the wind. 
 The broad straw hat rose once more at the steam 
 er s bow and sank again, but Mr. Burke was in 
 close pursuit now, going hand after hand even 
 faster than the current, with his head under water, 
 and turning his mouth to the surface at each fifth 
 stroke to gasp for a breath of air. And when down 
 below him he saw, turning and twisting in the 
 sharp undercurrent, a slim white figure, he dived 
 for it and brought it up firmly under his arm, and 
 struck out confidently for the anchor-chain that 
 stretched above his head a few rods farther back, 
 quivering in the current. He reached it with a 
 few quick strokes, and threw his arm over it and 
 
176 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 hung there, breathing heavily, and shaking the 
 damp hair from his eyes. He saw the men of the 
 Liverpool tumbling into the long-boat, and three 
 tugs making towards him with fierce shrieks of 
 their whistles, and the passengers on a lumbering 
 ferry-boat crowded at the rail and pointing him 
 out. It is almost as difficult to drown in the up 
 per bay as in Madison Square, and Mr. Burke, 
 knowing this, concerned himself not at all with 
 the approaching aid, but turned his eyes with 
 careless interest to the face beside his own. The 
 broad straw hat had been wrenched away, and 
 the long hair loosened, and the smooth oval face 
 pressed against his was still warm through the 
 water which ran from it. It was a different face 
 from any which Mr. Burke had known. He would 
 have classed its owner, had he been asked to 
 give a guess at her nationality, as a foreigner, 
 and more particularly as " Eyetalian," Italians 
 being to him a generic term for all those people 
 not born between the East and North rivers. But 
 he admitted mentally that it was a very beautiful 
 face. The lashes were longer than any he had 
 ever seen, and the lips smaller, and the skin a 
 warmer, browner tint, which made the clinched 
 teeth under the parted lips more white by con 
 trast. It reminded him of a picture he knew in 
 the cathedral, but he could not recall just then 
 where he had seen it. The face was so delicate 
 and beautiful that he instinctively moved his own 
 away from it, and relaxed his hold round the 
 
THE ROMANCE OF HEFTY BURKE 177 
 
 girl s body, and as her head sank back on his 
 shoulder he gave a short laugh, and wondered 
 with a grim smile what Mary Casey would say if 
 she could see him then. One of the men in the 
 long-boat lifted her up gently, and her father 
 seized her and caressed her and moaned and wept 
 over her, chattering in a soft unknown tongue. 
 Hefty had never before seen a man of his age 
 weep, and he observed it with interest, as he pulled 
 himself up over the bow of the boat. The cap 
 tain of one of the three tugs leaned over the low 
 rail and recognized Hefty with a wave of his 
 hand. 
 
 " I bet on it it was you," he said. And then 
 added, looking down at his shoulder with a lan 
 guishing smile, " Who s your friend ?" 
 
 Mr. Burke reddened fiercely at this, and did not 
 answer ; but whether he had blushed from anger 
 or embarrassment he could not tell. He still felt 
 the touch of the girl s face against his own, and 
 as he became conscious of this, he rubbed his 
 cheek hastily with the back of his hand, as a 
 tribute of fidelity to Miss Casey, who had not 
 been there to see. 
 
 He sailed back to the slip in his recovered cat- 
 boat with a strange sensation of excitement and 
 unrest. He had never felt excited when he had 
 saved other people, and he attributed his feeling 
 so at this time to the embarrassingly fervid grati 
 tude of the queer little father, or to the white 
 liquor he had given him from a long-necked flask. 
 
178 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 "It was awful hot stuff," lie argued, "and he 
 certainly did take on about it. Might have been 
 her mother from the way he took on." Then he 
 said " Foreigners," briefly, as though that ex 
 plained it all, and went up to the tenement to 
 change his wet clothes. 
 
 There was really no necessity for his sailing 
 out to the Liverpool again. He knew that quite 
 well as he beat uncertainly about in the wind. He 
 knew the girl had recovered, for she had opened 
 her eyes before he had left the boat, and had 
 smiled up at her father; so there was absolutely 
 no reason for his returning. Still, he argued, her 
 father had asked him to do so had, indeed, en 
 treated him to let them see him again. Perhaps 
 it was only his excitable Southern manner and 
 meant nothing. 
 
 And then, again, he would not like them to go 
 away thinking he had been ungracious and rude. 
 They had asked him to come back to dinner, and 
 it was even possible that they might at that mo 
 ment be waiting for him. His hand pushed the 
 tiller away, and then drew it back with a jerk, 
 and threw the boat into the wind again. He 
 would not go back. What right had he to go 
 calling on strange girls, and " foreigners " at 
 that ? But as soon as he had determined he had 
 no right to show this interest in an unknown wom 
 an, and that he would sail on to the pier, he put 
 the boat sharply about, and headed it directly for 
 the steamer. Jt seemed as if the boat did not go 
 
THE ROMANCE OF HEFTY BURKE 179 
 
 fast enough, and in order that he might not again 
 change his intention lie thought of the race he 
 had on with Robinson for the next Tuesday, and 
 had just determined that the stakes were not large 
 enough, and that he would demand more money, 
 when the sail of his cat-boat fluttered in the wind, 
 and left him at the foot of the Liverpool s ladder. 
 They were very glad to see him, and he felt 
 satisfied that he had come, and so expressed him 
 self, and his pleasure in finding that the young 
 girl was not at all the worse in health for her 
 journey under the water. She said nothing to 
 this, but smiled upon him from beneath the long 
 lashes with dark, sleepy eyes. Her father seemed 
 to be a very pleasant little man for a " foreigner," 
 with a great deal of manner, which compared 
 favorably with that of the Frenchman who taught 
 all the fashionable dances for fifty cents an hour, 
 and for nothing to those who formed classes of 
 six or over, at Sorley s Terrace Garden. Mr. 
 Burke could not remember having met with such 
 pleasant people before. They ate in the captain s 
 cabin in company with two of the ship s mates, 
 who were men of doubtful nationality, and who 
 said but little, but who regarded Mr. Burke close 
 ly, and drank frequently from the long-necked 
 bottle. The Liverpool, so they informed him, 
 was an English tramp steamer, chartered to carry 
 sewing-machines and other manufactured articles 
 to a port in Colombia, a South American repub 
 lic, as they further explained. Seiior Alvarez was 
 
180 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 the owner of the cargo, and his daughter accom 
 panied him for his better companionship and for 
 a sight of the great city of New York. Mr. 
 Burke, in turn, told them proudly of some of 
 its wonders, and volunteered to show them its 
 " sights." He thought they should certainly see 
 Central Park* before they left, and " take in " a 
 dance at the Terrace Garden. He would also be 
 pleased to get them seats for the play then run 
 ning at Niblo s, which was, so he understood, a 
 " piece " worth seeing. His advances were re 
 ceived with polite consideration, but the seiior 
 regretted, in bad English but with perfect grace, 
 their immediate departure. They had been lyinj* 
 for the past fortnight at the pier-head, and had 
 but that morning anchored in the basin, to be in 
 readiness to start with the tide at midnight. Mr. 
 Burke received this information dumbly. He 
 could not tell why, but he felt strangely hurt at 
 their so soon going away. It was as if they had 
 not only rejected him, but his rising feelings of 
 friendliness and hospitality. But then, he an 
 swered himself, it could mean nothing to him 
 whether they went or came. And yet when the 
 dinner was over he was loath to go. He stood 
 on the deck and pointed with his hand to the 
 statue of Liberty on Bedlows Island. 
 
 " That s something youse ought r see," he said, 
 " but I guess you ve been over it. No ? It s a 
 great bit of work inside, with stairs all the way 
 up. You wouldn t think how big it is from here. 
 
THE ROMANCE OF HEFTY BURKE 181 
 
 Why, mor n a dozen men can stand on the ledge 
 round the hand. If you like," he added, con 
 sciously, " I ll sail you over there." He looked 
 at the senorita as he spoke, and she glanced at 
 her father, and he looked doubtfully at Burke, 
 at which the young man reddened, and then the 
 Spaniard, seeing this, told his daughter that she 
 should go of course, that it was most courteous 
 of the brave gentleman who had risked his life 
 for her. He himself could not attend them, as 
 there were clearing-papers to sign and a crew 
 to choose. 
 
 The sun was sinking over the Jersey flats when 
 they turned and headed back to the steamer. 
 The girl sat silently in the cross-seat amidships, 
 with one hand trailing in the water and with the 
 other shading her eyes. She wore a light dress, 
 open at the throat, and she had thrown a black 
 lace scarf over her head and shoulders, with one 
 end hanging. It served her for both head-dress 
 and shawl; and though Mr. Burke condemned it 
 as fantastic, he admitted that it was more be 
 coming to her than Miss Casey s flat hat would 
 have been. They had passed the last two hours 
 together, stopping to rest on the grass around 
 the base of the statue, and watching the boats 
 of different make pass and repass the little isl 
 and. It had seemed to Burke as if it were all 
 their own, as if the two of them had been cast 
 adrift there, and that the rest of the world had 
 gone on with its worries and business and mak- 
 
182 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 ing of money and keeping of engagements with 
 out their caring or knowing. He looked with con 
 tempt upon the big ferry-boat that had to move 
 on schedule time, and listened with a feeling of 
 pity to the hoarse warnings of the tugs, and all 
 the other whistles and bells that told of work and 
 hurry. The strange girl at his side filled him 
 with a feeling of distance from it all, her soft, 
 lazy voice and slow speech, as she picked out and 
 formed her sentences, quieted and soothed, and 
 yet unsettled him. The places and things of 
 which she spoke were so widely different from 
 what he knew, and appeared, as she told of them, 
 as though they must be so much richer and fuller 
 and more plentiful. A land where it was always 
 noon, with trees and flowers and clear skies, and 
 where no one worked ; where the earth furnished 
 food freely, and where the men seemed to do 
 nothing all day but sit and smoke in the open 
 squares ; where the nights were filled with music 
 and dancing, and every one sat out-of-doors while 
 the band played on the plaza. 
 
 " Yes," said Burke, breathing heavily, and star 
 ing down with a troubled look at the dark eyes 
 of the girl stretched on the seat below him. " It 
 sounds as if I d like it. It ain t like this, is it?" 
 he said, with a wave of his hand as a great flat 
 scow, laden with freight cars, pushed past them 
 with a panting tug at her side. 
 
 " Ah, yes ; but, however," said the girl, slowly, 
 " you have that." She raised her arm from her 
 
THE ROMANCE OF HEFTY HURKE 183 
 
 side and stretched it out, with her long slim fin 
 gers pointing at the great bronze statue which I 
 stood out black against the red glow of the sunset. / 
 
 " How ?" said Burke ; " have wot ? I don t un 
 derstand." 
 
 The girl rested her chin on her hand, and looked 
 past him at the statue. Her lids closed heavily, 
 so that he could hardly see her eyes. She shook 
 her head. " You have liberty," she said, as though 
 she were speaking to herself, " and freedom ; you 
 have it all. You have no tyrants in your coun 
 try. It is all free and open and noble. With us 
 there is no law. We are afraid to speak we 
 are afraid She stopped and closed her lips 
 as though to compel herself to silence. 
 
 Burke watched her with a deep interest, which 
 he believed was in what she said, but which was 
 in the fact that she had said it. He waited for 
 her to continue, but she remained silent. 
 
 " Wot do you mean ?" he asked, softly. " Who s 
 hurting you in Colombia?" 
 
 " We do not live in Colombia," she said. " Oh 
 yes, the boat goes there, but our own home the 
 home I spoke of to you is in Ecuador. There is 
 peace in Colombia ; but now with us there is war 
 and revolution, and men are shot in the streets 
 because they will not suffer to be robbed." She 
 stopped again, and held her hands before her face. 
 
 " Shot in the street, eh ?" said Mr. Burke, grave 
 ly. " Wot ! Don t the police stop em ?" 
 
 " It is a revolution," said the girl, impatiently. 
 
184 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 " My people have been struggling for many years 
 against oppression. My uncle," she said, conscious 
 ly, " should be President of Ecuador, but now be 
 cause Gonzales has the army with him my uncle 
 cannot take his place, but hides in the mountains 
 without a home.- They hunt him like a bandit. 
 They have turned his house into a barracks for 
 Gonzales soldiers. I myself saw their tents and 
 horses in the gardens where I have walked many 
 times. It is all confiscate you understand?" 
 
 " Yes," said Burke, shaking his head solemnly. 
 " I read it in the papers. I read there was fight 
 ing going on down there ; but I didn t take no 
 notice to it, it s so far away," he added, apologet 
 ically. 
 
 "So far away!" the girl repeated, with quick 
 offence. " Do not men love their homes every 
 where they may be? And love their free life, 
 and to be masters ? I and my people have had 
 no home for years ; my uncle, chosen of the peo 
 ple, is driven from the city by a paid military ; by 
 a man who robs the rich and taxes the poor 
 taxes the salt they eat." 
 
 Mr. Burke reddened slowly. "Huh !" he said, 
 fiercely. "He does, hey? Well, wot are all your 
 men doing all this time?" 
 
 The girl gave him a quick look of approval. 
 She leaned forward, with her eyes fixed on his. 
 "They do the best they can," she said, slowly. 
 " They are poor, but not so poor but w^hen they 
 get the guns and the cannons and the powder, 
 
THE ROMANCE OF HEFTY BURKE 185 
 
 like all that Gonzales has, they will not be poor 
 no more." She opened her clasped arms, and 
 threw her hands out with a quick, impulsive gest 
 ure. " Then the brother of my dear father," she 
 whispered, "will come back at the head of the 
 army to the people who have chosen him, and 
 those inside will open the gates, and he will march 
 in and drive Gonzales away, and Gonzales will 
 die, and there will be peace again and freedom, 
 and no more taxes, nor stealing, nor assassina 
 tions." The tears came to her eyes and ran slow 
 ly down her cheeks, but she did not touch them. 
 " Ah, yes, we have brave men," she said, raising 
 her head proudly and nodding at him. 
 
 Burke shifted his hand on the tiller and looked 
 away. " And brave women, I guess," he said. 
 " I wish," he began " I wish I could do some 
 thing," he concluded, impotently. 
 
 The girl smiled quickly, and straightened her 
 head and shoulders. "Yes, I did not do wrong 
 to speak to you," she said, considering him with 
 grave, kind eyes. " You do understand it. You 
 are brave ; yes, you are brave, and you now know 
 what it is that we suffer." 
 
 Mr. Burke made no answer, but looked past and 
 beyond her. She seemed to have forgotten him 
 in the thoughts which her words had brought 
 back to her, and sat, with her chin on her hand, 
 gazing steadily across the water. It was all new 
 to him, and he let himself go for the time, and 
 did not try to shake off the hold the girl had 
 
186 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STOKIES 
 
 laid upon him. Mary Casey and her yellow hair 
 and proud nose, that was borne in air as the 
 daughter s of a janitor should be, grew familiar 
 and commonplace ; her complainings and up- 
 braidings returned to him with a jar, and he 
 compared, unwillingly enough, her love of the 
 gossip of the tenement and of the corner flirta 
 tions, and her envy of other girls more fortunate 
 in richer young men, with this queer, beautiful 
 girl, who treated him as a hero, and whose life 
 seemed mixed up with danger and the making of 
 Presidents. He remembered with fresh regret 
 the lack of appreciation Miss Casey had shown 
 when he helped make a President by acting as 
 window -man at the last election. He was sure 
 this girl would have better understood the impor 
 tance of that service. 
 
 Sefior Alvarez received them at the head of the 
 accommodation-ladder, and bade Burke make the 
 boat fast. " You will remain to eat with us," he 
 said. 
 
 Burke did not argue with himself this time, but 
 told himself that this was for the last time, and 
 that he would never again see these strange peo 
 ple who had come so suddenly into his life. 
 
 The moon rose early that night, and by the 
 time they came out upon the deck had spread its 
 light over the river and softened the red and 
 green lights at the yards of the many steamers 
 anchored about them. I* had turned the deck 
 white and the ratlines and cordage black, and 
 
THE ROMANCE OF HEFTY BUKKE 187 
 
 threw their shadows before them as they walked. 
 The Jersey shore lay like a black frame to the 
 picture, broken by blocks of blazing lights at the 
 ferries, which glowed like open fireplaces against 
 the dark background of the city. And to the 
 north the Battery showed a curve of lamps, and 
 high above it rose the Bridge like a great spider s 
 web, dotted with a double row of stars. But 
 Burke saw nothing of this ; he was thinking of 
 the hot, restless country with the queer name, 
 many miles away, of which he had but just 
 learned, and yet for which he felt a fierce turmoil 
 of sympathy. 
 
 Though it was so late, the men were still low 
 ering cases and boxes from the main-deck into 
 the open hatch with the aid of a creaking derrick, 
 and the three stood on the bridge and watched 
 them in silence. A mate, with his hands in the 
 pockets of his jacket, directed them in a low voice 
 and in a strange tongue, and the moonlight gave 
 to the men and their work a strange and unfamil 
 iar aspect. The derrick swung short of the hatch, 
 and stopped with a jerk, and the box it had lifted 
 shook free from the rope about it, and came down, 
 turning over in the air. There was a warning cry 
 from the mate, and a crash as the box struck. It 
 burst into a dozen pieces, and there tumbled out 
 upon the moonlit deck a scattered mass of glitter 
 ing sabres. Senor Alvarez uttered a quick, for 
 eign oath, and threw himself in front of Burke, 
 as though to shut the sight from him ; but Burke 
 
188 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 only turned towards the girl and smiled in sympa 
 thy. The smile, more than anything else, seemed 
 to startle the little Spaniard, and he glanced quick 
 ly at his daughter for a word of explanation. 
 
 " I have told him," she said. " I have told him 
 much, and he guesses the rest." 
 
 " You have guessed ? Yes," said Alvarez, fierce 
 ly ; " what have you guessed?" 
 
 Burke shrugged his shoulders irresolutely. 
 "It s no business of mine," he said. " I only wish 
 it was," he added. He turned away, while the fa 
 ther and daughter spoke to each other quickly in 
 their own language. Then the Spaniard turned 
 and surveyed Burke with steady deliberation. 
 
 "You are a brave young man," he began, slowly, 
 and speaking with soft intentness. "You have 
 shown us to-day that you think of other lives 
 before your own : is it not so ? You have done 
 very much for me: what will you do more ?" He 
 paused, dramatically, and held out his arms. 
 
 Burke regarded him with a troubled counte 
 nance. " What do you mean ?" he asked. 
 
 " Come with us," urged the Spaniard, quickly. 
 " That is what I mean. Come with us. My daugh 
 ter, she has told me what you know. She did 
 wrong to tell you, perhaps. We shall see. Per 
 haps no; perhaps she has done well. Come with 
 us, and I will make you a captain. You will have 
 many men under your command, and much of 
 glory and reward, and when my brother is in the 
 capital again, you will be a man with many titles 
 
THE ROMANCE OF HEFTY BURKE 189 
 
 to honor, and a home for yourself with beautiful 
 gardens about it. We need brave men. You are 
 a brave man. Will you come ?" The girl moved 
 slowly to her father, and stood beside him, with 
 one hand resting on his shoulder, and looked at 
 Burke from under the shadow of the black man 
 tilla. He could see her eyes shining in the moon 
 light. They neither invited nor repelled him, but 
 questioned him earnestly. There was a moment s 
 pause, and then Burke shook himself and laughed 
 weakly. He thrust his hands deep into his pockets 
 and stood slouching, with his chin thrown out, 
 and smiling bitterly at the great buildings around 
 Bowling Green. "Well?" said the older man, 
 with sharp suspicion in his voice. 
 
 " You needn t think that You can t under 
 stand," said Burke. "I am not good at saying 
 things," he added, impotently. " Wot I mean is," 
 he began again, " you wouldn t understand, even 
 if I was to tell you." 
 
 "You have seen much," said the Spaniard, 
 slowly. " You know more than any man in this 
 country knows. My daughter, she has told you 
 why we come ; you see for yourself why we come." 
 His voice rose to a sharp climax of excitement 
 and suspicious fear. " I make no more promises. 
 I command you. You understand, you must go 
 with us; you must go. We cannot trust you to 
 leave behind." 
 
 Burke s hands came out of his pockets with a 
 jerk. " Wot !" he growled, savagely. " You can t 
 
190 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STOKIES 
 
 trust me, can t you? Why not? Wot do you 
 know of wot I ve got to do, of wot I d like to do 
 if I had my way? I m promised. I ve given 
 my word to do something else. I d like to fight 
 and row with the best of you for you and for 
 the lady there. But but I m not free. I ve 
 got my work cut out for me where I am. I ve 
 got to stay here." 
 
 "You have got to stay here," repeated the 
 Spaniard, suspiciously. "Yet you are a young 
 man. You cannot have family or much business. 
 You take your pleasure swimming and sailing in 
 your boat in this bay. I have been informed so 
 of you since you were he-re this morning. All 
 these people know of you. They say you are very 
 brave, and that you are free. They all say good 
 of you, but now you know too much than is good 
 for you. You shall come with me." 
 
 Burke gave the girl a troubled glance and shook 
 his head. " Can t you understand ?" he asked ; 
 and then added, straightening himself and try 
 ing to give an air of importance to what he was 
 about to say, " I m engaged." 
 
 " Engaged what is that ?" demanded the Span 
 iard, quickly. 
 
 " I m engaged to be married to a young wom 
 an. I ve got to stay at home and take care of 
 her." 
 
 The Spaniard regarded him closely for a mo 
 ment with evident incredulity, and then burst 
 into a laugh which mocked him. 
 
THE ROMANCE OF HEFTY BUKKE 191 
 
 " Oh," he said, " it is that, is it ? It is a young 
 woman. It is always so. You have here honor, 
 money, and much renown, and great good to do, 
 and you remember this young woman. Let me 
 not keep you ! 5 he cried, with a sudden change of 
 manner. "Let us not detain you from her any 
 more. You are no doubt impatient to be back." 
 He bowed with exaggerated courtesy, and, with 
 an air of relief and amusement, moved backwards 
 towards the top of the ladder. " Let us not keep 
 you," he said, laughing. 
 
 Burke observed him with a sick feeling of rage 
 at the injustice of it, and then raised his eyes 
 slowly to those of the girl. She had turned from- 
 them, and was standing erect and motionless, with 
 her hands resting on the polished rail and gazing 
 steadily at the shore. She must surely understand, 
 Burke thought. 
 
 " Perhaps," interrupted the mocking voice of 
 the father " perhaps it is that you do not desire 
 to go for war. Fighting, it is true, is full of 
 danger." He laughed and bowed again, motion 
 ing with a wave of the hand towards the ladder. 
 
 Burke turned and looked at him, with his 
 shoulders bent and his head lowered. It reminded 
 the Spaniard suddenly of a bull he had seen in 
 the ring after the matadors had tormented it, and 
 just before it had plunged forward and hurled a 
 man lifeless against the President s box. He 
 straightened himself, and fell back a step. " Per 
 haps," he said, quickly, " there is something I do 
 
192 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 not comprehend. You will pardon me, but I mis 
 understood." 
 
 Burke regarded him steadily for some short 
 time, and then turned away without having heard 
 what he had said. He slipped his cap from his 
 head, and moved a step nearer the girl. "It isn t 
 that I am afraid of the fighting you know that," 
 he said " but that I am afraid of something else." 
 He stopped and stood with his eyes fixed so 
 earnestly on the girl s face that she seemed to 
 feel them, and her shoulders moved slightly as 
 though the cool night air had made her tremble. 
 "I am afraid of breaking my promise that s 
 given," he said. He waited a moment, but the 
 girl did not move, or show by any sign that she 
 had heard him. " I can t do that," he begged. 
 His voice was full of doubt and trouble. " ^can t 
 do that, can I V" The girl still stood motionless, 
 and then shrugged her shoulders slightly, and 
 turned out the palms of her hands. Burke drew 
 a long breath, and straightened himself reso 
 lutely. 
 
 " Good-by," said Burke. 
 
 She put her hand out slowly, and barely touched 
 it to his own, and then walked the short length of 
 the bridge away from him. He went down the 
 ladder and over the side without looking back 
 again, and dropped into his boat. He had gone 
 up the ladder so proudly that morning, and now 
 the world and all the world s ways seemed ajar 
 and devious, and his reason neither applauded 
 
THE ROMANCE OF HEFTY BURKE 193 
 
 him for having made a sacrifice, nor assured him 
 that he had done well. 
 
 As his boat rounded the bow of the steamer, a 
 row-boat shot out from under her side, and its 
 solitary occupant pulled off with short, quick 
 strokes for the shore. It was the sudden sight of 
 Burke s boat and the sail looming white in the 
 moonlight that had startled him, and Burke, 
 recognizing this, called to him to stop. The oars 
 man answered with a quicker pull on the oar, and 
 bowed his head as if to hide his face from obser 
 vation. Burke shortened sail, and in a moment 
 drew up at the row-boat s side. " Oh, it s you, is 
 it ?" he said. " You " was Mr. " Big " Marks. 
 
 Mr. Marks was the proprietor of a sailors lodg 
 ing-house, who robbed his lodgers, and as a return 
 helped them to rob their vessels ; who smuggled 
 in a small way, and even, it is said, was not too 
 proud to stoop to inform on other gentlemen who 
 smuggled in a larger away. 
 
 "Give me your rope," commanded Mr. Burke. 
 " I ll tow ye in." 
 
 The man in the boat sat motionless. "You 
 needn t mind me, Hefty," he whined, humbly. 
 " I m just rowing about ; I can get in by my 
 self." 
 
 Mr. Burke regarded him with steady scrutiny. 
 "You re lying," he said; "give me that rope. 
 Wot was ye doing under the bow of that steamer? 
 and," he continued, angrily, " wot did you try to 
 get away from me so fast for ?" 
 
194 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 Mr. Marks threw him his painter, and crawled 
 over the side of the cat-boat. " One of my men," 
 he began, glibly enough, "is on the Liverpool; 
 he s a Swede that s a regular customer of mine 
 when he s in port. I just rowed out to see him 
 off. They get away in an hour or two." 
 
 "In an hour," corrected Burke. He looked 
 back at the steamer with heavy eyes, and seemed 
 for the moment to have forgotten his sudden ani 
 mosity towards his prisoner. Seeing which, Mr. 
 Marks lit a cigar, and offered another with a pro 
 pitiatory smile to Burke. 
 
 " It s good," he said; " it s never seen no custom 
 house." 
 
 " I m not smoking," said Burke, grimly. 
 
 " Training again, hey ?" asked Mr. Marks, pleas 
 antly. " Well, my money is on you this time, and 
 every time. There ain t none of em as can 
 touch you that s what ./say." 
 
 Burke made no reply to this, but gazed at his 
 companion with stern inquiry and with troubled 
 eyes. He did not speak again until they had 
 reached the wharf, and then, as Mr. Marks started 
 away with a hasty "good-night," he called sharply 
 after him : " Come back here. I want you." 
 
 Mr. Marks hesitated, and then turned, and wait 
 ed with evident uneasiness. 
 
 " You ll come and take a drink," said Burke. 
 
 Mr. Marks fingered the cigar in his hand ner 
 vously. "I d like to, Hefty," he said, "but another 
 time. I ve got to see a man at the place. I ve 
 
THE ROMANCE OF HEFTY BURKE 195 
 
 got an appointment with him. Some other night 
 hey ? Got to hurry now." 
 
 " I ll go with you," said Burke, steadily. 
 
 Mr. Marks looked at him for the first time with 
 sharp scrutiny, and laughed a low, comfortless 
 laugh. He was a fat, oily person, with a face 
 reddened by drink and the wind of the river. 
 Burke towered beside him as they walked along, 
 his face set and miserable. From one place to 
 another and from one street corner to the next 
 the two men walked and halted. Sometimes to 
 speak to an acquaintance, sometimes to order 
 something to drink, which both left untasted on 
 the bar. As the hour wore on the nervousness 
 of the older man became obvious, and at last, in 
 a saloon near the Battery, he slipped quickly 
 through a side entrance and ran into the night. 
 The next moment Burke was at his side. 
 
 "Here, you had better not try that on," he 
 growled, and dropped into step again. 
 
 Mr. Marks stopped and drew a long breath. 
 " Well, you make me tired, Burke," he said, des 
 perately. It was his first sign of rebellion, and 
 Burke welcomed it. "What are you after, hey?" 
 Marks demanded. "What is it going to be? 
 You re stopping all my fun," he went on, fiercely, 
 " and you don t seem to be getting anything out 
 of it yourself. What do you want of me, any 
 way, trailing me all over the place ?" 
 
 They were at the end of a pier and quite alone. 
 Burke looked about him carefully, and then turned 
 
196 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 towards the water where the Liverpool lay, a 
 black, dim silhouette in the moonlight. The night 
 mist was rising and it was growing colder. The 
 place was quite deserted. 
 
 " Oh," said Burke, with unaffected carelessness, 
 "I don t know wot you are up to, and I ll stay by 
 you till I do. That s all." 
 
 Mr. Marks regarded him with fierce suspicion, 
 and broke the silence at last with an angry oath. 
 "I suppose you want me to divide hey?" he 
 cried, viciously. He looked at his watch, and 
 snapped the lid with a sharp click. " It s that or 
 letting it all go," he said. " Curse you for a med 
 dling fool !" He stamped his feet and clinched 
 his fat hands impotently. " I d ha been aboard 
 her by this time if it hadn t been for you." 
 
 Burke raised his eyes slowly towards the steam 
 er, and saw that the smoke was coming out of 
 the Liverpool^ funnel in a thick black cloud. It 
 gave his heart a sudden sharp wrench, and he 
 glanced about him with a look which sobered his 
 companion instantly. 
 
 "See here, Hefty, my lad," he whined, in a 
 low, conciliatory tone, " we ve got to work quick 
 if we re going to stop her. They ve got the 
 anchors up now, most like. Here," he exclaimed, 
 with an apparent burst of generosity, " I ll tell 
 you what I ll do. I ll go halves with you that s 
 three thousand dollars sure. Three thousand 
 think of that. It s a fortune." 
 
 Burke regarded him with a look of slow amaze- 
 
THE ROMANCE OF HEFTY BURKE 197 
 
 ment. " Three thousand dollars," he said, stu 
 pidly. 
 
 " Yes, easy that," begged the other. " There s 
 twelve thousand dollars worth of stuff on her 
 altogether, counting the Hotchkiss guns and the 
 ammunition. The informer gets half. That s law. 
 There s no getting out of that. It s law. They ve 
 (jot to give it to you, and it s honest money, too. 
 What right have them half-breeds coming up 
 here involving us Americans in their d d rev 
 olutions ? It s against the courtesy of nations 
 that s what it is. I read it all up,and I know what 
 I m givin ye. They can t do it. Look at the 
 Alliance case, and the Mary Miller. Levy got 
 five thousand dollars for giving her away, and 
 I d ha pulled six thousand out of this if you d 
 let me alone. Well, speak up ; what do you 
 say ?" 
 
 Burke was leaning forward, with his eyes 
 staring into those of his companion. He was 
 breathing heavily. " Wot are you going to do ?" 
 he asked, quietly. His voice was low and uncer 
 tain. 
 
 Marks caught him familiarly by the sleeve. 
 " Do ?" he asked, trembling with excitement ; 
 " go to the Washington she s at her slip there 
 beyond the fire-boat and tell the captain what 
 we know. He can stop her before she reaches the 
 lower bay, and he may if he believes what we 
 say. And he has got to believe me, because one 
 of the crew give me all the figures, and where 
 
198 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 they got the stuff, and who paid for it. It s Al 
 varez himself, the brother to the one they run out 
 of the country him as wants to be President. 
 Come !" he cried, frantically, and dancing from 
 one foot to the other in his excitement. 
 
 But Burke stood still, regarding him stupidly. 
 " Three thousand dollars. For me," he said. " I 
 don t understand." 
 
 " Hully gee !" cried the other. " Don t I tell 
 you we get half ! The government gets one-half 
 the cargo and the informer gets the rest. That s 
 the law. Think of it three thousand dollars ! 
 Why, man alive, you can marry on that ; and it s 
 good money too, come by honest for serving your 
 country. Old man Casey will be proud of you, 
 Hefty and and Mary too, hey, she " 
 
 " Shut up !" said Burke, savagely. He glanced 
 with a troubled look to where the revenue-cutter 
 Washington lay at the end of the Barge Office 
 dock. It was so very near. He stood rigid, 
 breathing quickly, and with only his fingers 
 working at his side. The other watched him 
 with evil, wide-open eyes. Then Burke gave a 
 short gasp of relief, and, reaching out suddenly, 
 caught Marks by the sleeve. " Come with me," he 
 said, steadily. " Come over here and sit down." 
 
 " Sit down ? Like hell !" cried the the other 
 fearfully. " What ails you ? Don t you see she s 
 got steam on now? She ll be out of the river 
 before " 
 
 "You re not going to the Washington" said 
 
THE ROMANCE OF HEFTY BURKE 199 
 
 Burke. "You re not going to give nothing away. 
 You are going to stay here with me. There s 
 there s friends of mine on board that boat. 
 They re not hurting you, and you re not going to 
 hurt them, nor interfere with them neither see ? 
 You ll stay right here." Mr. Marks 1 s face was 
 black, and the muscles working with excitement 
 and the fear of losing what he already considered 
 his. " I mean," said Burke, firmly, " that you re 
 going to stay here until that boat gets out of the 
 harbor, till she gets clean off. Do you under 
 stand ? That s wot I mean." 
 
 " Oh," said the other, softly, " that s what you 
 mean, is it?" 
 
 He jerked his sleeve away, and his arm rose 
 suddenly in the air, and Burke caught it by the 
 wrist and tripped him up with a quick jerk that 
 threw him heavily over on his back. Burke threw 
 himself on his chest and wrenched at the knife in 
 his hand. 
 
 " You would, would you," he said, under his 
 breath. "Give it up do you hear? Give it up," 
 he growled, or I ll" 
 
 The fat little man beneath him groaned and 
 struggled helplessly under his weight. " Let me 
 up," he gasped, " I m choking let me up." 
 
 Burke tossed the knife into the river, and set 
 tled his fingers carefully round the other s throat. 
 " Lie still," he whispered. " If you yell or noth 
 ing I ll choke the life out of you and leave you 
 lying here " 
 
200 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 But even as he uttered this threat Mr. Burke 
 raised his eyes to the bay, and gave a soft low 
 cry. The smoke was pouring in a black mass 
 from the funnel of the Liverpool, and as he 
 watched her she started slowly forward, as a 
 sled slides over the ice, and then moved more 
 and more swiftly until the smoke stood out in a 
 straight line and she grew less and less distinct, 
 until, after passing the base of the great statue of 
 Liberty, she disappeared into the mist and out of 
 his sight forever. 
 
 The man beneath him groaned feebly and 
 cursed him under his breath. 
 
 " You can get up," said Burke, gently, with 
 his eyes still staring into the mist. " She s gone 
 
AN ANONYMOUS LETTER 
 
 " SILLY sort of a play, I call it," said Van Bib 
 ber, as they left the theatre. 
 
 "I don t know," his friend dissented, slowly. 
 " Why ?" 
 
 "Well, about that letter, for instance," Van 
 Bibber continued. " The idea of a girl throwing 
 a man over like that just because some one sent 
 her an anonymous letter about him! Of course, 
 if she d really cared for the man she d have given 
 him a chance to explain; she wouldn t have be 
 lieved it at once. Still," he added, magnanimous 
 ly, " if she had asked him about it there wouldn t 
 have been any more play. The author had to do 
 something." 
 
 But Travers disagreed. " Oh, I don t know," 
 he said. " I think it s very true to life myself. 
 I know I d hate to have any one writing letters 
 like that about me." 
 
 Van Bibber laughed easily "Nice sort of 
 friends you have," he said. 
 
 " They re your friends." 
 
 "Some of them are," Van Bibber corrected; 
 "but I think better of them than you do, appar 
 ently. I m sure I m willing you should write all 
 
202 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 the anonymous letters to them you please about 
 me." 
 
 "That," said Travers, mockingly, "is because 
 you re so good." 
 
 "Not at all," Van Bibber answered, hotly. 
 "It isn t whether the letter told the truth; the 
 point is that the girl is willing to believe it. 
 That s what I object to. That s where the chap 
 who wrote the play shows that he doesn t know 
 anything about women." 
 
 " Well, as I said," Travers repeated, stubbornly, 
 "I think you are altogether wrong. She acted 
 just as any of the girls we know would have 
 acted, and, as I said, I should hate to have any 
 one write a letter like that to my friends." 
 
 " And as I said," reiterated Van Bibber, warm 
 ly? " y u can write all the letters you choose about 
 me, and my friends can stand it, and so can I." 
 
 Travers stopped and looked back over his shoul 
 der as they mounted the steps of the club. " Do 
 you mean that ?" he asked, seriously. 
 
 " I do," said Van Bibber, laughing. Then they 
 went into the club, and scowled at all the other 
 men as though they were intruders, and talked 
 about deviled kidneys. 
 
 Van Bibber slept peacefully that night in spite 
 of the deviled kidneys, but Travers sat up until 
 late composing an anonymous letter, which he 
 hoped would fall like a bomb-shell into the camp 
 of his friends. The morning found him still in 
 tent upon it and mischief, and by the time he had 
 
AN ANONYMOUS LETTER 203 
 
 finished breakfast his plans of campaign were al 
 ready made. 
 
 He first went to a type- writer in one of the big 
 hotels, and dictated four letters to him announc 
 ing the date of a women s meeting for a charita 
 ble purpose. The envelopes for these were ad 
 dressed to four different women. He tore up the 
 letters when he reached the street, but put the 
 envelopes with their non-committal type-written 
 addresses in his pocket. On Sixth Avenue he 
 purchased a half-dozen sheets of cheap paper, and 
 carried them to his room, where he locked himself 
 in, and wrote with his left hand, on four separate 
 sheets, the following communication: 
 
 " DEAR MADAM, When Mr. Van Bibber calls 
 on you again, ask him how well he knows Maysie 
 Lindsey. If he denies knowing her, ask him to 
 show you the tintype of the woman which he 
 wears in a locket on a chain about his neck. 
 
 "A FRIEND." 
 
 "There," said Travers, proudly, " I think that 
 is calculated to spread doubt and confusion in the 
 stoutest heart." He put the letters in the enve 
 lopes with the type-written addresses, and posted 
 them that same morning. Then he wrote to Van 
 Bibber, and told him of what he had done. 
 
 " And I call it a piece of damned impertinence," 
 said that gentleman that same evening. 
 
 "You re afraid now," said Travers, easily. 
 
204 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 " Last night you could trust your friends better 
 than I could; now you re afraid." 
 
 " That s not it," said Van Bibber. " I can trust 
 them. I don t care what you said about we, but 
 by sending letters like that to those girls you 
 intimated that they take an interest in me, that 
 they are more or less concerned about me, which 
 is a piece of presumption I wouldn t be guilty of 
 myself, and a thing which you had no business to 
 assume. Suppose they find out that you wrote 
 those letters, they ll ask me: Why did he send 
 one to me ? What have I to do with you ? Why 
 should I care what women you know or don t 
 know ? It was impertinent to them, that s what 
 I say. You can leave me out of it entirely, but 
 you had no business to put them in the light of 
 caring about me." 
 
 "But they do care about you, don t they?" 
 Travers asked, innocently. 
 
 "That s not for me to say, nor you. I m 
 ashamed of you. Practical joking is all very 
 well between idiots like ourselves, but you had 
 no business to drag women into it." 
 
 " Well," sighed Travers, " you can t make me 
 rude by being rude yourself, you know. You 
 told me distinctly that I could write the letter, 
 and I have written it, and if you ve any confi 
 dence in your friends you will do nothing about it, 
 but let them work it out their own way. I call it 
 a most excellent test of their confidence. You 
 ought to be obliged to me for giving you such a 
 
AN ANONYMOUS LETTER 205 
 
 chance of finding out what dear good friends you 
 have." 
 
 "I shall treat the whole thing with absolute 
 contempt, as they will," said Van Bibber, stiffly. 
 "It is beneath my notice, and so are you. May- 
 sie Lindsey, indeed ! Who the devil is Maysie 
 Lindsey ?" 
 
 "I don t know," said Travers, pleasantly. " She 
 is merely a beautiful creature of my imagination. 
 Rather pretty name, I think, don t you ? Maysie 
 Lindsey." Then he asked, with a touch of mis 
 giving, "You don t happen to wear anything 
 around your neck, do you ?" 
 
 " Certainly not, confound you !" said Van Bib 
 ber. 
 
 Van Bibber had as large a nodding acquaintance 
 with men in New York as almost any other man 
 in it, but the women he knew were not so many 
 and much more near. The four women of whom 
 he saw the most were those to whom Travers had 
 sent the anonymous letters. He was in the habit 
 of seeing them at their own houses and at other 
 people s houses as often as once a week or more 
 frequently, and he decided that instead of writing 
 them at once, and explaining that a friend of his 
 had sent them an anonymous letter about him, 
 and that he begged that they would overlook the 
 impertinence, he would wait until he saw them 
 and then explain the situation verbally. But as 
 the week wore on, the temptation to let the mat 
 ter take its course got the better of his first de- 
 
206 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 termination, and his curiosity and his desire to see 
 just how far his friends trusted him overcame his 
 original purpose of setting things right. 
 
 Mrs. " Jimmy " Floyd was from one of the 
 Western cities ; she had married Floyd while 
 abroad and had entered into the life of New York 
 with all the zeal and enthusiasm of a new con 
 vert. She had adapted herself to her surround- 
 \ings, though she had not herself been adopted. 
 But now she was undoubtedly an important per 
 sonage, and very many people paid court to her, 
 not for herself so much as for what she could do 
 for them. There were a number of men to whom 
 she was at home every day after five, and Van 
 Bibber came to see her then very frequently. She 
 knew him well enough to ask him to fill a place 
 when some one had failed her, and he thought her 
 amusing, but only that. He had a youthful hor 
 ror of having it thought that he was attached to 
 married women, and made it a rule to come late 
 in the afternoon and to be among the first tp go. 
 Owing to this no one had ever found him or left 
 him with Mrs. Floyd, and the men, especially those 
 whom he allowed to outstay him, were grateful to 
 him in consequence. Her drawing-room was a 
 place for gossip, and Van Bibber told her once 
 that he came because it saved him from reading 
 the papers, and that if she would fine herself a 
 penny every time she or her friends said " I sup 
 pose you have heard," she would be able to pay 
 for a box at the Horse Show with the money. He 
 
AN ANONYMOUS LETTER 207 
 
 called there a week after Travers had sent forth 
 his letters, and found her for the first time alone. 
 When she nodded to him brightly, and told the 
 servant in the same breath that she was not at 
 home to any one else, Van Bibber smiled grimly 
 to himself and regarded her with a masklike 
 countenance. He saw that he had been trapped 
 into a tete-a-tete, and that one of the letters had 
 evidently reached the home of the Floyds. 
 
 Mrs. Floyd s attitude as she sank back in her 
 cushions was an unsettled one, and her whole man 
 ner expressed pleasurable expectancy. Her visit 
 or observed this with amused disapprobation, but 
 as she seemed so happy in believing what she had 
 read of him, he thought it would be rather a pity 
 to spoil her enjoyment of it by telling her the 
 truth. 
 
 " Well," she said, " and what have you been do 
 ing with yourself lately ?" She spoke quite gay- 
 ly, as though her recently acquired knowledge of 
 him gave to whatever he might have to say a fresh 
 interest. 
 
 Van Bibber observed this also with a cynical 
 sense of amusement, and saw that she had placed 
 him under the light of a standing lamp, which 
 threw his face into strong relief, while hers was 
 in shadow. " Just," as he said later to Travers, 
 " as though she were keeping a private detective 
 agency." The talk between Mrs. Floyd and her 
 visitor ran on unevenly. She was eager to ques 
 tion him, and yet afraid of being too precipitate, 
 
208 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 and he was standing on his guard. At last some 
 thing he said of a young Frenchman visiting the 
 city seemed to give her the chance she wanted. 
 
 " Oh yes," she commented, indifferently, " I re 
 member him at Homburg. He is rather a senti 
 mental youth, I fancy. He wears a bangle, and 
 a chain around his neck. We could see them 
 when he played tennis." 
 
 Van Bibber gazed thoughtfully into the open 
 fire. " Yes," he said, politely. 
 
 Mrs. Floyd looked at the fire also. She was 
 afraid she had begun too clumsily, and yet she 
 still continued recklessly in the same opening. 
 " It is rather feminine in a man, I think , not un 
 manly exactly, either, but rather a pose, like writ 
 ing in a diary. You pretend that you write it 
 without thinking of any one s seeing what you 
 have written, but you always have the possibility 
 in your mind, don t you ? And men always know 
 that some day some one will see their bangle 
 or their locket. They think it gives them a 
 mysterious or sentimental interest. Don t you 
 think so ?" 
 
 Van Bibber changed his gaze from the fire to 
 the point of his shoe, and then, as an idea came 
 to him suddenly, smiled wickedly. He looked up 
 as quickly to see if Mrs. Floyd had noticed his 
 change of expression, and then relapsed into gloom 
 again. " The only man I know who goes in for 
 that sort of thing," he said, " is Travers. Travers 
 wears a gold chain around Ms neck, and he keeps it 
 
AN ANONYMOUS LETTER 209 
 
 on all the time. I ve seen it at the Racquet Club. 
 There is a picture of a girl on one side, a tintype, 
 and on the other, two initials in diamonds. The 
 initials are M. L." 
 
 " M. L. !" exclaimed Mrs. Floyd, confusedly. 
 
 " In diamonds," added Van Bibber, impressive- 
 
 iy. 
 
 " M. L. in diamonds ! Why," Mrs. Floyd ex 
 claimed, "that s "and then correcting herself 
 midway, she added, tamely, "that s very curious." 
 
 " Curious ?" asked Van Bibber, politely. " Why 
 curious ? They re not your initials, are they ?" 
 
 " I was told," said Mrs. Floyd, seriously, " that 
 is some one told me," she began again, " that you 
 wore a locket just like that around your neck." 
 
 " Fancy !" said Van Bibber, with a gasp of 
 amusement. " Who told you that, if I may ask ?" 
 
 "No one that you know," Mrs. Floyd replied, 
 hastily. " But he must have confused you two ; 
 don t you suppose that is it ? It is because you 
 are so fhuch together." 
 
 " Told you I wore a locket around my neck ?" 
 repeated Van Bibber, with some severity. " How 
 absurd ! It is very evident that he has mixed us 
 up. We don t look much alike, do we ? Perhaps 
 he saw us at a Turkish bath. Every man looks 
 like every other one when he is wrapped in a cloud 
 of steam and a bath robe. Only the other day I 
 took old man Willis for an attendant, and told 
 him to hurry up my coffee. I suppose that s how 
 it happened. You had better ask Travers about 
 
210 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STOKIES 
 
 it next time he comes and see what he says. He K 
 deny it, probably ; but I assure you I have seen 
 it ; so you can charge him with it with perfect 
 safety." 
 
 Mrs. Floyd looked at Van Bibber doubtfully 
 for a moment, but he returned her look with a 
 smile of such evident innocence that she smiled 
 in return, and then they both laughed together. 
 
 "And I thought it was you all the time," she 
 said. " What an odd mistake !" 
 
 "Very humorous indeed," said Van Bibber. 
 He rose, and Mrs. Floyd made no effort to detain 
 him. Her suddenly acquired interest in him had 
 departed. " Don t forget the initials," said Van 
 Bibber. 
 
 "I shall not," Mrs. Floyd answered, laughing. 
 "I shall remember." 
 
 " And in diamonds, too," added Van Bibber, as 
 he bowed at the door. 
 
 Miss Townsend was a young woman who took 
 everything in life seriously but herself. She was 
 irritatingly but sincerely humble when her own 
 personality was concerned, and was given to con 
 sidering herself an unworthy individual only fit 
 to admire the actions of real personages. She re 
 ceived deserved compliments either mockingly or 
 as sarcasms at her expense, and made her friends 
 indignant by waxing enthusiastic over people 
 whom they did not consider one-fourth as worthy 
 of such enthusiasm as she was herself. She was a 
 
AN ANONYMOUS LETTER 211 
 
 very loyal friend, and when she was with Van Bib 
 ber had the tact not to talk of those things which 
 might be beyond his reach. Still, when she did 
 venture with him on those matters of life and 
 conscience and conduct which most interested her, 
 she found his common-sense and his sense of hu 
 mor vastly disturbing to her theories. She re 
 ceived him this afternoon with a preoccupied air, 
 which continued until her mother, who had been 
 with her when he had entered, had left the room. 
 
 "I do not know how soon I shall have the 
 chance to see you alone again," she began at once, 
 "and I have something to say to you. I have 
 thought it over for some time, and I have con 
 sidered it very seriously ; I think I am doing the 
 right thing, but I cannot tell." 
 
 Van Bibber wanted to assure her that it was 
 not to be taken seriously, and felt fresh indigna 
 tion that she should have been troubled so impu 
 dently. But he only said " yes," sympathetically, 
 and waited. 
 
 " I want to ask you," she said, regarding him 
 with earnest eyes, " if you know that you have an 
 enemy." 
 
 Van Bibber bit his lips to hide a smile, and felt 
 even more ashamed of himself for smiling. " Oh 
 dear, no," he said, " of course not. We don t have 
 enemies nowadays, do we ? There are lots of peo 
 ple who don t like one, I suppose ; but enemies 
 went out of date long ago, with poisoned cups and 
 things like that, didn t they ?" 
 
212 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 " No ; you are wrong," she said. " There is 
 some one who dislikes you very much, who wants 
 to injure you with your friends, and who goes 
 about doing it in a mean and cowardly way. In 
 so low a way that I should not notice it at all ; 
 and then again I think that it is my duty to tell 
 you of it, so that you can be on $our guard, and 
 that you may act about it in whatever way you 
 think right. That is what I have been trying to 
 decide : whether I am a better friend if I say noth 
 ing, or whether I ought to speak and warn you." 
 She stopped, quite breathless with anxiety, and 
 Van Bibber felt himself growing red. " What do 
 you think ?" she said. 
 
 " Oh, I don t know," said Van Bibber, unhap 
 pily. " Suppose you tell me all about it. Of 
 course, whatever you do would be the right 
 thing," he added. She put her hand in the 
 pocket of her frock, and drew out a letter with 
 a type-written address. Van Bibber anathema 
 tized Travers anew at the sight of it. 
 
 " Last week," Miss Townsend began, impres 
 sively, " I received this letter. It is an anony 
 mous letter about you. What it says does not 
 concern me or interest me in the least. That is 
 what I want you to understand. No matter what 
 was said of one of my friends, if it came to me in 
 such a way, it could not make the least difference 
 to me. Of course I would not for an instant con 
 sider anything from such a source, but the point, 
 in my mind, is that some one is trying to do you 
 
AN ANONYMOUS LETTER 213 
 
 harm, and that it is my duty to let you know of 
 it. Do you understand ?" Van Bibber guiltily 
 bowed his head in assent. " Then here it is," she 
 said, handing him the offensive letter as though it 
 were a wet and dirty rag. " Don t open it here, 
 and never speak to me of it again. If you did 
 if you explained it or anything, I would feel that 
 you did not believe me when I say that I believe 
 in you, and that I only speak of this thing at all 
 because I want to put you on your guard. Some 
 man, or some woman more likely, has written this 
 to hurt you with me. He or she has failed. That 
 is the point I want you to remember, and I hope 
 I have done right in speaking of it to you. And 
 now," she exclaimed with a sigh of relief, and 
 with a sudden wave of her hands, as if she were 
 throwing something away, " that is over." 
 
 Van Bibber s first impulse was to put the letter 
 in the fire, and tell her the truth about it; but his 
 second thought was that this girl had for a week 
 been considering as to how she could act in his 
 best interest, and that to show her now that she 
 had been made a joke of would be but a poor re 
 turn of her thoughtfulness of him. So he placed 
 the letter in his pocket, and thanked her for her 
 warning, and sincerely for her confidence, and 
 went away. And as he left the house his sense 
 of pleasure in the thought that his friend trusted 
 him was mixed with an unholy desire to lay hands 
 upon Travers. He determined to end and clear 
 up the matter that afternoon, at once and for- 
 
214 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 ever, and with that object in view took a hansom 
 to the house of Miss Edith Sargent. 
 
 Miss Sargent was a friend of both Travers and 
 himself. She was an unusual girl, and the fact that 
 she was equally liked by men and women proved 
 it. She frequently regretted she had not been 
 born a boy, and tried to correct this injustice by 
 doing certain things better than most men could 
 do them, and so gained their admiration. Van 
 Bibber agreed with her that it was a pity that she 
 was not a man, as, so he explained it, there were 
 too few attractive men, while there were so many 
 attractive women that it kept him continually in 
 trouble. Miss Sargent was the president of a so 
 ciety for the lower education of women, the mem 
 bers of which were required to know as much 
 about polo as they did of symbolic and impres 
 sionist pictures, and were able to keep quite sepa 
 rate the popular violinist or emotional actress of 
 the day as a person from the same individual as 
 an artist ; they did not sob over the violinist s 
 rendering of music which some one else had writ 
 ten, on one afternoon, and then ask him to tea 
 the next. They did not live on their nerves or 
 on their feelings, but on their very rich fathers, 
 on whom they drew heavily for gowns, hunters, 
 and pianos, on which last they could play passa 
 bly well themselves. 
 
 Travers, it was believed, was sentimentally con 
 tent that Edith Sargent had been born a girl, and 
 spoke of her as Miss Sargent, and not as Edith 
 
AN ANONYMOUS LETTER 215 
 
 Sargent, as the other men did. Van Bibber con 
 sidered this a very dangerous sign. 
 
 Miss Edith Sargent was getting out of her 
 brougham as Van Bibber drew up in his han 
 som. She greeted him brightly with a nod, and 
 told him that she was half frozen, and that he 
 was just in time for some tea. He waited until 
 she gave some directions to the footman for the 
 evening and then walked up the steps beside her. 
 
 "You ve saved me from writing you a note," 
 she said. " I wanted to see you about getting up 
 a coaching-party for the game on Thanksgiving 
 Day. Do you think it s too late ?" 
 
 Van Bibber observed her covertly, but she did 
 not seem to be conscious of anything beyond 
 what she was saying, and regarded him frankly 
 and without embarrassment. He decided that 
 she had not received the letter, and felt a tempo 
 rary sense of relief. 
 
 " It is rather late," he said ; " most of the 
 coaches are engaged so far ahead, you know ; but 
 we might be able to get a private one." 
 
 They walked into the drawing-room together, 
 and she threw her sable boa and muff on the di 
 van and went to the fire to warm her fingers. 
 
 "Whom could we ask?" she said. Van Bib 
 ber was regarding her so intently that she stopped 
 and looked up at him curiously. " Whom could 
 we ask ?" she repeated, and added, after a pause, 
 " You re not listening to what I m saying." 
 
216 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STOEIES 
 
 They continued looking at each other for a 
 short moment, and then the girl, with a sudden 
 exclamation of intelligence, walked back into the 
 library beyond, returning with an envelope in her 
 hand. Van Bibber saw that the address upon it 
 was type-written. 
 
 " Here s that letter you and Travers sent me," 
 she said. She put it in his hand and left him 
 standing gazing dumbly down at it, while she 
 returned to the open fire and stretched her fingers 
 out before it. As he continued silent, she turned 
 and looke^J over her shoulder at him, and then, 
 as she caught his look of embarrassment, laughed 
 easily at the sight of it. " Don t you think," she 
 said, " it s about time you two became accustomed 
 to the fact that you have grown up ?" 
 
 Van Bibber gazed at her blankly and shook his 
 head. " Travers told you," he said, ruefully. 
 
 " Travers told me !" she repeated with dis 
 dain. " You both told me. I do hope I ve in 
 telligence enough to keep up with you two and 
 your games and foolishnesses. There s no one 
 else who would do anything so silly." She 
 laughed a triumphant, mocking laugh. " You and 
 your Maysie Lindsey and gold lockets, you re a 
 pretty trio, aren t you? And you thought you 
 were going to have such a fine joke on me. Oh, 
 you re so clever, you two ; you re so deep and 
 subtle. How long have you ceased wearing vel 
 vet suits and red sashes ?" 
 
 " That s all right," said Van Bibber, sulkily, 
 
AN ANONYMOUS LETTEK 217 
 
 " but I want you to know I ve had trouble enough 
 about this thing, and it s all Travers " 
 
 " There is some other game, perhaps," she said, 
 nodding her head at him, " that you play better 
 than this." 
 
 " Oh, I m going," said Van Bibber. He stopped 
 at the door and shook his high hat at her impres 
 sively. " If you have any regard for your young 
 friend Travers," he said, " you d better send him 
 word to keep out of my way for a week or two." 
 
 "Wait and have some tea," she called after 
 him, but Van Bibber pulled open the %ont door, 
 and as he did so heard an echo of mocking laugh 
 ter and something that sounded like "Give my 
 love to Maysie Lindsey." 
 
 There was still one other girl to see, and Van 
 Bibber kicked viciously at the snow at the thought 
 of it as he strode hurriedly towards her house. 
 He wished that he might find her out; but she 
 was in, the man said, and she herself said that 
 she was glad to see him. 
 
 Miss Norries was a peculiarly beautiful girl, 
 who almost succeeded in living in a way that was \ 
 worthy of her face. If she did not do so, it was i 
 not through lack of effort on her own part. And 
 yet to others there seemed to be no effort ; people 
 said of her that she had been born fine and good, 
 and could not be otherwise had she tried. " It 
 is only we poor souls who know what tempta 
 tion is," they said, " that deserve credit for over 
 coming it. Grace Norries always does the right 
 
 IS 
 
218 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 thing because she doesn t know there is any other 
 thing to do." 
 
 But Miss Norries had her own difficulties. She 
 had once said to Van Bibber, " The trouble is that 
 there are so many standards, even among one s 
 best friends, among the people that you respect 
 most, that it makes it hard to keep to one s own." 
 
 To which Van Bibber had replied, flippantly : 
 " You have no right to complain. All you have 
 to do when you get up in the morning is to look 
 in the glass and say, To-day I must live up to 
 that? It s a pretty high standard to live up to, 
 I know, but it s all your own." At which Miss 
 Norries had gazed coldly at nothing, and Van 
 Bibber had wished he had not complimented her 
 on the one thing for which she could not possibly 
 take any credit. 
 
 She received him now graciously, as a much 
 older woman might have done, but told him he 
 could not stay, as she had to dress for dinner. 
 
 "It won t take long to say what I came to 
 say," Van Bibber answered her. " I came on 
 purpose to say it, though. It s rather serious 
 at least, it didn t start out so, but it s getting 
 serious." He did not look at her, but at the fire, 
 as though he were trying to draw confidence from 
 it. But his anxiety was unnecessary, for Miss 
 Norries regarded him tranquilly and without loss 
 of her usual poise. She was always ready to 
 laugh with those who laughed, or to weep with 
 those who wept, giving out just enough of her 
 
AN ANONYMOUS LETTER 219 
 
 own personality to make her sympathy of value, 
 and yet never allowing it to carry her away. 
 
 "Perhaps," said Van Bibber, with a sudden 
 inspiration, " you have something to say to me." 
 
 " No, I don t know that I have," the girl an 
 swered, considering. " Has anything happened ? 
 I mean, is there anything I ought to speak about 
 that I haven t ? Are you to be congratulated or 
 condoled with ? Is that it ?" 
 
 "Well, you ought to know," Van Bibber an 
 swered, " whether I am to be condoled with or 
 not. I m certainly not to be congratulated." 
 
 " I don t understand," she said, smiling. 
 
 " Oh, well, then," he exclaimed, with a sigh of 
 relief, "it s probably all right. Only I thought 
 you would have received it by this time, and if 
 you had, I wanted to explain. But if you haven t 
 received it you probably won t now, and so I 
 needn t say anything about it." 
 
 " Received what ?" asked Miss Norries, with a 
 perplexed laugh. "But," she added, "if you 
 don t wish to speak of it we will talk of some 
 thing I do understand. Oh, you mean the pack 
 age of books you sent me. I ought to have writ 
 ten you about them. They were just the ones I 
 wanted. I was so very " 
 
 " Books ! no," said Van Bibber, with disgust. 
 "It s a letter," he blurted out. "Some one told 
 me a t least I happened to find out that some 
 one sent you an anonymous letter about me. 
 And I thought you might have received it, and " 
 
220 THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 He stopped in some confusion, for he liked Miss 
 Norries better than he did the other women, and 
 he found it, for some reason, harder to talk to 
 her about the letter than to those others. 
 
 " Yes, I received it," she said. 
 
 He looked at her a moment with startled sur 
 prise. 
 
 "No!" he exclaimed. "You don t say so! 
 You did receive it? Well, but then I don t 
 uaderstand. Why didn t you tell me ?" 
 
 " Tell you what ?" said Miss Norries, gently, 
 but with some hauteur. " Why should I speak 
 to you of it? I do not see that it concerns you. 
 It was an anonymous letter addressed to me, and 
 I threw it in the fire." She looked at him inquir 
 ingly for a moment, and then turned her attention 
 to the falling snow against the window. 
 
 " Yes, I know," said Van Bibber, thinking very 
 fast and talking to make time, " but the letter 
 was about me, you know, and suggested that is, 
 it put me in rather an unpleasant light." 
 
 The girl gave a slight laugh of annoyance and 
 stood up. " I fail to see how it concerns you," 
 she said. "It was insulting to me, that s all. I 
 did not consider it further than that. What it 
 said about you has nothing whatever to do with 
 it that I can see. All that I could understand 
 was that some one had tried to annoy me by send 
 ing me an anonymous letter." She stopped and 
 smiled. " You must have a rather poor opinion 
 of yourself and your friends if you think they 
 
AN ANONYMOUS LETTER 2 3t 
 
 consider you and anonymous letters with equal 
 seriousness. Now you have to go," she added, 
 "or I shall be late. Thank you ever so much 
 for the books, and come in to-morrow early, and 
 tell me what you think about them ; but now I 
 really must hurry, so good-bye." 
 
 Van Bibber put his hat firmly on his head as 
 he went down the steps, and then turned and 
 gazed at the closed door of the house he had just 
 left with a look of settled bewilderment. " Well," 
 he said, with a sigh, " it s all part of the day s 
 work, I suppose. For which," he added, impres 
 sively, " Travers will have to pay." 
 
 A long dinner and a large open fire in the al 
 most deserted club had melted his anger by ten 
 o clock to such a degree that Travers ventured to 
 ask for the details of the day s adventure, and 
 Van Bibber was so far pacified as to give them. 
 
 " Well, I must say," declared Travers, rubbing 
 his knees and gazing with much satisfaction into 
 the open fire, "it turned out to be a very interest 
 ing experiment, didn t it ? But it hasn t proved 
 anything that I can see. I don t see that it has 
 shown which of the girls cares the most about 
 you, has it ? What do you think ?" 
 
 " I don t know," said Van Bibber, lowering his 
 voice and glancing over his shoulder. " Which 
 do you think, now ?" 
 

 
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