HARRISON ROBERTSON
THE LIBRARY
OF
THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA
LOS ANGELES
THE OPPONENTS
The Opponents
BY
HARRISON ROBERTSON
AUTHOR OF "RED BLOOD AND BLUE,'
"THE INLANDER," ETC.
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1902
Copyright, 1902,
BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
All right! reserved
Published, April, 1902
UNIVERSITY PRESS JOHN WILSON
AND SON CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A.
CONTENTS
I. ALTERNATIVES i
II. SIDNEY GARRARD AS A MONEY-MAKER . 10
III. "BENEATH HER FEET" 26
IV. "VERY, VERY NICE, OR HORRID" ... 40
V. A HOUSE is PAINTED 55
VI. AT TUNSTALL PADDOCKS 66
VII. THE HEAD AND THE WALL 72
VIII. A YOUNG FOOL 80
IX. THE ISSUE JOINED 92
X. A WINNING AND LOSING SPEECH . . . 108
XI. THE PRELIMINARY HAND-CLASP .... 124
XII. A HORSE-BLOCK SYMPOSIUM 138
XIII. THE QUEENIN' OF IT 150
XIV. THE CONQUEST OF THE QUEEN OF SHEBA'S
SUPERIOR 167
XV. SOME RAIDERS AND A THEORY .... 178
XVI. FROM A STAFF CORRESPONDENT .... 196
vi Contents
PAGE
XVII. MARGARET HELM SHOCKS GOOD PEOPLE 203
XVIII. THE PENALTY 217
XIX. ANOTHER PENALTY 233
XX. THE LIGHT THAT BLASTS 250
XXI. LEVEL WITH THE EARTH 265
XXII. THE MORNING OF THE CONVENTION . . 277
XXIII. "THE OLD HICKORY OF LUTTROLL" . 288
XXIV. MORGAN TUNSTALL DECIDES HIS FUTURE 301
XXV. MORGAN TUNSTALL CARRIES OUT HIS
DECISION 310
XXVI. THE SUNLIGHT ON THE WALL . . . 325
XXVII. INTO THE COMING SPRING 340
The Opponents
The Opponents
ALTERNATIVES
" No. 7 three hours and twenty minutes late."
Morgan Tunstall stopped before the bulle
tin board in the Tenth Street Station and
stared at the chalked words.
Number 7 was scheduled to leave Louisville
at 2.35 P. M. and to reach Nashville at 7.50,
which, Tunstall calculated, would put him in
the Tennessee capital in time, if he dressed on
the Pullman, for the Fogg dinner. He wished
particularly to attend the Fogg dinner, for it
was given to celebrate the engagement of Tom
Lockwood to Miss Fogg, and Tunstall, being
happily married himself, was eager to testify
his joy at the good fortune of his old chum.
But if there was no train to Nashville for more
than three hours yet, the Fogg dinner was out
of the question, and satisfying himself by in
quiry that Number 7 was his only chance and
that the bulletin was correct, he left the station,
2 The Opponents
his keen disappointment nettled by a feeling of
personal resentment against the unreliability of
railroad time-tables.
He went to his club and loafed there till din
ner, after which, with a friend, he crossed the
street to the theatre and spent two hours with
Jefferson's Bob Acres.
It was not long before midnight when he got
off a Fourth Avenue car and walked over to
Third, where his house was, in a fashion
able quarter of Louisville. He was twenty-
five, rich, well educated, travelled. Best of
all, in his estimation of Fortune's favors, he
was married to the woman he loved, and the
home he had built as the flower of his wealth
and taste was incomparably more to him than
that, because his inspiration had been the ma
terial expression of his devotion to her and
of his anticipation of the life they were to live
together, and because he felt that she had un
derstood and was glad, as he was glad, that
what he had done was his best, and had been
done for her.
As he walked away from the car his con
sciousness of a day gone wrong had something
in keeping with the depressing fog of the chilly
atmosphere, which seemed to asphyxiate the
Alternatives 3
street-lights and, as he stepped from a pave
ment of concrete to one of brick, to disinte
grate the solid earth itself into a soggy sponge.
Not only had he missed the Fogg dinner, but
Grace, who had been disinclined to go, would
not be at home to-night, for she had insisted,
before he had started for the Tenth Street Sta
tion that day, that she would not brave the
loneliness of his absence, but would take one
of the afternoon trains from the First Street
Station and spend the night with friends in
Pewee Valley, a few miles out from the city.
Tunstall's pace was slow, his eyes on the
ground, and his healthy mind veering from his
irritating ill luck to the marked distinguishing
characteristics of brick sidewalks as affected by
the weather. In front of his own house he
raised his head from this study of brick side
walks, and his face suddenly glowed with a
smile. There were lights in Grace's window.
She had evidently reconsidered her plan to go
out to Pewee Valley. She was at home. After
all, the day had not ended so badly as it might
have done.
Tunstall eagerly sought his key and let him
self in. The hall and first-floor rooms were
dark. The house had been closed for the
4 The Opponents
night. His unexpected return would be a
pleasing little surprise for Grace, as pleasing,
perhaps, he was happy to believe, as his find
ing her at home was for him.
His swift feet sank noiselessly into the soft
carpets of the hall and stairway. He was
quickly in front of Grace's door. But as he
clasped the knob a strange transformation
came over him. His hand on the knob was
motionless; his figure stiffened in an abruptly
arrested posture ; his strong young face grew
instantly stronger with the white, stony death
of its youth. In the murmur of talk coming
from his wife's room he recognized the low,
refined voice of Julius Knowles.
For a little Tunstall stood, inclined forward,
as one transfixed. Then he breathed again ;
a tinge of blood crept back into his face ; he
drew himself up slowly, and half turning in
his steps, faltered for a second and leaned with
his back against the door frame. He lifted his
hand uncertainly toward his collar, but its wav
ering course was suddenly checked as the
fingers closed tensely and the clenched fist
was rigidly extended. A dull purple now
dyed his skin, his chest deepened, and, as a
soldier who had heard the voice of command,
Alternatives 5
he strode steadily across the hall, erect, with
fixed eyes, and disappeared through the op
posite doorway.
He returned almost immediately, with the
same martial step, with the same fixed eyes, his
right hand, which hung by his side, holding a
revolver.
He recrossed the hall to his wife's room, and
turned the knob. The door was locked. There
was an instant hush of the voices within.
Tunstall, his jaws set and his veins swelling,
braced his shoulder against the door and with
one determined strain forced it open.
As he stepped into the room, Grace, blanched
and trembling, was standing in the centre of it,
her hand on the arm of a chair, from which
she seemed to have just risen, her startled,
horrified eyes directed helplessly upon him.
Only for a moment did she look at him ; then
turning away, she threw her hands over her
face, and with a shivering moan sank to her
knees and bowed her head among the pillows
in the chair.
Julius Knowles, who, with sickened visage
and forehead dampening clammily, had been
standing a few feet behind Grace, never took
his stupefied eyes from Tunstall, and made no
6 The Opponents
motion, except once to open his dry lips as
if to speak, when no audible word came from
them.
Tunstall did not stir for a full quarter min
ute after entering the room. The two men
faced each other silently. There was no sound
except the ticking of the clock and the flare of
a gas jet ; even the convulsive breathing of the
woman seemed to have ceased.
When Tunstall did speak he was standing
where he had stopped after breaking open the
door. His countenance was an expressionless
mask, his tones passionlessly inexorable.
" When I came in here," he said, " I intended
to kill you both. But instant death is too
merciful a fate for such as you. There ought
to be, and there is, a greater penalty. I am
going to give you the choice between them."
He paused a moment. There was not even
a tremor now in the intense stillness of Grace,
and Knowles made no sign, except the mo
mentary blinking of his eyelids as he held his
gaze on Tunstall.
" The alternatives I offer you," Tunstall went
on, "are these: either to be shot dead now,
here ; or to live together as husband and wife
in this city, until one of you dies."
Alternatives 7
Grace had lifted her head an inch in alert
suspense. Knowles twisted his mustache with
a nervous hand, and, after a little, asked
huskily :
" What do you mean ? "
" Simply death, or life together. I shall kill
you both of you now; or you will elope
from this house to-night. You may go where
you please for a few weeks, until I have secured
a divorce. Then you will return to Louisville,
be legally married, and live together as hus
band and wife here, among those who know
you best and will be familiar with your story."
He was silent, awaiting some reply.
"Are you in earnest?" said Knowles un
certainly.
Tunstall waved his hand with a slight motion
of impatience.
" Understand me fully," he continued. " I
know you are a coward, Knowles. I presume
you are armed at this moment cowards of
your kind usually are. If you were a braver
scoundrel you might defend yourself and take
the chance of killing me and thus escape both
the alternatives I offer you. Do not make the
mistake of hoping that by agreeing to accept
now the second you may merely gain time to
8 The Opponents
extricate yourself from my conditions. You
can never elude me. While you are away I
shall always be in touch with you through my
agents. You can go nowhere, at no time, that
they will not follow you. When you return to
spend your wedded lives in Louisville you will
always be under their secret surveillance, and
you can never leave for an hour without my
knowing it. They will never annoy you. They
will simply keep you always in sight and inform
me if you attempt to break your agreement.
In the end you can never escape both these
alternatives, except by my death. So choose,
with your eyes open."
Knowles now was more like himself. His
natural color was returning. For the first time
his eyes left Tunstall, and with a plausible
effort at coolness he took out his watch and
glanced at the hour. There was even a trace
of a smile on his lips as he spoke.
"You make it easy for me, Tunstall," he
said, still studying his watch. " As far as I am
concerned, it will be only a happiness for me
to agree to your second alternative."
"Very well," Tunstall replied. "But that
requires acceptance by two. And you ? " His
burning eyes were on his wife, whom an hour
Alternatives 9
before he had idolized and whom now he could
not even address by her name.
Her back was still to him, but she raised
herself on her knees beside the chair. She did
not turn her head, nor speak.
" What is your choice ? " Tunstall demanded.
She took hold of the chair-arm and weakly
lifted herself to her feet. She made a groping
motion with one hand toward Knowles.
" We must go," she said feebly to Knowles.
Knowles went to her and supported her with
his arm ; the two moved toward the door, and,
as Tunstall stepped aside for them to pass,
they left the room and the house.
II
SIDNEY GARRARD AS A MONEY-MAKER
A LITTLE more than twenty years later, on a
certain June morning, in a certain county of
Kentucky within fifty miles of Louisville,
Sidney Garrard, having finished a breakfast
that had been kept warm for him over-time,
stepped out on the porch, his hands in his
pockets, and a lazy whistle answering the
nickered greeting of Blitzen, saddled and
waiting him at the stile.
Beyond the grove in which the house was
set rolled, on one side of the lane, the pas
tures, green in the foreground, and merging
into smoky steel in the distance, dotted with
an occasional oak or sugar-tree and with
statue-like cattle, heads down. On the other
side of the lane, hedged with blackberry and
wild-grape vines, stretched a field of young
corn, whose pallid blades stirred above a
threatening growth of grass and weeds. Then
spread away, to the deep shades of creek and
Sidney Garrard as a Money-Maker 1 1
ravine, the gold of ripened wheat, shimmering
in the sun and gently vibrating, perhaps to
an imagination more sensitive than Sidney
Garrard's just then, with the whir of the
reaper which throbbed faintly in the distance.
Sidney Garrard, in his twenty-sixth year,
bronze-skinned and clear-eyed, with the grace
of sound nerves and of physical vigor, was
not very imaginative this morning. He felt
a comfort which came of sufficient sleep, a
relished breakfast, perfect health, and the
knowledge that the day was before him, to be
disposed of as he liked.
He sauntered, bareheaded, out on the
lawn, where he was standing, a few moments
later, passing the conventionalities to his
appreciative fox-hounds, when Wash came
up the lane from the harvest fields. Wash,
black, middle-aged, and active, was the real
manager of the Garrard farm, and he was
walking with a quicker step than usual.
" Mawnin', Mr. Sid," he said cheerily,
touching his hat as he went through the
yard.
" Hey, Wash ! What 's up ? What 's your
hurry?"
" I gwine sen' one de chillun over to John-
12 The Opponents
son's to see 'f I cain't git some er dem niggers
to he'p out in de wheat-fiel'," Wash explained,
pausing. " We 's sorter short to-day. Sim,
he 's sick, en Mose, he went en got married
ag'in las' night en he ain't been turned out de
calaboose yit dis mawnin'. Tears lak Mose
alluz tekin' a notion to git married ag'in des
sho 's I git in a pinch ; en rain ap' to come
up fo de week's out, to-boot"
" Oh, if you are in such hard luck I '11 help
you out myself till your reinforcements from
Johnson's reach you."
" Go 'long now, Mr. Sid," Wash laughed,
in his soft, whole-souled way. " Stop yo'
projeckin' wid me," walking on and wagging
his head.
" I '11 report to you in the wheat-field,"
young Garrard assured him, " as soon as I
can dress more properly for the occasion."
Wash only looked back over his shoulder
and grinned.
" Mr. Sid, he feelin' mighty peart to-day,"
he said to himself.
Mr. Sid went into the house, and in a few
minutes came out in an old suit of clothes and
a wide-brimmed straw hat, dilapidated and
drooping.
Sidney Garrard as a Money-Maker 1 3
He mounted Blitzen, and as he turned down
the lane he was greeted with a ripple of
laughter from a young woman whose face
peered out at him over the hollyhock bushes
that lined the garden fence.
" What now, Sid ? " she called to him.
" Hullo, Kate ! " pulling up. " ' What now '
is a job in the wheat-field ; I 'm one of Wash's
hands this morning."
" And do Wash's hands ride to work on
such blue-ribbon winners as Blitzen? "
" This one does ; and, what 's more, a-wear-
ing in his buttonhole the prettiest rosebud in
Mistress Kitty Cockerill's garden."
He rode up to the fence, and Kate Cock-
erill, smiling and glowing with pleasure,
plucked a half-blown Jacqueminot, and step
ping up on the bottom board of the fence,
reached up and placed the bud in the but
tonhole of his coat as he leaned over to
her.
" I suppose," he said, " that this is one of
those fortunate roses the poet tells about, that
got what they wanted because they ' dared to
climb.' "
" Perhaps," she returned in the same banter
ing spirit. "And I suppose what this one
14 The Opponents
wants is a view of the promised spectacle of
Sid Garrard actually at work ! "
He laughed and galloped away, flinging back
at her a bar of a song,
" Oh, the red rose is a falcon ; "
while she, his widowed sister, and elder by a
year, followed his youthful figure with eyes in
whose fond smile was the light of a love that
was tenderly maternal.
Sid Garrard's work in the wheat-field was
only for an hour and that on a fairly com
fortable seat on the reaper when Wash's
reinforcements from Johnson's arrived, and Sid
mounted Blitzen and rode to the post-office at
Plover, the nearest village, three miles away.
There were perhaps a hundred houses in
Plover, scattered along a single street, and be
fore one of these built of rough brick, with a
wooden platform in front of it Sid Garrard
dismounted. A big board sign under the
eaves identified it as the establishment of
"Jaynes & Co., General Mdse. and Post-office."
Sid entered and exchanged jokes with Hi
Jaynes, pocketing a newspaper and reading a
letter which Hi handed him from behind the
glass-and-pine boxes of the post-office. When
Sidney Garrard as a Money-Maker 15
he went out on the platform again, the street,
which five minutes before had been deserted
except for a few pigs and chickens, now pre
sented an added bit of picturesqueness, if not of
animation, lent it by the arrival of Dunk Pea-
body and his annual wagon-load of red June-
apples. Dunk, a thin, sallow countryman
" clay-bank " his complexion was described by
Uncle Jesse Craik sang out his wares in a
melancholy monotone, as he sat bent over the
front of a ramshackle wagon, loaded with apples,
above which rose a pollarded sapling, on the
stubs of whose cut branches stuck clusters of
the red fruit.
Dunk drew up in front of the post-office and
discontinued crying his apples, to address
Blitzen, who was showing, by flattened ears
and warning teeth, his disapproval of any
nearer approach of Dunk's team.
" I yi, you pompered plutycrat, you ! "
Dunk said in a conversational tone, " you thes
cain't natchully bear to have the plain people
come anigh you, now kin you ? "
" Morning, Dunk ! " called Garrard from the
platform. "What's the trouble between you
and Blitzen?"
" I ganny, that sounds like Sid Garrard !
1 6 The Opponents
Come outn from under that hat an' lemme
see 'f 'taint. Say, what skylarkin' you up to
now, Sid ? Where 'd you git them clo'es ? "
" Where 'd you get that team?" Garrard
laughed.
" Well, you know I 'm thes boun' to have a
team 'bout this time o' year, when that old
apple-tree by the smoke-'ouse gits ready fer
business ; so I went to work an' borrid the
mare from Rufe Wright an' the mule from
Uncle Jesse Craik. Th' ain't no sich June-
apple in the county as that airn, but I mis
doubt me ef it pays fer the time an* labor.
I ganny ! it took me mighty nigh a week to
borry that team this year. Say, Sid, keep yo'
eye on 'em while I step in an' see 'f I c'n trade
Hi Jaynes a bushel of apples fer a jug of
m'lasses. Uncle Jesse Craik an' Rufe Wright
don't work overly well together yit been
a-shyin' at each other all mornin', seems like.
Though you cain't blame arry one of 'em spe
cially, fer they do look ruther skeercrowy to
be drove together 'thout blinkers, now don't
they? Say, you oughter seen 'em when they
fus got a good look at each other. Back
yonder at Carpenter's Hill Rufe Wright
that 's the mare was dozin' along when she
Sidney Garrard as a Money-Maker 17
happen to turn her head an' git a full-len'th
view of Uncle Jesse Craik that's the mule
an ' she give one snort an' lit out with the
whole outfit nor'-nor'east, in a bee-line fer Inji-
anny ; an' I had n't no mo'n got 'em back in
the road an' straightened out fer Plover ag'in
when Uncle Jesse Craik took a notion to see
what the nation it was alongside him, anyhow,
an' when he see well, he thes duck his head
an' shet his eyes an' open his mouf, an' right-
wheel, an' nex' minute he had done unlimbered
bofe batteries on the enemy's broadside, an'
ef I had n't 'a' been mighty lucky lassoin' him
with the lines no tellin' where Rufe an' the
rest of us would 'a' been by this time. So you
keep yo' eye on that team fer me, Sid. Hi
Jaynes, he 's gittin' rich so fas' he 's too grastin'
to 'fode mo' 'n one hitchin'-pos', an' that air
stall-fed m'nop'list o' yourn, he 's got a corner
on that."
"All right, Dunk," laughed Garrard. "I'll
see that your span of ' the plain people' don't
run away."
Dunk Peabody slouched into the store, his
hands full of apples, and Sid Garrard dawdled
down to the wagon and swung up to the driver's
seat, where he lounged eating one of Dunk's
1 8 The Opponents
apples and smiling at the ingenuity with which
Dunk had pieced out odd ends of rope and
leather into the harness that united the in
congruous " Rufe Wright " and " Uncle Jesse
Craik."
The lethargy of approaching noon was on
the straggling village. The sun, high overhead,
seemed to have drawn every remnant of the
morning's fleecy clouds to its own altitude,
where, instead of veiling the light, each one
appeared as separate softly sifting centres of
light, under whose grateful flood the earth
basked, lazily outstretched. Far in the blue
a pair of great black wings slowly circled.
Across the drowsy fields came the drone of a
thresher, echoed nearer by the drone of the
bees in the clover by the roadside. The pigs
had found a bed of mire in the gutter, and were
grunting fitfully with sensuous content, while
daintily hued butterflies wove lightly over and
around them, in the world-old symbolism of
the etherial's attendance on the gross. A
happy heat-song filled the throat of a young
pullet; the stillness was thudded by the hoof-
strokes of Blitzen, impatient of the flies, and
was pierced by the faint, militant cry of a bee-
martin, himself invisible in the sky.
Sidney Garrard as a Money-Maker 19
Up and across the street Breckinridge
Bodine, justice of the peace, notary public, fire
and cyclone insurance and rotary churn agent,
as well as standing candidate for the office of
county court clerk, came to his door in his
shirt-sleeves, smoked his pipe, and looked con
templatively out on the pigs in their wallow.
Garrard saw him, and holding up a handful of
the fruit, called to him in Dunk Peabody's sing
song,
" Ap-puls ! ap-puls ! fresh June-ap-puls ! "
Squire Bodine declined with a shake of his
head; then suddenly recognizing the apple-
vender, removed his pipe from his mouth.
" Hey, Sid Garrard ! " he laughed across.
"What devilment you up to now?"
Garrard only repeated his sing-song.
" Well, fetch me a half bushel of 'em over
here and I '11 see if "
The squire did not finish his joke. He
paused, his pipe again out of his mouth, and
his gaze directed beyond and behind Garrard.
" Say, Sid, you know every girl in the
county ; who 's that burnin* up the road down
yonder? "
Garrard turned and his eyes kindled as they
rested on the slender figure of a horsewoman
riding rapidly toward him.
2O The Opponents
"Never saw her before," he answered the
squire ; " but she 's at home on a horse, ain't
she? Turn your head, Blitzen ; you 'd like to
see her."
She dashed up and stopped in front of the
post-office, and before Sid Garrard, who had
sprung from the wagon, could proffer his assist
ance, she had dismounted.
As she stood holding the bridle in one hand
and looking around for a place to hitch the
horse, her eyes swept from the warning ears of
Blitzen to the wagon and then to Garrard.
" Ah ! " she said. " Won't you hold my horse
a moment? "
The words were in the form of a request, but
the tone was more an order; not ungracious
or arrogant, but assuming obedience as a mat
ter of course.
Garrard touched his old straw hat and nodded
compliance. He stepped forward and laid his
hand on the bridle, while she, without looking
at him twice, went toward the post-office.
It was unusual for a girl not to look at Sid
Garrard twice, and unprecedented for one to
make a request of him in the tone of an order.
There was a touch of red in his tanned face
and an amused twinkle in his eyes as he
Sidney Garrard as a Money-Maker 21
watched her walk up the steps and across
the platform in front of the building. But
there was more than amusement in his eyes.
" Gad ! " was his verdict, " but she 's a clean-
stepping thoroughbred ! " and his gaze did not
leave the doorway through which she disap
peared into the post-office.
She came out in a few seconds with a letter,
which she opened and read as she paused at
the top of the steps.
She was tall, and there was something about
her which suggested that recently she might
have been thin, with the thinness of growing
youth. Even yet her face would have seemed
a little thin but for the slight flush of her ride
and the splendidly colorful warmth of the
mouth, though the lines of neck, arms, and
figure, which a less well-fitting habit could not
have concealed, clearly limned no longer the
thinness, but the rounding symmetry of youth.
Refolding her letter and sticking it in her
bosom, she descended to the cinder sidewalk.
As she came up to him again, Sid Garrard held
out his hand to help her to mount, and with a
light foot she was quickly in the saddle.
" Thank you," she said, and took out a little
purse and began searching through its contents.
22 The Opponents
Sid Garrard watched her, the touch of red
in his tan deepening and the light in his eyes
beaming merrily.
" She takes me for Dunk Peabody," was his
mental verdict, " and Dunk Peabody so let it
be."
She handed him a quarter, and he accepted
it, but he swept off the old straw hat with such
a bow as Dunk Peabody had never made to
man or gods.
When he stood erect again, she was gather
ing up the reins, without any indication that she
had even seen his magnificent bow. It was
then that Hugh Letcher galloped up.
" Oh ! this is lucky," he said to the girl. " I
got through that business at Jernigan's sooner
than I had hoped. I thought maybe I might
overtake you."
" That is good," she answered, with obvious
pleasure. " So we may finish our ride, after
all."
" Yes, thanks to my lucky star."
" Thanks to my letter, which I lingered to
read."
" Blessed be the man who invented letter-
writing then. Hello ! Is that you, Sid Garrard,
under that hat?"
Sidney Garrard as a Money-Maker 23
" Morning, Hugh," grinned Sid Garrard.
" So it is you, is it? Ho ! " laughed Letcher.
" Miss Helm arrived only yesterday and you
have met her already, have you? You are
making even better than your usual good time,
are n't you, Sid? "
" I merely had the pleasure of holding Miss
Helm's horse," Sid explained.
" You don't expect me to believe you ever
got near enough to a lady to hold her horse
without striking up an acquaintance," chaffed
Letcher.
Sid Garrard made a vain and ludicrous effort
to summon a stern expression of warning to his
face, while the girl was looking from one man
to the other, a picture of blank bewilderment.
Letcher was laughing heartily. " I do be
lieve," he said, " Sid has been trying to behave
himself. Miss Helm, is it possible you do not
yet know my old friend, Sidney Garrard, whom
you have heard me and Florence and mother
and the rest of us talking about ever since
your arrival in Kentucky?"
Sid Garrard's hat was off again, but his bow
was less exaggerated, while the girl went from
red to rose, and from sudden shock to morti
fying self-condemnation. She looked hard at
24 The Opponents
Sid, at first with a little resentment, which
quickly melted into contrition and a plea for
mercy, then, as she marked the mischievous
gleam in Sid's eyes, brightening with a slight
smile in her own.
" Please forgive my stupid mistake, Mr. Gar-
rard," she begged. "I really was in a hurry,
and did not oh, I don't know why I made
it!"
She held out her hand to him, a little timidly
yet with a frank impulse, and Sid took it with
a laugh.
" You could hardly have helped making it
under the circumstances, Miss Helm," he re
plied. " You see, Hugh, I 'd just come out of
the wheat-field and was watching Dunk Pea-
body's team for him when Miss Helm rode up
and very naturally took me for Dunk."
" A very likely story, Sid, all except the
wheat-field. If I had ever heard of your going
into a wheat-field, it would be easier to believe
you had come out of one. But ride over to
night, old man, and fix up your explanation
at supper. And bring your mandolin, or /'//
never succeed in making a satisfactory explana
tion to Florence."
" I shall be delighted," answered Sid, as he
Sidney Garrard as a Money-Maker 25
looked at Miss Helm. Then his eyes fell to
the silver coin which he still held, and glancing
from it to her and noting the new wave of
color come into her face and the half-beseech
ing, half-defiant look settle in her eyes, he
deliberately placed the quarter in his pocket
and with another bow turned to Dunk Peabody,
who was emerging from the establishment of
Hi Jaynes as Letcher and Miss Helm rode off.
Sid Garrard stood, with his hands in his
pockets, and watched the two figures on horse
back until they disappeared over a hill a
quarter of a mile away. Then, as Dunk Pea-
body, who had been filling a sack with apples
and grumbling at Hi Jaynes's " grastingness "
in a trade, slung the sack over his shoulder
and went back into the store, Sid looked across
the street again and saw Squire Breckinridge
Bodine still smoking in his doorway, his fat
cheeks wrinkled with a broad smile as he met
Sid's glance.
" Ap-puls ! ap-puls ! fresh June-ap-puls ! "
sang out the squire; and Sid, grabbing one
from the wagon, threw it with close aim at the
dodging justice, and jumping on Blitzen, gave
him rein homeward.
Ill
" BENEATH HER FEET "
KATE COCKERILL, holding her skirts with one
hand and with the other fastening at her belt
the pinks she had just gathered, had reached
the steps of the veranda when Sid Garrard,
flushed and in his shirt-sleeves, came hastily
through the hall doorway.
" Oh, here you are, Kit ! " he cried. " I 've
been looking all over the house for you. Please
do up this crazy tie for me."
Kate laughed as she went up to him and
began deftly adjusting the refractory tie. She
had a peculiarly cool and invigorating little
laugh, which had once come near causing a
tragedy. Hardin Drake, one of her suitors,
had said to Ben Fairleigh, another of her suit
ors, that he had always sworn there was no
sound this side of Paradise that could be com
pared to Kate Cockerill's laugh, till one terribly
hot night in a hotel room, when his throat was
cracked with thirst, and after ringing for water,
" Beneath her Feet " 27
he heard the musical tinkle of the ice against
the pitcher as it came nearer and nearer far
down the corridor. To this Ben Fairleigh had
replied that Kate Cockerill's laugh was good
enough to drink, but it was n't ice in a water-
pitcher ; it was more like ice when stirred in a
thin glass goblet, with frost on the outside and
sugar, fire, and mint on the inside. Hardin
Drake had flared up and announced that no
gentleman would speak of a lady in the lan
guage of a guzzler, and be damned to him ; and
Ben Fairleigh had retorted that no mollycoddle
could teach him anything in the way of respect
for a lady, and be damned to him. Then there
had been a " difficulty " which had left both
participants badly battered, and which had al
ways been regarded in the neighborhood as
suspiciously mysterious, as Hardin Drake had
curtly explained to an inquirer that the trouble
was over a misunderstanding about some short
horns that he had bought from Ben, though
anybody could tell you that Ben had never
owned a short-horn ; while Ben had as curtly
explained to the same inquirer that the mistake
arose over a game of cards, when it was notori
ous that Hardin did n't know one card from
another.
28 The Opponents
Kate Cockerill finished that fateful laugh of
hers this evening as Sid held his chin high ; then
she stepped back and surveyed him critically.
"Is it all right now, Kit?" Sid asked.
" It 's a masterpiece," she pronounced. " But
who is it this time, Sid? "
"Who's what?"
" Your latest discovery ? Your new flame ? "
" What makes you think of such wild ques
tions, Mistress Impertinence?" he smiled with
boyish swagger, seating himself on the railing
of the veranda.
" Because I have never known it to fail that
when you come to me to get your cravats tied
you are just starting on a fresh ' case.' "
Sid laughed and blushed a little. " How
about your rule this time, if I tell you I am just
going over to the Letchers' to supper? "
Kate sat down in a rocker, and leaning
against the back, smiled up at him serenely.
"Who's visiting Florence Letcher now?"
she asked.
He tossed back his head in laughter, then
flipped a sprig of honeysuckle at her before
replying :
" The latest arrival from Olympus, I should
say, from the one glimpse of her I Ve had and
" Beneath her Feet " 29
from the way she treads Kentucky farmers
beneath her feet."
" So bad as that, and at first sight ? And is
Olympus in Virginia?"
" It must be. Hugh called her Miss Helm.
Isn't that the name of the Staunton school
friend of Florence Letcher's that she is always
raving about? "
" Margaret Helm ? Of course it is. Florence
told me the other day she was expecting her.
So she has come at last?"
" At last ! as all things come to him who
waits," said Sid with mock solemnity.
Kate laughed.
" As all things come and go, you mean,"
she qualified.
" Other things may come and other things
may go, but this this is final and forever,"
with sober voice and straightened face.
" So were all her predecessors," laughed
Kate. "What is she like, Sid?"
"Like? She isn't like! She isn't like
anybody, anything ! "
41 Describe her."
" It can't be done. She came, brand-new,
into the world long after language was invented,
and there is none to fit her."
30 The Opponents
" Is she blonde or brunette?"
" Blonde or brunette ! Those are mere
words, and poor ones at that. I tell you there
are no words that fit her."
"But her hair?"
" Her hair ! Why did you speak of it? The
mere remembrance of it befuddles me. I
don't know whether you would call it golden
oak, or cherry, or mahogany, or ebony; but
there is only one thing to call it if you want to
be accurate : call it her hair Margaret Helm's
hair."
"How tall is she?"
" How tall ! O quality of unstrained mercy !
When she stood for two whole minutes on Hi
Jaynes' platform she was so far above a mortal
holding a horse on earth that my eyes set in
such an uplifted angle I have been seeing only
heaven since."
" And her eyes what color are they ? "
" Her eyes ? Margaret Helm's eyes ! I was
afraid you would ask me that ! O Kitty Cock-
erill, you talk too thoughtlessly. Don't you
remember, it was once said of a Kentucky
orator that he was like a goose paddling on
the ocean, unconscious of the depths be
neath? The ocean, now, you've seen it,
"Beneath her Feet" 31
but do you know the color of it? I Ve been
watching that piece of sky over yonder where
the sun has just set. In the last five minutes
it has been gray, with a star or two shining
through it ; clear blue, with stars ; clear green,
with stars ; indigo, violet, purple, always with
the stars; and now it is black-and-gray, with
the stars; and after a while it will be black-
blue, with the stars. And all the time I 've
been watching that sky I Ve been thinking of
Margaret Helm's eyes, Kit. Now, people have
been trying to describe skies ever since people
began to talk, or at least to write, but to this
good day can they do it? And skies are com
mon, every-day things, and we Ve had them
for centuries, while there is only one pair of
Margaret Helm eyes in the world, and I
should n't say they 'd been here longer than
twenty years, at most. Still you sit calmly
rocking there, Kate Cockerill, and coolly ask
me to tell you the color of Margaret Helm's
eyes ! "
" I believe it is really beginning worse than
usual, Sid," she laughed.
" I won't talk with you any more about her,"
he said, swinging from the railing to his feet
" You '11 be asking me next to tell you what
she wore. Is this tie still all right?"
32 The Opponents
A few minutes later he drove away to the
Letchers' behind a spirited trotter, and in a
trim buggy that had been well washed not an
hour before, a turnout that was familiar on
every road in the county and to every pretty
girl within twenty miles. For in this country
of fast roadsters and pretty girls Sid Garrard,
who loved them both, was much given to driv
ing with them both, " buggy-riding," as it was
commonly called, to the amusement of North
ern maids who came as visitors to wonder at
the freedom of a custom which permitted a girl
to take these long drives with a man, otherwise
unaccompanied, and who often remained to
acquiesce and even rejoice in that custom.
There was no buggy in the neighborhood
that was held in more favor by the young
women than Sid Garrard's ; and its owner, with
a fair companion beside him and with a sure
hand on the reins, was ever ready to race a
rival or drop behind a party, to speed anywhere
or jog nowhere, to pull his horse to a walk
under long stretches of shade, or to clip down
the white, moonlit turnpike with laughter and
song.
As Sid drove up to the Letchers' and threw
the reins to a negro who took Sid's seat in the
"Beneath her Feet" 33
buggy and trotted off to the barn, it was at the
hour when the spell that follows a summer sun
set was on the earth ; when there was a hush
of sound, an arrest of motion, and the going of
day and the coming of night were suspended
beyond the rim of the horizon, while the serene
cavity between the calm of the earth and the
calm of the sky was rilled by the light that was
neither of the day nor night, and that seemed
to come from no central source, but from the
tender blue of the dome overhead and from the
limpid green of its lower circumference.
Old Shelby Letcher, grizzled and lean, was
seated in one of the chairs that were grouped
on the front lawn. He looked up from his
newspaper and waved it with a short jerk of
welcome to Sid as he approached. A gray-
blue wreath of wood-smoke rose from the rear
of the plain parallelogram of brick walls, shin
gle roof, and wooden veranda of the Letcher
homestead. From the same direction came
the muffled beat of a rolling-pin, and this, with
the querulous plaint of a belated chicken anx
iously seeking its roost, was less an infraction
than an accentuation of the universal stillness.
" Well, Sid, how are you ? Have a seat,"
Shelby Letcher greeted Sid, with a gesture
3
34 The Opponents
that included the entire collection of chairs and
benches on the lawn; "have well, I came
mighty nigh getting off that joke they used to
tell on that Congressman down in Alabama.
You remember? He was what the darkeys
call one of those ' pompious ' chaps, who show
from top-knot to spur the cock-of-the-walk
opinion they have of themselves. He stepped
into a State office one day and introduced
himself.
'"I am James Madison McCrory,' said he.
The official rose to the occasion. ' Pleased to
meet you, Mr. McCrory,' he replied. ' Take a
chair, sir; take two chairs.'
" Now you Ve got such a conquering-hero
look on you this evening, Sid," the old gentle
man concluded, " I was about to ask you to
take several chairs."
Sid was a favorite of Shelby Letcher, who
was fond of joking him, and whose jokes were
always received in good part by Sid. But the
young fellow's color grew a little warmer as he
sat down, and there was an unaccustomed self-
conscious note in his laugh as he responded :
"Thank you, Mr. Letcher; I will take two
chairs for me and my mandolin."
"Me and my mandolin, hey? Hum! from
" Beneath her Feet " 35
all I can hear, that is a combination that re
quires, off and on, about all the chairs in the
county. But what 's going on ? Have you been
to Yardley lately?"
" Not for two or three weeks."
"Then you don't know the straight of this
talk about the Republicans putting out a full
county ticket at the next election ? "
" No, sir ; but from what I Ve heard, that
seems to be the programme."
"By the Lord! what are we coming to?
Why, we '11 be having Republicans running for
the Legislature and for Circuit Judge next!
Now, what would you think of that? "
" It would n't do them any good to run,
would it?"
" Good ? But would it do us any good ?
Think of the impudence of the thing ! It 's
all that fellow Kirkland's doing. He 's feeling
his oats from the Federal bin too much. He
thinks, because he 's got a Government office
and a few of his henchmen are riding around
as deputy marshals, he can foist a Republican
party on this county ! "
" I don't know much about these things, Mr.
Letcher," Sid returned, pulling a spear of grass
from its sheath, " but don't you think it might
36 The Opponents
be an advantage to have two good political
parties in the county?"
"Two good political parties? Maybe so.
But what the Tom Walker has that got to do
with the Republican party? I agree with you,
Sid, you don't know much about these things,
you don't know any more about them than
I know about that banjo of yours."
It was in a section of the State where there
had been only one political party since the old
days of the Whigs and the Democrats, and
though Kentucky had been pretty evenly di
vided in sympathy between the Northern and
Southern factors of the civil war, Luttroll
County had been almost wholly pro-Southern,
and since the reorganization of the Democratic
party in the State, after the restoration of peace,
had known no other partisan affiliation. It was
not fashionable by many it was not consid
ered respectable to be a Republican in Lut
troll County, and while there were a few white
men who voted the Republican ticket at Na
tional elections, the Republicans had neither
party organization nor spirit in the county.
Shelby Letcher was a Democrat of Democrats,
at least in name and action, and it was his
pride to be called, as he sometimes was by
" Beneath her Feet " 37
the Yardley Gazette, the Old Hickory of Lut-
troll. Indeed, with his gaunt form, his sharp
visage, his keen, deep-set eyes, his small head,
and wiry shock of pepper-and-salt-colored hair,
he had known the pleasure more than once of
being likened in appearance to Andrew Jack
son ; and sometimes he swore " by the Eternal."
He would have resented now the imputation
that he was not a Democrat as vigorously as
he would have resented the imputation that he
was not a white man.
Sid Garrard lifted his head quickly as a light
step came from the house, and he looked be
yond the figure of Florence Letcher walking
toward him, but he looked in vain. No one
was with Florence, no one was following her ;
and that was not as Sid Garrard wished or had
expected.
Sid talked almost as freely and confiden
tially to Florence Letcher as he talked to Kate
Cockerill, and he liked her, as a chum, as well
as he liked Hugh Letcher himself. Florence
was a girl to inspire such liking. She took an
unaffected interest in Sid and his gallantries.
She was jolly, companionable, genuine. She
was a true daughter of old Shelby Letcher,
without his occasional simulation of austerity.
38 The Opponents
She had his cheerful temperament, his small
head, his unmanageable hair, and, more strik
ing than other resemblance, his shrewd, smil
ing eyes, eyes which in the father seemed
to smile even in his austere moments, as if at
his own posing, and which in the daughter
seemed to smile because it is as natural and
necessary to smile as it is to breathe.
She sat with the two men on the lawn, soon
directing the talk from politics and amusing
her father with the story of Sid's adventure of
the morning.
" Mistook Sid for a wagon-driver, did she?"
the old gentleman commented. " Well, I don't
reckon a pretty girl could stay around here
long without learning the difference between
a wagon-driver and a buggy-driver, could she,
Sid?"
Hugh Letcher joined them soon, and Mrs.
Letcher came out on the veranda for a moment
and spoke a word of greeting to Sid ; but his
repeated glances toward the house were unre
warded. Margaret Helm did not appear, and
this, trivial as it was in itself, was not to his
liking. He had arrived a little ahead of time
in his desire for a second meeting with Mar
garet Helm, but he might as well have saved
" Beneath her Feet " 39
his mare's wind. Could it be possible that
Margaret yet felt some constraint or embar
rassment from her mistake of the morning?
If that was the cause of her delay in showing
herself this evening, Sid Garrard could more
than forgive it. Indeed, he looked forward
with satisfaction to the pleasure of putting her
at her ease, for he knew that an acquaintance
begun under such conditions is often better
begun and farther advanced than by weeks of
conventional intercourse.
IV
"VERY, VERY NICE, OR HORRID"
IT was not until they went in to supper that he
saw Margaret. She was standing at the side
board, where she was just completing, as Mrs.
Letcher explained, the famous Helm salad.
So she had remained indoors to make a salad,
Sid reflected. That was less to his liking than
his first assumption, that she had remained
indoors to avoid him.
Nor was there the slightest indication of con
straint or embarrassment as she turned from
the sideboard to speak to Sid.
" Good-evening, Mr. Garrard," she quietly
said, smiling pleasantly over the ladle which she
held, as if he were any ordinary acquaintance.
It was altogether different from the meeting
that Sid had anticipated. There was no occa
sion for him to be genially magnanimous and
put her at her ease. Worse than that, there
was no opening for anything like that mutually
assumed attitude of frivolous familiarity, with
"Very, Very Nice, or Horrid" 41
its only partially concealed possibilities of seri
ous developments, often inspired by some such
contretemps as their first meeting.
" It 's a poor sort of girl that has no coquetry
about her," was Sid's verdict as he took his
seat at the table, and his dissatisfaction at that
particular moment was increased by his knowl
edge that instead of finding any evidence of
self-consciousness in Margaret Helm, he was
himself a little self-conscious. That was a new
feeling for Sid Garrard in the presence of any
girl.
But before the supper was over he revised
his verdict as to Margaret Helm's lack of
coquetry. " It 's natural enough with her when
she likes," he concluded. " She carries it very
well with Hugh, and she 's a genius when she
gives old Shelby Letcher a touch of her
mettle."
To Sid Garrard it was not a satisfactory
supper. He was seated between Mrs. Letcher
and Florence, while Margaret Helm was on the
other side of the table, between Shelby Letcher
and Hugh. Sid, therefore, had a good view of
her, but he had little more that he would have
expected of any girl who knew how to improve
agreeably such an opportunity as that offered
42 The Opponents
by the unconventional meeting of Margaret
and himself. Most of the talk at the table was
general; certainly nothing that Margaret said
to him, even in answer to one or two direct
questions of his own, was addressed any the
less to the others than to him. He was con
sequently quieter than was his wont.
Once, however, he turned to Florence and
asked:
" Tell me, what do you call that dress Miss
Helm has on ? "
" The name of the material, you mean ? "
" I suppose so, yes, of course ; what is it
made of, you know ? "
" Organdie," smiled Florence.
"Organdie? Seems to me I've heard of
that sort of dress before, but this is the first
time I ever saw one."
" Oh, no, it is n't," she laughed softly.
" Yes, it is," he reasserted ; " I noticed it
almost as soon as I saw her standing over
there by the sideboard, and I noticed it par
ticularly when she walked across to take her
seat at the table."
" That was because Margaret is one of those
girls who give distinction to their clothes. But
you 've been seeing organdie dresses all your
" Very, Very Nice, or Horrid " 43
life. Kate has several, and I have on one
now."
"No?"
He turned his head and stared at her, red
dening a little and grinning cheerfully.
" Precisely like Margaret's," she assured him,
" except that hers has a green figure and mine
a pink."
" Well, I never did know much about dresses,
anyway," he surrendered ; " but even you also
sometimes make mistakes about them. Now,
hers is n't green, because it 's blue."
" It is n't blue, because it 's green."
" But how can it be, when you know green
always makes one look ghastly ? "
" There are different greens. You Ve never
noticed that the green of the trees and plants
makes any one look ghastly, have you ? "
" By George ! I never thought of that ! "
" It must be because it is a living green.
And Margaret is a girl who can wear any shade
of green because she makes even the deadliest
colors living colors."
"That's a compliment to pay a girl! I'll
save it and get it off to her some day as if it
were my own."
The one time when Margaret turned her
44 The Opponents
eyes and words to Sid Garrard with a personal
directness was with what was clearly intended
as mild disapprobation. Shelby Letcher had
been telling some stories on Uncle Minus, the
old negro who tended the vegetable garden
and kept the kitchen supplied with wood.
" Isn't he delightful?" Margaret laughed.
" Uncle Minus and Margaret are already fast
friends," Florence explained. " She spent
nearly an hour this evening sitting on the
woodpile and listening to Uncle Minus's talk
while he was chopping the stove-wood."
So, Sid reflected, that was where Miss Helm
had been while he was waiting for her on the
lawn.
" He was telling me about what he called
his sums," Margaret said.
" Then he was in his element," Shelby
Letcher proclaimed. " The old fellow cer
tainly has remarkable powers in working out
all sorts of difficult problems in mathematics,
though he does not know one figure from an
other. He can shut his eyes and do in his
head sums which I could never do with a ream
of paper, and which neither of my children,
though I 've given them both a good education,
could solve with the aid of their algebra or
" Very, Very Nice, or Horrid " 45
calculus. How he does it nobody knows ; but
he does it, and it is marvellous. He has been
written up in the newspapers, and a museum
man came out here once to try to get him to
give public exhibitions."
" He 's a long way ahead of the educated
pig or the automatic chess-player," said Hugh.
" I Ve never yet known any one to give him
a problem he could n't solve," added Shelby
Letcher.
" He confessed to me to-day that there was
one," Margaret declared, " and I think it is
shameful," with an open smile of reproach
levelled at Sid Garrard, which made him feel
a culprit, yet content to be a culprit since his
guilt compelled a personal recognition from
this indifferent young woman across the table.
" What could that have possibly been ? "
asked Shelby Letcher.
" I think it a really distressing case," with
the same half-serious smile, which was now,
however, no longer directed pointedly on Sid.
' He was telling me to-day that nobody had
ever given him a sum which he could not work
out, until about a year ago, when Mr. Garrard
gave him one that had ' stumped ' him ever
since."
46 The Opponents
"Mr. Garrard? Who Sid?" interjected
Shelby Letcher.
" Yes, sir Mr. Sid, Uncle Minus called
him. He says it has pestered him a heap;
that he lies awake night after night trying to
think it out, and that often he is des bleedzed
to stop in his tracks a whole spell in de middle
of his work and wrastle wid dat sum."
" The old rapscallion ! " laughed Shelby
Letcher. " Well, I can testify to his stopping
in the middle of his work. You can see him
almost any sunny day out there in the garden
standing stock-still, propped up on the handle
of his hoe. But he don't seem to be wrastling
with anything. He seems to be asleep usually."
" He says," Margaret continued, " that he
has n't had a good night's sleep nor done a
good day's work since Mr. Garrard gave him
that sum, but that he knows he can find the
answer, and is going to do it yet, even if he
has to quit taking time to sleep and eat at all."
" And work," added Hugh.
"And what was the sum?" asked Shelby
Letcher. " Did he tell you ? "
" Oh, yes, after insisting that if I knew the
answer I was not to enlighten him. The prob
lem, in his own words, was this : ' A man, he
"Very, Very Nice, or Horrid" 47
went up in a b'loon. Atter while de man, he
shot off his pistol. Well, suh, de bullit en de
soun' uv de pistol, dey bofe hit de groun' at de
ve'y same time. How high wuz de b'loon? ' '
" Sid," said Shelby Letcher, after the round
of laughter with which this was received,
" I '11 have to forbid you associating with my
negroes if you are going to disable them with
such problems as that."
" Don't you think that Mr. Garrard ought to
go to Uncle Minus and confess that it was only
a joke?"
Margaret began the sentence as if addressing
it to Shelby Letcher and ended it with her
eyes fixed on Sid Garrard.
Sid, who had laughed heartily at her excel
lent imitation of Minus, shook his head.
" No, no, Miss Helm ! Uncle Minus would
never forgive me now, and there 's too good a
friendship between us to be sacrificed in that
way."
Afterwards it occurred to him to wonder
why Miss Helm herself, taking Minus's troubles
so to heart, had not explained to the old fellow
the trick that had been played on him, and he
finally decided that she had not done so be
cause of a delicate consideration for the man
48 The Opponents
who had played the trick. It was a little thing,
but it was more than a little significant of her
character, was his verdict. " That girl," he
concluded, " is as fine as she looks."
After supper there were smoking and chat
ting on the veranda. Sid and Hugh played a
little on the mandolins; two or three young
men called ; and a few minutes later Florence
slipped through the open parlor window to the
piano, beckoning Sid to follow, and soon to
the music of piano and mandolin couples were
waltzing through the long hall and wide parlor.
Margaret was in great demand as a partner,
though hardly more than pink-cheeked Mrs.
Letcher, who insisted that dancing kept her
young. Even old Shelby Letcher, who smoked
and looked on from the veranda, finally knocked
the ashes from his pipe and scraped gallantly
up to Margaret.
" As Minus says," he bowed, " I have n't
4 shook my foot ' for twenty years, but I 'd
confess myself an ungalvanizable mummy if I
couldn't turn a waltz with such a dancer as
this lady."
Margaret's pleased, girlish laugh and cour
tesy, so different from the dignity of her manner
to himself, was not lost on Sid Garrard.
"Very, Very Nice, or Horrid" 49
"There's one thing certain, Florence," he
abruptly remarked : " a fellow never is in such
high favor among your sex as when he is a
very young boy or a very old man."
Florence turned her head to him with a
quick laugh.
" Then what have you to complain of, Sid ? "
" That I am at that most uninteresting age
to you all, twenty-five."
" Don't tell your age then, Sid," she confi
dentially advised, " and don't tell the girls
you think yourself uninteresting to us : they
would n't believe you."
" I don't know that I believed it myself not
so long ago."
" Who is she this time, Sid, and what has
she been doing to you?" with affected sym
pathy.
" Oh, let up on that sort of thing, Florence.
Do you suppose a fellow never outgrows
anything?"
" Don't be in a hurry to outgrow things,
Sid. We could n't do without you, just as
you are."
He played waltz after waltz with Florence,
his eyes following the lithe grace of Margaret's
form as she danced from parlor to hall and his
4
50 The Opponents
ears intent for every note of her mellow laugh
ter as she disappeared beyond the line of his
vision in the hall or on the veranda. Finally
he sprang from his chair, shoving Hugh into
it. " Play awhile," he said, " and let me try a
round or two."
He went straight over to Margaret Helm,
tapped the shoulder of the man she was danc
ing with, and with hardly an interruption of the
waltz, took his place as he stepped aside.
" I see you have already become reconciled
to our custom of ' breaking in,' " he said,
" though you did seem rather surprised when
Bob Nixon first tried it with you to-night."
" Did you notice that ? " she smiled. " Though
I had heard of the custom, I was surprised, at
first, by its novelty and abruptness."
" I could see it was new to you."
" Yes ; it was my first experience."
" I cannot understand why, even if the cus
tom was unknown there before, it did not ori
ginate instantly and spontaneously wherever
you have danced."
" Evidently," and there was an indulgent
curve of the tantalizing lips, " you have other
customs here not so exceptional as ' breaking
in.' "
"Very, Very Nice, or Horrid" 51
"Yes; we are given to speaking the truth
freely and fearlessly."
She did not seem to consider it worth a reply,
and he guided her through the hall to the
veranda.
" I had begun to think," he said, " that if I
was to see anything of you again I should
probably have to hang around the post-office
and take my chance of another opportunity to
hold your horse."
She looked at him a moment before she
replied, and there was a play about her lips
which he knew was bewitching, even though he
doubted that its meaning was entirely flattering
to himself.
" I should hope not," she said ; " for I am
sure you dance quite as well as you hold
horses."
The response was another disappointment to
Sid. There was nothing in the tone or in the
words to indicate that she realized how com
pletely the first formal barriers to a delightful
intimacy had been, or should have been, de
molished by the manner of their meeting at
the post-office. He had even put his hand in
his pocket with the purpose of introducing as
an exhibit accompanying his next remarks the
52 The Opponents
coin which she had given him, but as she spoke
he withdrew his hand, empty. Clearly such
remarks would be, at least for the present,
wasted. He restrained them and forced a
platitude.
"You are fond of dancing?" he asked.
" Oh ! " she said, her foot tapping the floor
and the rhythm of the waltz seeming to pulse
to the very tips of the ribbons at her waist and
throat, " is there any one who is not? "
Mrs. Letcher appeared in the door, laughing
and fanning, after a waltz with Nixon. The
impetus of the music was still in her motion ;
she held out her hands to Margaret; in an
instant the two women were in each other's
arms and were waltzing the length of the
veranda.
Sid, with a laugh, caught Nixon and swung
into the measure.
" I say, Nix," he asked, " is the New
Woman to dispense with man even in the
dance?"
As he drove home, his mare was allowed to
pick her own way. The reins were relaxed in
one hand, while with the other he twisted
abstractedly an unlighted cigar between his
teeth. The evening had not been what it should
"Very, Very Nice, or Horrid" 53
have been. His acquaintance with Margaret
Helm had not advanced as he had expected it
to do.
" Did you have a pleasant time last night,
Sid?" Kate Cockerill asked at breakfast.
Sid carefully buttered a roll before he re
plied :
" You know you wanted me to try to describe
her yesterday, Kit."
"Her?"
" Miss Margaret Helm. You questioned me
about her complexion, her height, her hair,
her eyes. But you omitted the most impor
tant item her mouth. If I could describe
her mouth, I might describe Margaret Helm.
It is of many shapes, that play one into
another. It is rather large. Its color is a
warm rose. And, then, it is a mouth which
always seems to be saying something, or to
have just said something, even when she
is not talking. Some of these writers com
pare mouths to bows. Well, hers sometimes
looks like the prettiest bow just after it has
shot at you its keenest arrow. So far as I
know, she never really said any such thing,
but my most distinct memory of her mouth
now is that it had just addressed me in some
54 The Opponents
such words as these : ' Little boys should be
good!'"
" Oh ! " laughed Kate. " I am going to call
on her at once and see for myself. I 'm sure
from your account of her that she is either
very, very nice, or horrid."
A HOUSE IS PAINTED
KATE called that day, and Sid accompanied
her.
" Well," he said, as they drove away, " I
don't think I need to ask you whether you
found her very, very nice, or horrid."
" No ; I really believe, Sid, she is as nice as
you imagined the others at first."
" There are no others."
" There never are ! "
" I 'm glad, Kit, that I 'm not disappointed in
you : I should have been disappointed in you
if you had not found her nice. I don't care to
admit the right of any one but myself to find
her horrid."
" And I 'm glad that you 're glad you 're not
disappointed in me. She impresses me as a
girl that women and the nicest men will al
ways think nice."
" Nice ! nice ! What a glib little word, and
what a lot of things not in the dictionary you
56 The Opponents
women mean by it! And how easily you
prove that I 'm not one of the nicest men ! "
" I don't see."
"Don't I reserve the right to think her
horrid?"
" But were n't you glad that I was not disap
pointed in her?"
" I have always struggled under the handi
cap of a too clever sister."
Thus began a summer that had been alto
gether unprecedented in the life of Sidney Gar-
rard. From his boyhood regarded almost as
one of the Letcher family, few were the days
after Margaret Helm's coming when he did not
take advantage of these terms of intimacy.
" Come oftener and stay longer," had immemo-
rially been a phrase which Shelby Letcher
employed on the departure of visitors whom
he liked. It had been addressed to Sid many
a time, but not until this summer had he ever
been impelled momentarily to differentiate it
from others of Mr. Letcher's stock phrases,
such as, " We 're needing rain," or " The worst
Democrat is better than the best Republican."
Now, however, as Sid heard the familiar vale
diction, on more than one occasion he glanced
into the deep-set eyes of the old gentleman in
A House is Painted 57
search of a twinkle of new significance, as ready
to meet it, if he had found it, with an answer
ing twinkle of frank comprehension.
But, much as he saw of the Letchers, he saw
far less of Margaret Helm than he wished to
see or, at least, far less in the way he wished
to see her. He found little opportunity to mo
nopolize her, as he had always inclined to mo
nopolize the girl he liked best, or thought he
liked best, for the time. When he was in Mar
garet's company, others usually shared that
privilege. Hugh and Florence were to be
taken into consideration. Mrs. Letcher still
accounted herself, and was accounted by them,
one of " the young people." Even old Shelby
Letcher, prone as he had always been to talk
politics, seemed more partial than ever to Sid's
society since Sid's society now usually included
Margaret Helm's society. Besides, the Letch
ers' had long been such a popular resort among
the young folks of the neighborhood that old
Shelby had dubbed his house " Letcher Tav
ern," and since Margaret's coming this popu
larity had so increased that Shelby canvassed
the advisability of expanding Letcher Tavern
into Letcher Caravansary.
Letcher Tavern was now the centre of much
58 The Opponents
gayety, and Sid Garrard and his mandolin per
force contributed their part, notwithstanding
his preference for a quieter summer. Here
originated many picnics and excursions through
the countryside. Here were tennis tourna
ments, garden parties, house parties. Always
when nothing else was doing there were
evening callers, many of whom came to supper
and some of whom stayed to breakfast. Sid
Garrard accepted the situation, whereas he had
formerly been accustomed to make it. He
was not contented with it, yet he preferred
it to any which he was now able to make.
His confidence in his powers and resources
suffered. He was no more a monopolist than
were any of the other young men who fre
quented Letcher Tavern. He had succeeded
in securing but one " buggy-ride" with Mar
garet Helm alone all that summer.
But another and different pleasure was some
times his, thanks to Kate Cockerill. That was
the responsibility, the dignity, the new attitude
of consideration imposed upon him as host to
Margaret in his own house. Margaret and
Kate had soon become friends, and several
times Kate had Margaret and Florence with
her for a day or two. Once she had Margaret
A House is Painted 59
alone to spend the night with her, a night
when Sid lay long awake as the leaves at his
windows whispered exquisite things to him.
To see Margaret Helm, bright and happy, in
his own home, to sit with her at his own table,
to know that she was asleep under his own
roof, these were new and subtly tender sen
sations which Sid Garrard could not have
expressed as well as the whispering leaves
expressed them for him. Kate had not been
a friend of any of the girls whom Sid had at
various periods of his life " monopolized ; "
and none of them had ever been her guest for
a night. Besides, Sid was convinced now that
he had never known a real girl before he met
Margaret Helm.
When Margaret left next morning, after that
first night she spent with Kate Cockerill, Sid
strolled away through the pasture until, coming
to a clump of oaks, he threw himself on the
thick grass in the shade, where he lay on his
back, his hands beneath his head and his eyes
to the sky. High above the white cloud wisps
drifted and the sun hung far and contracted,
as if with eye half closed against the very
brilliance of the day he had created. A haze of
heat shimmered over the stretching corn-fields
60 The Opponents
and the rim of distant woodland. Somewhere
vibrated the notes of a yellow-breasted lark,
not the ringing challenge which he sounds from
the sky, but the quivering trill which he ripples
from thorn-bush or mullein spike, the veritable
voice of midsummer noontide. Nearer, more
pervasive were the drone of bees and the brows
ing of cattle, and nearer still Dodona's oracle
of the night before murmured, as then, in the
whispering leaves.
Later Sid took a long walk over the farm,
and was surprised to note, notwithstanding
Wash's management, how much room for im
provement there was on every hand. That
afternoon Kate Cockerill came upon Sid stand
ing on the lawn, his legs spread wide, his hands
in his pockets, gazing reflectively at the house.
" How long has it been since it was painted,
do you reckon, Kate?" he asked.
" I 'm sure I don't know. Oh ! yes, I do,
too ! It was the same year the Letchers'
house was painted, so I 've heard them say."
" And when was that? "
"In in oh! what year was it? At any
rate, it was what Mr. Letcher calls the year that
Samuel J. Tilden was elected President."
"So? From the looks of the paint are you
A House is Painted 61
sure it was n't when Andrew Jackson was elected
President? But it's a shame, isn't it, I've
let the old place run down like this? Why, it
simply is n't fit for a girl like like you to
live in, Kit!"
Kate stooped to break off a calycanthus bud,
and back of the smile which she gave the pur
ple flower was a resolve to have Margaret
Helm spend another night with her at the first
opportunity.
And when, two weeks later, Margaret did
spend another night with her, carpenters,
painters, and paper-hangers had renovated the
place, and Sid Garrard played the host with a
new dignity and heard a new note in the song
of the leaves at his windows.
Nor did his interest in making a suitable
habitation for a girl like Kate stop here. He
was surprised to discover how much in need of
repairs were the fences, and he daily astonished
as well as delighted Wash now by taking some
active part in the management of the farm.
Indeed, so much of his time was given to this new
impetus that even his visits to Letcher Tavern
became a little less frequent noticeably so,
perhaps, for it was during these weeks that
Shelby Letcher, in bidding him good-night,
62 The Opponents
was once heard to add a qualification to his
usually unqualified formula:
" Come oftener and stay longer and why
the Tom Walker have I got to tell you to,
Sid?"
And it was during these weeks that on at
least two occasions Kate Cockerill, finding her
self alone with Margaret Helm, suddenly and
without any apparent reason in particular, threw
her arms around her and kissed her with
" Oh, Margaret, you are such a dear ! "
It was about this time also that Kate in her
chats with Sid began to note in his philosophy
a strain, if not of humility, of a certain lack of
self-confidence, which was absolutely new in
his manifestation of himself, either real or su
perficial. It had never been apparent in his
devotions to any of the heroines of his " buggy-
rides." On the contrary, he had always borne
himself in those affairs with a cheerful self-suf
ficiency and an unconscious reliance on the
adequacy of his own openly asserted interest
to command a response in kind that were at
once very fine to see and very effective in prov
ing their power.
But it was not thus that he always bore him
self this summer.
A House is Painted 63
" Kit," he abruptly said one afternoon, as
he lay in a hammock, while his sister sat near,
looking over the newspaper which he had
thrown aside, " do you believe in that old
notion that a man can't be certain whether a
woman will accept or refuse him until he asks
her?"
Kate seemed to finish reading a paragraph
before she turned from the paper and replied :
" Why, yes ; that is, in many cases. Many
women themselves never know whether they
will accept or refuse a man until he asks
them."
" Oh ! I 'm not speaking of them. Many of
them don't know even after a man has asked
them. I 'm referring to well, women who
have minds of their own and can make them
up for themselves."
" But it is not a question of mind alto
gether with the women you are referring
to."
" Well, whatever it is, don't you suppose a
man with a head of his own may always know
the answer before he asks for it if it 's No ? "
" But has a man, under those conditions,
always a head of his own?"
" Perhaps I might use some of your own
64 The Opponents
words and say that his knowledge of the situa
tion is not a question of head altogether.
Anyway, he knows when it 's No without
asking."
" Then why does he ask? "
" Sometimes he doesn't. When he does
why? Well, why do things with heads insist
on butting them against walls ? Why do things
with wings fly straight into flames? Why does
a fellow who knows there is no hope still hope
there is hope? Why has he just got to make
her tell him what he knows already? Why
has he got to talk to somebody about it, and
most of all to her who cares least about it?
Now, Mrs. Kitty, if you don't understand don't
say that I have n't done my best to enlighten
you."
He got up and started away. Kate, whose
tone had been one of levity and whose smile
had been that with which she usually bantered
him, suddenly sobered and laid a detaining
hand on his arm for a moment as he passed
her.
" I think I do understand, Sid," she said
gently. " But don't be too sure you do, and
don't be too impatient. Girls are not like
men."
A House is Painted 65
" Oh, girls ! " loftily. " Bother girls ! Of
course they are not like men. And any par
ticular girl she is liable to be not even like
girls, is n't she ? " and he walked away whis
tling shrilly to a long-eared hound that loped
across the lawn to join him.
VI
AT TUNSTALL PADDOCKS
ONE afternoon in the middle of August Kate
Cockerill and Margaret Helm, Hugh Letcher
and Sidney Garrard, returning from a drive
along the Old Mill Road, and being overtaken
by a sudden storm, stopped at Tunstall Pad
docks for shelter. Tunstall Paddocks had once
been a stock farm of some celebrity, but for
years now its owner, Morgan Tunstall, had not
lived on the place, except for a month or two
occasionally in the summer ; having long since
sold out the strain of thoroughbreds which had
made the reputation of the farm, and having
left it in the hands of a none too energetic
" manager," who was satisfied if it produced
average crops of grain and hay, and enough
cattle and hogs for his own use.
Kate Cockerill and her party had hardly
taken possession of the broad porch before
the storm broke. A servant, in answer to
their ring, had informed them that Mr. Barnes,
At Tunstall Paddocks 67
the manager, was in Plover, while Mrs. Barnes
was in bed with a sick headache, but hoped
they would make themselves at home; and
there were melons and buttermilk in the
spring-house, and cider and blackberry cordial
in the dining-room.
Kate ran up to see Mrs. Barnes, and return
ing in a few minutes found the others of the
party seated on the porch, while the wind and
rain were swaying the trees and the water was
gushing down and overrunning the gutters.
" What a splendid old place it is ! " Margaret
Helm was saying, as she looked out at the
great forest trees and beyond to the meadows,
undulating dimly through the rain like billows
in a fog.
" What a splendid old place it has been, and
could be made again ! " Hugh qualified. " It's
a pity it does n't belong to some one who would
take more interest in it."
" Think what it would be," Sid suggested,
" if Morgan Tunstall took the interest in it that
he takes in politics."
"Is Mr. Tunstall a politician?" Margaret
asked.
" Politician ! " exclaimed Hugh. " Abso
lutely, irretrievably. He lives on politics. He
68 The Opponents
has taken to politics as some men take to drink
or gambling. They say it is his one passion,
and that he cares for nothing else."
"Is he successful?" Margaret continued.
" I don't remember to have heard of him."
" He lost his first game, I believe," Hugh
replied ; " but since that he always wins. At
least, so father says, and father is a great au
thority on the life and times of Morgan Tun-
stall. But Tunstall has not sought office for
himself. He does n't seem to care for it. He
plays the game of politics because it gives him
something to do and affords him a chance for
the exercise of power. He plays it for the
game, not for the stakes. In short, Miss Mar
garet, if you will pardon my illustration, he
plays it as a game of chess rather than as a
game of poker."
"Which isn't a good illustration, Hugh,"
Sid dissented ; " for if Miss Margaret will also
pardon me (I know Kate will, as she plays a
good hand herself), there isn't a greater game,
as a game, than this same poker. The master
poker player must not only play cards, but he
must play people in a superlative degree, and
it 's the same with the game of politics, as you
define it, is n't it? At any rate, I believe, with
At Tunstall Paddocks 69
your father, that Morgan Tunstall is a great
man, and that it is a pity he does n't go in for
the stakes and take some of the offices."
" Where does he live, and why does he
abandon such a home as this?" were Mar
garet's next questions.
" He lives in Louisville," Hugh answered,
" though once in two or three years he spends
a few weeks here. As to why he abandoned
the place well, there is a story connected
with that."
" Oh, a story ! " Margaret exclaimed expect
antly. " Could there be a better time and
place for a story?" drawing her chair an inch
nearer Hugh's.
" Unfortunately, there is not enough known
about it to make a very effective story. All
that is clear is that Tunstall married, in his
early twenties, a Louisville girl, and brought
her here to live. But she did not like the
country, and in less than a year he took her
back to Louisville, where he provided a hand
some home for her. They were supposed to
be happy, but one morning the town was star
tled to find that Mrs. Tunstall had eloped with
Julius Knowles, a well-bred and popular fellow
who had never been suspected of being a
70 The Opponents
scoundrel. They say Tunstall took it coolly.
He got a divorce, and when the couple married
and actually had the effrontery to return to
Louisville and brazen it out by living there, he
never betrayed that he was aware of their exist
ence. He has never made his home at Tunstall
Paddocks since."
" It is a pitiful, horrible story," was Marga
ret's comment, with a soft gravity of tone and
face.
" It is terrible," echoed Kate.
" One of the contemptible things about the
case I have not mentioned," Hugh went on.
" As I said, Tunstall acted coolly and ignored
the pair when they returned to Louisville, and
this, to some extent, was held against him. It
is, or used to be, the unwritten law of this
country that the one thing left to be done by
a man wronged as Tunstall was wronged was
to kill the man who wronged him. Because
Tunstall paid no attention to this law, I have
heard that he was long suspected by many of
cowardice."
" No one who knows Morgan Tunstall," Sid
declared, " would believe there is a drop of
cowardly blood in his body. No one here has
believed it since he defied that mob and saved
At Tunstall Paddocks 71
the life of that negro boy whom the badly
scared sheriff of this county was about to sur
render to the lynchers."
" But many believed it at first, Sid. That
was why, when he took up politics as a pas
time, he lost his first game."
" I don't see how any one who ever saw him
could doubt Mr. Tunstall's courage," said Kate.
" Come and look at his portrait, Margaret."
The two girls went into the house, and when
they came out a few minutes later Margaret's
expression was one of unusual thoughtfulness.
"Well, what did you make of him?" Hugh
asked her.
She drew her wrap around her shoulders
more closely and answered a little absently,
as if to some self-inquisition rather than to a
question of another :
" I have never seen a face that impressed me
more with its strength and power. I should
not like to be either the man or the mob to
cross the will of Mr. Tunstall."
" That 's a good portrait, and you are a good
reader of faces, Miss Margaret," Sid testified.
VII
THE HEAD AND THE WALL
THE rain soon passed, and the party drove to
the Garrards' for dinner. Hugh Letcher and
Kate Cockerill were dropped here, but Sid,
who was to go on to Letcher Tavern for Flor
ence, turned to Margaret Helm on the front
seat beside him.
" It is just the time of day for a delightful
drive," he said ; " do you know of any reason
why I should have this one all to myself? "
" None in the world," she smiled, " unless
Kate has some other use for me."
Mrs. Cockerill, thus appealed to, ordered
Margaret to keep her seat, and Sid drove off
with a triumphant stir in his blood. It was
rare that he could find an opportunity to be
alone with Margaret, and it was rarer that she
so readily acquiesced in it.
He vigorously shook up the horses, as if to
quicken them to the new momentum pulsing
into the hands that held the reins, but he soon
The Head and the Wall 73
pulled up to a lazy jog. The road to Letcher
Tavern was all too short, and he wished to
make the most of it.
There were other reasons why one, even if
he did not have Margaret Helm beside him,
should not hasten over that bit of road. The
limestone macadam, washed clean by the rain,
was as smooth as asphalt. The foliage of the
trees, bushes, and vines that lined it was glis
tening wet and sighed fitfully the ecstasy of its
rejuvenation, and there were new notes in the
throats of birds that might have been caught
from this ecstasy of the leaves. The sun was
sinking in a marvellously clarified sky of blue
and green, without a dash of other color to blur
its brilliant purity. There was an answering
purity in the cooled air, which was charged,
besides, with the insidious and tonic odors of
drenched woods and fields.
At a certain point on that stretch of road a
great wild-grape vine sprawls up by the bole
of a tall ash and weaves a wide arch across the
pike into the branches of the trees on the other
side. It was just here, Sid Garrard always
remembers when he sees this arch, that Mar
garet Helm turned to him with a thrillingly
sweet and radiant face which he was never
74 The Opponents
to forget It appeared to have bloomed, like
the scene around them, out of the storm, the
freshness of its coloring, the wet scarlet of the
lips, the rain-swept sky-light of the eyes, even
the hair, coiling at the neck and massed heavily
over the brow, seemingly darkened and damp
ened by the exhilarating humidity of the atmos
phere. It was a face which told him that she
had never before liked him as much as now.
" So you did make the amende to Uncle
Minus," she smiled.
" Uncle Minus? " blankly. " Oh ! about the
balloon problem ? "
"Yes."
" How did you know?" he laughed.
" He told me only this morning. I noticed
that he had been sitting on the garden fence
for a long time it must have been at least an
hour. His head was propped in his hands and
he was so still that I might have believed him
asleep if he had not twice got down and care
fully made some curious lines on the ground
with his toe. Finally I yielded to my curiosity
and went out to him and asked him what was
the matter.
" ' Hit 's de same de matter whut 's been de
matter ever sence Mr. Sid tole me 'bout dat
The Head and the Wall 75
b'loon, Miss Marg'rit,' he said. ' I des tryin'
to work out how high dat b'loon wuz when dat
pistol went off da' 's all.'
" I asked him if he was sure Mr. Sid himself
could work out that, and he said :
" ' I dunno 'bout dat. Maybe he kin en
maybe he cain't. Mr. Sid, he come roun' yere
t' other day en he 'lowed he wuz des foolin'
when he give me dat sum, en he tole me 't wa' n't
no use fer me to pester no furder 'bout it, caze
he des made it up hisse'f to ketch me, en it
cain't be worked out nohow. But I up en tole
him to go 'long. Dah wuz de sum, en it boun'
to have er answer. Dah wuz de b'loon, dah
wuz de pistol fired off, dah wuz de bullit en de
soun' hittin' de groun' at de same time how
high wuz de b'loon ? Nobody cain't deny de
b'loon wuz so high when de pistol went off:
how high wuz she? Maybe Mr. Sid done fool
hisse'f, but dey cain't nobody fool me 'bout
sums. Ev'y sum, hit des bleedzed to have er
answer, en dat b'loon, hit sholy is a sum, en I
gwine work it out, don't keer whut Mr. Sid say,
ef de good Lawd spar' me bref en strenk.'
" I 'm afraid it is impossible to break him of
the habit of trying to find out how high the
balloon was," Margaret concluded.
76 The Opponents
" Yes," Sid agreed, laughing, for the second
time, at her faithful imitation of Minus, " he
thinks I builded bigger than I knew when I
' made up ' that problem, and I only won his
contempt when I tried to convince him it could
not be solved."
They had now come out on the stretch of
road that lay for a mile along the bank of the
little river. To the left the level rays of the low
sun lit rolling leagues of grassland, dotted by
an occasional spreading tree, or cluster of trees,
and marked by long lines of intersecting fences.
Nearer and to the right the thick fringe of
shrubbery that edged the river and hung over
the water threw upon the stilled stream the
first cool, brooding shadows of evening. Far
ther ahead the surface of the river widened in
a sun-smitten sheet of silver, extending, it
seemed, to the very windows of Letcher Tavern,
which shone as if with the same brilliance.
Sid Garrard had pulled the horses to a slow
walk.
" But it would n't be safe," he said, turning
his head and looking at her with sudden seri
ousness, " to credit me with any belated con
sideration for Uncle Minus in confessing the
trick I had played him. I tried to undo that
The Head and the Wall 77
trick simply because you disapproved of it.
Do you remember, when you told the story,
the evening of the day I first met you ? "
She colored a little.
" Yes that is, I remember I told the story."
" And I remember you did n't like my part
in it. That was the most distinct impression it
made on me, because, I suppose, from the very
first I have wished to please you, not displease
you. Perhaps because I so much wished to
please you was one reason why I have done little
but displease you."
She was rosy now, and as serious as he.
" No ! no ! " she protested with agitation.
" That is not true ! How could it be? I I
have not taken it on myself to be either pleased
or displeased with what does not concern me."
" But everything I have done since I met you
has concerned you that is, in the sense that
you have been the motive of everything I have
done. You know you must know that
from the day I first saw you I have thought
only of you only of how to "
" Don't, please ! You must not ! " making a
quick gesture that was at once imploring and
imperative. " I do not wish to hear."
" Yes, I know. I am only displeasing you
78 The Opponents
again. But you are going away soon, and I
must have it out, though I am perfectly aware
there is no chance for me yet."
"Why would you spoil everything?" she
said sadly, a little petulantly. " I did so wish
us to continue to be good friends ! "
" Good friends ! We have never been good
friends. It was impossible, when I loved you
so openly and madly from the first, and it will
always be impossible because I can never for
get my love for you long enough to compro
mise on friendship. I want your love, Margaret,
nothing less. I know I cannot have it now,
but "
" Oh, love ! love ! " she interrupted passion
ately, her cheeks glowing, her eyes flashing.
" I do not wish to hear the word. I will have
nothing to do with it ! I am so young yet, and
there are so many other things that come be
fore love. There is no man living that I would
allow myself to love now ! " Her lips were
half parted as she finished speaking ; she threw
out both hands in a swift, outspreading motion,
as her eyes looked out exultantly on the beau
tiful world before her and her nostrils drew in
its exhilarating atmosphere.
" Ordinarily," Sid droned, " I 'd say it would
The Head and the Wall 79
be a poor sort of love if a girl could control it
at will ; but you, Margaret well, you are not
to be classed ordinarily, and I 'm not sure that
anything is impossible with you now. Any
way, I shall wait with the rest until you have
had the other things, and when the time comes
I shall take my chance with the rest if I can't
get my way before."
She paid no attention to this. Her breath
ing was still full, her head still high, her eyes
still victoriously penetrating the beautiful world
beyond the track of the silvered river.
" When the time comes ! " was Sid's thought
as he shook up the horses. " The glory of that
time to the man who comes with it ! But one
thing is certain he will be a man, not a
boy."
VIII
"A YOUNG FOOL"
ONE passing along that road on an afternoon
about a week later might have inferred that
some festivity was in progress at Letcher Tav
ern. At one point of the shaded lawn there
was a group of a dozen garrulous and laughing
young people, and scattered in various direc
tions under the trees were several couples, less
audible. Old Shelby Letcher, with his chair
tilted against an oak, was delivering a mono
logue, emphasized by gestures with the pipe
which he had taken temporarily from his
mouth, and addressing his remarks especially
to Sid Garrard, who maintained a listening
attitude, but whose eyes sought the larger
and noisier group in the babble of which the
voice of Margaret Helm, though unusually soft
and low, was easily distinguishable. Here and
there were two or three negroes serving light
refreshments.
But it was not a prearranged affair of any
kind. It was the last day of Margaret Helm's
"A Young Fool" 81
visit to Kentucky, and Margaret's friends, with
the Letchers' friends, had simply come over,
and out, and in, to say good-bye.
Sid Garrard, since he had " had it out " with
Margaret a week before, had not again verged
on sentimental or even personal ground. He
knew that he could only lose by trying to force
the issue further at present, and there was
nothing for him to do but, as he would have
expressed it, " give her her head." He had
set himself to continue, as before, their usual
friendly relations, and he had been consum
mately seconded by Margaret. Perhaps Kate
Cockerill may have suspected the real situation,
but beyond her surely there could have been
no other unless it was Florence Letcher.
To venture an opinion on that point would
hardly be profitable ; for it is not given to a
masculine mind to fathom the knowledge,
intuitions, or suspicions existing between two
girl intimates. Nevertheless Sid inwardly chafed
that he had to spend so much of this last after
noon of Margaret's stay listening to Shelby
Letcher's well-worn political dogmas, and that
even could he escape these he could only be
one of the score that were now making merry
at Letcher Tavern.
6
82 The Opponents
The political dogmas were interrupted by
the arrival of two men who drove up, and,
leaving their buggy at the gate, walked
with a business-like directness toward Shelby
Letcher. One of these was John W. Driggs,
familiarly and admiringly called "Jawn W."
He was a well-made, ill-dressed fellow of fifty,
with a shrewd, firm face, shaved except at the
cleft between chin and lower lip, from which
grew a pointed tuft of gray hair, above which
his upper lip closed down in a clean, almost
straight line, ending at the corners in two
little dimples that gave an inconsistently cher
ubic and youthful touch to his countenance.
" Jawn W." was the head of the Democratic
County Committee and had long been the
local party leader and boss. His companion
was Squire Breckinridge Bodine, who, not
being able to pass the ladies on the lawn
without a great deal of bowing and beaming,
and without stopping to bend low over Flor
ence's hand, was a quarter of a minute behind
Driggs in joining Shelby Letcher.
"Ain't that Jawn W. and Breck Bodine?"
asked Mr. Letcher, swinging his pipe toward
the two and cutting off a sentence invocative
of the Resolutions of '98. " I wonder," raising
"A Young Fool" 83
his voice that Driggs might not miss the words,
" what skulduggery Jawn W. is up to now.
I say, Sid, would you mind stepping around
the house and unchaining old Rosin?"
Shelby Letcher was one of Driggs' greatest
admirers, and it was his way of showing his
admiration to profess to Driggs himself much
contempt and respect for Driggs' powers of
rascality.
Driggs came up, both dimples going, and
was received with a vigorous hand by Mr.
Letcher. As Squire Bodine followed, Mr.
Letcher called to a negro who was passing with
a tray.
" Bring that over here, Sam. What is it? "
" Lemonade, sir," the boy answered, as he
approached.
" Lem lemonade ! Listen to that, gentle
men. Lemonade for Jawn W. and Breck
Bodine ! Sam, will you never learn any
manners? Water the peonies with it and "
He went over to Sam and gave him a few
directions in a lowered voice; then turning to
Driggs and Bodine again, as Sam hastened
toward the house, said :
"Gentlemen, I hope you will excuse Sam.
He 's one of these new niggers, and what 's
84 The Opponents
worse, was born over in Indiana, or Illinois
somewhere, and you all know very well you
can't expect a darkey raised across the Ohio
River to have any real nigger breeding."
" Hah ! don't give yourself any uneasiness,
Mr. Letcher," Squire Bodine protested, fan
ning his hot face with his hat. " Everybody
knows that no Letcher Tavern darkey ever
makes a miscue among gentlemen ; though I
can't see that it was any particular fault of
Sam's this time, as he was makin' for the
ladies when you called him, and I have under
stood that ladies have a taste for lemonade."
" Well, Squire, whosever fault it was, I
promise you it shall soon be remedied."
" In the mean time, Mr. Letcher," Driggs
suggested, "is Hugh at home? We'd like
particularly to have a few words with him this
evenin', on the matter I mentioned to you in
Yardley the other day."
" Why, yes, he 's here somewheres or other.
O Hugh ! Sid, look around and find that
young man, won't you? "
Sid found Hugh among those who had
gathered about Margaret Helm, and send
ing him to his father, took the desirable seat
near Margaret which Hugh vacated. There
"A Young Fool" 85
was no opportunity, however, for such engross
ment in Margaret's society that Sid did not
see Driggs, Bodine, and Hugh walk off to a far
corner of the grounds, where they sat down
and engaged in a conversation that seemed
principally conducted by Driggs. When Sam
reappeared with a differently colored set of
glasses on his tray, he was directed by Shelby
Letcher to the far corner, and when he left the
far corner he evidently took a request to Mr.
Letcher which the old gentleman complied with
by getting up and going over to the far corner
himself. There was much more talk, Shelby
Letcher now apparently leading ; finally Driggs
rose and shook Hugh's hand, after which he
also shook Mr. Letcher's, a performance that
was repeated immediately, though more ef
fusively, by Squire Bodine. Sam was now
again summoned, with another set of glasses ;
Shelby Letcher, holding a glass in one hand
and his pipe in the other, made a short speech,
after which a toast was drunk, clearly to Hugh
Letcher, and the party, all smiling now, moved
slowly across the lawn toward the gate.
As they were passing within a few yards of
the group in which Sid Garrard was sitting,
Squire Bodine, with an eye ever to the ladies,
86 The Opponents
lifted his hat from his head and, his broad face
radiant with the situation in which he found
himself, bowed impressively and proclaimed :
" Ladies and gentlemen, I have the high
honor to be the first to announce er, ladies
and gentlemen, I am most happy in being the
first to enjoy the privilege and distinction of
presenting to you our next Senator in the
State Legislature, the Hon. Hugh Letcher."
This was received with exclamations of sur
prise and congratulation and with a round of
hand-clapping which Squire Bodine at once
took to himself as a tribute to his oratorical
powers, responsive to which, bubbling over
with satisfaction and reassurances of the truth
of his announcement, he was the next instant
in the thick of the crowd, grasping hands right
and left, especially hands of the ladies.
Hugh, besieged for explanation, laughed,
with a gesture toward Driggs, who, ill at ease
in such company, was silently standing at some
distance, by the side of Shelby Letcher.
Driggs was dumb, and Shelby Letcher
undertook to amplify Squire Bodine's an
nouncement.
" This is all there is to it, my friends," he
said, extending his pipe out over his auditors.
" A Young Fool " 87
" Our worthy fellow citizen, Squire Bodine, is,
I am afraid, a little precipitate. Hugh is not
elected yet he is not even nominated, but
the er the executive heads of the party,
through their chief and representative, Jawn
W. Driggs, Chairman of the Luttroll County
Democratic Committee, have expressed a de
sire that my son consent to become a candi
date before the convention for the nomination,
with kindly personal assurances from Mr.
Driggs that the young man will enlist such
influential interests in his support that his
chances for nomination by the convention are
er very promising, very promising in
deed."
" Very promising?" swelled Squire Bodine,
straightening up from a bow he had been mak
ing over Margaret Helm and, in his resentment
of the attempted qualification of his own words,
forgetting to release her hand. ' Lookahere,
Mr. Letcher, you know as well as anybody
that Hugh is done as good as elected that
Jawn W. Driggs is for him, first, last, and all
the time, and that when Jawn W. Driggs says,
' Stick ! ' the convention says, * Stuck ! ' and
that a nomination means an election, hands
down. Ladies and gentlemen, that's all there
88 The Opponents
is to it, and the Hon. Shelby Letcher knows it,
the Hon. Hugh Letcher knows it, and the Hon.
Jawn W. Driggs knows it better 'n anybody."
Again expressions of gratification and con
gratulation were addressed to the future State
Senator, and Sid was standing near Margaret
when, as Hugh approached, she impulsively
stretched out her hand to him.
" I am so glad ! " she exclaimed radiantly.
" I know you will make a splendid record, and
we shall all be proud of you."
"7'd go to the penitentiary, if necessary,
Hugh, instead of to the Legislature," Sid
laughed, " to have such things as that said to
me. And by the way," with a sudden serious
ness, " why can't I go to the Legislature with
you ? I 've been with you in most of your
record-making heretofore. I say, Mr. Driggs,"
the laughter again in his voice, as he turned
abruptly to the county chairman, " Hugh and
I are usually partners in iniquity. Can't you
send me with him to Frankfort ? "
"To the Legislature?" asked Driggs, some
what at a loss how to take this sally of Sid's.
" Yes, sir ; to the Legislature."
Nearly every one was laughing now. The
joke seemed a good one. " Listen to Sid ! "
"A Young Fool" 89
cried out Nixon. " He 's actually putting him
self in the hands of his friends for the Legis
lature ! He '11 be coming out for Governor
soon ! "
"I'd like to suppote you, Sid," responded
Driggs, " but I 'm afraid you 're a little too
late."
" Hugh goes to the Senate," Sid persisted,
" but you Ve still got the place in the House,
have n't you ? "
" Well, you know, Lanagin has been prom
ised well, you know, he 's been a candidate
for the place for several weeks, and I expect
he 's got it nailed down pretty tight by this
time. In fact, Mr. Garrard, I keep toler'bly
well posted on the politics of the county, and
I 'm dead sho that Lanagin already has a ma
jority of the delegates to the convention."
" Why, the delegates have not been selected
yet."
"That don't make no difference, Mr. Gar
rard. The the people are done committed
to Lanagin, and the delegates are bound to be
selected accordin'ly."
" Oh, come off, Sid ! " Squire Bodine put in,
" you know as well as anybody that Jawn W.
Driggs is promised for Lanagin, and that when
90 The Opponents
Jawn W. Driggs says, ' Stick ! ' the convention
says, ' Stuck ! ' "
" Officially," qualified Driggs, " I 'm not for
nobody, but personally I was long ago com
mitted to Lanagin. If you had spoke to me
earlier, it might have been different."
The joke still seemed to be considered a
good one. " I do believe Sid 's in earnest ! "
roared Nixon. Sid glanced around at the
merry faces. They were laughing at the very
thought of his broaching the idea of becoming
a candidate for the Legislature. But Margaret
Helm was not laughing. She was looking from
him to Driggs with wonder and perplexity.
Kate Cockerill was not laughing. Her face
was flushed in resentment of the laughter, and
her eyes were fixed on Sid with a touch of
solicitude in their tender depths. Sid flushed
a little himself, and his jaws hardened. He
turned again to Driggs.
" So you think there would be no chance for
me in your convention, Mr. Driggs? "
" Well, you know everybody has a right to
go before the convention that wants to, Mr.
Garrard ; but what would be the use ? I 'm
givin' it to you as a friend that it is my honest
personal opinion that no man in the county
would have a chance now against Lanagin."
"A Young Fool" 91
" All right," Sid announced with quiet reso
lution ; " then I '11 see what I can do against
Lanagin before the people instead of before
the convention."
" By George, he is in earnest ! " gurgled
Nixon.
" You don't mean to say you '11 run inde
pendent?" replied Driggs in amazement.
" I suppose that 's what you call it," Sid
answered, moving away.
" It 's it 's everlastin' suicide, Sid ! " gasped
Squire Bodine.
" Sid, you 're a young fool ! " pronounced
Shelby Letcher, with unaffected asperity.
Sid was smiling again now. " Well," he
replied, " this is my first appearance in politics
you know "
" And it '11 be yo' last, my boy," interjected
Squire Bodine.
" And I 'm doing the best I know how," Sid
continued ; " and as my first speech, ladies and
gentlemen, I ask everybody to vote for me who
is not committed to somebody else."
" There 's one thing sure, Sid," Nixon bel
lowed, " you 'd win, in spite of all the Lanagins
and the Driggses, if the girls of the county
could vote."
IX
THE ISSUE JOINED
WHEN about four years later Sidney Garrard
announced his candidacy for Congress, there
were few voters in Luttroll County who did
not recall and recount, with some personal
reminiscence, his first race for the Legislature
and the altogether surprising manner in which
he " slipped up " on John W. Driggs and his
man Lanagin. Not many of the Luttroll voters
had taken that race any more seriously than
Nixon had done at the moment when Sid had
so suddenly declared his intention to become
a candidate. It had been looked upon as a
" joke " by the county generally, as it had been
looked upon by most of those who heard his
declaration on that afternoon at Letcher Tavern.
People laughed good-humoredly in his face
wherever he went in his canvass of the district,
but many of those who laughed voted for him
on election day, because of some special rea
son : because he was the friend of the voter ;
The Issue Joined 93
because he was " a clever chap " and " a good
fellow ; " because their votes could not affect
the result, anyway; because, even in a joke,
they liked the spunk of a man who would
" buck " against John W. Driggs and his
machine. Sid Garrard was simply rated as
Sid Garrard, happy-go-lucky, " one of the
boys " even younger than his years, hail fellow
with horses and dogs, but fonder of pretty girls
than he was even of horses and dogs, " popu
lar " among all classes of men, with whom he
was ever ready to give and take a story or a
prank. His candidacy for the Legislature was
considered only as one of his pranks. It was
not taken seriously because Sid himself had
not been known to take anything seriously.
But notwithstanding that Sid knew nearly
every voter in the county and made personal
overtures for his support, and notwithstanding
that he received so many votes for the reasons
already indicated, he could not have been
elected if Driggs and the machine, like the rest
of the county, had not also laughed in his face
and regarded his candidacy a joke. Lanagin,
once nominated, was, as a matter of course,
" as good as elected." Certainly John W.
Driggs did not think it necessary to make any
94 The Opponents
particular effort to defeat such an opponent as
Sid Garrard.
When the count of the ballots showed that
Sid had been actually elected by a scant major
ity, it was considered a bigger joke than ever.
People laughed in his face more heartily than
before. But Driggs did not laugh. No one in
Luttroll County believed that Driggs ever
afterward thought it a laughing matter, or ever
entirely recovered from the blow which his
pride and prestige suffered in Lanagin's inex
cusable defeat.
Before Sid had served out his first term,
however, people quit laughing at him, either
in his face or behind his back. He put the
same energy and enthusiasm into his work at
Frankfort that he had put into his play at
home. He made such a record as a progres
sive, fearless, and clean member of the House
that he had little opposition for re-election,
which he secured after easily beating Lanagin
for the nomination in convention, thus return
ing to the Legislature with unimpeachable cre
dentials of " regularity," indispensable in win
ning his hard fight for the Speakership.
The value of his service as Speaker of the
House of Representatives was disputed. The
The Issue Joined 95
" thick-and-thin " element of his party, " the
fossils," the " old guard," " the machine," the
" Bourbons," the men who believed, like Shelby
Letcher, that the worst Democrat was better
than the best Republican, and yet who could
not have given a more intelligent reason why
they were Democrats than that " the Demo
crats are our people " these and their repre
sentatives in the House were not pleased with
Sidney Garrard's record as Speaker. On the
contrary, there were times when they were
astounded and outraged by his failure to do
what any " good party man " would have done
as a matter of course. He was too unreliable,
too prone to " fly the coop " when his party
needed to count most on his blind loyalty. He
could not be depended on to rule in the inter
est of his party, even on essentially partisan
measures, when such a ruling was all that was
. requisite to put these measures through. Even
when in the last days of the session the cele
brated Redistricting Bill, well known to have
been prepared under the supervision of Morgan
Tunstall himself, the shrewdest party leader in
the State, was rushed through the Senate and
could as easily have been rushed through the
House but for Garrard's obstinacy in refusing
96 The Opponents
to make a new ruling against the rights of the
minority, he persisted in his obstinacy, not
withstanding the fierce denunciations of his
"treachery" which his course provoked, and
was thus responsible for the failure of the bill
which was conceded to embody the ablest
scheme of gerrymandering the State yet de
vised, and which, everybody knew, would un
questionably have prevented the possibility of
an opposition majority in the Legislature.
On the other hand, his course in the Speaker's
chair won him many friends among those Ken-
tuckians whose party affiliation was influenced
by something more than association and pre
judice, bigotry or lack of real conviction, upon
whom the ties of mere party regularity were
becoming loose, and who were beginning to
cast their votes, despite the contempt of the
" party liners," as the involved issue, rather
than the party name and the party hacks,
dictated. These Kentuckians were even then
making themselves felt, however slightly, and
since then they have so increased and have so
asserted themselves that Kentucky cannot
always be counted on with certainty by either
of the old political parties with their appeals to
petty passions and inherited ignorance, and
The Issue Joined 97
with their inspiring aims to put the " ins " out
and the " outs " into offices whose salaries,
small though they may be, are much greater
than most of the incumbents earn or expect to
earn elsewhere.
Sidney Garrard's refusal to consider the
Speakership as first of all a party appendage
and instrument had brought upon him such
criticism and aspersion from those of the " reg
ulars " who have no claims upon any party ex
cept regularity that his term in the Legislature
no sooner expired than, with his spirit of resent
ment and belligerency aroused, he defiantly
announced his purpose to seek an election to
Congress.
Within twenty-four hours after the publica
tion of this announcement Sidney Garrard,
riding by Tunstall Paddocks, was hailed by
Morgan Tunstall and urged to stop and smoke
a cigar with him.
" I wish particularly to have a talk with you,
Sid, and I was going to hunt you up to-day for
that purpose."
Tunstall had spent more and more of his
time in recent years at his country place, which,
indeed, he now made his home, and though it
was April, earlier by two months than he usu-
7
98 The Opponents
ally appeared there, Garrard was not surprised
to see him. Garrard had been long enough " in
politics " to be proof against surprise at any of
Tunstall's appearances or disappearances.
The two sat on the porch just where, Gar
rard remembered, Margaret Helm had sat four
years before as she listened to Hugh Letcher's
story of Tunstall. Garrard was thinking more
of how Margaret Helm looked as she sat there
than he was speculating about Tunstall's object
in seeking this interview.
Tunstall was not long in coming to the point.
" Sid," he said, in his straightforward way,
" I have brought you here to ask you to re
consider your intention to run for Congress."
Garrard turned his eyes upon Tunstall with
an expression of curiosity.
" The fact is, Sid, I am going to run myself,
and both of us can't be elected."
Garrard's short laugh was boyish and frank.
" I Ve never counted on not having strong
opposition, Mr. Tunstall," he replied.
" I expect to win, Sid. I 've never gone in
for office before, and I can't afford to lose
now."
" So far as you are personally concerned, Mr.
Tunstall, I should hate to see you lose, but it
The Issue Joined 99
seems to me that personal considerations enter
very little into the matter."
" There 's where you are mistaken. You have
been provoked into making this race because
you want a personal vindication of your course
as Speaker. I don't mean to say that you have
not the highest conception of a Congressman's
duty and the highest purpose to do that duty.
As for me, I confess candidly that I am influ
enced by personal considerations entirely in
this instance. I have mapped out a plan for
the employment of my personal energies for
eight or ten years, and a term in the next Con
gress is the first step in that plan."
" If you insist on emphasizing the personal
side of my case," Garrard said reflectively, " it
seems to me you make it imperative that I
fight it out to the end and all the more im
perative if you are to be my opponent."
" I see. I thought you would say something
like that. It is in keeping with the fine and
quixotic ideas with which you have entered
politics. It sounds manly. It is manly. You
can make a stirring and eloquent campaign
with it. But you have no chance to win with
it, Sid; and if you lose under such circum
stances it will be almost impossible for you to
ioo The Opponents
make another start. And you are too young
to end your political career before it is fairly
begun."
"I may have no chance to win, as you say,
Mr. Tunstall ; but certainly I can have no
chance if I do not take one, however hopeless
it may seem. What you say about practical
expediency may be true, and I may end my
political career by continuing in this race, but,
really, I have no desire for a political career on
any other ideas than those which you call quix
otic, and if I should withdraw now, under the
the existing conditions, I do not believe I
could ever have enough self-respect again to
try to make another start."
" I can assure you, Sid, that the ' chance '
which you propose to take is hopeless. It is
several years too soon for any man to make a
winning race in Kentucky on the lines you
expect to follow. The time may come when
there will be enough voters in this State who
do their own thinking to elect a Congressman,
but that time is not yet. Don't deceive yourself
that it is, because you have found that a great
many of them approved your course in the
Legislature. All those estimable people don't
live in this Congressional district. You might
The Issue Joined 101
give me a good fight in Luttroll County, but
there are a dozen other counties in the district
in which your personal popularity won't count
for so much. Those counties are all dominated
by the old school of politics. They are Demo
cratic to-day for no better reason than that they
were Democratic twenty-five or thirty years
ago, and that it has never been considered
good form since the war to be anything but
Democratic. They are Democratic for no better
reason than the mountain counties could give
for being Republican. Their political duties
make but little demand on them. They allow
the wire-pullers to control their primaries and
conventions, and they religiously ' vote the
ticket ' which the wire-pullers name. That is
why it will be easy for me to beat you, Sid."
" Then it is not particularly material to you
whether I withdraw or not," Garrard laughed.
" People who don't know me as well as you
do might infer that I was making a clumsy
argument in my own behalf. I want you to
withdraw for two reasons. One is that it would
save me considerable work in organizing the
district ; the other is that it would save you a
needless defeat. It is not necessary for me to
tell you that I have liked you ever since you
IO2 The Opponents
were a young boy, and I wish to see you suc
ceed where you do not insist on crossing my
own path. Perhaps it will be news to you that,
though I have called you quixotic, and though
you obstructed some of my plans, your conduct
in the Legislature had no greater admirer than
I. It was splendid, though it was premature.
When the new order of things comes in Ken
tucky your day may come with it, unless you
rashly sacrifice yourself to prematureness.
Don't do it. Wait a little. Your day could
not come yet, even if mine were not at hand,
but when it does come it will be a better day
than mine. If I were your age I might choose
the road you have chosen, but as it is I must
reach my ends by the road which I know, and
which, as yet, is the only road to those ends.
You are thirty ; I shall be fifty before you are
thirty-five. It will be an advantage to you to
wait; I cannot afford to wait. As yet the old
order of things obtains in Kentucky. That is
for me, not for you. You and your followers
call me a boss of the machine. Well, political
parties in this State are to-day merely soulless
machines, and move aimlessly except to
antagonize each other only as they are
moved by those who understand how to
The Issue Joined 103
operate machines. The Democratic machine
is the bigger, and I think I have now got to a
position where I can reach and hold the
throttle-valve. Why throw yourself in front of
the engine ? If I were not so sure of the result,
and if I did not have a real regard for you, I
should prefer that you remain on the track.
It was you who made the issue with the machine
in the Legislature ; if there is to be a continu
ance of that issue it would signalize the su
premacy of the machine if the representative
of the opposition it is to crush should be you."
Tunstall relighted his cigar, and Garrard,
who had been thoughtfully watching the smoke-
rings from his own lips, turned his eyes upon
his companion and replied :
" I think I understand you, Mr. Tunstall,
and I am grateful, honestly, for your consider
ation for me ; but I can't see the question of
expediency as you do, and I can't do other
wise than make the best fight I know how."
"All right, Sid," Tunstall answered with a
tone of finality. " I felt almost sure this would
be your decision, and I 'm genuinely sorry that
it is ; for there is no one in the district I should
not prefer to fight."
Garrard extended his hand impulsively.
IO4 The Opponents
"Thank you, Mr. Tunstall," he said; "it
would be a great thing if we could fight on the
same side some time."
"On your side?" smiled Tunstall, as he
grasped the other's hand.
Garrard laughed confession.
" Perhaps, Sid ; but at present it would be a
losing fight; and, unlike you, I cannot find
glory in defeat."
The two sat long after that, talking of other
things ; and when Garrard finally left, Tunstall
watched him ride away and smoked another
cigar meditatively.
Tunstall had been insincere in nothing he
had said to Garrard. Considering the disparity
of their ages, the two were good friends. The
older man, especially, was fond of the younger,
what appealed to him most in Sidney Garrard
being the very qualities lacking in himself
youthful enthusiasm, optimism, and the impol
itic audacity with which the untried Speaker
had refused to obey the mandates of the party
organization when he believed them wrong,
even though he owed his election to the Speak-
ership to that organization. Tunstall knew
that the most effective way to confirm his own
power in this organization was to administer a
The Issue Joined 105
decisive defeat to the man who had refused to
use his office received from the party to
further the enactment of the party's chief
strategic measure. He was sure that it would
be easy to administer such a defeat; yet he
preferred, such was his liking for Garrard, that
he should stand aside and not invite this chas
tisement. Some time, when the spirit of inde
pendence was less aggressive in Garrard and
stronger in the party, there might be a future
for him, but there was small promise of a
future if he insisted on making an issue now of
his independence.
Tunstall, though like most politicians of his
type he would do many things in politics that
he would not think of doing outside of politics,
was neither dishonest nor corrupt. He had
taken up politics as divertisement. He liked
activity and power. He believed in himself,
his own integrity and ability, more than he
believed in the leaders or even the rank and
file of political parties. When he entered the
" game " he did not insist on introducing a new
deck of cards of his own invention. He played
it with the cards at hand. He saw that one
party was all-powerful in the State, and he set
himself to make that party his instrument.
106 The Opponents
Heretofore he had been satisfied with winning,
with putting into office men of his own selec
tion. But he had finally reached a point where
this palled on him. He wanted a new and
wider scope for his energies. He could not
find it in doing the same thing over and over
in the State. His eyes turned to the National
stage of action. He saw there a vast stage,
indeed, poorly filled by figures most of whom
he knew to be much smaller than himself, blind
to their opportunities for statesmanship and
impotent to seize them if they could have seen
them. When Sidney Garrard was elected
Speaker of the lower house of the Legislature
Tunstall had determined that he would go to
the United States Senate, and that the next
election for United States Senator, four years
ahead, should give him his credentials. His
first step was the Redistricting Bill, by which
the Legislature was to be made sure for his
party against any possible encroachment.
That had unexpectedly failed through Gar-
rard's obstinacy, but the failure was of little real
consequence. It would be almost impossible,
even under the existing apportionment, for the
Democrats to lose control of the Legislature.
The work before Tunstall was to maintain his
The Issue Joined 107
party leadership and to lend a vigilant scrutiny
to the selection of the Democratic majority in
the new Legislature. In the mean time he
would add to his prestige and begin his public
life with a term in the lower branch of Congress.
If Sidney Garrard persisted in getting in Tun-
stall's way here also, the result could only add
further to Tunstall's prestige. Nevertheless,
he was sorry for Garrard, and would have been
pleased if he had been prudent enough to retire
from the field.
A WINNING AND LOSING SPEECH
GARRARD had not seen Margaret Helm since
her visit to Florence Letcher, nearly four years
before. He had made it convenient to pass
through Virginia, a few months after Margaret's
departure from Kentucky, and he had left the
train at the little town in which she lived, but
when he called at her home he learned that she
was at the death-bed of Elsie Russell, and he
continued his journey without any further effort
to see Margaret. He knew, from an occasional
remark of Margaret herself and from the less
reserved testimony of Florence Letcher, that
there was no one to whom Margaret was so
devoted as to Elsie Russell, and he felt that
even to recall his existence to Margaret then
would be an inconsiderate intrusion. Shortly
after Elsie's death, Margaret, in her grief, had
gone abroad, where she had remained for over
three years. It was only this spring that she
had returned, and Garrard was planning to
A Winning and Losing Speech 109
repeat his journey through Virginia when
Florence Letcher revitalized the world by telling
him that Margaret was coming to Kentucky
soon for another visit.
She came before Garrard, as he had under
stood Florence, had expected. He had been
making a ten days' speaking tour of some of
the adjoining counties, and he had returned
just in time to fill his appointment at Plover.
The crowd had already assembled around the
wooden stand, erected in the grove in front of
the little church. He was in excellent spirits
as he rode up. His ten days' trip had been
most encouraging. He knew that he had made
votes and gained ground that Tunstall would
have never thought of conceding him. He and
Blitzen were fresh from an inspiriting canter of
a dozen miles in the breeze-stirred, perfume-
breathing May morning, along spongy dirt
roads and smooth turnpikes. Leaving Blitzen
and pausing only to speak to Kate Cockerill,
who, with some friends, was seated in a surrey
on the outskirts of the crowd, Garrard sprang
upon the improvised platform, greeted by hand
claps, cheers, and familiar personal invocations.
Several of the party leaders had seats on the
stand, prominent among them being John W.
iio The Opponents
Driggs, Squire Bodine, and Shelby Letcher, who
assumed these positions because it was a Demo
cratic speaking Garrard having announced
his candidacy " subject to the action of the
Democratic party" and not because they
were committed to the support of the speaker.
Indeed, it was doubted that any one of this
trio would " come out " for Garrard. John W.
Driggs certainly would not, unless Garrard
could demonstrate that his chance was better
to win than Tunstall's; Squire Bodine would
follow Driggs ; while it was known that Shelby
Letcher had never been able to understand
how one to whom he had so fondly expounded
the doctrines of " Democracy unterrified and
undefiled" had wandered astray as Sidney
Garrard had wandered as Speaker of the House.
Indeed, Shelby Letcher was heard to address
the young man occasionally now as " Mr. Gar
rard " instead of " Sid."
The audience was one to stimulate Garrard
to his best. It was made up of people who
had known him all his life, who had liked him
and laughed at him, but who now, having seen
that there was more in him than they had
merely liked or laughed at, were disposed to
consider him more seriously. There were some
A Winning and Losing Speech 1 1 1
who had begun to take a pride in him, as " a
Luttroll County boy," because of his growing
reputation, although not all of these could rec
oncile themselves to his occasional tendency
to irreverence of party traditions and discipline.
He had been speaking for ten or fifteen
minutes, and he could see that he was making
a good impression. The young men in the
andience were particularly responsive. A group
of them, led by Nixon, was the centre of the
applause. Dunk Peabody, who had climbed
to the limb of a tree, was frantically waving his
hat and his heels, and although the speech had
in no way touched on Dunk's hobby, at every
point well received by those below him he was
jubilantly yelling out : " Tha' 's the ticket, Sid-
die ! Give it to the plutycrats ! Hit 'em
ag'in!" There was a slight stir on the edge
of the crowd as a carriage drew up, and an
other voice swallowed that of Dunk Peabody
with a cry of " Hurrah for Tunstall ! " The
cry was repeated by several other robust
throats, and looking in that direction, Garrard
saw Morgan Tunstall's high English phaeton,
and Tunstall, who held the reins, making a
quick, imperious gesture that instantly quelled
the noisy greeting of his partisans.
112 The Opponents
By Tunstall's side was Mrs. Letcher, and
Garrard, following Tunstall's smiling glance
as he turned to speak to some one on the rear
seat, faltered in the middle of one of his strong
est periods as he saw that Tunstall's answering
smile was from Margaret Helm, who with
Florence Letcher completed Tunstall's party.
For two seconds Garrard's heart seemed
locked ; his voice fluttered and his strong
period died away incoherently and indistinctly.
The argument that he was developing had
snapped short and left him without a foothold ;
the train of thought that he was following had
ended in an abrupt blank into which his words
stumbled weakly and aimlessly. It was Dunk
Peabody who seemed to save him from what
some of his friends feared was a threatened
and inexplicable " break-down."
"Thes you all wait tell he gits good an*
ready," shouted Dunk ; " then fare you well,
Mr. Plutycrats ! "
Garrard looked up at Dunk with a laugh,
and then glancing again at Margaret Helm,
met her eyes for the first time and was thrilled
by what he thought he saw in them an ex
pression of bewilderment and of concern lest
he acquit himself disappointingly.
A Winning and Losing Speech 1 1 3
But he had caught his mental balance now,
and he proceeded with his speech consistently
and with good effect. Indeed, after his mo
mentary stumble, he seemed to have gathered
himself together for a more vigorous effort,
and his gain in fervor and force was so notable
that a reporter for a Louisville paper, who had
followed him on his round of appointments,
wrote that "after he was fairly warmed up, his
Plover speech was by odds the best that Mr.
Garrard has yet delivered." If the reporter
had understood the explanation he might have
added, with characteristic flippancy and per
spicacity " thanks though it be to the pres
ence among his auditors of one who could not
even vote for him."
Determined as he was that a Luttroll County
audience should not have cause to be ashamed
of him, and bending all his energies to that
end, Garrard yet had the practical speaker's
facility for noting and apprehending incidental
accompaniments of his speech's reception with
out deflecting or weakening the course of his
thought. He realized that among the young
men around Nixon who were making such
demonstrations in his favor was the heartiest
sympathy that he aroused, and that to such
8
H4 The Opponents
as these he must look mainly for the success of
the movement in which he had enlisted. He
realized that among many of the older farmers
there were admiration for him as a youngster
they had always liked, admiration for his
powers as a speaker, and only partial compre
hension of the points he sought to press and
sometimes even less acceptance of them. He
realized that Dunk Peabody, on his perch in
the tree, was becoming more and more mysti
fied why the climax of pitching into the pluto
crats was not reached, and more and more
impatient that it should be reached. Most
clearly of all he realized, every moment, the
presence of Margaret Helm. Turn which way
he would, the one face in the throng that he
saw, or subconsciously felt, was hers, more
beautiful than he had known it before, with the
softer, deeper beauty that sorrow and four
years of life had added to it. He knew that
she listened to him and watched him atten
tively; that she was not disappointed in his
speech ; that once she and Kate Cockerill ex
changed glances in which there was something
very different from disappointment. (It was
immediately after this that he rose to what the
reporter described as " his finest flight of elo-
A Winning and Losing Speech 1 1 5
quence," which so excited Dunk Peabody that
he lost his tree and in his fall crushed into a
cockade that well-known and long-known land
mark of the community, Hi Jaynes' Sunday
" stove-pipe.") Moreover, long before he had
finished his speech, he understood that Marga
ret Helm and Morgan Tunstall were on good
terms, very good, considering that they could
have known each other hardly more than a
week. Tunstall turned to Margaret frequently
with a nod of approval or a word of comment
on the speech. Garrard noticed that each
quickly looked at the other, as they applauded,
as for confirmation of a good opinion. It was
after cumulative evidence of this that the
orator launched into what some of his friends
deprecated as a needlessly impolitic passage,
noted by the reporter as " a savage onslaught
on hide-bound Bourbonism, in which he boldly
proclaimed that he pitched his campaign on
the living issues of the present, and that he
wanted the votes of no man because of the
politics of that man's grandfather, or because
that man wore either the blue or the gray, or
was the son of a man who wore the blue or the
gray, in a war that was fought and ended be
fore he (Garrard) was born."
116 The Opponents
He concluded his speech very simply. " I
have tried to present to you clearly," he said,
" the grounds on which I ask this nomination
for Congress. I have tried to explain to you
distinctly why I am a Democrat and what I
believe to be the best interests of the party
and the country. If you will allow me to revise
that phrase, I will say the best interests of the
country and the party. With me the country
shall always have precedence over any party. I
am a Democrat, but before that I am an Ameri
can ; I am a Southerner, but above that I am
an American ; I am a Kentuckian, but some of
my old friends here may call it treason when I
say that were the choice forced on me, and I
could not be both an American and a Ken
tuckian, then I should proudly be an Ameri
can." (" I be Tom Walkered if he ain't gone
back on States Rights ! " growled Shelby
Letcher to Squire Bodine.) " I have been
told by those who wish to see me win this race
that I am guilty of bad politics that I am un
necessarily imprudent in declaring my views,
in answering questions that are not asked me
but it seems to me that I have no right to
your votes, nor could I wish them, without
frankly revealing the grounds on which I seek
A Winning and Losing Speech 117
this nomination and election ; and my one aim
this afternoon has been to be unreservedly
frank."
As Garrard finished and turned to leave the
stand, Squire Bodine, who had risen, with the
other distinguished occupants on the platform,
held out his hand, as a matter of habit on such
occasions.
" You made a good speech, Sid," he said ;
" about as good as could be made for your
side of the case, I reckon : but I 'm afraid you
have n't made many votes by it."
" There 's one he 's lost," confessed Shelby
Letcher, " and I 'm sorry of it. I Ve been hold
ing off till I heard this speech, Sidney, but I '11
have to come out for Tunstall now. I 'm too
old a dog to learn new tricks."
" I Ve never supposed you would not be for
Tunstall, Mr. Letcher," Garrard said, as he
helped the old gentleman down the rude steps
of the stand. " I 'm sorry, too ; but I '11 have
to be satisfied with dividing the family with
Tunstall. Hugh is for me."
" And I believe Florence is for you. Still it
may yet be a tie between you and Tunstall
over at the Tavern. There 's Margaret, you
know," smiling drily ; " I don't believe she 's
1 1 8 The Opponents
made up her mind between you two yet, but
Tunstall has been carrying on a pretty strong
campaign at the Tavern while you were out in
the district."
Garrard felt his face burning in spite of
himself.
"Tunstall's campaigns are always strong,"
he smiled back at the old fellow.
Others were crowding around Garrard to
speak to him, and Nixon and his satellites
were so demonstrative that Garrard could
not see whether Tunstall's party, in whose
direction he was trying to make his way, had
yet driven off. Dunk Peabody also lounged
up, his hands deep in his pockets, his counte
nance a ludicrous compromise between un
certainty and exultation.
" By Ned ! " he drawled, " we did give 'em
holy smoke, did n't we, Sid? "
" Never say die, Dunk ! " shouted some
one. " Maybe he'll get to the plutycrats next
time ! "
Tunstall himself was now pressing Garrard's
hand, and was saying, in the quiet, straight
forward way which would have carried convic
tion of the speaker's sincerity even if Garrard
had known him so poorly as to doubt it :
A Winning and Losing Speech 119
" It was a good speech, Sidney the best
this crowd has ever heard. In fact, it was so
much too good for the most of us," a smile
lighting his eyes, " that I think it will make as
many votes for me as for you. But come with
me. There are some friends of yours over
here who are waiting to congratulate you."
"On making votes for you?" Garrard an
swered, laughing shortly, as he went with Tun-
stall toward the ladies. He felt that it was a
small and ungracious spirit which his retort
showed, but for the time he did not regret it.
That was the spirit which Tunstall had aroused
in him.
" I fear not," was Tunstall's reply. " You
could never make too good a speech for that
part of your audience."
Garrard, as he walked forward with Tunstall,
did not try to shake off this petty spirit. There
is a perverse satisfaction, akin to luxury, in the
lapse, on certain provocations, of natures which
are far from petty themselves into conscious
and unashamed pettiness. In some such mood
Garrard inwardly resented the part that Tun
stall was playing this afternoon. The resent
ment began the instant he had seen Tunstall
here with Margaret Helm. He resented the
1 20 The Opponents
fact that at his first sight of Margaret after
these four years she should be in the company
and under the protection of Tunstall. He re
sented the fact that it was to hear him speak
that Tunstall had brought Margaret to Plover.
He resented the footing of familiarity with
Margaret on which Tunstall seemed to have
placed himself. He resented the glances of
sympathetic approbation that had passed be
tween them as they listened to his speech. He
resented the incident that it was even Tunstall
who had sought him out in the crowd to take
him to this first meeting with Margaret after
so long a separation a meeting under con
ditions very different from those he had looked
forward to in his four years' dreams of it.
He resented the thought that had come over
him, against his will, as he saw Margaret and
Tunstall together, that here were two people
whom Nature, in lavish mood and unerring
law, had fashioned for each other.
But he forgot his small resentments when he
stood in Margaret Helm's presence once more.
There was such sincere welcome in her eyes
and in her voice as she spoke the few simple
words of greeting, and, beyond that, he was so
sensible of something, in her manner, in her
A Winning and Losing Speech 1 2 1
tone, which seemed to indicate a new and more
respectful attitude toward him, that all trivial
irritation was at once allayed. With Margaret
Helm not only glad to see him but placing
him on a plane of manhood which he had felt
she had never quite conceded him in the old
days, the moment was not one for harboring
trivial irritations. For the time Garrard was
no longer disturbed by the well-meant officious-
ness of Morgan Tunstall, or by the possibility
of having so formidable a competitor as Tun-
stall in other fields than politics.
He was glad that Margaret barely referred
to his speech, and then in a lightly conven
tional way. He knew that she liked it. He
had watched her so closely while he was speak
ing that nothing she could have said here, in
the presence of Tunstall and the Letchers,
could have indicated to him more clearly the
impression he had made upon her, which, as
he had already interpreted it, intoxicated him
with triumph, whether he was to win or lose
the race he had entered. He would not have
had her congratulate him here, even with the
moderate effusiveness of Florence Letcher, to
say nothing of the extravagant praise of Mrs.
Letcher.
122 The Opponents
" I don't know anything about politics, Sid
ney," that lady exclaimed, " and I don't want
to know ; but I do know the speech was just
grand, because because it sounded grand,
and because it made me cry and nobody
noticed me do it because everybody was pay
ing such close attention to you. Besides, Mr.
Tunstall says he never heard a finer speech,
and Mr. Tunstall knows all about such things ;
and Margaret well, Margaret does n't know
any more about politics than I do, but she
says she understood every word I asked her
that point-blank and what 's more, she says
she does n't see how your speech can be an
swered, which is pretty hard, / think, on Mr.
Tunstall."
" It can't be answered," Tunstall smiled,
" and I shall not try. But fortunately for me,
as I Ve been telling Sidney, people are not
sent to Congress from this district because
they make unanswerable speeches."
Garrard, promising himself that the evening
should find him at Letcher Tavern, mounted
Blitzen and rode slowly homeward, ignoring
for once the opportunity for electioneering
offered by the unusual crowd in Plover. He
had no spirit for such work to-day. He had
A Winning and Losing Speech 123
no thought of politics now. He saw only the
lovely face that had dawned for him on the
edge of the rough crowd he had addressed
that afternoon, and his pulses were beating
only to the new elation of Margaret Helm's
return.
XI
THE PRELIMINARY HAND-CLASP
THE following month was far from satisfactory
to Sidney Garrard. He could have devoted
that month ardently to either his political can
vass or to Margaret Helm. He tried to divide
it between the two, and compromises were
never to his liking. It was June again now, but
a very different June from the one, four years
before, which he had devoted, as much as she
would let him, to Margaret Helm. He knew
that he could not afford to allow his campaign
to lag. His only chance of winning the nom
ination was in a thorough, vigorous effort to
win it. The district was large ; the convention
was to be held in August : it was essential that
he should make good use of June. But it was
the hardest task he had yet set himself riding
over other counties while Margaret Helm was
in Luttroll County, and only there until July.
"Kit," he said to Kate Cockerill one day,
The Preliminary Hand-Clasp 125
with a return of his old boyish spirit, " I'll
play you a game of Suppose."
"Suppose " she assented, ever ready to
enter into his humor.
" Suppose a man were in love with a woman
the right sort of woman."
" Yes."
" And suppose he were in love with well,
going to Congress."
" I think I might possibly make both suppo
sitions," Kate smiled.
" Suppose she were where he could see her
every day or two for a month, and suppose
that he felt if he gave up that month to see
ing her he might lose his chance for Congress."
"Well?"
" Suppose also that if he did n't give up that
month to seeing her he felt that he might lose
his chance for her."
" But would n't it be fair to suppose, if she
were ' the right sort of woman,' that by thus
throwing away his chance for Congress he
might weaken rather than strengthen his
chance for her?"
" You are taking the game away from me,
Kit. I was going to ask you if such a suppo
sition might not be in order."
I 26 The Opponents
" I think it would be at least with one girl
. I know."
" Though it might please her, in a way that
women can't help being pleased, if he threw
away all other chances for the one chance for
her?"
"Yes; but there is a possibility that it might
disappoint her more than it would please
her."
" Unless she knew that the man was abso
lutely sure, he would lose her if he did not
throw away his chance for Congress ? "
" Well, perhaps. But that supposition is not
permissible in this game, is it? "
" Kit, you are a woman in a million. You
always agree with me perfectly ! If if others
were more like you, there would be lots less
trouble in the world for some people I know."
So Garrard kept most of his campaign ap
pointments, changing some of them to regions
nearer home, that he might run in and spend
an hour or two at Letcher Tavern at least once
a week.
It was a cruel course to hold himself to,
especially as it was evident that Morgan Tun-
stall was not risking any of his chances for
Margaret Helm by leaving her and travelling
The Preliminary Hand-Clasp 127
over the district in pursuit of the nomination
for Congress. Tunstall as yet had made no
speeches. He had not proposed a speaking
campaign. He relied upon other methods.
True, he recognized the fact that a candidacy
for Congress in Kentucky was essentially
one that, from immemorial custom, implied
a certain amount of oratory as a matter of
course. He knew that it was no more ques
tioned that a candidate for Congress would
" take the stump " than it was doubted that, if
successful, he would be expected to " take
care of his friends." Tunstall was too good
a politician to ignore this tradition and condi
tion entirely. He intended to observe it to a
sufficient degree to satisfy the proprieties. He
had announced his purpose to make a few
speeches throughout the district in July. But
he was not relying on those speeches to secure
him the nomination. Nor was he waiting till
July to secure it. He had taken quick trips in
May to the various county seats, and in June
several of his lieutenants, of whom John W.
Driggs was now one, had taken other trips
over the district in his interest, to say nothing
of the local leaders in different counties who,
on special invitation, had paid Tunstall quiet
128 The Opponents
visits at Tunstall Paddocks. Garrard was not
ignorant of the situation. Wherever he went
he found Tunstall's " organization " strong.
He discovered that a majority of the local
"workers" and committeemen the men who
were to preside, with autocratic authority, at
the opening of the primary conventions, and
who would " organize " those conventions for
the candidate of their choice, were already for
Tunstall. Naturally cheerful though Garrard
was, there was many a moment as he made his
way over the district that hot and dusty June
when he was sick at heart. He was fighting
an opponent who not only seemed to have his
victory won, but who was availing himself of
the advantage which that gave him to remain
at home and seek another victory, in compari
son with which all other victories were nothing
to Garrard.
For Garrard was sure that Tunstall intended
to do what he could to win Margaret Helm.
When a man loves he is ever ready to suspect
that every other man loves the same woman ;
indeed, he never quite understands why every
other man does not love her. He is sure that
every man does who shows a partiality for her.
And Tunstall had done much more than show a
The Preliminary Hand-Clasp 1 29
partiality for Margaret Helm. Since Garrard
had known him he had had little to do with
women ; certainly he had never seemed to care
for one above another ; nor had he given the
least indication that he thought of marrying
again. But it was evident to Garrard now that
Tunstall intended to try to marry Margaret
Helm. The extraordinary impression she had
made on Tunstall ; the change in the routine of
his life ; his open, assiduous proofs of his pref
erence for her society; his attitude of respectful
deference and intimate comradeship ; his frank,
quiet joy in the new conditions that had come
into his life, were all noticed by Garrard, little
as he had been at Letcher Tavern since Mar
garet's return. Moreover, Garrard was sure
that there was something exceptional in Marga
ret's liking for Tunstall. Garrard had passed
the period when he had feared no rival, and he
felt that he could have no more dangerous
rival for such a girl as Margaret than Mor
gan Tunstall. Curiously distinct and insis
tent now was his recollection of Margaret's
manner and words four years before, as she
had said, after looking at the portrait of Tun
stall : " I have never seen a face that impressed
me more with its strength and power. I should
9
i 30 The Opponents
not like to be either the man or the mob to
cross the will of Mr. Tunstall."
Garrard was not mistaken. Tunstall, for the
second time in his life and for the first time in
his full maturity, loved. He had never thought
that possible in all the years since the annul
ment of his marriage. He had gone his way,
among men, killing time with his game of pol
itics, in which the players were always men.
Women had had no place in his personal rela
tions or purposes. And yet Margaret Helm had
suddenly taken such a dominant place in them
as to work a complete revolution in his outlook,
his desires, and, if not altogether in his plans,
in their spirit. He had no thought of abandon
ing those plans. On the contrary, he would
follow them out with a new zest. He would
play his game now not for the mere love of
playing, not solely for the exercise of power
and the attainment of eminence for the better
exercise of power, but for the exercise of
power that Margaret Helm might the more
respect him; for the winning of honors that
Margaret Helm, as his wife, might be hon
ored. If he had been successful before, with
only the tokens of the game as stakes, he
meant to be he felt that he would be in-
The Preliminary Hand-Clasp 131
vincible with the inspiration of Margaret's
pride and happiness to recreate him. It would
still be something to demonstrate his power for
the sake of demonstrating it, but it would be
more to demonstrate it for Margaret's sake.
It would be little enough, and yet the thought
of it was a strange new elixir, to make Marga
ret the wife of a Senator, an Ambassador, per
haps Why not? Kentucky will yet furnish
other Presidents for the Republic.
Truly the fallow acres of Tunstall Paddocks,
so long run wild to weeds and thickets, had
not been more signally metamorphosed into
upturned, fructifying fields by Tunstall's re
sumed management than had been the fallow
soul of Tunstall himself by the influence of
Margaret Helm.
Sidney Garrard postponed a speaking ap
pointment in an adjoining county, in order to
run down to Letcher Tavern the day before
that set for Margaret's departure. Accom
panied by Mrs. Letcher and Florence, Margaret
was to leave for one of the Alleghany summer
resorts where she was to remain until fall, and
where Garrard expected to take a few weeks'
rest after the meeting of the convention to
nominate a candidate for Congress. But the
132 The Opponents
convention was more than a month in the
future, and in the mean time he would have no
other opportunity of seeing Margaret Helm.
For once Garrard departed from his rule, and
the yeomen of the Big Bend district in Grier
County "the Old Stamping Ground of the
True Blue Democracy " were notified through
handbills and the county press that, owing to
important changes in the plans of the Hon.
Sidney Garrard, he would be unable to address
them at Big Bend until the third Tuesday in
July.
It was late in the afternoon when Garrard
reached Letcher Tavern. Margaret and Flor
ence, Shelby Letcher and Tunstall were on the
lawn. Tunstall left almost immediately after
Garrard joined the group.
"Walk with me to the gate, Sidney," he
said, taking Garrard's arm, "and tell me the
news from Grier County."
As the two went slowly toward the gate, Tun
stall showed a disposition to impart rather than
seek news.
" Better throw it up, Sidney," he said. " It is
not your time yet. You won't have a delegate
from Grier. You have a good chance to carry
Trowbridge, Croxton, and Bascom counties,
The Preliminary Hand-Clasp 133
and if you can carry this county and 'the
Pocket,' you '11 be in the race. This county
as yet is uncertain, but the Pocket is n't."
Garrard smiled. Tunstall was not so well
informed as he thought. If Garrard was sure
of one thing about the campaign, it was that
the Pocket was opposed to Tunstall. But his
smile faded as Tunstall went on:
" At present the Pocket does not like
me. It may even stand solidly against me
in the convention. But it won't be for you,
Sidney."
" I think I have some chance there," Garrard
replied modestly.
" None whatever. I believe you could beat
me there; but has it never occurred to you
that the Pocket's delegates might go to the
convention committed to neither of us, but
instructed for one of the Pocket's own favorite
sons? "
Garrard threw a quick glance at Tunstall.
" No," he answered ; " I have seen nothing
to indicate that."
" But you are likely to see it at the proper
time. Don't you think that such a man as,
say Poindexter, could control every delegate
from the Pocket?"
134 The Opponents
" I think it very probable ; but Poindexter is
not a candidate."
Tunstall looked straight at Garrard two
seconds before speaking.
" He will be if I wish it."
" Ah ! " Garrard responded with raised brows,
after another two seconds. " I see."
"And with Poindexter holding the Pocket
and you having Trowbridge, Croxton, Bascom,
and even Grier and Luttroll counties, don't
you see that the best you could hope for would
be a deadlock?"
" Your reasoning is fair."
" And there would be only one way to break
the deadlock. You could never throw your
following to Poindexter against me, and you
would n't do it if you could. I should not
throw my following to you, because that would
not be in the plan at all. The one outcome,
you will agree, would be that ultimately Poin
dexter would break the deadlock by withdraw
ing and giving me enough of his votes to
nominate me."
"Your reasoning is still fair," Garrard
smiled.
" You see, from the first I have shown you
my hand. Why foolishly try to beat it? "
The Preliminary Hand-Clasp 135
"It is a strong hand, I admit; but the only
way to beat it is to try."
" You are making a good fight, Sidney, and
against any other opponent I should like to see
you win. But I am pretty sure you can't, and
I don't think you really believe you can. Bet
ter quit now and wait till another time."
" Thank you, Mr. Tunstall, but my mind is
unalterable on that point."
" I have not hoped that it was n't. Well, I
am sorry. I am downright sorry, Sidney. It
will be a little more work for me, but I hate to
see you make this mistake," smiling slightly.
" I understand you thoroughly," Garrard
replied, with a touch of feeling. " I know you
are actuated in what you have said principally
by your friendship for me. I am duly grate
ful; but we hold very different views on this
matter, and I must go on as I have begun."
They were now talking across the gate,
Tunstall standing on the outer side.
" All right, Sidney. But it was not for this
that I asked you to walk down here with me.
We Ve got up a little party to show Miss Helm
Mammoth Cave, Mrs. Letcher, your sister,
and Miss Florence, Hugh, Nixon, and we are
counting on you to be the other man. I should
136 The Opponents
have written or telegraphed you, but the excur
sion was only decided on yesterday and Mrs.
Cockerill said you would be in to-day. We
start to-morrow and expect to be back in three
or four days. You '11 be one of us, won't
you ? "
" I thought Miss Helm was to leave for the
mountains to-morrow," Garrard answered, not
trying to conceal his surprise.
" She was ; but we convinced her that she
should not leave Kentucky without visiting the
cave. Have you ever seen the cave?"
" Never."
"Then you can't afford to miss this trip.
You could n't afford to miss it, any way,
Sidney."
The two men looked silently across the gate
into each other's eyes.
" Oh, to be his age," was Tunstall's thought,
"with my life to live over and youth on my
side."
Garrard was thinking of Margaret Helm's
words four years before : " I should not like to
be either the man or the mob to cross the will
of Mr. Tunstall ; " and thinking, further, that
his own will and Tunstall's were inflexibly
crossed not once, but twice.
The Preliminary Hand-Clasp 137
" I will go," he finally replied ; " I shall be
glad to go."
They separated with a hand-clasp, each hav
ing a certain feeling that it was not very differ
ent from the ceremony with which two antago
nists precede a duel to the death.
XII
A HORSE-BLOCK SYMPOSIUM
THE next day, Friday, Garrard left with Tun-
stall's party for Mammoth Cave. The preceding
Sunday there had been some discussion, under
the trees around the little Plover church, of a
matter that was to complicate the uncertainty
of Garrard's securing the vote of his home
county in the convention, without which, as
was well understood, he could have no chance
of getting the nomination. Eight or ten men
were loafing in the grove to gossip, as was their
custom, before going into the church.
" Here he is," said one of the group, as a
sleepy yellow horse, drawing an old buggy,
appeared around the bend of the road. The
horse was big, the buggy was low, and all of
the driver, " Pap " Maxey, that was visible was
a soft drab hat, perched cockily on one side,
and beneath it a crinkly face, small, dancing
eyes, in which the fountains of perpetual youth
might have bubbled, and a sunken mouth,
A Horse-Block Symposium 139
whose thin lips, when not parted in the act
of talking or laughing, were incessantly closed
and working as if in the act of chewing
though chewing what, nobody had ever
discovered.
"Do you reckon he's heerd of it?" asked
one of the men in the church grove.
" Well, he won't say a thing when he does
hear ! " exclaimed another.
" Naw, he won't ! " agreed Dunk Peabody.
" He '11 lay over Uncle Jesse Craik when he 's
breakin' a colt er prayin' fer rain ! "
Pap Maxey turned from the road and pulled
up his horse.
" Howdy, boys, howdy ! " he waved his
hand in comprehensive response to the noisy
salutations of the loungers.
The old man got out of the buggy with an
agility that belied his apparent years. Dunk
Peabody helped him take the horse from the
shafts and hitched it to the rack, during which
time every one was silent and Pap Maxey
chewed. Then he joined the group under the
trees.
" Well, boys," he said in a high voice, thin
but merry, " what devilw^/ you scamps up to
now? I don't never see Dunk Peabody
140 The Opponents
so polite an' Uncle Jesse Craik so pious
'thout knowin' the Old Harry's afoot somers
aroun'."
"Oh, th 1 ain't nothin' ailin' of us, Pap
Maxey," answered Uncle Jesse Craik, him
self not much younger than the new-comer,
for whom he made room on the horse-block.
" Some folks mout say it was the Old Harry,
an' some folks mout n't."
" 'Nother toll-gate done fer las' night, Pap,"
Dunk Peabody volunteered for the crowd.
" I reckon so," assented Pap Maxey.
"Yeh."
"Which one this time?" chewing medita
tively.
"Sibley's Mill," hastened two or three
voices.
"Ag'in?"
" Finished the job this whirl, Pap : cut down
the gate an' burnt down the house."
"How about Andy?" Andy was the gate
keeper.
" Andy, he got mulish, an' they shot the durn
fool in the shoulder."
" He 's laid up at Sibley's, but Sibley says
the doctor says he'll pull th'ough ef blood
p'ison don't set in."
A Horse-Block Symposium 141
" Yi, yi," was Pap Maxey's comment, after
which he went on chewing.
"Ain't but one mo' gate in these diggin's
now, Pap," somebody suggested.
" Tha' 's all Conway's," somebody else
agreed.
" Yonder comes Nelse Tigert now ! " another
exclaimed.
" Yes, yonder comes Nelse Tigert now I "
Pap Maxey repeated, with one of his cackling
little laughs, as his small eyes played restlessly
upon a tall muscular fellow of thirty-five or
forty approaching with a stride whose freedom
had a touch of swagger in it.
Two or three men had joined the party since
Pap Maxey's arrival, without attracting any
special attention ; but it was as if Nelse
Tigert's coming was an event, and had been
awaited.
" Hello, folks ! Why, howdy, Pap ? What 's
the good word ? " he called cheerily, throwing
himself down on the grass.
" We was all thes talkin' about you," Pap
Maxey answered "anyhow, we was all thes
thinkin' about you, Nelse. Toe-be-sho, we was
only talkin' about the raidin' of the gate at
Sibley's Mill."
142 The Opponents
Nelse joined in the laughter which followed
this. "Was you there, Pap? Tell us all
about it."
" Ef I had 'a' been, Nelse Tigert, they 'd 'a'
been mo' 'n Andy got shot."
" Andy's all right, Pap," Nelse assured him.
" I thes come by Sibley's. Still somebody
oughter be bucked fer shootin' the galoot;
same time, Andy oughter be bucked fer bein'
a galoot."
" Anybody," spoke up Dunk Peabody,
" oughter have sense enough to know the
people of this county have made up their
minds to have free turnpikes, an' free turnpikes
they 're a-goin' to have."
This was received with a chorus of approval.
" It 's a vanity an' a mockery fer any man to
set hisself up ag'in the will o* the people," ob
served Uncle Jesse Craik.
" The will o' the people is all right when it
is all right," responded Pap Maxey, pushing
his hat to the back of his head, " but the will
o' the people is like mighty nigh ev'ything else
in this worl' it 's a in-an'-outer ; an' it knows
it. That 's why the will o' the people sets up
constitutions an' gover'ments an' laws to lay
down things which the will o' the people shain't
A Horse-Block Symposium 143
do an' things which the will o' the people shill
do. Yes, sir, the will o' the people, ef it is
always right, goes to a powerful lot o' trouble
to keep itself straight. You boys say the will
o' the people has made up its mind to have free
turnpikes. Now, free turnpikes is a mighty
good thing to have, an* we oughter have 'em,
ef we git 'em honis. An' I don't know no way
to git 'em honis here but to buy 'em an' make
'em free. You pay fer yo' teams, ef you cain't
git 'em on tick ; you even pay fer yo' drams
ef you cain't git 'em on treats. But you wanter
blow up all creation ruther 'n pay fer yo' turn
pikes. 'T ain't that you are all paupers. Some
o' you don't pay no toll nohow you go afoot
ef you cain't git a lift. Dunk Peabody there,
he ain't had hair ner hide of a critter sence he
los' his las' mule on aces-up; yit Dunk is a-
whoopin' loud as anybody fer the will o' the
people an' free turnpikes. But 't ain't them
that cain't raise no stake, like Dunk, that 's doin'
all the devilment. In some counties the gates
in the richis neighborhood is the fus to go. Ef
you want free turnpikes, why n't you buy an'
pay fer 'em, from them that bought an' paid
fer 'em, stiddier goin' after dark to rob an*
shoot 'em free ? Well, sir, the will o' the peo-
144 The Opponents
pie has made laws which be it enac's that when
the will o' the people takes a notion to rob an'
shoot, the jail is the right place fer the will o'
the people ; an' the jail is the place where ev'y
gallivested scamp that raided that gate las'
night oughter be yes, sir-ree, the jail, an' not
the church ! "
Pap Maxey only seemed to amuse the crowd.
" You ain't a fair witness, Pap," said one ; " you
would n't talk that-away if you did n't own stock
in the turnpike."
" Yes, I own stock I own five sheers. An'
I didn't raid no toll-gates fer it, nuther. I
worked fer it, like ev'ything else I got. I got
my turnpike stock thes like I got my farm. I
reckon when you boys burn me outn my turn
pike property an' git yo' free turnpikes you '11
pitch in an' dynamite me offn my place, ef the
will o' the people makes up its mind to have
free farms."
" Say, Pap," he was informed by Dunk Pea-
body, "you're away off! Farms is owned by
privit individyuls, but turnpikes is owned by
copperations ; an' copperations an' m'nop'lies
an* all them is gotter go."
" Yes, the turnpike is owned by a coppera-
tion," the old man admitted, " an' ' copperation '
A Horse-Block Symposium 145
is a powerful big word, ain't it? They was a
man, one time, they was, who discovered that
Nature won't allow no vacyum you know
that 's a empty holler an' I reckon Nature
invented the word ' copperation ' fer to fill up
the empty hollers in the heads of some folks
with. Toe-be-sho, ' copperation ' is giner'lly
what comes out when they opens their heads."
There was some chaffing of Dunk at this, but
Pap Maxey, as one of his auditors expressed
it, had " got his gait now," and did not pause.
" One of the fus things I learnt in the old
blue-back spellin'-book," he continued, " was
that copperations is a good thing fer the little
fellers, like us. The old man with a raft of
sons showed 'em how easy it was to break ev'y
stick by itself, but they could n't break narry
one when he tied 'em all together. We got up
a copperation to build the turnpike because
there wa' n't no privit individyul able er willin'
to build it. We chipped in because that was
the only way to git the road, an' we needed it,
an' needed it bad. Befo' we built it there wa' n't
a farm 'roun' here that sent hardly anything to
market. It wouldn't pay to haul stuff forty
mile th'ough the wilderness. Sence we built
the pike it is easy to git ev'ything we raise to
10
146 The Opponents
the railroad an' railroads is copperations that
has done a heap mo' to bring out some States
in this country than the States themselves has
done an' ev'y acre o' Ian' in the county has
doubled and thribbled in price, an' farmers not
only makes a good livin', but has somethin'
over to buy Sunday clothes, an' patent churns,
an' melojuns, an' powder an' lead to shoot cop-
peration toll-gate keepers with."
" Pap 's a-warmin' up now," sang out Nelse
Tigert.
" One po' man, like me or you, ain't no great
shakes by hisself, but ten, er fifty, er a hundud
po' men clubs in an' makes somethin' mo' 'n
tongue and buckle meet. That 's a copperation.
Most of the stockholders in our turnpike is po'
men ; some is widders an' childun. Same way
in mighty nigh all copperations. Yit you honis,
hard-workin' privit individyuls wanter wipe out
all their property, er gobble it up fer yo'selves.
You let these here dummygogue politicians set
you crazy. All a man 's gotter do is to take the
stump an' shuck his coat an' loose his collar an'
light into copperations, an' you wanter send
him to Congriss."
"'Raw fer Garrard ! " shouted Dunk Pea-
body.
A Horse-Block Symposium 147
" ' Raw fer Tunstall ! " countered Uncle
Jesse Craik.
" You ain't never heerd Garrard dummy-
goguin' ag'in copperations," Pap Maxey
snapped.
" Well, you ain't never heerd Tunstall,
nuther ! " Dunk Peabody glared at Uncle
Jesse Craik.
" You thes wait tell Tunstall takes the
stump !" challenged Uncle Jesse, with slowly
oscillating head.
"You boys shet up," ordered Pap Maxey
" There was that 'ere nigger Gabe Fowler,"
taking up again the thread of his discourse,
" he believed in the doctrine of free meat, an'
because he carried it out an' stole a shoat from
Alf Howlitt you sent Gabe to the peniten
tiary. But Alf Howlitt, he believes in the
doctrine of free turnpikes, an' because he eggs
you on to stealin' 'em you 're a-goin' to send
him to the Legislature, where he promises an'
pledges hisself to put in his time pulverizin'
the turnpikes an' the railroads an' Wall Street
and Lombud Street an' all them copperations.
The way you fellers is a-goin' to pulverize the
roads an' streets I reckon you mus' be caki-
latin' on takin' to flyin' machines."
148 The Opponents
" Shanks's mare is good enough fer me," tes
tified Dunk Peabody.
" Ef you cain't borry somebody's mule,"
qualified Uncle Jesse Craik.
" An' while you 're pulverizin' the coppera-
tions," Pap Maxey resumed, "what are you
a-goin' to do with yo' churches? Ev'y man
cain't have a church an' a preacher an' a orgin
all to hisself, so you all go in cahoots an' chip
in to put up a meetin'-house an' hire a preacher
some chippin' in blue chips an' some reds an'
some thes whites, accordin' to the parable of
the talents. So what 's yo' church yonder but
a copperation? Well, I reckon ef the ma
jority in heaven was to git possessed with yo'
idees they would n't wanter let you in at all,
because ev'y gallivested one of you didn't
carry on a church by hisself as a privit indi-
vidyul. When you goin' to blow up the Con-
way gate ? "
The crowd was laughing in good humor,
and some began moving toward the church
door.
" 'Raw fer Garrard and Howlitt ! " called
back Dunk Peabody.
" 'Raw fer Tunstall and Howlitt ! " promptly
followed the falsetto of Uncle Jesse Craik.
A Horse-Block Symposium 149
" Come on in, Pap," Nelse Tigert suggested.
" Maybe the parson '11 exchange pulpits with
you."
" I s'pose you all are a-goin' to put the toll
you saved this mornin' at Sibley's Mill into
the conterrybution box ! " was Pap Maxey's
last word.
XIII
"THE QUEENIN' OF IT"
A LITTLE later he drove over to Sibley's to
see the wounded Andy; and then coming
back he went on down the road to the Conway
gate. In those times of the turnpike ma
rauders in Kentucky scarcely a week passed
that the newspapers did not report gates cut
down and toll-houses burned. The gate at
Sibley's Mill had been destroyed twice now,
and Pap Maxey knew that a few mornings
before a scrawl, signed " The Friends of the
People," had been found tacked to the door of
the Conway toll-house, directing that no more
toll be collected, on pain of being " blowed
sky-high."
The Conway gate was the pride of its
keeper, Nathan Conway. Forty years before,
when the road was surveyed and a gate located
near Nathan's cottage, he had applied for the
post of keeper, and in accordance with his
wishes the company had placed the gate in
<c
The Queenin' of It " 151
front of Nathan's yard, on the edge of which it
built the cabin used as the toll-house. Here it
was the pleasure of Nathan to spend most of
his time. He was an autocrat in his sphere,
and, no less than others in higher spheres, he
liked autocracy. Nothing in his narrow experi
ence had ever given him such opportunity for
self-assertion. A wave of his hand, and the
traveller had permission to pass ; a twist of his
wrist, and the gate barred all transgression of
his will. He was a stickler for the strict ob
servance of the rules of the company, but it
was a question if he was not secretly more
pleased with their attempted infraction, for
that gave him a chance to demonstrate his
authority. His family a wife and two chil
dren understood and respected his hobby.
His daughter, Lide, who kept the cottage ob
scured from the toll-house and the road behind
roses, wistaria, and morning-glories, trained the
vines also over the porch of the toll-house,
and saw to it that there was ever within easy
reach on that porch a cedar bucket of cold
spring-water and a shining dipper, a feature
of " the Conway gate " which spread its fame
from one end of the road to the other, and
which more than anything else reconciled
152 The Opponents
Nathan Convvay to the existence of the bicy
clists. For the bicyclists not being required
to pay toll, and not being therefore subject to
Nathan's official authority, had been at first
offensive innovations in his sight, and he had
raised his voice, in political discussion with
Dunk Peabody, Uncle Jesse Craik, and others
of his fellow-countrymen, in favor of passing a
law at Frankfort abolishing bicycles, along with
the Money Power, trusts, and other evils of the
age. But when the bicyclists discovered that
bucket and dipper on the porch and revelled
as only bicyclists can over such a discovery,
and glorified his spring, and extolled his kind
ness, and stocked him with cigars and tobacco
as tokens of their appreciation, Nathan's atti
tude toward them underwent a change, and
eventually it pleased him almost as much to see
the approach of a bicycle as it did to see a
traveller try to evade or defy the rules of the
company.
The few acres that he owned were cultivated
by his young son, Dave, and these, with his
official income, sufficed for his simple wants.
This summer, after years of saving, he had
got enough together to make his long-planned
visit to his brother in Texas. Dave, as a rare
" The Queenin' of It " 153
treat, had been allowed to accompany him
as far as Louisville, and for the present Lide
Conway was in full charge of the gate.
She came out of the cottage, this Sunday
morning, through the toll-house, to the little
porch, a wholesome-looking girl, clean as to the
calico dress she wore, clean as to the white
petticoat whose edge showed as she caught up
her skirt crossing the yard. There were pink
roses at her waist and under the rich tan of her
cheeks, and the sun sifted down through the
morning-glory vines shading the porch and
sought its own in her eyes and hair.
" Good-mornin', Pap Maxey," she greeted
the old man, who had pulled up the yellow
horse in front of the toll-house. " I was goin'
to send for you to-day. You must come in to
dinner. Ma told me I must make you. We 're
all by ourselves."
" Much obleeged, much obleeged, Lide, but
I mus' be gittin' along. I thes drove by to see
how you comin' on."
" Everything 's about as usual, only another
warnin' was left last night."
" Toe-be-sho, toe-be-sho ! "
She took from her bosom a paper and handed
it to him.
1 54 The Opponents
" I found it on the do' this mornin', the same
place where the other was."
He adjusted his spectacles and scanned it
closely. " Ken you make it out?" he asked,
returning it to her. " My schoolin' did n't
pervide fer no sich gallivested writin' as
that."
" It says : ' Last Warnin'. You are hereby
notified not to collect no mo' toll, or the Con-
way gate will go to meet the one at Sibley's
Mill. We warned you once next time we
will act. We do not act on Sunday which we
remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy, but
we will be ready for business Monday. Take
due notice. The Friends of the People' "
"Yi, yi!" Pap Maxey laughed, "an" the
rapscallions means it."
" It 's a shame ! " the girl said with kindling
eyes. " Oh, I wish I was a man ! "
" But you ain't, Lide, an' I '11 come over an'
sleep in the toll-house to-night. They won't
come to-night, though. That "s honis, what
they say about Sunday. I know them scamps.
But I reckon you an' yo' ma '11 feel easier with
a man on the premises."
" I ain't afraid, but I know ma '11 be glad if
you come."
" The Queenin' of It " 155
" I '11 hunt up Vance " Vance was the
president of the turnpike company " an'
make him go befo' Judge Gilbert, at Yardley,
to-morrer, an' swear out guards fer the gate.
Then the Conway gate will be as ready fer
business Monday as 'the Friends of the
People"ll be."
The next day, about noon, Pap Maxey, who
had started to the railway station with the
intention of going to Yardley, the county seat,
to have Vance apply to the County Judge for
guards, returned to the Conway gate, with the
explanation that, owing to his horse's " galli-
vested laziness," he had missed the train, and
there being no other until late in the afternoon,
there would be little probability of his securing
the guards before morning.
" But ef the raiders come to-night, Lide, you
let 'em cut down the gate," he advised. " Don't
you make no objection, an' they won't bother
you ner the house."
" But why can't I have some guards without
sendin' all the way to Judge Gilbert?" the
girl suggested.
" So you mout, Lide, but not accordin' to
the law made and pervided. An' the p'int is,
you don't know who to git. You don't know
i 56 The Opponents
who b'longs to the raiders 'roun' here now an'
who don't specially who don't."
" I thought maybe it would n't make so
mighty much difference, you know," Lide ven
tured, with a little more color, " whether they
belonged to the raiders or not, if I asked them
as a particular favor to me."
Pap Maxey's face wrinkled till his eyes shut
with his shrill little laugh.
" Well, now, maybe it would n't," he admitted.
" I had n't thought of that p'int I reckon some
folks would swim the river ef you ast 'em, Lide,
raiders er no raiders. I mind me, now, there 's
Ike Pritchett an' Rufe Wright, toe-be-sho."
" An' there 's Nelse Tigert," she added. " I
reckon he 'd come."
" An' Nelse Tigert," agreed Pap, his eyes
twinkling. " You git Ike an' Rufe an' Nelse to
watch the gate fer you to-night, an' there won't
be no raidin' of it, I '11 go you ! An' all you
gotter do is to crook yo' finger at them three,
Lide, you raskil ! " his laugh even causing the
sleepy horse to prick up his ears.
"You go 'long with you, Pap Maxey!"
Lide commanded, her eyes narrowing and her
cheeks dimpling with the smile she only par
tially succeeded in repressing.
" The Queenin' of It " 1 57
That afternoon she wrote three notes and
sent them off by a negro boy. Ike Pritchett,
Rufe Wright, and Nelse Tigert were regarded
as the chattels of Lide Conway. They had all
been " sparkin' " her for some time ; Rufe and
Nelse for three or four years and Ike more than
half as long. It was generally agreed that Lide
could get any one of the three whenever she
" said the word ; " that if she had made up her
mind to " have " any of them, none of them
knew it; and that she was holding all three
" on the string," to suit her pleasure and con
venience. They were all tractable subjects,
except, perhaps, Nelse Tigert. Nelse had
" asked " her as many times, no doubt, as either
of the others had, and had been as devoted,
but he was less patient with what he called
Lide's " queenin' of it." He had even told her
outright that she ought to make her choice
of them or " boost the whole bunch." This
being " bunched " impartially with the others
was one of the things that seemed to chafe
him. Rufe Wright did not disturb him much,
except to get in his way. Rufe was a harm
less sort of fellow, whom Nelse rather liked,
and whom he did not seriously regard as his
rival. Perhaps he did not seriously so regard
158 The Opponents
Ike Pritchett ; but he had a contempt for Ike,
and did not deem him worthy of so much as
Lide's notice. He had too good an opinion of
her to think that she would ever marry Ike
Pritchett, but it "riled" him to see Ike ad
mitted to her friendship and, apparently, to
equal favor with Rufe Wright and Nelsc
Tigert.
He was particularly displeased with Lide's
latest bit of " queenin' of it." In the early part
of the preceding week he had ridden up to the
gate and asked Lide if he might " come to see "
her Thursday night.
" Come Friday night or Wednesday night,"
she had said. " Ike 's comin' Thursday night."
" Seems like Ike an' me 's always wantin' the
same nights," he had replied.
"An* you an' him are always put out with
each other an' actin' disagreeable about it. So
I Ve turned over a new leaf. I 'm goin" to give
you all one night a week apiece. Ike says he '11
take Thursday night, an' you can have yo*
choice of the others. Rufe will be satisfied
with any night."
" Well, I be dadbur well, you do beat the
Queen o' Sheby ! " was Nelse's dazed com
ment, while Lide laughed softly in a " Giant
" The Queenin' of It " 1 59
of Battles" rose into which she was dipping
her face.
" Scuse me!" Nelse said, with his second
breath. " I 'm a thousan' times obleeged to
you, but you c'n give my night to Ike Pritchett
too." He swept the horizon with his hat as he
bowed to her, and dug his heels into his horse's
sides.
" Remember," Lide called to him as he gal
loped away, her laugh growing clearer in her
intention that it should overtake him " re
member, any night but Thursday. An' tele
graph me which one you decide on."
Lide's three notes were brief, and similar in
everything except the addresses; Ike, Rufe,
and Nelse each being merely informed that
she would be at home that night, with the inti
mation that she would be pleased to see him.
"Did you find them all?" she asked the
boy, on his return.
" Yassum."
"It was all right, was it?"
" Mr. Ike en Mr. Rufe say dey sholy gwine
come, but Mr. Nelse, he say please scuse him,
caze he done got an'er in-ingagemunt."
Such a thing had never happened before.
Rufe came at dusk, and Ike not much later.
1 60 The Opponents
Each seemed surprised to see the other, each
having assumed himself especially favored by
his invitation. Lide made no explanation for
some time, sitting between the two and appear-
ing not to notice their discomfort, though she
was keenly and approvingly conscious of it.
Finally Rufe slowly rose and flapping his
hat dejectedly against his thigh, remarked that
he reckoned he 'd be movin' on.
Lide told him not to be in such a hurry, and
then added that the raiders had made threats
to destroy the gate, and that Pap Maxey had
suggested that she ask Rufe and Ike to come
over and help her take care of things that
night
Rufe's lassitude gave way to a look of pleased
and childlike animation. He sat down imme
diately, and all constraint between him and Ike
Pritchett at once vanished. They had some
thing to think of now except the same girl.
There was even before them a possibility of
fighting; and Rufe and Ike were both more
natural and rational and cheerful when fighting
than when courting.
Soon Rufe took out his pistol and inspected
it fondly; and Ike followed his example, re
marking to Lide:
" The Queenin' of It " 1 6 1
" Ef you 'd a-told me afo'hand I 'd 'a' brung
my rifle along."
They were sitting on the little porch of the
toll-house.
"You all take them pistols inside an' lay
them on the table," Lide ordered. "There
would n't be no accountin' for what you two
would do, with them pistols in yo' pockets.
I'll tell you when to use them, if the time
comes."
There were strenuous, even indignant, pro
tests against this, and her two subjects were
nearer open rebellion than they had ever been
before. But Lide had her way.
They sat and talked of the raiders and their
doings until the moon came up through the
trees, and the air from the yard grew sweet
from the dew-distilled fragrance of Lide's
flowers. It was nearly twelve o'clock when
Rufe suggested that Lide go to the cottage
and leave him and Ike to look after the gate.
" Hush," she answered intently. " I believe
I hear horses."
She was not mistaken. In a few seconds the
hoof-beats of several horses were faintly though
distinctly audible down the turnpike.
Then the sound suddenly ceased.
1 62 The Opponents
"They've all pulled up," said Rufe, "er
they 've turned off to the side, where there
ain't no rock."
"An* there ain't no dirt road along there,
nuther," supplemented Ike; "mus" be ridin'
on the grass to keep f 'om makin' any noise."
For a little the silence was unbroken ; then
Rufe spoke :
"That's it! Don't you hear the chug!
chug! of the horses on the grass?"
The moon was shining, though dimly,
through a thin film of clouds.
" I see them ! " exclaimed Lide, her eyes
straining down the pale limestone line of the
road.
About a hundred yards from the gate there
was a clump of trees on one side of the pike,
which was thus partially obscured at that point,
but beyond, in the moonlight, a dark shadow
was approaching; and a moment more it
was merged in the larger shadow of the trees.
"They're goin' to hitch their horses there
an' do the rest on foot," hazarded Rufe.
He seemed to have guessed right. It was
not long before the raiders reappeared, now
without their horses, and numbering apparently
ten or fifteen. They came straight forward
" The Queenin' of It " 163
until they had covered about half the distance
between the trees and the gate, when they
abruptly halted and drew together in a bunch.
" I reckon they see us now an' are holdin' a
confab," observed Rufe.
It was fully a minute before it ended. Then
a voice was heard to say decisively : " I '11 go
myself an' see how the land lays, an' not a
man comes another step till I give the word."
Immediately one of the party left it and walked
swiftly toward the gate.
" Why," gasped Rufe, in amazement, " that
feller's voice sounded like "
" It is ! it is ! Oh, the creature ! " was Lide's
low cry of wrath and contempt.
" The pistols ! " Ike exclaimed, and he and
Rufe rushed from the porch into the house to
secure them.
But Nelse Tigert was too quick for them.
He sprang forward, and before Lide knew
what was his purpose he, laughing, had lifted
her from the porch and was hurrying with her
in his arms across the yard between the toll
house and the Conway cottage.
" That wa' n't no place fer you, Lide," he
said.
" Oh, you coward ! " and she, surprised and
164 The Opponents
powerless, could only strike him in the face
with her hand.
"Do that ag'in," he threatened, "an' I'll
kiss you."
Rufe and Ike had almost immediately run
from the toll-house with drawn revolvers, but
with Lide in the arms of the man they wished
to shoot, revolvers were useless.
" I '11 be back, boys, soon 's I escote Miss
Lide home," Nelse had laughed to them over
his shoulder.
He put her down at the door of the cottage.
" You better go in an' stay with yo' ma,"
he advised ; " I '11 see that they ain't no damage
done 'cept thes to chop down the gate pole."
Lide did not deign to answer him.
Rufe and Ike rushed up, and Nelse turned
to face them.
" Hold on, you all," he said ; " we don't
want no difficulty in Miz Conway's yard. I
reckon she 's asleep, anyhow. You c'n see
me outside, ef you wanter."
Just then there was the ring of axes at the
toll-gate.
"You hurry back to the gate, Rufe," Ike
urged; "I'll settle with Nelse Tigers"
" Stop, both of you ! " Lide ordered, run-
The Queenin' of It " 165
ning up to her two lieutenants. " It's too late
to do any good now, an' there ain't no use of
yo' gettin' hurt for nothin'."
Ike took a determined step toward Nelse,
but Lide was between them, and was to be
obeyed.
" Ike Pritchett," she cried, " if you an' Rufe
Wright don't do exactly as I tell you, I '11
never speak to either of you again as long as
I live ! "
" She 's right, boys," Nelse Tigert volun
teered. " No use yo' cuttin' up now. The
gate 's down by this time, an' you got my word
they shain't do no other damage. Ef you
wanter light into us you c'n do it ; but what '11
you make buckin' up ag'in' a crowd that 's six
or seven to yo' one ? As fer me, when you all
wanter see me you know mighty well it 's
always easy to find me."
He turned and walked away, toward the toll-
gate. Ike, sullen and black, was about to fol
low, but was restrained by a look from Lide.
Rufe was slowly gouging a hole in the turf with
his boot, his eyes intent on his work.
" By gum ! " he muttered, " I don't see what
was the use o' yo' sendin' fer us ef you wa'n't
a-goin' to let us have no fun."
1 66 The Opponents
The raiders had now left the gate and dis
appeared down the pike. When Lide, with
her unhappy escorts, went to see what ruin
had been wrought, she found that the toll
house had been undisturbed, but that the
gate-pole had been cut down and had been
obligingly chopped up into lengths suitable
for stove-wood.
XIV
THE CONQUEST OF THE QUEEN OF SHEBA'S
SUPERIOR
ALTHOUGH it was not later than seven o'clock
the next morning when Nelse Tigert rode up
to the Con way gate, he found another pole
across the road.
There was a smile on his face as he stopped
his horse and waited for Lide to let him pass ;
the smile broadened as he noted that she came
out of the toll-house without appearing even to
see him, and that, contrary to her custom in
taking toll, she made no motion to raise the
pole until she had his money in her hand.
" Hear Pap Maxey has gone to Judge Gil
bert fer guards," he said propitiatingly as he
rode through.
She simply turned her stony face further
away and lowered the pole behind him.
" That 's a good move," he tried again, " ef
he gits the right men; an' I reckon I better
give him a tip."
1 68 The Opponents
She fastened the gate and walked back into
the house, without any indication that she had
seen or heard him.
When Pap Maxey returned to the Conway
gate that afternoon, his eyes were dancing and
his jaws were working so much more than nor
mally that Lide knew, the instant she saw him,
that he was highly pleased with the result of
his journey to Yardley.
" Well, Lide," he said, " I reckon we '11
manage fer a while now. The judge did n't
wanter give us no guards much folks thinks
he 'd like to take sides with the raiders hisself,
bein' as he 's a candidate fer re-election an'
he would n't give us as many guards as we ast
fer, but he allowed us fo' fer this gate an'
Sibley's Mill together, an' long 's we got good
men I reckon they '11 do. Nelse Tigert, he says
they 're all right, an' Nelse knows."
" Nelse Tigert ! " the girl protested. " Why,
don't you know that it was Nelse Tigert that
led the raiders last night? "
" I reckon I know as much about Nelse
Tigert as the nex' man. When he says he '11
do a thing he '11 do it ; an' he says he '11 be
'sponsible this gate won't be raided while he 's
in charge."
The Queen of Sheba's Superior 1 69
" Nelse Tigert in charge of this gate ! " as
tonished and indignant.
" Toe-be-sho ! Ef he 's on our side now,
who keers ef he was on t' other side las' night ?
So much the better ef he was he knows
the ropes. We done fixed it all up. We got
Nelse 'p'inted one of the guards, an' he 's
comin' here, while the other three '11 go to
Sibley's Mill. Nelse said he reckoned you
was not hankerin' fer his comp'ny, but you
would n't hafter see much of him, an' he
would n't be much wuss'n havin' strange guards
hangin' 'roun'. Anyhow, we cakilated he
could take keer of the gate best, without
botherin' about any of the strangers ; so he '11
be on hand to-night."
Lide's head was high in the air now, but she
did not condescend to argue the point.
When Nelse arrived later and, standing his
gun on the porch, against the wall of the
toll-house, sat down on the steps near, Lide
was at the cottage with her mother ; nor did
she appear until an hour afterward, when she
came out to collect toll from some one. Nelse
was still sitting on the steps, but she would
not look at him.
" You neenter trouble about comin' to take
170 The Opponents
toll," he said, as she started back. " Ic'n thes
as well 'ten' to that fer you as not."
" I despise you, Nelse Tigert ! " she flung at
him, as she walked away and returned to the
cottage, which she did not leave again that
night.
Next morning Nelse waited until he saw
her standing in the doorway of the cottage,
when he placed the money he had collected on
the table in the toll-house and left for the day.
When he returned to take up his sentry
again in the evening, she was sitting in the
entrance of the toll-house, sewing. Nelse
stood his gun against the wall, saw that she
did not look up from her work, and went to
his old seat on the steps. He sat there for
several minutes, fanning himself with his hat,
and then said, without glancing toward her :
" One reason I never come the other night,
when you sent me that note, was because I
knowed I could do you a heap mo' good by
goin' with the raiders."
She gave no sign that she had heard him,
and he spoke no further.
Soon she rose and went to the cottage for
the night.
The following evening she was again sewing
The Queen of Sheba's Superior 171
in the doorway of the toll-house when he came
on duty, and after he had been silently sitting
on the steps for some time he said, as if in
continuation of his words the evening before :
" I picked you up an' toted you to the house
because I did n't know what minute them fools
might begin carryin' on an' shootin'."
She made no reply. He went on fanning
himself, and she went on sewing. Then, after
a little, it being Thursday and Ike Pritchett's
night, that young man arrived, and Lide took
him over to the cottage.
Friday evening, as Nelse placed his gun
against the wall, he looked into the doorway of
the toll-house, as if he expected to see the
girl sitting there again, but she was not visible.
Just then Dunk Peabody rode up, and Nelse
went forward to take his toll.
" Say, you ain't goner charge me nothin',
are you, Nelse Tigert ? " Dunk expostulated.
Nelse answered that he had no authority to
make any exception in Dunk's favor.
" But this ain't my mule, nohow," Dunk
argued. "It's Uncle Jesse Craik's: charge it
to Uncle Jesse."
Nelse insisted on the cash.
" Look-a-here, Nelse Tigert," Dunk de-
172 The Opponents
murred, as he handed over the money, " I be
dodgasted ef you ain't the las' man I ever ex
pected to see takin' sides with the grastin' pluty-
crats. An' I tell you, man to man, you better
look sharp, too ! The boys don't know what
to make o' yo' desertin' 'em 'twixt sun-up an'
sun-down, an' they got it in fer you ! "
" You tell the boys," Nelse replied with
unwonted dignity, " that bein' a privit citizen
is one thing an' bein' a awficer of the law is
another ; an' as long as I am a awficer of the
law, sent here by the Judge of the County Cote
to carry out the law an' guard this gate, I 'm
a-goin' to do it while Ic'n draw a bead er pull
a trigger."
" Well, Nelse Tigert," Dunk called back as
he rode on, " I bet you that 's the las' cent o'
my money the Conway gate ever gits. You
put that in yo' gun an' shoot it."
" Is Uncle Jesse goin' to lend you the toll
as well as the mule?" Nelse retorted.
He did not see Lide until about nine o'clock
that night. Then she came into the toll-house
and set a tray on the table.
" Ma thought," she said in a low, uncompro
mising voice, "you might need a snack durin'
the night."
The Queen of Sheba's Superior 173
"I I 'm much obleeged to you," Nelse
stammered ; " I - ' But she went out and
across the yard to the cottage without waiting
to hear what he would have added when he
recovered control of his tongue.
Saturday night was the one Rufe Wright had
chosen for his own ; and Lide and he sat on
the porch of the cottage, while Nelse sat on the
porch of the toll-house.
Mrs. Conway brought him his lunch that
night.
Lide brought it Sunday night; and before
she could set it down and leave, Nelse had again
spoken.
" You never s'posed I ever meant to harm^'
gate ? " he said. " Them fools was thes deter
mined to play the mischief an' burn down the
whole toll-house, an' I dunno what all, but I
thought ef I went with 'em I could take the lead
an' hold 'em down from doin' anything but thes
cuttin' down the pole, 'thout nobody bein' hurt.
That 'sail."
She did not answer, but adjusted the napkin
over his lunch and went back to the cottage.
Monday night Nelse was a little later than
usual, and it was dark when he reached the gate.
This time Lide Conway was standing out on
1/4 The Opponents
the porch of the toll-house, looking anxiously
down the road. When she saw Nelse she gave
a little exclamation of relief and hurried to meet
him.
" O Nelse ! " she cried, " look what I found
stuck on the do' to-night."
She held out a sheet of paper and they went
inside, to the lamp.
But Nelse, standing by the table, seemed to
have no thought of the paper in his hand. His
breathing was deep, his face aglow, his glad,
puzzled eyes fixed helplessly on the metamor
phosis of Lide.
" Read it, Nelse, quick ! " she urged. " It-
it is terrible ! "
Nelse's face relaxed into a great smile, which
seemed to settle there forever, and he finally
found voice as he reluctantly withdrew his eyes
from the girl to the paper.
" What? This here thing? " he said stupidly.
" Hurry, Nelse ; read it ! "
He unfolded the paper and held it to the
light:
" To Nelse Tigert Trater You leave the Con-
way gate at once, or we will hang you to the rafters
before we burn down the house.
" The Friends of the People."
The Queen of Sheba's Superior 175
Nelse laughed absently as he dropped the
sheet on the table ; but Lide caught his arm
quickly.
" O Nelse," she pleaded, " leave right away,
please ! You don't know when they will
come ! "
" Shucks, Lide ! " he scoffed in his happiness ;
" don't you mind what them fellers say. It 's a
cold bluff. They wanter bluff me off the place
so they c'n chop you some mo' stove-wood.
I know that gang. They ain't out fer no shootin'
match with with no plumb fool that they
know ken shoot, an' will shoot, an' shoot trou
blesome ruther 'n step up an' be hanged.
There 's a wasps' nest up there among them
rafters, anyhow, an' I thes would n't choose to
be hanged so clost to no wasps' nest. 'Sides,
I would n't leave the Conway gate now, wasps'
nest er no wasps' nest, with a hangin' th'owed
in ! "
" But please, Nelse, do it for for me."
" Why, Lide " and he said it as if he meant
it, "I could whoop all the raiders in Ken
tucky to-night ! "
He led her out to his old seat on the porch,
and they talked it over there for nearly an hour,
he finally promising magnanimously, " thes to
ij6 The Opponents
satisfy you, Lide," that he would call on one
of the guards at " Sibley's Mill to reinforce
him, if young Dave Conway did not get home
next day. Then Lide went to the cottage, and
came back with Dave's rifle, insisting that she
intended to take f)ave's place that night, and
Nelse was standing on the porch before her,
roaring with laughter and threatening that if
she did not return to the cottage and go to sleep
he would " bodaciously tote " her there, as he
had done once before, when his laughter
abruptly ceased at the sudden and near sound
of a horse galloping away from them, up the
pike.
Lide and Nelse looked at each other com-
prehendingly. No one had ridden through the
gate.
" Some loafer sky-larkin' roun'," Nelse said
reassuringly.
" It was somebody spyin' on the gate, to find
out if you were here," Lide answered with
quickened breath.
" Well, he found out, an' I reckon what he
found out," replied Nelse confidently, " will
satisfy him fer this night. Now, you run on
back to the house, my my girl, ef you don't
wanter make me lose my job. The fact is,
f
The Queen of Sheba's Superior 1 77
I 've been so took up an' turned 'roun' with you
tonight that I plumb forgot I was a awficer
of the law, an' that sneak might 'a' touched a
match to the toll-house 'thout my layin' eyes
on him."
XV
SOME RAIDERS AND A THEORY
" I HEAR somebody comin' now," said Lide,
looking alertly up the turnpike.
"Oh, that ain't them," Nelse assured her;
" they won't come on wheels."
It was Morgan Tunstall and his party, driving
home from the railway station, on their return
from Mammoth Cave. Tunstall, in his phae
ton, with Mrs. Letcher, Kate Cockerill, and
Hugh Letcher, passed through the gate with
out stopping. A few seconds later a second
carriage followed, containing Margaret Helm,
Florence Letcher, Nixon, and Sidney Garrard.
Garrard pulled up the horses at the gate, and
the party spoke to Lide cordially, Florence
and Margaret leaning out and shaking her
hand in unaffected admiration. Lide, since her
adventure in attempting to defend the gate the
previous week, was regarded as something of a
heroine.
Some Raiders and a Theory 179
" No more attacks on the gate since we
left?" inquired Garrard.
" No, sir," Lide answered ; " Mr. Tigert has
been guarding it every night."
" Ah? Well, that 's a good idea. I shouldn't
like to attack a gate that Nelse was guarding."
" By order of Judge Gilbert," explained
Nelse, standing a little straighten
" But what are you doing with that gun,
Miss Lide?" Garrard asked.
"This? Oh, this is Dave's. I just brought
it over from the house."
" She 's got a notion the raiders are comin*
ag'in," Nelse laughed softly, " an' she ain't
good an' certain that Ic'n manage them by
myself."
" Oh, Mr. Garrard ! " Lide cried impulsively,
stepping nearer, " you read it an' see if you
don't think Nelse ought n't to pay some at
tention to it," handing him the warning she
had found stuck on the door earlier in the
evening.
Garrard read it slowly two or three times.
"Where did you get it?" he asked lightly,
as he handed it back.
Lide explained.
" Well, I should n't worry about it at all,"
1 80 The Opponents
he said, as if it were not worth further con
sideration.
He drove on; but fifteen minutes later,
when he had said good-night to Margaret and
Florence at Letcher Tavern, he called to Hugh,
who was smoking outside, Tunstall having left
Mrs. Letcher and Hugh at the Tavern and
gone on with Kate Cockerill.
" I 'm afraid there may be trouble again at
the Conway gate to-night," Garrard declared,
as Hugh came out and lifted one foot to the
wheel hub.
"What makes you think so? "
" A rather ugly warning left at the gate to
night, together with the fact that since reading
it I have recalled several circumstances that
look a little suspicious. There was that fellow
we met on the other side of the Conway gate
he was certainly going somewhere and for some
purpose. At any rate, he was going in the
direction of Windrow's Bend. There was the
neigh of a horse in the bushes as we passed
Windrow's Bend, further back, before we met
this fellow. Now, what business have horses
in Windrow's Bend at this time of night? We
have either passed or met half a dozen men
to-night all of whom were going toward Wind-
Some Raiders and a Theory 181
row's Bend, and all of whom edged away from
us on the road. Since I have been waiting
here I heard two more gallop along the pike
beyond Burnham's yonder and turn off into
Burnham's lane. It may be only a coinci
dence, but Burnham's lane is the only route
they can take from here to reach Windrow's
Bend conveniently without going through the
Conway gate. Besides, we know the state of
feeling now against the toll-gates."
" Nelse Tigert is still on guard at the Con-
way gate, isn't he? " Hugh asked.
" Yes. That 's one reason why an attack on
the gate to-night would be a much more seri
ous matter than the one last week was. Nelse,
as well as some of the raiders, would be pretty
sure to fare roughly."
" Well, do you propose anything?"
" Yes. I shall stop awhile with Nelse as I
go back. If you like you and Nix might join
us. We four should make a pretty formidable
garrison for the Conway gate."
"Now, Sid," Nixon protested, "I'll sit up
with Nelse, but you drive on home. You
are n't nominated yet, and you 're a fool to go
out of your way to set all this anti-toll-gate
crowd against you."
1 82 The Opponents
" Right you are, Nix," Hugh exclaimed.
" You and I can keep Nelse company to-night.
There 's no use of Sid getting mixed up in this
business. It would beat him, sure."
"You go to the house," Garrard enjoined
him, " and get a couple of guns, without letting
any of the family see you. We can talk over
the other point on the way."
Hugh got the guns, and as the three drove
back to the Conway gate he and Nixon re
newed their protestations against Garrard's
taking any unnecessary risk of weakening him
self in his race for Congress by helping Nelse
Tigert guard the gate.
"You admit that these raiders and their
sympathizers are strong and unreasonable in
this county," Hugh urged, " and that to excite
their hostility won't help you to win your race."
" I admit," Garrard replied ; " but Nelse
may be in a tight place to-night, and may need
us."
" I 'm afraid you '11 never make a politician,
Sid."
" Oh, well, as far as that is concerned, this
turnpike rioting is a matter of public interest,
and the voters have a right to know what I
think of it."
Some Raiders and a Theory 183
" But you can afford to wait till they ask
you what you think of it. There 's no occa
sion for your mixing up in it in this ruinous
manner. Nix and I are all the reinforcement
Nelse will need."
" But are n't you a politician yourself? "
" I 'm out of politics and intend to stay out."
" I could n't ask you and Nix to go where I
would n't go. Besides, three of us on Nelse's
staff will be more effective than two, if the
raiders should come. There will be less prob
ability that they will fight at all if they find the
gate strongly guarded. Nelse's conceit, his
reputation as a rifle shot, his recent association
with the raiders, and his desire to 'show off*
before his sweetheart have made him over
confident, yet I am pretty sure that Nelse's con
tempt for the raiders is not altogether unjust
to them. I have long been convinced that the
average mob, when not aroused to frenzy by
some unusually atrocious crime, has n't a sur
plus of courage, and that a determined resist
ance by even greatly inferior numbers will stop
it and put it to flight. I believe that three
fourths of the mobs that go around lynching
negroes and all of them that go around burn
ing toll-gates could be routed by a sheriff and
1 84 The Opponents
two or three deputies who were men enough
to do their duty. The chief trouble is that
these law officers either sympathize with the
mob or are too cowardly to oppose it. They
do not seem to realize that a man, though
brave enough ordinarily, is usually more of a
coward than they are themselves when he is
taking part in the unlawful enterprise of a mob.
It is not often that he will run much real risk
of getting a bullet in his skin, to say nothing
of discovery. Nelse and two of us would no
doubt be ample to protect the Conway gate,
but Nelse and all of us would be as good as a
regiment."
He had his way. Nelse Tigert laughingly
scoffed at the possibility of his needing their
assistance, but he took the horses to the stable
cheerfully.
" There wa' n't no use of you all comin'," he
said ; " but I 'm glad you did come, anyhow.
It's powerful lonesome here 'long towards day.
Maybe wec'n have a little game of seven-up."
But there was no seven-up. Lide, happily
confident now of the safety of the gate and of
Nelse, had retired to the cottage, leaving Dave's
rifle at the toll-house " in case it might be
needed." The four men lounged on the porch
Some Raiders and a Theory 185
for an hour, when Nixon, removing his coat
and turning a chair down as a pillow, stretched
himself on the floor, with the request that he
be called if visitors should arrive. A little after
twelve o'clock Hugh yawned that he believed
he would follow Nix's example.
" Better wait a minute," suggested Garrard.
" Do you hear anything, Nelse ? "
It was very still. The moon, red with what
Nelse had interpreted as " rain before she
changes," was low in the west. The trees
seemed to have drawn the shadows of the
night about them and were motionless in sleep.
There was not even a lisp in the field of corn
across the road. The one sound that domi
nated the silence had the effect of only deep
ening it, the slumberous, soothing murmur
of the shoals in the little river a mile distant.
" Yes," Nelse answered ; " I hear Sanders'
Shoals, an' I don't know as I ever heerd 'em
from the Conway gate befo'."
" And / hear what sounds like a troop of
cavalry, up the road," Garrard declared.
Nelse bent forward intently for a second.
" By Hannah Maria ! " he exclaimed, " so do
I!"
He took up his gun, which had been stand
ing against the wall.
i86 The Opponents
" I never would 'a' thought," he added, " that
you had better hearin' than me, Sid Garrard ! "
" Oh, Sid 's a politician, and he keeps his
ears to the ground," Hugh Letcher remarked.
" He does, does he?" Nelse studied Hugh's
countenance as if not quite sure that he under
stood thoroughly. " Well, ef he don't want to
hear things that would n't do him no good, I 'd
advise him not to be ketched here to-night.
Them 's voters hittin' the pike now, an' there 's
lots mo' of the same stripe in Luttroll County."
" Excellent advice, Nelse," Hugh replied ;
" too good to be thrown away on a man pre
destined always to do his best to elect the other
fellow. Get up there, Nix," kicking Nixon's
foot, " or you '11 miss the fun."
Nixon rolled over and raised up on his
elbow, growling:
" To the devil with you, Spud ! Don't want
any breakfast 'smorning."
The night-riders were drawing rapidly nearer.
The ring of the hoof-beats on the hard turn
pike was now so distinct that Nelse Tigert
claimed he could " come mighty clost to
countin' the lay-out There 's about twenty in it
not mo' than twenty-five nor less than fif
teen." Soon they were visible, their backs
Some Raiders and a Theory 187
against the sinking moon. As they swept for
ward along the white strip of the road, there was
a jubilant yell from a single throat, followed by
a gruff " Shut up ! " in a lower voice. The
troop galloped as near as sixty yards of the
toll-gate before they stopped, and as they drew
rein Nelse Tigert stepped out into the road in
front of the toll-house.
" I reckon you all better wait there tell you 're
invited to come any furder, boys," he called out
good-humoredly.
One of the masked raiders, holding up a
handkerchief tied to the muzzle of his gun,
trotted forward half the distance to the gate
and halted.
" Nelse Tigert," he shouted, " you know
what we 're here fer, an' I thes wanter tell you
that they ain't no use of havin' no foolin'. We
don't want no trouble, but we're a-goin' to
chop down that gate an' burn down that toll
house ; an' we 're a-goin' to do the square thing
to keep from havin' no trouble an' give you
a fair chance to throw up yo' job an' move
outer the way. We ain't disputin' yo' spunk,
but I reckon youc'n see we 're a few too many
fer you."
" Say, Shack," Nelse responded, " you ough-
1 88 The Opponents
ter wear a muzzle along with yo 1 mask ef yo'
don't want yo' old friends to know you. But
I ain't throwin' up no jobs, Shack; an' right
now my job is to keep this gate from bein'
chopped down an' this toll-house from bein'
burned down. Is that all you wanted to say,
Shack?"
" I thes wanted to give you fair notice,
Nelse, to save onnecessary trouble ; an' fair
notice I done give you. Now, I ain't got but
one mo' thing to say. I 'm a-goin' back to the
boys yonder, an' we 're a-goin' to wait thes two
minutes by the watch fer you to ac' reasonable
an* step out o' the way. Then we're a-goin'
to chop down the gate an' burn down the
toll-house, trouble er no trouble."
The man with the flag of truce pulled his
horse around to ride back, but Nelse halted
him.
" Wait a minute, Shack. I ain't had my say
yit You give the boys up yonder my love
an' affection," raising his voice so that the
boys could hear him themselves, " an' tell ' em
as a particular favor to me I want 'em to take
due notice of that 'ere tree standin' on the side
of the road a little ways in front of 'em. It 's a
slippery-ellum tree, an' bein' as it is the only
Some Raiders and a Theory 189
tree between here an' them, they cain't mis
take it. Now I 'm a-goin' to stan' here behind
this red-oak tree I 'm free to say that con-
siderin' the number of you all I 'm a-goin' to
take to timber an' the fus one of you that
comes this side of that slippery-ellum, well,
I 'm a-goin' to do my level bes' to keep him
from a-comin' any furder; an' I'm livin' in
hopes that Ic'n stop a passel of you all be
tween here and the slippery-ellum. I reckon
you all know whether Ic'n shoot."
" All right, Nelse," answered Shack. " We
ain't honin' fer no ruckus, an' we 've done done
the fair thing to keep from havin' no ruckus;
but ef you mus' have it, you mus'. An' I
reckon other folks kin shoot some, too, Nelse."
Shack rode back to his command. There
was evidently a hurried and disorderly con
ference. There was a confusion of voices,
several of which could be understood at the
toll-gate :
"Then we won't give the fool no two
minutes ! "
" We better bushwhack him through the
corn-field ! "
" Or flank him through the yard ! "
"To hell with the slippery-ellum! I'm
190 The Opponents
fer ridin' him straight down right over the
turnpike ! "
Garrard stepped from the shadow of the
porch to the moonlit road.
" Hugh," he said, " would n't it be well for
you and Nix to show yourselves for a second
out here by Nelse and his red-oak ? "
He walked up the turnpike about twenty
paces, that he might be within better speaking
distance of the raiders.
" Here, Sid," Nixon objected ; " no use your
acting smart now and getting too far away from
the red-oak."
" Boys," began Garrard, stopping on the road
and addressing the raiders, " wait a minute
where you are. I've a few words to say to
you."
" Why, he 's goin' to make a speech," com
mented Hugh. " The ruling passion strong in
death."
From the group of raiders came such
ejaculations as:
" I know that voice ! "
" What 's he doin' here?"
" Damned if 't ain't Sid Garrard ! "
"Yes," admitted the speaker, "it's Sid
Garrard. I 've come over with Hugh Letcher
Some Raiders and a Theory 191
and Bob Nixon to keep you and Nelse Tigert
out of trouble."
"Well," shouted the leader, Shack, riding
forward a few feet in front of the others, " you
an' Hugh Letcher an' Bob Nixon had better
go back to keep yo'selves outer trouble. An'
you better take Nelse 'long with you, I
reckon."
" Now, see here, boys," Garrard urged,
" you 'd better act reasonably about this mat
ter. You know very well that you have come
to do an unlawful deed ; that Nelse is an officer
of the law who is here to protect the toll-gate,
and that before you can do what you came to
do you will have to kill him, and you don't
believe you will be able to do that before he
kills some of you. Is the destruction of the
toll-gate worth what it will cost ? "
"Oh, come off ! This ain't no stump speakin' ! "
yelled one of the raiders.
" That 's yo' Sid Garrard ! " one was heard to
scoff at another. " Now maybe you still think
he 's fer the people, heh? "
" We never come here to debate, Mr. Gar
rard," Shack responded. " We come here fer
business, an' we 're a-goin' to 'ten' to business.
We ain't got nothin' ag'in' you an' Mr. Nixon
192 The Opponents
an' Mr. Letcher, an' th' ain't no call fer you all
goin' outn yo' way to git in our way. So you
all better stan' aside an' not meddle in what
don't concern you. That's fair an' square
warnin'. An' that 's all there is to it."
" Not quite," answered Garrard. " We have
a warning to give from our side. There are
four of us, and we are well armed and pretty
well sheltered. We are determined that you
sha'n't destroy the gate without killing us, and
we don't believe you can do that. Now, I serve
notice on all of you that if you raise a hand
against this gate to-night I am going to do my
best to send every one of you to the peniten
tiary, and if you kill any of us to-night the
survivors will do their best to send you to the
gallows."
There were howls and jeers of indignation
and derision from the raiders.
" Let him have it now ! " cried one, as a rifle
was levelled at Garrard.
But Shack threw up his hand imperatively.
" Stop that ! " he ordered ; and as Nelse,
Hugh, and Nixon sprang toward Garrard, the
gun was lowered, and Shack snapped his fin
gers at Garrard, declaring:
"We don't care that fer yo' notices an'
Some Raiders and a Theory 193
warnin's. We 're a-goin' to 'ten' to this busi
ness when we git ready. We ain't got
nothin' ag'in' you an' Letcher an' Nixon that
is, not enough to hanker after shootin' you down
fer a old toll-gate. Besides, there 's another
way of gittin' even with you, Sid Garrard, an'
there '11 be a heap mo' fun in it than there 'd
be in thes a few minutes' shootin' match."
" How much did they pay you when you
sold out, Siddie?" a raider shouted.
Shack rejoined his gang, and Garrard and his
friends had started back to the toll-gate when
one of the masked men, thrashing the ribs of
a mule with his legs, galloped down the road
with such momentum that the slippery-elm was
passed a few feet before the animal could be
stopped and jerked back.
" Look out there, Nelse Tigert ! " the rider
of the mule cried hastily, crouching low over
the mule's neck. " We 're on our own side of
the slippery-ellum ! "
Then, as the laughter of Nelse and several
of the raiders ceased, the rider of the mule
raised himself in the saddle and in a surer voice
continued :
" I let you know, Sid Garrard, that you ain't
the only man in Kentucky that kin make a
'3
194 The Opponents
speech ; an' I tell you to yo' face, Sid Garrard,
that I been fer you, thick an' thin, wet er dry,
play er pay ; that I have stood up fer you tell
I have been knocked down fer you ; that I
have been made fun of fer you, got drunk fer
you, fell outn trees fer you ; that I have been
called a lie when I said you was ag'in' the pluty-
crats an' that I always up an' give it out flat-
footed that thes they wait tell you come to the
plutycrats. But I have done foun' you out
to-night, Sid Garrard, an' I let you know that
I wash my hands er you. Yes, sir, I wash my
hands er you. An' now, feller citizens," turning
to the raiders, " le's all give three cheers fer
Tunstall ! "
The cheers were given boisterously, and as
the orator rode back to his companions Nelse
Tigert called after him :
" Say, Dunk, nex' time you wanter disguise
yo'self you better take yo' mask an' put it on
Uncle Jesse Craik's mule."
The four men returned to the toll-house, and
the raiders for perhaps ten minutes held the
position they had taken beyond the slippery-
elm. They were noisy with laughter, a few
oaths, some argument and protestation, but
finally they rode away in the direction whence
Some Raiders and a Theory 195
they had come, an occasional whoop and two
or three pistol-shots marking their recession.
" Your theory about rioters, Sid," observed
Nixon, sitting on the edge of the toll-house
porch, " seems to have been right in this
instance. There goes your mob."
"And there go enough votes to give the
county to Tunstall," added Hugh Letcher.
XVI
"FROM A STAFF CORRESPONDENT"
ABOUT a month later the Luttroll County con
vention was held at Yardley, to select delegates
to the district convention. The ladies of
Letcher Tavern had spent that month in the
mountains of West Virginia, and, undiverted
by their presence, both Tunstall and Garrard
had devoted their time to the campaign for
Congress. On the night before the convention
a staff correspondent of the Louisville G/obesent
this despatch from Yardley to his paper : -
" The eve before the battle for the Luttroll delega
tion to-morrow finds both sides stubbornly contesting
every point and the friends of both Tunstall and
Garrard claiming the victory. There has been no
such fight in any county of the district as in old Lut
troll. It is not only the home county of both con
testants, but it is thought to be the keystone to the
district arch. In other words, the general belief is
that the Luttroll delegation in the district convention
" From a Staff Correspondent " 1 97
will hold the balance of power, and that whoever
names the Luttroll delegation to-morrow will win the
nomination two weeks later. This seems to be as
sure a forecast as can be made in politics, and in my
previous despatches covering the district I have given
convincing facts and reasons for this conclusion. In
a nutshell, to recapitulate the result of my thorough
canvass of the entire district, the situation seems
clearly to be that without the vote of Luttroll there
will be a deadlock in the district convention between
Tunstall, Garrard, and Poindexter, and to break this
deadlock the vote of Luttroll will be absolutely neces
sary. The interest in the county convention at
Yardley to-morrow is, therefore, more intense, in all
probability, than it will be in the district convention
at Bracebury next month. For, in this view of the
situation, it is at Yardley, rather than at Bracebury,
that the identity of the next Congressman from this
district is to be decided.
" Poindexter has made no fight for this county.
Tunstall has spoken only once, and very briefly, but
his campaign has been a thoroughgoing Tunstall
campaign. What that means, many a gentleman who
has gone up against it and who is now in the retire
ment of private life knows too well. From personal
observation I can say that Tunstall's organization in
the county is as expert a piece of workmanship as
that master of the art ever turned out. It seems to
be perfect His friends and managers claim that they
198 The Opponents
will have no trouble in naming and instructing the
delegation to-morrow, and it is evident that they are
confident in their claims.
" On the other hand, Garrard's fight has been as
plucky as was ever made by a crippled bulldog. For
pure gameness and grit I have never seen it surpassed.
At the outset of the campaign the odds in Luttroll
were with Garrard. He had lived all his life in the
county ; Tunstall had only of late years returned to
resume his residence here. As a young man, Gar
rard was personally popular in an exceptional degree.
It was this popularity, his sociable, free-and-easy
democracy, that elected him to the Legislature the
first time, notwithstanding the fact, as I am reliably
informed, that his candidacy then was taken largely
as a joke. But he made such a record and reputa
tion that, though it is a question if a majority of his
party here did not disapprove of his tendency to in
dependence in the Speaker's chair, his home people
were tickled at the prominence he had given the dis
trict and were more or less proud of him on that
account This and, perhaps more than this, his un-
diminished personal popularity gave him, at the
beginning of the present campaign, an advantage over
Tunstall in the county. If to-morrow's convention
had been held a month ago, it would have been a
Garrard convention, notwithstanding TunstalPs superb
work. But the now celebrated incident of the Con-
way toll-gate turned the county against Garrard in a
" From a Staff Correspondent " 199
night. The anti-toll-gate craze was at its height.
Many of these people had worked themselves up to
the belief that it was . justifiable to destroy the toll-
gates. Others, ever ready to range themselves against
the established order, and still others, ever ready to
take a drink and smash a law for the fun of it, swelled
the free-turnpike crusaders to such numbers that when
Garrard openly defended the Conway gate against
them, even threatening them with the penitentiary
and the halter, his cause seemed hopeless. The
wonder was that he did not quit the race. His friends
gave up, to a man, and several who had money, hats,
and cigars on his winning paid their bets. But Gar
rard was no quitter. Like Paul Jones, when appar
ently knocked out of the water, he had only just
begun to fight. It was then that the same stuff
showed in him that showed in his course as Speaker.
Instead of surrendering, he changed his plan of cam
paign and boldly pitched it in defiance of the lawless
element he had aroused against himself. He ' car
ried the war into Africa.' He went over every foot
of the county, making a speech every day, sometimes
two or three a day, openly demanding the observance
of the law, however unpopular it might be, uncom
promisingly reprobating lawlessness, insisting that
lawful methods alone must be followed in freeing the
turnpikes, declaring that he would repeat, if neces
sary, his action at the Conway gate, and that he would
do what he could as a citizen of the State to prevent
2oo The Opponents
the nullification of its laws and to impose upon those
guilty the penalty of their crimes.
" Naturally his campaign was a hot one. Time
and again was he warned not to visit, or to leave,
different parts of the county. More than once was
his life covertly threatened, and it is an open secret
that his friends feared for his safety ; while predic
tions were heard on every hand that he would not live
through the campaign. But he was to be neither
dissuaded nor intimidated. He kept up what many
termed his foolhardy fight to the end. And not with
out result. Kentuckians love a good fighter, a square
fighter, a foolhardy fighter. There was no discount
on Garrard's honesty and courage, however much
there may have been on his principles. Those who
agreed with him were all the more active in his in
terest, but even among the free-turnpike element
there was in time some reaction, though the ex
tremists among them are all still wild for Tunstall,
who had the shrewdness not to entangle himself
in this matter, which, after all, does not come with
in the scope of Congress. As it is, the friends of
Garrard, who had given up the ghost three weeks
ago, now claim that they will be able to control
the convention to-morrow, though by a small
margin."
At the bottom of the last sheet of the fore
going despatch, as received at the office of
" From a Staff Correspondent " 201
the Globe, was this private message to the
editor :
" Have tried to follow instructions and give sum
mary of situation from standpoint of both sides with
out committing the paper to forecasting success of
either. Tunstall has a cinch."
The same correspondent's detailed report of
the convention as it appeared in the Globe was
preceded by this introduction :
"The unexpected has happened. While the sup
porters of Tunstall were last night sure of naming a
straight Tunstall delegation in the convention to-day,
and while the supporters of Garrard were claiming
that their man would win ; while most people here
were confident that Tunstall would have a solid dele
gation, and while some clung to the hope that Garrard
might pull through, no one looked for the actual
result a dog-fall. It had been universally assumed
that either Tunstall or Garrard would have the entire
delegation. It had not been conceived within the
range of probabilities that the best that either would
be able to secure would be an uninstructed, divided
delegation. Yet that was the outcome of to-day's
convention, the delegation, which was chosen after a
long and fierce struggle on both sides, being not only
uninstructed, but being, as far as can be ascertained,
2O2 The Opponents
pretty evenly balanced between the two candidates.
How sharply the line of cleavage in the delegation is,
may be judged from the fact that the Garrard men
are represented on it by such leaders as the Hon.
Hugh Letcher, the Hon. Robert K. Nixon, the Hon.
Nelson Tigert, and the Hon. W. C. (" Pap ") Maxey ;
while among Tunstall's partisans on the delegation
are the Hon. Shelby Letcher, the Hon. John W.
Driggs, the Hon. Breckinridge Bodine, the Hon.
Jesse D. Craik, and the Hon. Dunkerson Peabody.
How this desperately fought battle came to be a drawn
battle, forms one of the most interesting chapters in
Kentucky politics."
As such a chapter is not essential to this
narrative, nor materially different from many
chapters in the politics of other States, the
remainder of the Globe's despatch, describing
in full the proceedings of the Yardley conven
tion, is not reproduced here.
XVII
MARGARET HELM SHOCKS GOOD PEOPLE
MEANTIME, in the mountains of West Virginia,
the woman who had once been Morgan Tun-
stall's wife had met the woman he wished to
make his wife.
This summer resort to which Mrs. Letcher,
with Margaret Helm and Florence, had come
was one of several similar places in the Alle-
ghanies. Aside from its high altitude, its
primary attraction is a copious spring whose
waters, according to tradition, were once chemi
cally analyzed, what purports to have been the
result being presented upon the hotel sta
tionery to this day. The hotel itself is a large,
massive structure of brick, built in the substan
tial and simple style of the Virginia of a hun
dred years ago. The long, two-story building,
with its spacious dining-room and ball-room
and its scores of bed-rooms, is girdled by wide
galleries. Steps run down from these galleries
204 The Opponents
to a tree-studded lawn, that extends some two
hundred yards to the spring and the swimming
pool and to the flanking brick cottages. The
frequenters of this resort are mainly from Vir
ginia, Kentucky, and Louisiana, the society of
Richmond, Washington, Baltimore, Louisville,
and New Orleans being always well represented
here in July and August. Many families return
here summer after summer until they are re
garded as fixtures of the season, and the women
who got their first taste of social life here as
young girls, before formally entering upon the
stage as " debutantes," come back here year after
year, and continue as matrons, widows, or old
maids the life they first learned here as chil
dren. It is yet one place in the country where
the old maid may be seen, not the bachelor
girl or the new woman, but the real, feminine
old maid, on whom the originally doubtful
designation sits as a distinction, who is rich
in memories of past summers on this lawn and
in this ball-room, and who would be out of place
at the mountain and sea-side resorts of a more
modern and garish fashion. Dancing and
dining have long been the principal divertise-
ments here. There are dancers in the ball
room every evening, and occasionally there is
Margaret Shocks Good People 205
a formal cotillion. Cards and a little horse
back riding help to pass the time. In the
mornings there is a brass concert on the lawn,
and latterly golf links are an innovation wel
comed by the more actively inclined.
The Letchers mother and daughter and
Margaret Helm had been here about ten days
when Mrs. Grace Knowles arrived with her
maid and took one of the cottages. Margaret's
attention was first directed to her because of
her isolation. She seemed to have neither
friends nor acquaintances among the guests.
When visible at all, she was always alone. In
the dining-room she had to herself a little table
in an inconspicuous corner near the entrance.
Sometimes she sat stiffly for a quarter of an
hour on the hotel gallery before returning to
her cottage. Usually during the morning con
certs she appeared with a book in her hand, if
there was an unoccupied seat on some unfre
quented part of the lawn. It was plain that
she did not seek to make any overtures for the
establishment of a social relation different from
that which she had accepted from the first, and
it was equally plain that the guests, taking
their cue from the Kentuckians, had no thought
of assuming any different attitude toward her.
206 The Opponents
They simply ignored her, even the middle-
aged idlers of her own sex rarely exchanging a
covert sneer at her.
Margaret Helm, who did not know and had
not asked anything of the history of this poor
creature, could not help some feeling of pity
for her. It was clear that she was without the
pale, for what reason Margaret had neither
knowledge nor curiosity, but the loneliness of
the woman, the quiet bravado with which she
recognized her position and persisted in her
course, appealed to Margaret with a touch of
pathos. This appeal was not weakened by
Margaret's realization, which was soon forced
on her, that she herself seemed to be an object
of some exceptional interest to Mrs. Knowles.
Margaret became aware that Mrs. Knowles
was given to eying her at every opportunity.
When the two were at all near each other, it
mattered not how many other people were in
the vicinity, Margaret could rarely look toward
Mrs. Knowles without finding the woman's
gaze fixed on her, with something in its ex
pression that puzzled her in its suggestion of
fear and longing.
In appearance Mrs. Knowles was not attrac
tive. One's first casual impression on beholding
Margaret Shocks Good People 207
her would be of a studied artificiality to stay
and replace the physical charms of youth, the
result being, instead of the arrest of decay or
the obliteration of its effects, a more positive
defmement of its ravages and an aggressive
materialization of the persistence with which
the losing fight against it had been made. A
closer study of the face might reveal a con
sciousness of the futility of the fight, and this
in itself added to the countenance a further
touch of hardness, to be interpreted possibly
as the index of a settled stoicism. Such an
observer as circumstances and sensibility had
made of Margaret Helm would have quickly
concluded that this stoicism was rooted more
deeply than in the failure of a vain woman to
preserve her beauty.
One morning Margaret and Florence had
been sitting on a bench at the edge of the
lawn, Margaret with a book and Florence with
her work-basket. The concert was about half
over when Florence left and went to the hotel.
A few minutes later Margaret looked up and
saw Mrs. Knowles standing a dozen yards
away. She was gazing intently, appealingly, at
Margaret, and she seemed to shrink back a
step as Margaret raised her eyes. Her hand
208 The Opponents
went nervously to her bosom, which Margaret
could see was agitated.
" She is trying to make up her mind to come
over here and speak to me," was Margaret's
conclusion as she turned again to her book.
She had not read ten lines before she was
aware that Mrs. Knowles had walked forward
and stopped at one end of the bench. Marga
ret's eyes remained on the page, though she
was no longer reading.
"May I sit here?" said a voice timidly un
certain, yet with a strain of defiance. " All the
other seats seem occupied."
Margaret glanced up perfunctorily.
" Certainly," she answered ; after which she
returned to her book.
She read a paragraph twice without compre
hension. Two thirds of the guests, most of
them women, were on the lawn, and Margaret
felt that the eyes of every one of them were
directed toward her. In spite of herself a flush
began to steal into her face, and the conscious
ness of this only deepened the flush and stung
her with prickling points of heat. She turned
over the leaf ostentatiously, and seeing that
the novel ended with only another quarter page,
she read it religiously, being careful to hold the
Margaret Shocks Good People 209
book so that Mrs. Knowles might easily per
ceive that the last of the closing chapter had
been reached. Then she shut the volume with
a final snap, gazed meditatively at nothing for
a few seconds, as if weighing what she had
read, and without glancing at Mrs. Knowles a
second time, rose and walked across the lawn
to the hotel.
It was a longer walk than it had ever been to
her before. There were so many people to be
passed, and most of them looked at her with
something more than conventional bows or
words of recognition, their voices and smiles
betraying their approving, and in some in
stances sympathetically amused, appreciation
of what she had done. But this approval and
amusement, restrained and well bred as they
were, grated uncomfortably on the girl as she
went toward the hotel. She could not help
feeling that she had done a small thing ; that
she had pettily and publicly wounded a fellow
creature ; and that, however callous this woman
had become, the wound was real and needless.
Margaret inwardly resented the commendatory
interest which she perceived as she made her
way past these refined-faced, so ft -voiced wo
men. At the moment she would have pre-
14
21 o The Opponents
ferred their contempt to their commendation.
She had a flood of her own contempt.
As she went into the hotel, her steps quick
ened and her color heightened. Her rising
anger burned in her cheeks and eyes. Enter
ing her room, she walked across it two or three
times with aimless impatience. She stopped
at a window and looking out over the lawn,
saw the lonely figure of Mrs. Knowles still sit
ting stiffly on the bench.
" It was cowardice ! cowardice ! " she in
dignantly said aloud. " I had nothing against
her! I felt nothing against her! I did it
simply because those people were looking on,
and I was afraid to be seen with her ! "
She turned impetuously from the window
and started across the room to the door. At
the table on which she had dropped the book
she had been reading, she suddenly halted,
stood irresolute for an instant, and then seized
another book lying on the table. She was
transformed in a flash. The anger in her face
and voice was routed by a childish and joyous
radiance. Looking through the window again,
she laughed gayly :
" They thought that I left the poor soul be
cause I would not sit on the same seat with
Margaret Shocks Good People 211
her ; they shall think now that I left her only
to get another book."
She hurried down the stairs with a ripple of
song on her lips, but as she emerged from the
hotel she restrained her steps to the more de
liberate dignity and assumed the more normal
unconcerned and reposeful expression which
were quite the thing among young women of
the best circles at this resort.
As she retraced her way across the lawn
straight to the seat by Mrs. Knowles, Margaret,
holding her skirts with one hand and the fresh
book with the other, longed to smile at the
imperfectly repressed signs of astonishment
which she saw, from the corners of her eyes,
among the good people in sight of whom she
passed. But she forgot these as she drew near
Mrs. Knowles, and noticed the even more im
perfectly repressed intensity and eagerness
with which that woman watched her coming,
the incredulity, surprise, and suspense which
broke over and almost softened the painted
and cracked face. Involuntarily Margaret
hastened her approach a little, and as she
regained the seat she had left a few minutes
before, there was an answering quickening of
her own breath to that which heaved the
212 The Opponents
breast of the woman at the other end of the
bench.
Their eyes met as Margaret sat down. Mrs.
Knowles reluctantly turned her head away, and
Margaret bent over and scanned the title-page
of her book. She had seen, with a momentary
little ache in her throat, that Mrs. Knowles'
eyes, which had seemed as if they had been
forever dry, suddenly filled.
After a little Margaret summoned her will,
and said with a fairly successful effort to appear
at natural ease :
"Do you know, I am just starting to read
Comnterford ? Everybody else seems to have
read it long ago, and I feel dreadfully behind
the times."
Mrs. Knowles flinched perceptibly. She
turned at the words, her lips twitching in
silence before she framed an answer.
" I have not read it either," she said ner
vously. " It it is a sequel to The Survivors,
is it not? If it is as good as The Survivors,
you have a treat before you, don't you think
so?"
" Indeed, I have n't even read The Survivors.
I do remember now that Comnterford is a
sequel to it, and I suppose one should read
Margaret Shocks Good People 2 1 3
The Survivors first ; but there are so few books
of any kind here that one has little choice."
" I have a copy of The Survivors. If you
would like to read it, I 'd be glad to lend it to
you."
" Oh, thank you ! And as you have n't read
Commerford we might exchange."
Thus the acquaintance between the two be
gan. The good people on the lawn were not
near enough to hear the conversation between
Miss Helm and "that Knowles woman," but
they saw with due astonishment that there was
a conversation, which lasted fully five minutes,
and they were still further shocked when Miss
Helm actually walked by the side of the
Knowles woman to the door of the latter's
cottage and waited while the woman entered
and reappeared with a book, which Miss Helm
received from her and bore back to the hotel !
Miss Helm was a very nice girl, but she was
evidently unusually ignorant or unusually in
discreet. Mrs. Letcher should look after her
charge more closely.
It was not long before Mrs. Letcher did take
it upon herself to do what she called her duty
by Margaret. Florence Letcher had remon
strated with Margaret against having anything
214 The Opponents
to do with Mrs. Knowles; but Margaret, while
readily promising that she would not seek the
woman's society, for which she had no desire,
refused to agree to cut her or snub her when
thrown in contact with her. Florence then
carried the case to her mother.
" It was just like Margaret," Florence said,
after explaining the matter to Mrs. Letcher.
" She sees that everybody here disapproves
of her course, and that makes her all the more
stubborn."
" It is more like her to pity the creature
so that she is willing to scandalize the whole
place rather than hurt the feelings of one
woman. Margaret is a dear girl, but she is
peculiar in some things."
" As if such a woman has any feelings to be
hurt, or if she has, as if they ought not to be
hurt ! Margaret is a dear old goose, and she
only laughs when I tell her so."
" How much have you told her about the
Knowles woman ? "
" That she was the wife of one man and ran
away with another, whom she afterwards mar
ried ; that in Louisville, where she lived with
her first husband and where she was brazen
enough to live with her second also, nobody
Margaret Shocks Good People 2 1 5
had anything to do with her. That was all I
knew about the woman myself, except that her
first husband was Mr. Tunstall."
" And did you tell Margaret that, too ? "
" N-no. I did n't see the use. She knows
all about Mr. Tunstall's marriage and divorce
that the rest of us know, except that this par
ticular woman was the one who was his wife.
It would n't make any difference, but it would
make it unpleasant to tell her that, don't you
think so?"
"Yes, I understand. And she will find it
out from somebody soon enough, anyway."
Mrs. Letcher herself, in accordance with
Florence's suggestion, gave Margaret a " lec
ture " on her civility to the Knowles woman;
but Mrs. Letcher was a poor lecturer of any
body, and a very poor lecturer of Margaret;
the result being that instead of carrying her
point she half-way apologized to Margaret,
when the girl, at the end of the argument be
tween them, took her chaperone's face between
her hands, and kissing her, smiled appealingly :
" Please do not be vexed with me, dear Mrs.
Letcher, and please do not ask me to snub the
poor thing. I '11 promise never to make any
advances toward her, but when we are thrown
216 The Opponents
together let me be polite to her. She prob
ably has been a bad woman, and may be yet,
but it won't do her any harm, or me either,
to treat her like a human being ; on the con
trary, I can see it does her real good."
XVIII
THE PENALTY
MRS. GRACE KNOWLES had come to this par
ticular mountain resort simply because she had
seen in the papers that Margaret Helm was
there.
Kentuckians had never fully understood the
destruction of Morgan Tunstall's home and the
sequel as lived by the Knowles pair not half a
mile from the spot where that home had been.
All that they knew was that Morgan Tunstall's
young wife had fled one night with Julius
Knowles, a leader in cultured and fashionable
circles ; that Tunstall had secured a divorce ;
that Julius Knowles had married the woman,
and that the two had returned to Louisville and
lived in isolation as man and wife until the death
of Knowles. Why they chose Louisville of all
spots on earth, and why Tunstall never took
any step to avenge the wrong that had been
done him never even noticing the existence
of the couple long enough to put a bullet
2i 8 The Opponents
through either of them was known only to
the Knowleses and Tunstall himself. If the
whole of this story had been public property,
as were several other stories of real life in
Louisville which readers of fiction would pro
nounce much more improbable, it would at
least have made it easier for Tunstall at
first; and as for that, Kentuckians to this day
have been heard to intimate that, though Mor
gan Tunstall surely in other instances proved
his courage and protected his " honor," there
must be some sort of " yellow streak " in a
man who would silently submit, without so
much as a lifted hand, to the insult which
Julius Knowles put upon him. It was, in
deed, this feeling that had been, at the begin
ning, the one obstacle to Tunstall's success
in politics.
On the night when Tunstall had declared to
his wife and Julius Knowles the alternatives
noted in the first of these pages, he had been
tremendously in earnest Immediately after
ward he had gone so far in his plan then an
nounced as to send a detective to shadow the
couple when they left the city, but had re
called him in less than a month, and had
abandoned the plan, except as to the prosecu-
The Penalty 219
tion of the action for divorce. The passion of
the crisis passed, he did not care to concern
himself about this faithless woman and treach
erous man. To spend his life in the execution
of a scheme to punish them would be to spend
his life in punishing himself by keeping them
constantly in his mind. He turned his back
on them and did what he could to forget them.
But he did not stoop to tell them that he had
put aside his purpose, and they never knew
that he had. Knowles, being the coward that
Tunstall had pronounced him, had gone on to
his death, or at least until he was too callous to
care, believing in Tunstall's vengeance because
fearing it. Tunstall did not know it at the time,
and may never have known it, but it was only
necessary for a man like himself to wind the
spring of cowardice in a man like Knowles in
order to set going the machinery of his subse
quent life. He might throw away the key and
disappear himself, but his object was accom
plished. Knowles knew that during the first
few weeks after his departure from Tunstall's
home with Grace Tunstall, Tunstall's spy had
been set upon him; ever afterward or until
the time came when he cared for nothing
he was sure that he was always within reach
22O The Opponents
of Tunstall's spies, and all the surer of it when
he did not see them.
There is a square in Louisville which, when
this man and woman returned to the city as hus
band and wife, was one of the most fashionable
residential quarters of the place. To-day it is a
square of cheap boarding-houses, tenements,
shoe-shops, plumbers' shops, and laundries, while
one of the aristocratic mansions of the earlier
time is now occupied entirely by negroes.
This is the square on which Julius Knowles
bought a handsome house, after vainly trying
to lease one of the desirable houses that were
" For Rent," though not to him. Here the
Knowleses made their home, to the consterna
tion of the neighbors, some of whom quietly
formed a syndicate among themselves and
offered Knowles, through a real-estate agent,
three times what he had paid for the house.
Failing in their efforts to secure the departure
of the Knowleses, these neighbors began grad
ually sacrificing their own residences and mov
ing to less objectionable parts of the city,
making room for others not so fastidious as to
their environment. The descent of the square,
thus begun, was easy and inevitable.
The Knowleses were sensible enough at first
I
The Penalty 221
to stay closely within their handsome house.
Even in summer, when everybody sits out of
doors, they did not show themselves. There
was a hush over the grim walls of the massive
building, a sombreness in its heavy shade,
that were impressive to those of even little
imagination. Passers turned curious, solemn
faces to its blank front, and nurses trundled
their baby-carriages on the far side of the
street.
For the first few months these two, behind
the closed doors of their home, convinced
themselves that they found enough in each
other to make life not only endurable but de
sirable. They had been infatuated with each
other; at least, he had been infatuated with
her, and her vanity had been intoxicated with
his infatuation. The reaction had not yet come
fully to either. They succeeded in keeping
alive for a while something of their old passion.
They cheated themselves, at times, into belief
that this was enough. " Tunstall was a fool,"
Knowles said at one of these times. " What
does it matter where we are, so that we are
together?"
But beyond this passion they had little to
feed the life they were living. They might
222 The Opponents
have got on as well as many married couples
if they had not been thrown entirely on their
own resources, if he had been in business, if
she had had friends and social distractions.
But they had only themselves, and they could
not sleep enough to keep their waking hours
from dragging. Knowles had been fond of
reading before his marriage; books were a
dead language to him now. He was neither
in nor of their world ; he cared nothing for it ;
the volumes in the library were so much decay
ing paper and leather. Sometimes he glanced
at the Globe, though he took little interest in
what he saw there, and when he found his wife
poring over the "society" news through her
tears he threatened to forbid that the sheet
should be brought into the house. Knowles
had loved merry company, and being a man of
sufficient wealth to follow his inclinations un
hampered by the necessity of earning his daily
bread, he had usually found congenial and con
vivial companionship, if not in one part of the
world, in another. But the club, which had
been the centre of his life in Louisville, was
now closed to him, and the good fellows who
had constituted his " set " now passed him by
without seeing him. He spent his days at
The Penalty 223
home, smoking, pulling the ears of his dog, or
walking slowly back and forth under the grape
arbor at the rear of the house.
Mrs. Knowles had one material advantage
over Knowles in getting through this existence :
she could sleep much more than he could.
She lay in bed till noon, with the blinds drawn,
and she could burrow on her face at almost any
hour of the afternoon and doze. Then, too,
her toilets took up much of her time. For
nearly a year after her marriage to Knowles
she was exceedingly careful about her toilets.
She was solicitous to preserve and heighten
her beauty. It is true that few besides Knowles
saw her during that first year, but she under
stood that she must fight against the marks of
age and decay if she would retain Knowles'
interest, while, beyond that, she was anxious
that not even the servants should have reason
to notice that Mrs. Knowles was any the less
beautiful or happy than Mrs. Tunstall had
been. This engrossment in her dress was a
double gratification to Knowles. It preserved
much of the charm that had at first captivated
him, and it afforded him hours of reprieve
from the task of trying to entertain her and of
pretending to be entertained by her. It gave
224 The Opponents
him hours for the more satisfying employment
of pulling the ears of his dog.
Mrs. Knowles also had frequent recourse to
the piano. She had learned partially three
" pieces " at school, and she thrummed them on
an excellent piano with a great deal of energy.
Knowles, who was an ardent lover of good
music, was reconciled to his wife's three pieces.
They not only occupied considerable of her
time, but they occupied it usually at dusk, when
the neighbors were sitting on their porches,
an hour which Mrs. Knowles seemed to think
especially suitable for indicating that the closed
doors of her own house did not exclude domes
tic gayeties and graces, and certainly an hour
especially suitable for the strolls of Knowles
and his dog out the back way and over the
commons. Those strolls with his dog over the
darkening fields were almost cheerful hiatuses
in the routine of Knowles' existence at that
period.
Another pastime of Mrs. Knowles was to
stand behind the blinds and watch those who
walked or drove by. Sometimes her face
flushed, but more often hardened, as she saw
the cold countenances turned curiously on her
house, and again she shrank back suddenly as
The Penalty 225
if fearing discovery by those who had once
been her associates and even friends. Knowles
found her at two o'clock one morning kneeling
in her night-gown at a window and peering at
the house next door before its owners had
given it up to the dyers and the massage pro
fessor listening to the old familiar dance
music and intent on catching a glimpse, among
the dancers or the departing guests, of those
she had once known.
After dark it was some easier, at least on
Knowles. The two could kill the hours before
bedtime in long walks or longer drives ; silent, it
is true, for the most part, but relieved to some
extent by varying scene and incident on which
a remark could be hung. It was motion, it
was change, and though commonplace enough,
it gave better sleep afterward ; while even com
monplaces were important to lives in whose
stagnation the daily visits of the butcher and
the annual arrival of the caterpillars were
notable events. Still, those evening walks and
drives with his wife were not to Knowles all
that his strolls with his dog were.
In the first few weeks after the couple's re
turn to Louisville Mrs. Knowles had discovered
that her husband was not immune from jeal-
226 The Opponents
ousy. He had come in one evening and found
her at the door talking to a well-dressed man.
She had explained truthfully that the stranger
had rung the bell believing that the former
owner of the house still resided there, and
Knowles had endeavored with poor success to
conceal his sudden doubts. Several evenings
afterward, returning later than usual from his
stroll with the dog, he found a line from his
wife informing him that she had gone over
to a little park with her maid for a few min
utes to listen to the open-air concert. He had
crushed the note in his clenched hand and
stalked straightway to the park, to find her
sitting in the shadow, on a bench on which,
besides the maid, was this very stranger.
Knowles took her home, and the explosion
came. It was in vain she protested that his
charges were ridiculous ; that she had not even
exchanged a word with the man ; that he had
taken his seat on the bench, which was public
and one of many, without any attempt to open
conversation with her and without appearing
even to notice her. Knowles would not listen.
He did not wish to hear anything she might say.
He would not believe anything she chose to
say about such a matter. Morgan Tunstall
The Penalty 227
may have trusted her once; no other man
ever would.
That had been the beginning of months
of espionage on her by Knovvles, of vigilant
watching, of sly traps laid for her, of incessant
suspicion, hot reproaches, coarse accusations.
It was before he ceased to care. Afterward,
when he cared for nothing except his degene
rate life, and least of all for her, the jealousy
was hers, besetting him in tearful whines and
peevish nagging, and culminating one night
when she followed him to the entrance of a
disreputable dance hall and was knocked down
by him in his brandy-inflamed exasperation.
Soon after their return to Louisville they
had' assumed a brave front and gone to one of
the theatres, but the frigid faces of former as
sociates they saw there, the row of forbidding
countenances they passed in order to get to
their seats, the quiet desertion for another part
of the house by a pair who had adjoining seats,
deterred them from making another venture in
public until the time came when they put
qn frigid faces themselves and defiantly went
where they chose, if admission was to be had
by purchase.
It was in the second year after their marriage,
228 The Opponents
while yet life together was tolerable, that their
child was born. When Mrs. Knowles came
out of the shadow, it was broken to her by her
husband that the baby had died, and later,
when she insisted on visiting its grave, he ex
plained to her that the grave was in his family
burying-ground in Virginia; that no child of
theirs should sleep in Kentucky soil ; that he
had sent the little body to his old home, in
order that its last resting-place might be free
from the shame it could not have escaped in
Louisville. It was not till three years after
ward that in one of his outbursts of contemptu
ous passion Knowles revealed to her the truth.
" The child is not dead ! " he had gloated
over her. " I took her from your side because
I would not allow her to draw sustenance from
such a mother ; because I would not allow her
to breathe your atmosphere, to be infected by
your influence, to be contaminated by your
depravity, to share your disgrace. She is
growing up among honest people; she has
been given an honest name; she has been
taught that her father and mother are dead ;
she is ignorant of her origin, and she shall
always remain ignorant of it."
Subsequently, when the mother declared her
The Penalty 229
intention of going to her daughter, Knowles
had quietly replied :
" You will do no such thing ; and for several
good reasons. You should not have forgotten
yet that Morgan Tunstall does not propose to
let you leave Louisville alive during my life
time, and even if you escaped him, you could
not escape me. I do not propose to let you
leave Louisville alive while that child is outside
of Louisville. But should you elude both Tun-
stall and me, you would be far from accomplish
ing your purpose. The family into which the
child has been taken know you and your his
tory, and they would guard your daughter from
you as relentlessly as I do."
But it was not such threats as these that
most restrained Mrs. Knowles from going
to her daughter. It was the woman's com
mon sense, made acute in the school of her
own experience, and made stronger than her
maternal yearning. Perhaps it might have
been different if the mother had ever known
the child, if it had ever had a personality for
her, binding itself into her life with the bonds
that only actual baby fingers know how to tie.
But -from the first she had thought of it as
dead, and now, after years, when she knew
230 The Opponents
otherwise, she knew also that Julius Knowles
was more than half right. It was better as it
was. It would be the act of a mother unwor-
thier even than Julius Knowles held her to open
the eyes of an innocent girl to such shame as
the world would allot her as the daughter of
Julius and Grace Knowles. She made no effort
to interfere with Knowles' disposition of the
child. She acquiesced in its loss to her as
another feature of the inexorable penalty she
was paying every hour of her life.
As the years passed, this man and woman
ceased all pretence of interest in each other.
She, no longer caring to please him, lapsed
into the lassitude of a slattern ; he, fastidious
as he had once been regarding her personal
appearance, was eventually callous even to
disgust at her slovenliness. Though each in
turn had burned with jealousy and distrust of
the other, they later reached a point where he
went his way and she hers, both relieved at the
divergence of their paths, and neither con
cerned as to where the path of the other led.
They continued to make their home in the
same house, but beyond that there was no
contact with each other, even superficially.
She found a way of prolonging her sleeping
The Penalty 231
hours and of stimulating the dreams and phan
tasms of her waking, while he sought society
and diversion in drinking-saloons and gambling-
rooms.
The penalty inflicted on these two by Morgan
Tunstall bore more heavily on the man than on
the woman. She merely degenerated ; he died.
Once, in his last besotted days, when he real
ized that the end was near, he braced himself
with brandy and taking a pistol went in search
of Tunstall, determined to surrender his few
remaining hours of life, if necessary, to settle
his score with Tunstall. But even then his
courage failed him, and he dared not face his
old enemy, but crept back to the bed from
which he did not rise again, his strongest curse
being for his own cowardice.
The death of Julius Knowles left his widow
free to go where she pleased, according to the
terms of Tunstall's sentence, under which the
two had supposed they had lived all the years
since its pronouncement. But at first she did
not change her place or mode of life. She no
longer cared for freedom. There was nowhere
to go, nothing outside the old existence to in
vite her interest until one day she read in
the Globe of Margaret Helm's arrival in the
232 The Opponents
West Virginia mountains. She read the item
many times that day; she hunted the paper
again and read the paragraph over the follow
ing day. Then a touch of living color came
into her face, and she moved about the house
for the first time in many months as one who
had some definite object in view. She di
rected that her wardrobe be put in order; she
got out once more her old powders and paints ;
and shortly afterward she had taken possession,
with her maid, of one of the cottages at the
mountain resort where Margaret Helm and
the Letchers were spending the latter half of
the summer.
XIX
ANOTHER PENALTY
THE Yardley convention was the last of the
county conventions preliminary to the district
convention, which was to assemble at Brace-
bury about two weeks later and make the nomi
nation for Congress. Morgan Tunstall, knowing
that he had done his work well and feeling con
fident as to the outcome, decided that during
these intervening two weeks he would turn his
back on politics and take a rest in the West
Virginia mountains. Ordinarily nothing would
have diverted him from the field of a political
battle before its result was declared, even
though, as in this instance, he was sure that
he had done, or could yet direct, all that could
be done; but now, after summoning two or
three of his campaign managers and giving
them explicit instructions as to what remained
to be looked after, he left the scene of the
struggle at Yardley and turned toward Mar
garet Helm with a sense of relief and elation.
234 The Opponents
Before, political battles had been sufficient in
themselves to absorb his first interests and to
monopolize his energies ; now, they were things
that must be got through with in order that he
might find time to be with her, things to be
won as trophies for her. Tunstall smiled boy
ishly as he recognized this transition in himself.
It was a new birth that he had never dreamed
of as possible, an obliteration and recreation
that stirred him profoundly and exquisitely.
" I am young again," he told himself as the
train bore him on toward those magical moun
tains ; " I have no past, and the future is all
mine. It is youth, real youth, in all but counted
years, which are counted no longer. And,
thank God," glancing at his beaming face in
the panelled mirror of the car, " I do not even
look old. I am not old ! I am not even
fifty yet!"
It was long after midnight when he reached
his destination. As the stage-coach that bore
him from the railway station neared the old
hotel in the mountains, he experienced a strange
new impatience and expectancy. Somehow
it was as if he were approaching the goal
toward which all his longings and hopes had
set, and where their full realization awaited
Another Penalty 235
him. He was almost as a child in his repeated
interrogation of the driver as to the distance
yet to be traversed, and when at last he was
answered that at the next turn of the road
the springs would be in sight his pulse was
pounding in his temples till the voice of the
driver seemed to sink into an echo. At the
turn of the road Tunstall's eyes softened and
his breath suspended. Swell on swell of the
mountain billows stretched away mistily in the
moonlight, and in their midst the great hotel,
that held all his world now, lay sombre and
silent, like some anchored, sleeping ship.
Drawing nearer, Tunstall, who had fought
his way among men with never a too scrupulous
hand, felt the awe of a new reverence as he
gazed up at the windows of this solemn pile,
wondering which of them were hers, and know
ing her presence as the worshipper knows the
unseen spirit of the shrine before which he
bows. With this spell upon Tunstall, the rasp
ing halloo of the stage-driver, out of humor
because his solitary passenger had refused to
wait till morning to make the trip from the
station to the hotel, was gratingly discordant,
and Tunstall, as silent as the awakened clerk
and porter, was shown to his room, acutely
236 The Opponents
conscious, in every hall and corridor of the old
building through which he passed, of the near
ness of Margaret Helm.
He was up early the next morning, long
before there was any probability of seeing
Margaret, and at last, after he had breakfasted
with her and the Letchers, he requested -
almost ordered Margaret, as they stepped
out on the gallery:
" Come with me now and show me something
of the place."
There was not much to show, and a quarter
of an hour's stroll found them standing on the
grassy dome of the nearest hill, from which was
the favorite outlook upon the surrounding
panorama of valley, ravine, and mountain-side,
and at the base of which lay the path from the
hotel to the dense woodland beyond. Several
rustic seats had been constructed on this hill,
and on one of these Margaret was resting
after her climb. Tunstall had thrown himself
down on the turf, and was looking up at her
rather than out on the various aspects of the
landscape which she was indicating.
" But I 'm afraid our scenery does not inter
est you," she said, pausing and smiling down
on him.
Another Penalty 237
" Oh, yes ! " he answered quickly ; " more
than anything else in the world at least, some
of it that I have not beheld since you left
Kentucky."
Her smile vanished instantly, and a tint of
pink dawned in the light which to Tunstall
seemed to radiate softly from her face, so lumi
nously clear against its background of dark
green foliage. Tunstall realized that he had
been blunt and crude, and he flushed a little
himself.
" Don't think that I meant to be flippant ! "
he begged, raising himself to a more erect and
more rigid posture. " That speech was de
cidedly raw, but a worse objection to it, as I
see it, is that it signified so little of what I did
mean."
She was at ease again now, and her smile,
more brilliant than before, had returned.
" Then let it stand," she said with determined
lightness. " Surely it is only the speeches that
mean things that need to be apologized for on
such a morning as this."
" I shall not apologize for it," he went on,
stubbornly refusing to fall into the mood she
had assumed, " though it means much much
which I did not intend to say when I came up
238 The Opponents
here this morning, but which I did intend to say
some time very soon, and which it has been my
one purpose to say almost from the moment I
first met you."
" Please, not now not yet ! " she pleaded,
her face suddenly grave with apprehension and
appeal.
" Don't ask me to restrain myself any longer,"
he answered almost fiercely. " I ought to have
spoken before this. It was due to you. There
are things which you should know, whatever
your your final attitude toward me may
be. I want to explain them now, and then,
if you insist, I shall go no further until I
have your permission, if I am ever to have
that."
" Perhaps I already know what you would
explain," she said gently.
" No ! no ! You cannot. You may have
heard something anything. But you cannot
have heard the truth. No one on earth knows
that, except me and one other, whom you could
never meet who could not breathe the same
air with you. You probably have heard that
I once had a wife, that she proved false, that I
secured a divorce. If that were all, or even the
worst, I could face you now with less flinching.
Another Penalty 239
All that is true as far as it goes, but 7 went
much farther than that. I took the law of man
and God into my own hands, and read it as only
vengeance. Under that law of my own usurpa
tion I set myself up as judge and executioner,
and the penalty I exacted was the most terrible
I could conceive. You shall see when I tell
you what I have told no one else. It was
well, she was false, as I have said. I learned
it suddenly. My first impulse was to kill
her, to kill him. If they had had a million
lives, I could have taken them all and still
should not have been satiated. But death is
too swift, too merciful. I wanted some punish
ment for them more in accordance with the
crime they had committed. If I could have
been sure of their tortures after death, if I
could have devised and directed those tor
tures, I should have killed them provided
I had not thought of a punishment which to
me seemed more horrible than any that could
be inflicted in another world."
She was looking at him as one half unwilling
to listen, yet intently held by what he was say
ing and by his strongly wrought manner. He
thought he detected here a fleeting quiver of
the eyelids, a slight shrinking from him, and
240 The Opponents
he paused. His hand closed with seeming
unconsciousness on a tuft of grass, which he
pulled from the ground ; his eyes dully swept
the horizon; then, returning to hers, blazed
steadily with his purpose, as he continued :
" I did not kill them, but gave them the
choice of dying or of living inseparably in their
shame as husband and wife, in the city where
they had always lived, among those who best
knew their infamy. They chose the latter
alternative, and paid the penalty to which I
condemned them, he escaping it finally in
death, and she facing it out to the end in the
isolation and ostracism of a social outcast."
He desisted again, waiting as if for some
word from her, but she gave none, her eyes
falling beneath his scrutiny and resting on her
hands, which she clasped a little convulsively
in her lap.
" After the first few weeks I took no further
interest in the case, and did nothing and would
have done nothing to enforce the penalty I
had pronounced upon them; but they were
doubtless ignorant of that ; and so, in the final
balancing of the account between us, I suppose
I must be credited with the execution of the
full sentence.
Another Penalty 241
"That is, in brief, my story. The part I
played in it has never disturbed me in the least
until recently until I met you. Then, for
the first time, I began to pay the penalty I had
inflicted upon myself; for I began to realize
that sometime I must tell you this story, and
that, when told, it would place another and,
perhaps, insuperable barrier between us ; but,
hardest of all, I realized that, remaining un
told, it would be a still greater barrier between
us."
He studied her face earnestly for some sign
of her spirit toward him. It was a very serious
face, a very sad face, with eyes fixed far beyond
him on the distant mountain tops, but it was a
face whose seriousness and sadness were as
vague and uninterpretable as the mists which
seemed to veil alike those mountain tops and
the eyes that were drawn to them.
" I am not asking of you anything now," he
went on, with a rough tension in his voice,
" except that if it is possible, in the beauty
and charity of your heart, you will not let the
story I have told you bar me from your friend
ship entirely. Do not judge me irrevocably
too hastily, too justly. Make some allowance
for the fact that I am a man a misshapen
16
242 The Opponents
abortion of a man whose passions and short
comings no woman no woman like you
can fully understand. Judge me, if you can,
with mercy instead of with justice."
Her eyes fell to him now, and there was
something in their shadowy depths that re
called to him suddenly a look that he had seen
only once before, in the eyes of his mother as
she gazed so long for the last time upon his
little face. There was something too in Mar
garet's voice which seemed to speak from her
eyes as she answered simply :
" I shall not judge you. It is not for me to
judge."
The words moved him for the moment be
yond the power of reply. A little folded fan
had slipped from her lap, and he caught it up
in his two hands, bowing his head over it and
kissing it.
" How like you ! " he said gratefully. " But
it was I who insisted that it was only for me to
judge those two poor fools. Your very mercy
is to that extent a condemnation."
He lifted his face to hers again and spoke
with increased passion :
" And yet it is your mercy that I want. Do
not withhold it. Give me a chance to redeem
Another Penalty 243
myself. I know that I am selfish and base still
in putting it in that way, but I am at least
honest. My only chance is through you.
There is not enough good in me to redeem
me for its own sake. I want redemption simply
because I want to be nearer you, with you,
worthier of you."
A shadow of trouble brooded over her face
as she rose to her feet.
" I think I have said all there is to say," she
replied in her low, gravest voice. " I do not
judge you, and I am still your friend."
He stood up beside her, stepping in front of
her, to the path descending the hill.
" Don't go yet," he interposed. " I have not
finished. You will listen to me? "
" Is is it necessary? Is it best? "
" It is fair. You must hear me some time.
It is fair, I think, that having said as much as
I have, I should say more. Remember I am
asking you nothing now except that you hear
me. Won't you sit down again ? I shall not
detain you long."
She took the seat from which she had risen.
" Thank you," he said, standing above her,
his hands awkwardly in his pockets. " I
well, I thought I had done with women before
244 The Opponents
I met you ; then I knew I had never really be
gun with them. It has been bad for me, I fear,
that I did not meet you long ago. It is only
since I knew you that I have had any desire to
be what such as you would call a decent man ;
that I have regretted my squandered years,
my perverted energies. It is only since then
that I have felt the sting, if not of conscience,
of consciousness; that I have realized that
while I have been called a strong man, I have
been a weak one, swallowed by, instead of
strangling, the demon of my rage, and throw
ing away my subsequent life because of the
treachery of two weak creatures whom I had
trusted. I should have been considered as
weak as they if I had gone to the dogs of
dissipation and self-destruction on account of
their treachery; but, after all, it was dissipa
tion that I plunged into that of what we call
practical politics and in it I have almost ac
complished moral self-destruction. My dissi
pation has been to make, for my personal
pastime, sport of those things which men more
deserving of your respect guard and cherish as
the very foundations of our system of national
existence and well-being. Nothing that I have
done in all these years, though sometimes it
Another Penalty 245
may have resulted for the good of others, has
been done with that object, but only because
the doing of it gave me occupation and proved
my powers. I do not believe my political
methods have been so bad that they would
not be considered legitimate by the politi
cians generally, though some of them have
not been such as I could explain to you
with confidence of your approval. But do
not think I am pleading repentance in my
own behalf now I fear I only repent be
cause my sins have so widened the gulf
between you and me nor must you infer
that I am claiming a complete eleventh-hour
reformation. Even in my present political
undertaking the only one made from any
higher motive than personal divertisement ; the
one in which I am enlisted earnestly, ardently
because I would have something better than a
wasted past to offer you I must confess that
I have employed some campaign tactics that I
am not proud of when your eyes look into
mine, and that would never be countenanced
in his own interest by the splendid young fel
low who is my opponent. I am trying to show
you, not that I can ever be worthy of you, but
that it is only through you that I have real-
246 The Opponents
ized how unworthy I am, or that I hope to be
any worthier."
His voice had deepened and filled with a
burden that retarded and finally seemed to
weight it to a stop. He paused, his lips com
pressed, his steadfast gaze seeking to penetrate
the curtains of her fallen lids. When they
lifted a little after he ceased speaking, her eyes,
sorrowful and compassionate, yet unrevealing
that which he yearned most to see, looked
frankly, unwaveringly into his.
He took a step toward her, throwing out
his arm in a gesture of impetuous power,
only to drop it again impotently at his
side.
" Oh, if I could forget it all ! " he cried,
" everything until I met you ! And why not,
if you will let me? Yes, why not? We live
to-day, not yesterday. I never had a chance
for life until I knew you. I want to begin
over. I want to look forward and upward to
to you. I want to do, to be what is in me to do
and be that will please you. I want to be dif
ferent because I despise myself when I see
myself as you must see me. I want to be dif
ferent because I worship you. I want you
to help me forget my past by forgetting as
Another Penalty 247
much of it yourself as you can. A woman can
forget much for the sake of a man who loves
her as I do you ; she cannot help forgetting it
if there is in her own heart any response to his
love. Can you? Will you? Ugh!" brush
ing his hand across his forehead with fierce im
patience, "what am I raving? I love you,
Margaret. Everything I have said or could
say resolves itself to that. I promised not to
ask of you anything now, and yet I am asking
you all. But why not? If there is anything
in the future for me, why not give it to me
or at least give me hope of it now? I have
gone so long without you every hour be
fore me is so long without you if there is
anything you can give me, Margaret, give it
now."
He stood motionless, it seemed breathless, in
his suspense, waiting for some sign, searching
for it with eyes that might have burned it out
of her inmost self.
She could not face their fire. Her head
drooped, her bosom swelled, the glow that had
warmed brow, cheeks, and neck faded slowly.
Suddenly she raised her head and her eyes
fluttered for a moment upon his. She spoke
as one half frightened, wholly candid :
248 The Opponents
" Do not press me for an answer now. I can
not give it definitely. I do not know my
self yet."
It was as if his lungs had been suddenly
filled with a salt gust from Northern seas. His
lax form straightened, his chest distended,
and his head was high in the invigorating
gale. He looked at her in wordless exaltation.
Abruptly the eyes which had not known tears
since boyhood were wet. His throat heaved,
and leaning over, he raised Margaret's hand to
his lips.
" Thank God for this ! " he said with almost
inaudible depth of voice. " You have not yet
cast me out ! "
She moved to go now, and he, turning to
descend the hill with her, was startled by the
unwholesome face of a woman, made ghastlier
by the heliotrope lining of the parasol thrown
across her shoulder, and made more repulsive
by the sneer on her lips and in her eyes. She
was standing in the path below, looking up at
Margaret and Tunstall. As he saw her, an in
articulate exclamation of astonishment, anger,
and disgust escaped Tunstall, and he noticed,
as Margaret glanced down to seek the cause
of his exclamation, that the sneer on the
Another Penalty 249
woman's face gave place to a forced smile, as
she nodded and walked on toward the woods
with a conventional
" Good-morning."
" Good-morning, Mrs. Knowles," he was
amazed to hear Margaret kindly return.
XX
THE LIGHT THAT BLASTS
TUNSTALL'S jaws were clamped, and he did not
speak until he was half-way down the hill, which
he was descending with a savage desire to
lengthen and quicken his stride far beyond the
pace necessary to keep him by Margaret's side.
" You seem to know that woman," he finally
said, with a new hardness in his voice.
" Who? " Margaret asked, as if aroused from
a revery. "Oh! Mrs. Knowles?"
" Yes."
" Only as we know people at a place like this
whom we speak to in passing and perhaps ex
change a few commonplaces with occasionally."
" You are aware who she is, I suppose? "
" Beyond the facts that she is said to have an
ugly past, that the guests here ignore her, and
that she is evidently not at all happy, I know
nothing of her."
" Then don't seek any closer intimacy with
her. She is," pausing and turning with grim
The Light that Blasts 251
visage to look for a moment at the retreating
figure, " the woman I have been telling you
of this morning."
There was a vivid transition from bewilder
ment to comprehension, incredulity, and pained
concern on Margaret's face as she stared at him
with wide eyes.
" Not " she began, without the courage to
finish.
" Yes. She was once Mrs. Morgan Tunstall."
" Oh ! " in faint distress, half extending her
hand to him with a timid impulse of sympathy,
and as quickly withdrawing it, almost before
he saw the gesture. " Forgive me, please."
" Forgive you ? " a touch of ill-concealed
tenderness in his tone. " For what? If I
had something to forgive you for, I should
feel that the distance between us, even by
ever so little, was not so vast as it is."
They went on toward the hotel in silence,
with a mutual recognition that it was now no
time for words, she with thoughtful eyes down
cast on the path in which she was walking,
and he with high head and set face, blindly
trampling the bending grass and weeds at her
side.
He accompanied her to the steps leading up
252 The Opponents
to the hotel gallery, and in leaving her there
made an effort to summon a conventionality in
a natural voice.
" I think I shall go for a good tramp through
the mountains before dinner," he said ; " which
route would you recommend ? "
" The road to the left there is considered the
most picturesque, I believe," she answered with
a more successful assumption of normal ease
than his own effort had been.
" Thank you," lifting his hat as he receded.
" I hope I have not overtaxed you with too
much exertion this warm morning?"
" No, indeed," she smiled. " I am not so
frail as that."
He walked away, with an indifferent glance
over the lawn, on which he recognized several
people who knew him and who knew who Mrs.
Knowles was. He laughed a little as he sneered
in an undertone :
" Don't trouble yourselves to straighten your
marshmallow faces, and don't be such hypo
crites as to pretend you don't know that I
know just what you have been puckering
and side-glancing about, or that it makes
a particle of difference to me whether you
straighten or whether you pucker, or that it
The Light that Blasts 253
really matters to you whether it makes any
difference to me."
A man among them rose and sauntered
toward him, as if to greet him ; but Tunstall,
not pausing, struck out into the road which
Margaret had indicated.
" Hullo, Terry ! " he called back, with a
wave of the hand, in response to the man's
salutation. " I 'm off for a stroll. There are
times for mountains and times for marsh-
mallows; at present the mountains have it."
Which Terry regarded as a poor sort of joke,
whose point he could no more discover than
he was expected to discover it.
It was a picturesque road, as Margaret Helm
had intimated, though Tunstall might have been
blind, so little did it impress him. He ploughed
through the dust and crashed over the stones,
no more conscious of them than he was of the
rugged beauty around and above him. A
short hour before he had risen out of his old
self, out of the ashes of old faiths and the tor
por of the old existence, and had caught again
the unfolding vistas of a promised land of
perennial blossom and fruitage that lay around
a home of trust and truth, a land that had
first spread before him in the morning of his
254 The Opponents
youth and that had vanished, it had seemed
forever, in his early manhood. How distinct
and near it had drawn before him again to-day,
as he had stood before Margaret Helm and at
last, grappling the issue he had long contem
plated and dreaded, looked into her clear eyes
and revealed to her pure heart his past, with
the purpose and hope he had dared build above
it. And she had not repulsed him ! She had
not spurned him back into the rayless past
from which her own self had lighted him, nor
shut out from him forever the future to which
his face was turned. She had simply said that
she did not know her own heart. That meant
that nothing was yet impossible for him ; and
to Tunstall the possible, once he set his will
to it, was ultimately the actual. The moment
he realized that Margaret Helm, knowing all,
had not, as he expressed it, cast him out, had
been a moment of awed ecstasy, in which his
desires were hopes, all but fulfilled. It was in
that crowning moment of promise of all that
he longed for that there, in the path on the
hillside, the incarnation of his past had sud
denly stood before him in the tawdry figure
of a woman, confronting her who was the
incarnation of his future, interposing between
The Light that Blasts 255
him and that future with all the theatric ap
position of Chance and all the stern inexora-
bleness of Fate. Grace Knowles and Margaret
Helm here together ! Grace Knowles and
Margaret Helm speaking to each other, he
between them ! Grace Knowles rising before
him the instant he stretched out his hand to
Margaret Helm ! Chance, Fate whatever
the accursed thing was sardonic as well as
theatric and stern.
He had been walking swiftly for perhaps half
an hour when, following the course of the road,
as he stepped out on a shelf of the mountain
he was astonished to see rise before him, as
the sea unexpectedly looms before one through
a rift in a dense forest, the green knoll on
which he had stood that morning with Mar
garet Helm. When he left the hotel, the road
he had taken led away from rather than toward
this knoll, yet here it was, apparently so near
that it seemed as if he could almost leap from
the ledge where he had now stopped to the
very spot on which he had stood when he kissed
Margaret Helm's hand. He realized, after a
little, that the knoll must be nearly a mile
away, yet so clear was the atmosphere that the
path which the other woman had trod was a
256 The Opponents
sharply distinct scar, while on the rustic seat
that Margaret had left was a bit of white which
he knew must be Margaret's fan.
It had a potent magic that bit of white
and instantly turned Tunstall's course and
stayed the current of his mental chaos. It
belonged to Margaret; he had seen it in her
hand; he had seen it against her cheek; it
was as if it were a part of Margaret; it had
been forgotten, abandoned to the garish sun,
to the coming rain, to the first chance
wanderer who should ascend the hill. Tun-
stall, striding along this mountain road, bereft
of objective aim, of rational equilibrium, sud
denly gathered himself to one crystallized, be
calming purpose. He would hasten to the little
fragile thing that was Margaret Helm's; he
would rescue it from the sport of the weather ;
save it from the hand, the eyes of a stranger.
He would take it into his own keeping, as he had
longed, with all that was tender and strong in
him, to take Margaret herself. By such trifles
as this is a man, even in the emotional stress
of mountain solitudes, sometimes turned to
lower and saner levels.
Tunstall looked about him for the nearest
way by which he could reach the hill where
The Light that Blasts 257
Margaret's fan was lying. To the left the road
that he had been following veered farther and
higher toward the ridge of the mountains which
cut the sheer sky. A little beyond the ledge
on which he was standing a narrow bridle-path
branched from the road and led to the right
and downward, through laurel and rocks,
toward the forest beyond the hill. This path
promised to take him at least in the vicinity
of the hill, and instantly stepping into it he
was swallowed up in the laurel.
Keeping to this path, he finally entered the
stretch of forest which he knew skirted the hill
he sought. Turning again to his right, he
walked back along the rim of a ravine at the
bottom of which a little brook romped. It must
be the same brook he had seen winding at the
foot of the hill that morning, and that being
the case, his course was along the bank, up
stream.
He soon reached a road, and entering on this
he had caught a glimpse of the hill through the
trees, when he came upon a woman sitting on
a boulder of the slope between the road and
the stream.
She turned her head toward him as she heard
his footsteps. At sight of her face Tunstall
17
258 The Opponents
stopped abruptly, his eyes blazing out beneath
frowning brows. Mrs. Knowles sprang to her
feet, with a faint exclamation of alarm, a real
pallor heightening the incongruity of her arti
ficial coloring.
The two gazed at each other mutely, the
silence broken only by the gurgling brook and
by a stone which, dislodged by Mrs. Knowles
as she rose, rolled down the rocky declivity
into the water.
It was but a few seconds that they stared at
each other thus; then Tunstall turned con
temptuously away and walked on toward the
hill.
But he had not gone half a dozen yards
when he whirled about and went back to Mrs.
Knowles with determined stride, his face lower
ing ominously.
As he came toward her, Mrs. Knowles' skin
mottled with conflicting tides. She took a
step backward as if to retreat, but checked
herself and gripping her parasol drove the rod
into the ground, thus braced awaiting him.
When he halted before her, there was even a
flicker of defiance in her eyes.
"Why have you come here?" he demanded
imperiously.
The Light that Blasts 259
She did not reply at once. She had not yet
won her struggle for self-control. But she did
not flinch beneath his gaze.
"Why have you come here?" Tunstall re
peated.
"I why have you come here, Morgan
Tunstall ? " she retorted, with a boldness that
was a little overdone.
" You are wasting time. You might as well
answer at once. I intend to know what you
are up to here."
" No, I am not wasting time." She even
dared a sneering little smile. " If you
had answered my question honestly, you
would have answered the one you asked
me."
" What do you mean?" impatiently.
" Oh ! simply but I don't know that I am
accountable to you or anybody else."
"Why are you here? I shall not ask you
again."
His face hardened into a cast which she had
seen once before and which struck chill to
her heart. Her hand went involuntarily to her
breast as she quickly replied, still braving it
out:
" I am here, Morgan Tunstall, for the same
260 The Opponents
reason that you are here to be near Mar
garet Helm."
Tunstall leaned suddenly toward her, fury
distorting his countenance, but instantly drew
back in horror.
" Margaret Helm ! " he cried. " Then, by
God, you shall leave here at once ! "
There was no more bravado in Mrs. Knowles
now. She went to pieces as at one blow.
"Oh, no, no!" she pleaded. "Not that!
Have you not done enough to me already? I
will not go ! I will not ! You may murder
me, but unless you do I will stay here as long
as I please. Is n't there a spark of manliness
in you somewhere? Margaret is the only
being in the world I care for, and and oh,
I do not see her much just a few minutes, a
few words with her a day, sometimes in two
or three days. You need not fear that I shall
ever tell her anything indeed, indeed, I have
not I could not! Nothing could force me
to tell her!"
"Tell her?" Tunstall exclaimed in harsh
disgust. " She knows already. I have told
her everything myself. Can't even you under
stand that you are not to see her any more
that I shall not allow it?"
The Light that Blasts 261
There was no fear in Mrs. Knowles now.
She took a swift step toward Tunstall with
flashing eyes and quivering voice.
" You have told her ! You have dared to
tell her everything about me about the
child ? You have told her that she that my
daughter ? "
Tunstall looked into the waiting, questioning
face blankly.
" I don't know what you are talking about,"
he answered curtly. " I did not know you had
a daughter."
Her hands covered her cheeks and eyes.
She laughed a little, hysterically. Then she
sank in a huddle upon the boulder on which
she had been sitting when Tunstall found her,
and bowing her head on her knees, cried like a
heart-broken child.
Tunstall, mystified, contemptuous, self-con
temptuous, and impatient of the whole situa
tion, waited in silence.
Mrs. Knowles' paroxysm passed quickly.
She flung up her head and faced Tunstall
again, indignantly but tearlessly.
" You did not know that I had a daughter ! "
she said with cutting intonation. " You who
took it on yourself to prescribe my life how
262 The Opponents
and where it should be spent! Where were
your spies? They didn't earn their hire if
they didn't tell you of my baby of how her
father slipped her from my side and sent her
away to Virginia that she might grow up with
another name, in ignorance of her own mother ;
of how during all the years of her childhood
and girlhood I never saw her, never even
heard of her except in an indirect way. And
yet now that he is dead and I am free to go
where I please, and I come here, not to breathe
a word of the secret to Margaret nothing
could make me do that but just to be where
she is and talk to her sometimes, and maybe
get her to talk to me sometimes, about the
the things that any mother has a right to know,
you would even forbid me that. But I tell you
now you can't intimidate me any longer.
You may do what you choose, but you can't
drive me away from here. Only Margaret
Helm herself can prevent me seeing her."
Tunstall, observing the woman closely, began
to question her sanity.
" This sort of raving is altogether pointless,"
he answered coldly. " I was not aware that
you had a daughter, but because you have,
and she has not been allowed to know you, is
The Light that Blasts 263
no reason why you should impose yourself on
Miss Helm. It is not worth while bandying
words about it, but I shall not permit you to
annoy Miss Helm any more."
Mrs. Knowles slowly rose and confronted
Tunstall with white lips.
" You find it hard to realize," she said in
low, bitter challenge, " that I shall no longer
look to you for permission, don't you ? And
you find it hard to reconcile yourself to any
acquaintance between me and the girl you are
in love with, don't you ? "
" Stop ! No more of that ! "
Tunstall did not move, but he gave his order
in a voice which Mrs. Knowles once would
have instantly heeded.
"What do you know," she went on, without
faltering, "of this girl you are in love with?
She is too good for you or any other man
you seem to understand that and you are
horrified at the thought of my even seeing her
or speaking to her. How are you going to
comfort yourself when I tell you the truth,
which you can easily verify for yourself, that
Margaret Helm that you, you, Morgan Tun
stall, are in love with, of all women in the
world, Margaret Helm, my daught "
264 The Opponents
With a guttural snarl muffled in his throat
Tunstall leaped as if to choke Mrs. Knowles,
but her quick cry of terror or his own timely
impulse stayed his outstretched arm, and he
recoiled from her without touching her, rub
bing his arrested hand again and again in a
dazed way on his coat-sleeve, and muttering
over and over, as he turned his back on her
and groped his way up to the road :
" She lies, Lord God ! She lies, Lord God ! "
XXI
LEVEL WITH THE EARTH
HE stumbled on deep into the forest, follow
ing the flow of the brook more by its sound
than by any guidance of his eyes, which
stared blankly before him. Of cognition,
thought, reason there was in him no consist
ent train. He was dominated by the murmur
of the brook, swelling, receding; laughing,
moaning; grieving, mocking; demoniacally
reminiscent, desolately prophetic. It was the
murmur of his own chaotic brain.
After nearly an hour's purposeless tracking
of the stream, as he stopped before a cliff
against whose base the brook impotently beat
and petulantly doubled, he was still absently
rubbing against his coat-sleeve the hand that
had almost clutched Mrs. Knowles' throat.
He looked about him with intelligence for
the first time. Blocking the course he had
been following, the cliff towered over him, its
seamed sides patched with mats of vines and
266 The Opponents
gripped by the desperate roots of stunted
trees. Away from the cliff stretched the thick
woods through which the brook had cut its
course, and at his feet shot up the straight
trunk of a pine. Overhead in its branches,
softer yet more distinct than the brawl of the
water, was the song of the forest. Tunstall, as
one awakening from sleep, drew in a long
breath of the resinous fragrance, and lying
down on the carpet of pine-needles, stretched
prone upon his face.
Level with the earth his once fierce pas
sions, his strong will, his sustaining belliger
ence, his grasp of power, his daring new
desires and hopes. It was a moment of utter,
humble prostration of a man who had always
been self-sufficient; and he who had trampled
on the world when it was in his way knew no
rebellion now as he felt that his place was, as
here, on the ground, beneath the world's feet.
He lay there minutes, hours, motionless.
Gradually the tumult of his brain subsided, and
he began to consider, with some degree of
calmness, the revelation made to him by Mrs.
Knowles and its full significance to himself.
Margaret Helm the daughter of Grace Knowles !
Margaret Helm, the one woman who meant his
Level with the Earth 267
self-redemption, his restoration to faith, love,
life, the child of the one woman who had shut
him out from all these, of the one woman on
whom he had worked the extremity of his
vengeance ! Could the fleering tyranny of
Destiny, Chance, of Law, of God of what
ever the power that directs or neglects the
fortunes of men be more grimly manifested
than in his doom to find that the possibility of
all that he had missed, all that was worth
living for, was through the love of one who
owed her very existence to the woman who
had done most to destroy him and whom
in turn he had done most to destroy? Re
volt as he might at the thought that so
lovely a flower as Margaret Helm had sprung
from such muck, the aspect of Mrs. Knowles'
disclosure which now most crushed Tunstall
was that which bore on himself rather than
on Margaret. She did not know, she must
never know ; but he knew now, and his knowl
edge was a barrier between them as insuper
able as infinity and as lasting as eternity. Of
all created beings, aside from Mrs. Knowles
herself, Margaret Helm was the one whom he
could not now ask to accept his love. The
nobler, the worthier of the highest love she
268 The Opponents
might be, the wider was he sundered from
her.
It did not occur to Tunstall to doubt the
revelation which Mrs. Knowles had made. The
very improbability of the thing almost its
inconceivability except in truth was in itself
instantaneous conviction. As an invention it
would have been so preposterous, so readily
disproved, that it would never have been
offered or even harbored. Mrs. Knowles, had
she been of weaker intellect than she was, could
not have been so foolish as to fabricate such a
story. Sometime, Tunstall vaguely conceded
himself, he might go to the Virginia town that
was Margaret Helm's home and make a quiet
investigation of the facts on his own account;
though there was not even a vague concession
that such an investigation was necessary. But
this point was now of no interest, however re
mote. He did not question Mrs. Knowles'
truthfulness in this instance, but if he had done
so the ultimate effect on himself and on his
future could have been little different. Whether
or not Margaret Helm was Mrs. Knowles'
daughter, the now recognized possibility that
he might have met and loved her daughter
snuffed out the light of the new world to which
Level with the Earth 269
he had set his face with the coming of Mar
garet. And the purer, the juster, the more
charitable, the more lovable the more like
Margaret such a daughter might be, the
blacker the darkness in which he must be left.
Assuming, for idle assumption's sake, that Mar
garet might not be Mrs. Knowles' daughter,
yet in her own innocent girlhood she repre
sented, incarnated, all that he had irreparably
wronged in Mrs. Knowles' daughter, all that
must forever exclude him from the gladly,
proudly loving heart of such girlhood.
Turning these things over fitfully in his still
reeling mind, groping feebly on the bottom,
along the walls, of the abyss into which he
had fallen, sure, in his inward shadows, of his
mental results without perception of any erratic
indefiniteness and incompleteness of his mental
methods whose force a different and grosser
mind might have felt, Tunstall's efforts at rea
soning and his conclusions have not been in
adequately indicated here, however uneven
may seem their logic or their lucidity when
presented to the different mind in the uncom
promising fixity of the printed page.
When finally he turned his stiffened body
and slowly lifted himself to his feet, night had
270 The Opponents
settled over the forest. The invigorating cool
ness of the high altitude was in the air. The
cliff was a bank of dense gloom. The thick
foliage seemed to gather and imprison, as
under a vast dome, the darkness, intensified by
a narrow rift here and there through which the
sky was visible. Above Tunstall the great
pine, every breath of its sighing under-song
now hushed, was as stirless as if hewn from
the rock of the cliff, loomed high beyond the
shades of the forest and blossomed apparently
with white, still mountain stars.
Tunstall peered inquisitively around him.
He did not know where he was, how far away
or in what direction was the hotel. He remem
bered that he had come here a long time ago,
when it was daylight, though he had noted no
more of his way or its surroundings than if it had
been as dark as now. The sound of the brook
still beat upon him the one thing that was
familiar ; that had not changed ; that linked the
night with the morning, so long passed ; that
seemed to have gone on since he could not
remember, that seemed must go on till he
could not forget He recalled that he had
followed that sound all through the woods that
day ; he knew that wherever the hotel was, it
Level with the Earth 271
was toward the head of this brook, and that
therefore the stream that had led him here
would guide him back.
He set forth up its course. For the first
time in many hours he now had some definite
object in view : he was walking with some pur
pose, making his way to some place. It was a
poor enough object merely to get back to
the hotel which he now loathed but it was
an object, and in a degree relaxed the subjec
tive strain that had been upon him. Beating in
the darkness through the briars and underbrush
toward that object, was as effective to reawaken
his normal senses as was the object itself.
Soon and sooner than he had thought
possible, for it seemed to him that he had
traversed many leagues in descending the stream
that day he reached the road which, as the
forest began to grow thinner, he recognized as
the road he had turned into that morning after
descending the mountain bridle-path. He knew
that the edge of the woods, and beyond that
the hotel, were near now. A little further along
he passed the spot where he had seen Grace
Knowles. He felt a chill sensation as if his
body were contracting and shrinking into
himself. Involuntarily his chin fell to his
272 The Opponents
sunken chest, and he automatically drew his
coat closer about him. It was a place of the
dead and damned. His own sudden death,
and his dead self yet down there, were vividly
real things.
Emerging from the woods a few minutes
later, the lights of the hotel shining across
to him smote him with a shock of repellent
inapposition. It was as if he were suddenly
thrown back on a world he had left but a mo
ment before, though he had lived through
centuries since he left it. Black as was the
doom back there in the forest, yet he had less
heart for the world of those hotel lights, and he
paused for a second as if actually to retrace his
steps. But it was only for a second, and walk
ing on toward the hotel, he came to the hill
which he had ascended that morning with Mar
garet Helm. He stopped again, with a re
pressed groan. All the beauty of the ascent,
the splendor of the summit, the desolation of
the descent rushed upon him in a flood. Then
again came the vision from the mountain, as he
had looked down on the hill and discovered
Margaret's fan. A returning wave of the old
tenderness that had hurried him down the
mountain-side to secure the fan swept over
Level with the Earth 273
him, with a momentary pang that he had neg
lected, forgotten it so long in his own self-
concern.
With quickening steps he climbed the knoll,
curious, even anxious, to see whether the fan
were still there. He found it lying on the seat
where Margaret had left it, and where he had
seen it from the shelf of the mountain later.
He dropped into the seat, and taking up the
little fan contemplated it reflectively. Then
bowing his face into his hands, the fan pressed
against his cheek, his elbows supported by his
knees, he lived over the drama of the morning
that had been enacted on this spot, recalling
every word of Margaret's, every intonation,
every change of the sensitive face. And it was
only that morning that all this had happened
only that morning, ages and ages ago, in
another world, another life.
He sat up after a while, and gently placing
the fan in his pocket, looked across to where
the dim ridge of the mountains melted into the
star-sprinkled sky. Nearer, below him, his
eyes fell to the lights of the hotel, and he
caught on the fitful breeze of the night an
occasional wave of a waltz from the ball-room,
or a faint ripple of laughter from the galleries.
18
274 The Opponents
In another hour the music had ceased, the
ball-room was dark, and other lights twinkled
in the upper story; these, too, gradually
died away, and when Tunstall finally rose
and began the descent of the hill, the building
was sleeping in the hush and shadow of the
mountains.
As he walked toward it and its outlines
took form before him, he looked up to the un-
lighted windows, and he found himself won
dering, as he had wondered on his arrival the
night before, which of those windows were
Margaret Helm's. He pulled his hat over his
eyes, with an aching stricture in his throat.
He was never to know, the thought crushed in
on him he was never to know, or to concern
himself to know, anything more about Marga
ret Helm. All that, with everything else, was
in the past now.
He made his way to his room and without
undressing threw himself across the bed. He
did not sleep, and as he lay there in the still
ness and under the same roof that covered
Margaret, the feeling of her hopeless nearness
was so poignant that he got up with the first
flush of dawn and went down to the hotel
office.
Level with the Earth 275
"You have some saddle-horses here, have
you not?" he asked the clerk.
" Oh, yes, sir ! "
" Let me look at the best of them."
" Yes, sir. You are out early."
Horses were shown him and he made a
selection.
" How much do you want for this one?" he
inquired.
" Do you mean by the hour?"
" I mean I wish to buy him."
" Oh, I could n't say, sir ! " the surprised
clerk stared. " I 'd have to see the manager."
" Then see him at once, please."
The manager was seen, the sale was made,
and Tunstall, having scribbled a conventional
line of leave-taking on his card for the ladies,
was in the saddle, with the first conscious
breath of the bracing morning air in his long
constricted lungs. In his youth a horseback
ride had always been his resort in time of
trouble, and the possibility of returning to
Kentucky on a good horse over the mountain
roads, instead of in the stuffy railroad train, no
sooner suggested itself ,to him than he seized it
as a reality.
With one fleeting glance at the still sleeping
276 The Opponents
windows of the hotel, he turned his face to the
silvering crest of the range and galloped away.
The vigorous swing of the horse into the
majestic solitude of the morning put new
strength into Tunstall's own body and spirit,
and not once did he look back.
XXII
THE MORNING OF THE CONVENTION
IT was the morning of the district convention.
Sidney Garrard, in his little room in the crowded
Bracebury hotel, was awakened at 5.30, in
accordance with his instructions left with the
clerk the night before. The boy pounded
noisily at the door before Garrard answered,
for it had been 3 o'clock when the conference
of his friends in the Garrard headquarters on
the first floor of the hotel had broken up and
he had climbed wearily to his bedroom.
He did not get up at once, but lay staring at
the slit of a window, against which a foggy
rain was beating. Beyond that the gray gloom
of the morning was impenetrable, except for a
few feet, within which the dripping branches of
a linden tree swayed and thrashed against the
weatherboarding of the hotel. The rain rat
tled in gusts on the shingle roof, the water
gushed and thumped in the tin gutters, and
near Garrard's bed there was a tap, tap on the
278 The Opponents
bare floor as the slow drops fell from a wet
spot in the plastered ceiling. It was not a
cheerful beginning of the day to which Garrard
had looked forward so long and whose out
come, which he had exerted himself so strenu
ously to control, meant so much for him.
Nor was there any inward source of cheer in
Garrard, now that he had made his fight and
awaited the result. He lay there, in the reac
tion which comes after one's utmost effort has
been put forth without having attained the
result whose possibility had been his stimulus.
Moreover, he was in the semi-torpor that some
times follows an untimely awakening from sleep
and submerges one in a depressing revulsion
from the very thought of resuming the activity
and struggle of the waking hours which have
worn most on mind and body. For the time
Garrard, free as he usually was from morbid
ness, felt the oppression of the day and of
defeat. He did not care to get up. It did
not seem that he should ever care. There is
something to keep a man going when he is
making his fight, but when it is made and lost
a dry bed on a wet morning is about as good
as is left for him.
But Garrard's unfavorable political prospect,
The Morning of the Convention 279
bad as that seemed, was not what oppressed
him most at the moment. It was his convic
tion that the distance between Margaret Helm
and himself, if not widening, at least was not
lessening. It was true he felt that she re
spected him more and liked him better than
she had done during the first summer of their
acquaintance, and it was true that since then,
until this year, he had seen nothing of her;
but he had seen enough recently to feel sure
that she did not yet wish to listen to what he
most wished to say to her. Once, indeed, he
had been on the verge of saying it again, just
before she left for the West Virginia mountains,
and she had so delicately yet so positively in
dicated to him that he would make a mistake
if he did speak that he had immediately de
sisted. While this had keenly disappointed
him, it had not in itself discouraged him, nor
would he have been so near despondency this
morning if he had not felt that to win he must
overcome an opponent more formidable than
Margaret herself. If his contestant had been
any man he knew except Morgan Tunstall,
Garrard would have been more hopeful. In a
vague sense he had somehow conceived that
Tunstall was his dangerous rival as long ago
280 The Opponents
as the day when Margaret had first seen the
portrait at Tunstall Paddocks, and since Tun-
stall's actual appearance on the field, handi
capped though he might be by his unhappy
divorce, Garrard, while as determined and
aggressive in love as he was in politics, could
not help feeling at a distinct disadvantage in
opposing him. From Garrard's boyhood Tun-
stall had always made on him an impression
of power that at first had almost the effect of
awe, and that was not lacking later when he
found that it was Tunstall whom he must meet
as his chief antagonist in the two battles that
he thought most worth winning.
What other man but Tunstall, for instance,
could have made the political campaign that
he had made this summer, and yet have spent
most of his time with Margaret Helm? Who
but Tunstall, with the result of that campaign
so close as it was known to be, would have run
off to the mountains and loafed at a watering-
place the last days preceding the convention
without losing, but actually gaining, ground in
his political race meantime? Garrard was well
aware that while he was doing some of his
hardest campaign work these last days, Tun
stall had gone to Margaret. Tunstall himself
The Morning of the Convention 281
before leaving had told Garrard of his destina
tion, and had laughingly advised him that he had
" better come along." Here it was the morning
of the convention, and Tunstall, to the conster
nation of some of his supporters, had not even
appeared at Bracebury. But Garrard had built
no hopes on that fact: he knew Tunstall too
well, and he knew too well Tunstall's strength
in the convention.
Tunstall had undoubtedly gained materially
since the Luttroll County Convention. The
proceedings of that body, as reported by the
correspondent of the Globe, had resulted in an
uninstructed delegation to the district conven
tion at Bracebury, both Tunstall and Garrard
being well represented by friends among the
delegates. So close was the race in the rest
of the congressional district that it was confi
dently assumed by the Tunstall and Garrard
workers alike that the vote of the Luttroll
County delegation in the district convention
would either effect a nomination or produce a
dead-lock. Garrard and his friends had done
what they could in the interval between the
two conventions to increase his strength in the
Luttroll delegation, and they believed, up to
the night preceding the district convention,
282 The Opponents
that they had won enough of the undecided
delegates to give Garrard a majority of the
delegation. They were dumbfounded, there
fore, when, on the night before the district con
vention was to assemble, the various county
delegations holding separate meetings for the
purpose of organizing and agreeing on their
committeemen, the Luttroll delegation was
controlled on every vote by the Tunstall men,
who not only dictated its organization, but
declared that its vote should be cast as a
unit on all questions in the convention. This
programme, if carried out, would stifle every
Garrard man on the delegation and would in
effect throw all the votes of the delegation for
Tunstall and insure his nomination. It was an
old trick, and one that had been successfully
played many a time before by politicians less
shrewd than Tunstall. Garrard and his lieu
tenants knew, and admitted among themselves,
that unless this scheme could be frustrated
they were beaten. With every member of the
Luttroll delegation voting for his choice in the
convention, there was a bare possibility that
Tunstall in the end might not hold a decisive
number of Poindexter's following and that
Garrard might win; with the delegation vot-
The Morning of the Convention 283
ing as a unit for Tunstall, there was no chance
at all for Garrard. At the conference of the
Garrard men immediately after the action of
the Luttroll delegation there was but one
opinion as to the course that was left them.
They must make their fight in the convention
against the " unit rule." Their only hope lay
in having the convention refuse to accept
Luttroll County's vote as a unit, but insist
that the delegation be polled and the votes
be recorded as cast by the individual dele
gates. It was a desperate hope, they realized,
for even if they should succeed in having
the vote of Luttroll County excluded on the
question of recognizing or rejecting the unit
rule, the probability of securing its rejection
by a majority of the other delegates was very
slight. It was clearly the Tunstall plan to
make sure of the nomination by the enforce
ment of the unit rule, and if the convention
should determine against its enforcement it
would only be because Tunstall could not con
trol his delegates and those of Poindexter on
that question. But Garrard's friends admitted
that there was scant encouragement in count
ing on Tunstall's inability to do that. Tunstall
had never been the man to fail in such a coup
284 The Opponents
as this. It belonged essentially to the field of
practical politics of which he was a master.
It was true that Tunstall had not yet ap
peared at Bracebury. That was looked on in
Garrard's camp as singular, though not signifi
cant of any fatal disadvantage to Tunstall's side.
Tunstall was in the habit of doing singular
things in a political fight, and he had never
been known to lose by such tactics. Never
theless it was understood at Garrard's head
quarters that some of Tunstall's managers
were not as unconcerned over his absence as
they professed to be ; that Poindexter in par
ticular was secretly fuming about it ; and that
Dunk Peabody, having taken a few drinks to
allay his agitation on the subject, had become
so boisterously agitated that some of the diplo
matic Tunstall workers had to get him " dead
drunk " in order to quiet him.
That was the situation as developed by the
preceding night, and as it recurred to Garrard
looking out from his room on the rainy morn
ing of the district convention.
He lay there until he heard a clock strike
seven, and Hugh Letcher, pushing open the
door a few minutes later, found him still in
bed.
The Morning of the Convention 285
" What ! not even up yet ? " he said in sur
prise. " I Ve been expecting you downstairs
for an hour. It's the late bird that catches
last year's nest."
" Oh, well, old man," Garrard replied slug
gishly, rising to a seat on the edge of the bed,
" I did n't see any reason to hurry. The game's
up, and I 'm tired of the whole thing."
" What's the rub? It always did upset you
to lose much sleep. It 's not like you not to
put in your hardest licks when the other fellow
seems surest of licking you."
"I need a good cold bath, Hugh," Garrard
answered, a little apologetically, as he began to
dress, " or a good kicking. Don't be so easy
with me ; try a kick or two. I '11 be down in
a minute and do what 's to be done. Not much,
is it?"
" I ran across a fellow this morning you
might do something with. His name is Hull
Dorsey Hull one of Poindexter's men.
He says he can't vote for you, but that it does
look like you ought to have a square deal and
be allowed your votes in the Luttroll delega
tion. I believe if you will have a talk with him
you can get him to vote against the unit rule."
"All right. Hull, did you say his name was ? "
286 The Opponents
" Yes. Says he remembers you well, and has
always had a sort of pity for you ever since he
cut you out with Bessie Floyd."
" Bessie Floyd," Garrard smiled musingly.
" Yes, I did know a girl once named Bessie
Floyd. Let me see: it was the summer I
drove that Dictator filly. You remember her,
don't you ? "
"Miss Floyd?"
" That filly. She was a good one. It wasn't
anything to step over into Magowan County
behind her. Bessie Floyd lived in Magowan,
you know. Hull Hull yes, I believe there
was a chap of that name hanging around Bessie
that summer. So he got her, did he ? Well, I '11
go and inquire about her and that other little
matter. Anything turned up this morning? "
"Tunstall hasn't. EvenDriggs is beginning
to seem a little rattled, and Poindexter does n't
look as if he could contain himself much lon
ger. He is clearly getting desperate and has
taken to dissipating on ice-water. He ex
hausted the supply in the hotel office early.
And, oh, by the way, I Ve a letter from Flor
ence this morning. She said that Tunstall had
come up there, but remained only a day. What
do you think now?"
The Morning of the Convention 287
" Oh, nothing ; except that Tunstall will be
on hand if he is needed, and that he is not
likely to be needed. He left his machine in
such good order that it will do its work with
out him. What racket is that downstairs, do
you suppose ? Hello, Nix, what 's all that
noise?" the last question being addressed
to Bob Nixon, who came into the room at
the moment.
" Here ! what are you fellows loafing up
here for? " Nixon asked. " That noise? Why,
don't you know? That is Dunk Peabody and
a few of his fellow statesmen celebrating
the good news : they Ve heard from Morgan
Tunstall."
"What have they heard?" Hugh Letcher
inquired.
"That he has reached Yardley on horse
back and will be here by the two o'clock train.
Dunk was at breakfast when the glad tidings
found him, and he immediately transferred
himself to the hotel office. He is now stand
ing on the clerk's desk, with a napkin under
his chin and an unfurled table-cloth in his
hand. That which you hear downstairs is
Dunk breakfasting on plutocrats."
XXIII
"THE OLD HICKORY OF LUTTROLL "
THE convention met at ten o'clock, and when
it adjourned for dinner two hours and a half
later Sidney Garrard's assertion that Tunstall's
machine would do its work without Tunstall's
presence had been demonstrated. The Tun-
stall-Poindexter combination had held together
and had carried every point raised.
The first test of strength came on the ques
tion of temporary organization. The vote was
close, but the Tunstall selection for Temporary
Chairman won. With their power thus shown
and the organization and administration of the
convention thus seized, Tunstall's adherents re
garded the nomination of their man as assured,
while at heart Garrard's supporters, though
still maintaining a bold front, conceded that,
unless some totally unexpected development
should favor them, they were beaten. They
made an obstinate struggle against the unit
rule, but lost by only two or three less votes
"The Old Hickory of Luttroll" 289
than they lost the temporary chairmanship.
After that they offered no resistance to the op
position's motion to adjourn until two o'clock.
They understood that Tunstall's train was due
at two o'clock, but they agreed with Garrard
now that Tunstall's absence or presence would
not change the final result. The Tunstall ma
chine had been shown to be in perfect order.
On reassembling in the afternoon, the Chair
man's gavel rapping a few minutes after the
whistle of the two o'clock train had resounded
through the hall, the business before the con
vention was the placing in nomination of the
various candidates for Congress. A call of the
counties of the district was begun alphabetically.
When Bascom County was reached, Hoard, a
square-jawed, big-nosed young member of the
delegation, arose and made the nominating
speech for Sidney Garrard with such earnest
force, such a plain exposition of the methods
employed against him, such a telling repudia
tion of the " husks of Bourbonism " on which
the Tunstalls and Poindexters would nourish
the party, and such a fervid plea for the cour
age and sturdiness of Garrard's stand for a
living Democracy and for the manly repre
sentation of its vitality instead of a crafty reli-
19
290 The Opponents
ance on its prejudices and spoils, that the
Garrard delegates were aroused to an uproar
ious demonstration of reddening faces, straining
throats, and tossing banners, which continued
several minutes. When this finally subsided
and the call of the counties was resumed, Crox-
ton County furnished the next speaker, who
seconded Garrard's nomination. It was sec
onded again before Hardesty, one of "the
Pocket " counties, was reached and " the honey-
lipped orator of old Hardesty " presented the
name of Leonidas Cox Poindexter to the con
vention, which was received with some honest
applause by the Pocket delegations, joined in
rather perfunctorily by the Tunstall counties.
At last Luttroll County was called, and the
Tunstall delegates had their cue. Luttroll was
to propose the name of Tunstall, the nominat
ing speech having been assigned to " the Old
Hickory of Luttroll," Shelby Letcher. When
the reading clerk sang out resonantly, "The
County of Luttroll," the Tunstall men on the
convention floor and platform sprang to their
feet with the promptness of a drill team and
began the din for which they had been waiting
their opportunity. Yells, tin horns, pounding
chairs and canes, made a clamor that was bar-
"The Old Hickory of Luttroll" 291
baric and that was maintained with a persist
ence betraying more method than spontaneity.
Flags were drawn from many places of con
cealment and waved overhead ; sheets of canvas
bearing Tunstall's portrait were hung out, and
streamers with Tunstall mottoes and catch
words were flaunted. After a while the stan
dards of the Tunstall counties were wrenched
from their places and borne aloft, while behind
them the Tunstall delegates fell in line and,
still keeping up their noise, began to march
and countermarch through the hall ; most con
spicuous among these standards being that of
Luttroll County, clutched in the frenzied hands
of Dunk Peabody as he was carried around
the room on the shoulders of some of his
colleagues. None of the usual features of the
modern convention demonstration was omitted.
The Garrard men remained in their seats
through it all, some of them resigned, others
smiling patiently, and still others jeering good-
naturedly. They knew that this was a part of
the programme which would have to run its
prescribed course, and that it would be timed
by the watch until it well exceeded the length
of the Garrard demonstration. They also knew
that it would not make a vote for Tunstall,
292 The Opponents
though there was no comfort in that, as they
knew at the same time that it was not necessary
to make any more votes for Tunstall.
Finally, after the hurly-burly had been pro
tracted for thirteen minutes, that greeting
Garrard's name having lasted about five, even
the Tunstall men began to realize that, as one
of them expressed it to another, there was " a
cog loose somewhere." There were now gaps
in the " enthusiasm," as if the enthusiasts felt
that they had done their part and were dis
posed to subside in order that the next part,
which was not theirs, should be done. They
began to look around for Shelby Letcher, to
note that he was not in any of the seats assigned
to the Luttroll delegation, and that he was not
to be discovered on the platform or elsewhere
in the hall. Even the Chairman now banged
the table and turned to see if the expected
speaker had yet reached the stage. Cries of
" Letcher ! " soon dominated the other noises in
the building, and some of the Garrard men,
though not understanding the hitch, were laugh
ing outright.
At last there was a sudden, genuine cheer
from the Tunstall followers, as the gaunt form
of Shelby Letcher was seen to emerge from
"The Old Hickory of Luttroll" 293
the wings of the stage and with awkward slow
ness make its way to the table by the Chair
man's side.
Standing there until the din was stilled, " the
Old Hickory of Luttroll " began to speak in a
harsh but unstrained voice that carried every
syllable to all parts of the auditorium :
" Mr. Chairman and Fellow Democrats," he
said, " I must inform you at the outset that I
am here to make a very different speech from
that which you expected from me, and which
you had a right to expect from me. Just how
and why I am not to make the speech I intended
to make and am to make the speech I shall try
to make, I hardly know myself. It has all come
about so suddenly, and I am so far at this
moment from fully grasping the entire situa
tion in all its cause and effect, that I seriously
doubt if I should not have acquitted myself
with more credit by remaining mute in my seat.
But, gentlemen, I am a Democrat who never
shirks a duty to his party, and in the brief time
I have had to ponder on that duty and the
imperfect light I have had in which to find it, I
believe that it is to the interest of the Democ
racy of this district that I should say to you
what I stand here now to say.
294 The Opponents
" Gentlemen, when I came to this convention
this afternoon I came with the expectation,
which I have since been compelled to abandon,
of placing in nomination for the office of Rep
resentative in Congress from this district the
name of the man I believed, and still believe, to
be the choice of a majority of the members of
our party." (At this there was a subdued com
motion throughout the hall, growing louder as
feet were shuffled and delegates pressed nearer
the rostrum, while their questions as they asked
one another what it meant were mingled with
ejaculations which were not chosen with a view
to elegance of expression.)
" Be patient, all of you, if you would hear
what I have undertaken to tell you," the old
gentleman resumed, extending a hand and a
long arm over his auditors authoritatively.
" Fellow Democrats, without beating around
the bush I will make a long story short by say
ing to you that, for personal reasons of his own,
which, whatever they may be, we must concede
to be, in the judgment of him whom they most
concern, good and sufficient, the man who I
am morally certain would have been declared
their nominee by a majority of the delegates to
this convention has changed his mind and has
"The Old Hickory of Luttroll" 295
determined to retire from politics." (There
was another commotion here, more vigorous
than the first, but shorter, in the convention's
eagerness to lose no word of the speaker's.)
" So it is my unwelcome function, Democrats
of Kentucky, to come before you at the urgent
and repeated solicitation of the Hon. Morgan
Tunstall himself and, in his behalf, not only to
inform you that he refuses to allow his own
name to be placed in nomination, but that it is
his desire that, instead, I shall second the nom
ination of the Hon. Sidney Garrard."
The effect of this announcement, according
to the report published in next morning's Globe,
was " hard to describe. Consternation was
plainly written in the ranks of the Tunstall
delegates, whose tense faces, lifted upward to
the aged speaker, broke into an agitated sea of
dismay, perplexity, incredulity, disgust, aston
ishment, and anger, from which sounded sharp
exclamations, muttered oaths, and here and
there a groan and an unmistaken hiss. The
Garrard forces were scarcely less a study. As
they took in the significance of the thunderclap
from the stage, they responded with a sponta
neous cheer, but it was short and seemed to die
away in doubt. They looked into one another's
296 The Opponents
eyes and found not answers to their question
ing, but questions similar to their own What
does it mean? Is it a trick? The most vivid
and violent part of the scene, however, was in
that portion of the hall occupied by the dele
gates from the Pocket. These were all sup
porters of Poindexter, and they did not try to
conceal their fury at what they considered Tun-
stall's betrayal of his ally from the Pocket.
Every man of them was on his feet and his
feet usually on the bottom of the chair on which
he had been sitting and with distorted face
was hooting and howling out his passion. The
air was thick with doubled fists and cries of
' Take him out ! ' ' Traitor ! ' ' What did he
get?'" etc.
But it was not long before the tumult sub
sided, at least temporarily. Shelby Letcher
was waiting to proceed with his remarks, and
curiosity to hear what else remained to be
said did far more to restore order than the
energetic efforts of the Chairman did.
" I am here," Mr. Letcher went on, his voice
seeming to have gathered some of the excite
ment with which the hall was now charged,
" unwillingly to fulfil the commission that has
been imposed upon me. In withdrawing the
"The Old Hickory of Luttroll" 297
name of Mr. Tunstall from this canvass, I speak
for him alone ; in seconding the nomination of
Mr. Garrard, I speak for Mr. Tunstall and for
myself. Mr. Tunstall wishes me to assure you
that he regrets that the campaign proceeded
so far before he determined to quit it ; that he
is grateful for the loyal support he has received
at the hands of so many of you, and that
he deplores the wasted exertions which he in
duced you to put forth so generously in his
behalf; nevertheless, he particularly wishes me
to assure you that his decision to go no further
in the matter is absolute and final. And know
ing the man as I do, I can further assure you
if it were necessary to make any such assurance
to those knowing him as you do that there
can be not the remotest question of his
sincerity.
" So much for that part of my duty. I have
discharged it with reluctance, for I believe
that Morgan Tunstall is the ablest leader of
our party in Kentucky, and I earnestly de
sired his election to Congress this fall, both
because it would have been for the signal
honor and advantage of our district to have
such a representative at Washington and be
cause I wished to see him take the place in the
298 The Opponents
direction of our national legislation and in the
councils of our national party to which his
commanding gifts and accomplishments so
pre-eminently entitle him.
" The second part of my duty the indorse
ment of the candidacy of the Hon. Sidney
Garrard I also discharge with some reluct
ance. It is well known that, neighbor and
friend as he is, even almost as a son, it was
with pain that I have withheld my support
from him in this campaign. Frankly I thought
he could wait ; that it would be better for him
if he had to wait. All of us have our short
comings, and his are to be charged to the im
pulsiveness of an honest and courageous youth.
He will get over his youth, my friends, and
with his courage and honesty left him, added
to the soberer temperament and the broaden
ing experience of his increasing years, he will
yet make an all-wool Democrat. As you are
aware, there are some things in his record
which I do not like, but I have suggested to
you their explanation, and we surely can well
afford to bear with a young Democrat whose
divergence from the plummet line of the Fathers
is due to his effort to stand so straight that he
is sometimes a little sway-backed. With all
"The Old Hickory of Luttroll" 299
his faults I believe, and the great chieftain
whose name I have just withdrawn from this
convention believes with me, that Sidney Gar-
rard is the most available man for the party
now to unite on. At this stage of threatening
party break-up and realignment in Kentucky,"
he continued, with oratorical confusion of
metaphors, " we cannot afford to invite need
less dissensions. Three men have made this
contest for Congress. One of them has volun
tarily withdrawn. Two remain in the race.
Our choice should be one of these. It would
be folly to inspire the resentment of their ad
herents by going beyond these two, at this late
hour, to select a candidate who has known
nothing of the brunt of the battle. No man in
this district has stancher, more zealous friends
than Sidney Garrard. Shall we wantonly slap
them in the face now after his chief competi
tor has retired in his favor by going into the
woods and bushes for a dark horse? That
would be a poor way to unite the party, when
Morgan Tunstall's action really leaves no ob
stacle to party union. Gentlemen, you must
know that the nominee of this convention will
be Garrard or Poindexter. I know, and you
must know, that, as by far the stronger candi-
300 The Opponents
date, rallying to his standard even with Tunstall
in the field almost enough delegates to nomi
nate him, Garrard will be that nominee. Be
cause, therefore, Morgan Tunstall, who had
practically won this nomination, thinks it should
go to this gallant young leader ; because by his
remarkable fight against stupendous odds he is
entitled to this honor over any opponent that
might now seek to lift the lance dropped by
the peerless Tunstall ; because he is clearly the
second choice of the Democrats of this district,
who are not to have their first choice ; because
he is the son of my county, whose heretofore
divided allegiance now centres on him ; because
he is my neighbor and one of my boys whom,
with God's help and your help, I intend to live
to make as rock-ribbed a Democrat as I am
myself; and most important of all, because he
is now the one man in this district who can
best insure the harmony and invincibility of
our glorious old party in this campaign, I
second the nomination of Sidney Garrard, of
the county of Luttroll."
XXIV
MORGAN TUNSTALL DECIDES HIS FUTURE
TUNSTALL'S decision to withdraw from the
race and throw his influence to Garrard had
been made only that morning, on the train from
Yardley to Bracebury. His horseback ride
through the mountains had been a distraction
from thought. The rough and often perilous
roads, the changing scene, the almost continu
ous objective demands on his mind, the deep
sleep in some humble cabin after a long day in
the saddle, left him little opportunity for re
flection, even had he desired it. But he had
no such desire. His one purpose was to
escape reflection, to get away from the spot,
and all its associations, where the blow had
fallen upon him. No mind could stand many
days such as that through which he had passed
after his morning with Margaret Helm and
Grace Knowles. He fled, as a wounded ani
mal flees, homeward ; though but for his knowl
edge that there was unfinished work for him
302 The Opponents
in that direction, he soon might have drifted
anywhere, instead of keeping to his course.
The one definite conception that took shape
in his mind, when there was room there for
anything beyond the agony and despair of
those first hours after he had been struck down,
was that back in Kentucky he had set his hand
to work which yet remained to be completed,
and to that he turned like an automaton.
There was nothing else for him to turn to.
Yet, when he had put the mountains behind
him and had reached the rolling meadows of
his own county, every familiar landmark seemed
to oppress him with a new distaste for the
work to which he was going back. When he
had left for the mountains, that work had been
infused with his own life blood, and he had
given to it the best of his vitality because by
it he would lay a stepping-stone into the new
world that Margaret Helm's coming had
opened before him. But now, returning to
take up his work again, he returned to take up
an empty, purposeless thing, a thing, indeed,
that was worse than purposeless, for its sole
power was to remind him of the purpose with
which he had once vivified it. There was no
longer anything in it for him, not even the
Tunstall Decides his Future 303
solace of work for work's sake, as there had
been before he knew Margaret Helm. On the
contrary, as he approached the point of re
suming his political campaign, his anticipation
was not only utterly devoid of interest, but was
sickened with loathing and revulsion. His in
clination was to turn and flee from Bracebury,
as he had fled from the mountains of West
Virginia.
He made his way, therefore, to Bracebury
leisurely, with no effort to reach the town be
fore the day on which the convention was to
meet. He did not even communicate with his
friends until the morning of that day, on his
arrival at Yardley. It was not until he had left
his horse at Yardley and had taken the train for
Bracebury that the full repellent force of the
work to which he was speeding bore on him
overpoweringly.
Then first came the suggestion of relief. He
played with it a little, even smiled at it once,
held it away from him, drew it back ; con
templated it from various sides : self-indul-
gently, as if he recognized himself as a child
with a toy, with profound concentration a
few seconds later.
Within ten minutes after the idea had been
304 The Opponents
born he had accepted it as a finality and had
decided his future. He would withdraw from
the campaign for Congress. He would quit
politics. He would turn his back upon the
whole hollow, degrading business.
He settled back in his seat as if for the first
time he had found a position of comfort.
Some might say, he reflected, that he owed it
to his friends to push his candidacy to the
end, especially as he was practically sure to
win, but it was more his fight than his friends',
and in this instance he owed less to them than
to himself. He would not sacrifice himself to
the interest of others, particularly when that
interest was mainly sentimental. Poindexter
was the only one who might feel that he had
real cause of complaint. He had promised to
use his influence as a Congressman to secure
the office of Internal Revenue Collector for
Poindexter. Well, he would not be Congress
man and that would count for much but
he could still use what influence he might have
for Poindexter. If that should not satisfy
Poindexter, then to the devil with Poindexter.
He should have had nothing to do with Poin
dexter, anyway. He was in no mood now to
consult the code of " honor among thieves."
Tunstall Decides his Future 305
He would not only withdraw, but he would
swing his following to Sidney Garrard and insure
his nomination. Some of Tunstall's delegates,
he was aware, might mutiny, but that would
not matter. Garrard already lacked but a few
votes of the number necessary to nominate,
and it would be easy for Tunstall to throw
those to him. Indeed, Tunstall admitted that
with himself out of the contest it would be
almost impossible to prevent enough of his
supporters going over to Garrard to nominate
him, in preference to any other man in the dis
trict that could be pitted against him.
Let it not be inferred that in determining to
nominate his rival in love as well as in politics
Tunstall was impelled by any motive of romantic
self-abnegation and heroism. He acquitted
himself of any such incentive. For one thing,
he was no longer a rival of Sidney Garrard
for the love of Margaret Helm. Margaret was
no longer a possibility to Tunstall. If she
had been, he would never have surrendered
to any one an inch that could have helped
to advance himself in her favor. More than
that, Tunstall realized, without compunction,
that if Margaret Helm had been still a pos
sibility, and he had been compelled to retire
306 The Opponents
from the Congressional race, he would not have
been equal to bestowing on any lover of Mar
garet's an honor that might have strengthened
his suit. Tunstall was human, and he was
honest with himself.
Tunstall liked Sidney Garrard. He even
admired him for the things which he some
times laughed at to Garrard's face. With his
own abandonment of politics, and with Mar
garet Helm out of consideration, Tunstall
wished to see, even to help, Garrard attain
his ambition. Besides, some day, in all prob
ability, Margaret Helm would be Garrard's
wife, and it was much to feel that in further
ing the fortunes of Garrard he would be doing
something for Margaret Helm. But it was at
this point that the human nerve in the man
was to ache most sharply. He would have
done anything for Margaret's happiness, and
yet when it came to doing it through help
ing one who was perhaps to take the place in
her heart that he himself had hoped to hold,
Tunstall shrank in acute, though momentary
anguish and rebellion. No man ever loved a
woman if he was superior to this feeling of
rebellion at the thought of any other man in
her arms.
Tunstall Decides his Future 307
At the first station where the train stopped
after Tunstall had made his decision he went
out and telegraphed John W. Driggs at Brace-
bury: " Don tallow a ballot before I arrive, at
two o'clock" Then he returned to his seat in
the car and pondered the plan to be put in
operation when he should reach Bracebury.
Two methods of action occurred to him.
One was simply to withdraw, in favor of Garrard,
and at the same time quietly transfer enough
of his following to Garrard to make sure his
nomination. This course, sprung so abruptly
on the convention, would be somewhat theatric,
and would impress some of his adherents with
the idea that in failing to take them into his
confidence he had not treated them with suffi
cient consideration. It would also perhaps
alienate some of them from him beyond the
limits within which they could be controlled by
his organization. This, however, as already
suggested, would be immaterial. So few ad
ditional votes were needed by Garrard that
Tunstall knew that more than the necessary
number could be counted on. For the possi
ble weakening, or even collapse, of his own
organization Tunstall cared nothing. Quitting
politics entirely and permanently, he had no
308 The Opponents
further use for an organization. He would
have preferred, out of regard for his support
ers, not to wait thus till the last hour before
confiding to them his decision to withdraw,
but it was not worth while to concern himself
about that. He could not have confided to
them his decision before he had made it. As
for the theatric aspect of the proceeding, he
did not give that a second thought. Of two
effective means of accomplishing an end, one
theatric and the other not, the politician usually
chooses the theatric.
The second method of action, which Tun-
stall reviewed briefly, was more indirect, and
would have appealed to him more strongly if
he had not lost all interest in making an adroit
political play merely for the love of the play.
It contemplated that he should not openly with
draw from the contest, but that ostensibly he
should fight it out. The balloting would begin,
and the deadlock between Garrard, Poindexter,
and himself would result. This would be pro
tracted by Tunstall until it had the appearance
of a stubborn struggle, and finally, atTunstall's
secret dictation, enough of Poindexter's dele
gates should go over to Garrard to nominate
him, instead of carrying out the terms of the
Tunstall Decides his Future 309
deal between Poindexter and Tunstall to go
over to Tunstall. The consequence would be
the nomination of Garrard, no less at the in
stance of Tunstall by this method of procedure
than by the more direct one. Moreover, it
would have the merit of leaving the public and
Garrard himself under the impression that he
had won by his own efforts, after the contest
had been fought out on the ground of Tunstall's
choosing. Victory coming to Garrard thus
would no doubt be more gratifying to him than
if he knew it to be owed to Tunstall's unex
pected and unexplained generosity. But that
consideration had no weight with Tunstall ; or
if it had, it was to turn him against it. Even
if he had a heart now for conducting such a
tactical manoeuvre as this, he was so human as
to prefer, if it came to analyses of motives, that
in the future years, with their possibilities of
what Sidney Garrard might be to Margaret
Helm, she should not be wholly ignorant of
what Morgan Tunstall, who she would know
had loved her also, had done in Sidney's be
half. Perhaps she would even understand that
he had done it more on her account than on
Sidney's.
XXV
MORGAN TUNSTALL CARRIES OUT HIS
DECISION
WHEN his train arrived at Bracebury Tunstall
was met at the station by John W. Driggs and
two or three others of his lieutenants. Driving
to the town hall, they found that the convention
had reassembled but a few minutes before, and
Hoard was just beginning his speech placing
Garrard in nomination. Tunstall went to one
of the little rooms back of the stage, and send
ing for half a dozen of his leaders notified them
of his decision to withdraw and throw his influ
ence to Garrard. They were astonished, but
had little to say. They knew Tunstall well
enough to realize that it would be useless for
them to say anything. They could not fathom
his motives, nor did he explain, beyond his
answer to one who burst out with :
" Holy Moses, Mr. Tunstall, what does it all
mean ? "
Tunstall Carries out his Decision 3 1 1
" That I have changed my mind," he replied,
" and am done with politics. I am sorry if I
seem to have imposed upon you, gentlemen,
but I had no such purpose. Up to an hour
ago I had fully intended to keep on with the
thing."
Two or three of them laughed faintly and
spoke meekly.
" Well, I reckon, if you can stand it, we can,"
said one of these.
Two or three others darkened sullenly, but
made no open protest. John W. Driggs, with
his thumbs under his suspenders, looked from
one to another and remarked with equable
resignation :
" Well, boys, the old man always knows what
he 's about."
Squire Breckinridge Bodine's eyes batted
weakly, and he fanned himself nervously with
his hat, but his only utterance was a short-
breathed
" Lord 'a' mercy ! "
The one man who openly rebelled against
Tunstall's announcement was Shelby Letcher.
Leaning forward and shaking his long finger in
Tunstall's face, he served notice :
" It 's preposterous, Morgan Tunstall, and
3 1 2 The Opponents
we are not going to submit to it. You can't
trifle with us this way. It's too late to talk
about withdrawing when you are in an hour of
a sure nomination, and I hereby notify you, if
you attempt it, I '11 go before the convention
and say on the floor what I 'm saying here, and,
by the Eternal, we '11 nominate you in spite of
yourself! "
" And I '11 go before the convention," Tun-
stall smiled in reply, " and tell them flatly that
I '11 refuse a nomination if given me. Instead
of making the speech you threaten to make,
Mr. Letcher, I urge you, as a friend of mine, a
friend of Sidney Garrard, and above all a friend
of the Democratic party, to go before the con
vention and not only withdraw my name but
second the nomination of Sidney Garrard.
You are the one man to make that speech.
And you might as well, for Sidney is bound to
be nominated, anyway."
" I '11 see you in Jericho first, sir ! "
Nevertheless, after a ten minutes' argument,
during which Tunstall pressed most of the
points which Mr. Letcher subsequently re
peated as his own in the speech reported in
preceding pages, the old gentleman reluctantly
surrendered.
Tunstall Carries out his Decision 3 1 3
In the convention hall the clamor was now
tumultuous. The county of Luttroll had been
called, the demonstration in favor of Tunstall
was in progress, and the cries for Letcher had
already reached the old war-horse, who with
head uplifted was drinking in the sound.
" Now seems to be your time, Mr. Letcher,"
Tunstall smiled.
The veteran buttoned his coat and cleared
his voice, as he went to the door.
" I am ready for them, sir," he replied, leav
ing the room and crossing over to the wings,
whence he stepped out on the stage.
Most of the others who had been in the
room were now, at Tunstall's suggestion, join
ing their delegations on the floor of the con
vention, in order better to assert leadership
of them in the new and unforeseen turn of the
situation. Tunstall, accompanied by Driggs,
had just stepped through the door to follow
Shelby Letcher toward the stage when Poin-
dexter, purple and panting, rushed up.
" What is this damned rot I hear, Tunstall,
about your fluking and throwing the race to
Garrard ? " he demanded.
Tunstall paused. " I suppose that is about
the size of it, Poindexter," he replied. " I Ve
314 The Opponents
concluded to quit and do what I can to nom
inate Garrard. I sent for you half an hour ago
to tell you this, along with the other boys, but
you were not to be found."
" And you mean to stand here and tell
me to my face that you have thrown me
down?"
" Well, Poindexter, I 'm sorry to disappoint
you, but I confess that you have not entered
into the considerations that have governed me
in this matter."
" In short, sir, you openly acknowledge that
you have repudiated your your agreement
with me ! "
" Not so extreme as that, Poindexter. My
agreement was that if you would co-operate
with me in this canvass, when I got to Con
gress I would recommend and urge your ap
pointment as Collector for this district I
speak freely in the presence of John here,
for he knows of the arrangement already.
But I am not going to Congress; though
I will still use my influence to get you the
appointment, if you think it will do you any
good."
" Good ! Hell ! What good can anybody's
influence do me if the man who is going to
Tunstall Carries out his Decision 315
Congress is Sidney Garrard? He'll name the
Collector, and you know perfectly well he 'd
no more think of naming me than he would of
naming John W. Driggs there himself."
" Well, I 'm sorry things have got into this
mess, Poindexter," Tunstall said, taking a step
forward. " We '11 talk it over later this after
noon. Come on: Mr. Letcher is making a
speech, and we don't want to lose that."
Tunstall started toward the wings of the
stage, but Poindexter did not move.
" We will talk it over later," he called after
him ; " and I give you fair warning, Morgan
Tunstall, that if you go on with this welching
business we '11 have a settlement as well as a
talk. There 's yet time for you to stop this
sell-out, and, by God ! you 'd better pull in
your ropes before it is too late, if you don't
want them to stretch your own neck."
Tunstall, paying no attention to this, went on
and stood in the wings, where he could see and
hear Shelby Letcher without being seen him
self by those in the auditorium; while Poin
dexter hastened down to that portion of the
convention hall assigned to the delegates from
the Pocket.
Tunstall missed nothing of the effect
316 The Opponents
already indicated in this chronicle of Shelby
Letcher's speech on the delegates. He noted
their commotion following the first intimation
that his name was not to be placed before
them ; the suspense with which they awaited
a fuller revelation ; the dismay among his fol
lowers on the definite announcement of his
withdrawal and of his desire that Sidney Gar-
rard receive the nomination ; the bewilderment
of the Garrard forces, and the rage of Poin-
dexter's men from the Pocket. He smiled
more than once at the Old Hickory's patronage
and egotism in seconding the nomination of
Sidney Garrard, and he observed that these were
not lost entirely on the audience, but to some
extent relaxed the tension produced on it by
the first half of the speech. As Shelby Letcher
finished his peroration and walked to the back
of the stage to a seat, there were two seconds
of dead silence in the hall. Then there were
hand-clappings on the stage, followed at length
by a rousing cheer by the Garrard delegates,
led by Nelse Tigert. Tunstall's supporters
were motionless and silent in their seats, with a
few exceptions here and there who sang out with
forced cheerfulness, " What 's the matter with
Tunstall? He's all right! " or, " Hurrah for
Tunstall Carries out his Decision 317
Tunstall and Garrard ! " Over in the corner
of the representatives of the Pocket, where such
an outburst of indignation had at one time
interrupted Shelby Letcher's speech, a more
methodical expression of contempt was now
audible and visible. Groans and taunts were
measured out in chorus. References, direct
and indirect, to Tunstall were greeted with
sarcastic exclamations and derisive laughter.
Above the concerted clamor individual voices
shouted: "How much did he get?" "Mor
gan T. C. O. D. ! " " Everybody step up
and get a transfer check ! " " And Tun, he got
de mon ! " " Stand up, Tunny, and tell us all
about it ! " " Yes, come out and show your
self, Tunny ! " Soon this last phrase was taken
up in chorus, and the whole Pocket crowd sang
out with insistent reiteration, " Come out and
show yourself, Tunny."
It was not long before this provoked the
other delegates to counter demonstrations.
The Garrard men now cheered lustily for Tun
stall, while most of Tunstall's original sup
porters, who up to this point had been rather
quiet, jumped to their feet and fiercely yelled
back the name of their leader to the insults of
the Pocket. This continued, without sign of
318 The Opponents
abatement, for two or three minutes, when the
Chairman, looking around and seeing Tunstall
standing in the wings calmly surveying the
turbulent scene, got up and crossed over to
him.
" Morgan," he said, " they seem determined
to have you, and I believe myself a few words
from you would do more than anything else to
end this."
" I was just thinking that perhaps I ought to
say something," Tunstall replied.
The Chairman took him by the arm, and as
they walked down to the front of the stage the
auditorium resounded with shout upon shout
that completely submerged the noise of the
Pocket delegates.
Tunstall stood waiting for the tumult to
subside.
" Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the con
vention," he finally began ; but he got no
farther. The Pocket delegates, standing in
their chairs, started a determined effort to cry
him down. They would not hear him, and did
not propose that anybody else in the hall
should hear him. Their mouths were wide
with hoots, howls, cat-calls, and varied objurga
tions. The air was raucous with tin horns.
Tunstall Carries out his Decision 3 1 9
" Take him out ! " " Sit down ! " " Go hang
yourself! " were among the distinguishable
words to which the horns furnished accompani
ment. Upon the orchestra railing, not six feet
away from Tunstall, Dunk Peabody had climbed,
and with his coat under his arm and his hat in
his hand describing many fantastic gyrations, he
was catching up and passing on, as he bobbed
about on his narrow footing, every phrase that
sounded like an intended insult to Tunstall.
The Chairman, energetically pounding the table
with his gavel and violently commanding order,
only added to the disorder.
Tunstall suspended all effort to speak. He
could not have been heard by even Dunk Pea-
body. He remained standing, patiently wait
ing his opportunity, his purpose not to be
driven plainly indicated in posture and feature.
It continued thus for ten, twenty, forty min
utes. Twice again, as the din in the Pocket
died away, apparently from exhaustion, Tun
stall essayed to speak, only to desist as the
protestations burst forth with renewed violence.
After the last of these attempts he had settled
back against the Chairman's table, supporting
himself against its edge, in an attitude that so
clearly implied his determination to make the
320 The Opponents
resistance of the tactics employed against him
a matter of physical endurance, that his friends
and those of Garrard among the delegates gave
him a ripping cheer. They were powerless to
do more in such an emergency, except to
throw the disorderly delegates bodily out of
the hall. Some of their hot-heads urged this
course, but were discountenanced by the more
diplomatic leaders, who had an eye to " har
monizing" the party after the nomination
should have been made.
Whether the Pocket men were impressed by
Tunstall's evident purpose not to yield, or
whether their exertions finally wearied them
beyond longer spirited perseverance in their
course, Tunstall, in the end, had his way. It
may be that the incident of Dunk Peabody's
disappearance from his place on the orchestra
railing had something to do with the humor of
the Pocket which gave Tunstall his chance.
Dunk certainly showed no signs of wearying ;
on the contrary, he seemed to grow more agile
and more vociferous the longer he remained at
his conspicuous post of service. Finally, as he
was swirling his coat on high in launching a
sweeping imprecation upon "plutycrats and
their minions," the big form of Nelse Tigert
Tunstall Carries out his Decision 321
made its way to the railing and clasping Dunk
around the waist, pulled him down.
" Come on, Dunk," Nelse said ; " you Ve
got a seat in the Luttroll delegation, an' we 're
lonesome without you."
As Nelse marched down the aisle with Dunk
tucked under one arm, Dunk's coat, hat, and
tongue frantically active at one end and his
feet at the other, his progress was greeted by
the first general laughter of the session, in
which even the Pocket delegates joined. It is
true that one of these advanced hastily toward
Nelse, as he reached the Luttroll section of
seats, with the apparent design of rescuing
Nelse's captive, but Nelse, grinning, turned at
bay and assuming a position as if to defend
himself, with Dunk Peabody's rear extremities
trained on the enemy, gave warning:
" Better stand back there, podner ; you 're
liable to git kicked by Dunk, an' Dunk is a
powerful bad kicker when he 's good an' riled
by the plutycrats."
Innocent reader, do you cavil at anything
set down in these pages as a libel on the dig
nity and wisdom with which the sovereignty
of our free people asserts itself ? Then, if you
would remain innocent, seek no information of
21
322 The Opponents
those who know how the conventions that make
our legislators, executives, and judges are often
conducted.
Nelse Tigert's ludicrous coup and his novel
method of defence scored such a hit with the
overwrought delegates that any more strenu
ous purpose seemed for the moment forgotten,
or at any rate minimized, and the laughter that
followed the incident was still rippling on the
outskirts of the crowd when Tunstall again
began his remarks, with so little interruption
now that he took no notice of it.
He did not say much, but what he said, and
the manner of his saying it, left no doubt of
his sincerity and firmness. With terse incisive-
ness he repeated to the convention substan
tially what he had told his friends in the little
room back of the stage. He had made up his
mind to quit politics; he could not accept a
nomination or election ; he was sorry that he
had not formed this resolution much sooner;
he was sure that Sidney Garrard would make
them a better Congressman ; he was honest in
his conviction that Garrard's nomination, with
the objects both of securing a progressive and
fearless Representative and of promoting the
interests of the party in the district, was now
Tunstall Carries out his Decision 323
the best nomination that could be made; he
was grateful to those who had stood by him,
and regretful, only in consideration of them, to
take the action he did ; to those who impugned
his motives, he had nothing to say.
The speech seemed to impress the conven
tion as a finality. It was followed by little
manifestation of approval or disapproval, the
delegates settling back in their seats in quiet
readiness for the order of business.
The call of the counties was concluded with
out any additional speeches, and the long-
awaited ballot began. Though the Tunstall
delegations, when polled, cast some scattering
votes for men who had not been placed in
nomination, the votes of the entire delegations,
under the unit rule, were registered in accord
ance with the choice of the majority for Gar-
rard. The Pocket counties stood doggedly by
Poindexter. By the time Luttroll County was
reached, with the announcement of its solid
vote for Garrard including the unwilling vote
of Dunk Peabody, under the unit rule which
he had earlier in the day so ardently demanded
Garrard's nomination was assured.
This, of course, was the signal for another
demonstration for Garrard, and as the delegates
324 The Opponents
were loudly calling his name and clamoring for
a speech, the Chairman appointed " the Hon.
Morgan Tunstall and the Hon. Leonidas Cox
Poindexter a committee to wait upon and
escort to the stage our next Congressman,
the Hon. Sidney Garrard."
Tunstall, who after his remarks to the con
vention had sat down in one of the stage seats,
rose and went in search of Garrard. In the
wings he came face to face with Poindexter,
hurrying up from the auditorium. Poin-
dexter's usually florid face was very white, and
as he met Tunstall he stopped directly in front
of him.
" You damned traitor ! " he bit out, and with
his soft felt hat, which he was carrying in his
hand, struck Tunstall a vicious blow squarely
on the mouth.
Tunstall, with clenched fist, sprang at his
assailant, but there was a muffled report of a
pistol from Poindexter's coat-pocket, and
Tunstall, clutching at the canvas of one of the
side scenes of the stage, sank to the floor.
XXVI
THE SUNLIGHT ON THE WALL
FROM the first Tunstall felt that his wound was
mortal. As he lay in his bed at the Bracebury
hotel, on the day following the convention, he
was facing death with an equanimity that ap
proached content. Once he wondered whether,
if he knew that resistance would defeat death,
he would care to resist. The fact that he did
not now care to resist, that he did not care
whether he lived or died, was the best evidence
to him that benignant Nature had already ad
ministered to him that blessed anodyne which
she reserves for those at whom she is about to
strike her last blow. Aside from this natural
dispensation, this release from responsibility
and desire, Tunstall did not ask himself or
if he asked he did not take the trouble to
decide whether, if he could, he would have
ordered his fate otherwise. He was no coward,
nor was he given to morbid exaggeration, but
Nature's anodyne must have been materially
326 The Opponents
aided by his state of satisfaction that the future
which lay in wait for him only yesterday had
been cheated by Poindexter's bullet. Certainly
he harbored no vengeful feeling toward
Poindexter.
But there was one recurring irritant, one
persistent obstacle to the serenity of his last
hours, which he pondered as he lay with closed
eyes in his shaded room, and which grew more
disturbing the more he pondered it. There
was something he had left undone, something
he had yet to do before he died. He had
hastened away from Grace Knowles in West
Virginia without considering the possibility of
her revealing to Margaret Helm the secret from
whose blight she had been so carefully pro
tected. Had Grace Knowles, while he was
pursuing his selfish flight through the moun
tains, revealed to Margaret that secret? It is
true he recalled now that in his interview with
Grace Knowles she had said that nothing could
ever induce her to make such a revelation to
Margaret, and at that time she undoubtedly
had meant what she said. But who could tell
when she might change her mind, or yield to
some sudden impulse, and betray everything
to Margaret? Was there enough good, with
The Sunlight on the Wall 327
enough strength, in Grace Knowles to enable
her always to resist the instinct of mother
hood, or the temptation to thrust herself into
Margaret's purer and brighter world, at the
cost of afflicting her with the knowledge of her
origin's shame?
The risk was too great. It must be removed.
That must yet be his task. He must not die,
he would not die, before he had attended to
that. If it was in his power to prevent it,
Margaret should never know her mother's
identity or story.
But could he prevent it? How was he, a
dying man, to prevent it, if Grace Knowles
should will otherwise?
He did not know how, but he would prevent
it. He would make sure of it he still had
that confidence in himself though the grave
was now but a step before him.
The first thing to be looked after was the
arrangement of an interview with Grace
Knowles. One of his physicians being in the
room, Tunstall asked if he knew whether
any one from Luttroll County was still in
Bracebury.
" Oh ! yes," was the response. " Mr. Gar-
rard, both of the Letchers, Mr. Nixon, and
328 The Opponents
John Driggs have all been up to ask about you
in the last hour."
Tunstall thought over the list. He believed
he could call upon any one of them to do him
the service he now desired, but there were
reasons why it might be best not to call upon
the first three in this particular instance.
" I wish to see Driggs," he announced.
" But you know you are not to see any one
yet awhile."
" You suggested this morning that it might
be prudent to put my affairs in order."
" Oh ! that is always well."
" Then send for John Driggs. I want him
to put them in order for me. Besides, doctor,
it is n't worth while trying to deceive me. I
know my condition as well as you do."
" Your case is not at all hopeless. I '11 send
for Driggs if you will have as little to say to
him as possible."
" There '11 be little to say."
When Driggs entered and took a seat by
Tunstall's bed, the two men clasped hands in
silence. Then Tunstall came directly to the
point.
" I want you to do something for me, John."
" Anything on earth, Mr. Tunstall."
The Sunlight on the Wall 329
" Find Grace Knowles and bring her here as
quickly as you can. She was at Springs
ten days ago."
" You may certainly count on me."
" Better not mention my name in the matter.
You would have trouble in getting her to come
if she knew it was to see me. Invent some
pretext to get her to the hotel here and into
this room without letting her know that I am
here. You can manage it, can't you?"
" I can, and will."
For half a week after Driggs' departure
Tunstall lived and waited. At the end of the
second day he received a telegram which
greatly strengthened him in his fight to pro
long his life. It was from Driggs, and read :
" Start at once with Mrs. K. Will reach
Bracebury Sunday afternoon''
In the mean time Tunstall's brain was busy
with the problem he had set himself: How
was he to make sure that Margaret Helm
should be guarded from the wretched knowl
edge of her birth ? How was he to deal with
Grace Knowles to effect this end?
Many plans were conceived, weighed, and
dismissed, until finally he settled on two. He
330 The Opponents
would try the first, and if that should prove
unsuccessful, he would have recourse to the
second, which must not fail. With this con
clusion Tunstall's mental faculties found grate
ful release from further responsibility in that
direction, and he closed his eyes restfully.
He had only now to live until he had seen
Grace Knowles and carried out one of his
plans or the other.
John Driggs returned Sunday afternoon. As
he bent over Tunstall and took him by the
hand, he did not need to ask how he was.
The nurse had told him that in the corridor,
and Tunstall's haggard face told him even
more impressively.
" Well, Mr. Tunstall, I am back," he said
simply.
"Thank you, John," Tunstall replied in a
voice whose weakness betrayed no less than his
face did the ground he had lost since Driggs
had seen him. "Is she with you?"
" Yes, sir. I left her in the parlor."
" Does she know she is to see me? "
" Oh ! no, sir. I did n't mention your name.
I made up a yarn of my own."
" Bring her up, please, at once."
" All right, sir."
The Sunlight on the Wall 331
Driggs rose and was crossing the room when
Tunstall added :
" Leave her in here and shut the door.
You stand outside, please, and keep others
out."
" Yes, sir."
Tunstall lay with closed eyes and listened to
the step of Driggs creaking along the corridor
and then down the stairs. " Driggs is doing
his best to walk softly," he thought, and smiled.
Then the creaking ceased and there was silence,
broken only by the groans of a heavily loaded
wagon in the street and by the lazy chant of
the wagon driver.
After a little the creaking on the stairs began
again. " Driggs is having no trouble in get
ting her here," ran Tunstall's active brain. " I
knew I could rely on him. Driggs would have
made his mark in the world if his field had been
a wider one."
As the steps approached down the corridor,
the rustle of skirts became audible, and Tun
stall raised his head a little higher on the pil
lows, his face assuming the expression of power
and will which the painter's brush and even in
a greater degree the photographer's camera in
variably caught and perhaps exaggerated.
332 The Opponents
There was a pause outside the door, which
opened and closed again, leaving Mrs. Knowles
standing before Tunstall. For a little, while
her eyes were adapting themselves to the dark
ened room, she did not move. Then she
walked over lightly to Tunstall's bedside.
" Mr. Driggs," she said, stooping over Tun-
stall, " told me that "
She suddenly recoiled with a startled and
terrified " You ! " repressed almost to a whis
per; then turned to flee to the door. Half
way across the room, she tottered with faint-
ness and grasped the back of a chair for
support.
" Don't leave yet," Tunstall called to her, in
a tone at once of reassurance and command.
" I have sent for you because I must have a
short talk with you ; and I shall not last much
longer to have it"
She was shaking and sobbing now in the
weakness of her shocked nerves.
" I '11 wait till you become calmer," he said.
" There is n't much to say ; but that must be
clearly comprehended by each of us."
He lay silently watching her while she dried
her eyes and gradually checked her sobs.
Finally she drew herself erect and turning
The Sunlight on the Wall 333
abruptly toward Tunstall, demanded, with a
flash of anger in her eyes:
"What do you want with me?"
" A last understanding."
"Well?"
" I must be satisfied before I die (I am not
satisfied yet) that Miss Helm will be safe from
you that you will not tell her who she is
if I leave you in the world with her."
"What do you mean?" she panted, a
tremor of alarm modifying the challenge of
her voice.
" I mean that ever since you told me that
Miss Helm was your daughter "
" I told you what? " she interrupted in shrill
astonishment.
" I do not care to repeat those words.
But "
" I told you no such thing ! "
" Come ! Don't waste time. When you
told me that, in the woods that day "
" I told you no such thing, I say ! I remem
ber I started to tell you after you had become
so indignant at the very thought of my daring
to venture within sight or hearing of Margaret
Helm that she was my daughter's life-long,
dearest friend, when you so suddenly stopped
334 The Opponents
me by flying at my throat as if to strangle me,
and left without "
Tunstall, notwithstanding his weakness and
his wound, had jerked himself up on his elbow,
and his countenance underwent a transforma
tion that suppressed Mrs. Knowles' words and
held her as if fascinated. Blank incomprehen
sion, vivid comprehension, fleeting, poignant
humiliation for his mistake, in turn swept away
by a flood of joy and thankfulness, were graphi
cally depicted on his wasted face, as he stared
at Mrs. Knowles, his speechless mouth half
open.
"This this is the truth?" he finally asked,
in a low-pitched voice.
" Of course it is. It never crossed my mind
to say that Margaret Helm was my daughter,
but I was glad to let you know that the girl
you had such a horror of me even speaking to
was my daughter's best friend."
Tunstall sank back on his pillow with a sigh
of profound relief. " Thank God ! " were the
words his lips, all his being, breathed, though
they reached Mrs. Knowles only as an indis
tinguishable murmur.
" My daughter lived in the same town in
Virginia that Margaret Helm lives in." Mrs.
The Sunlight on the Wall 335
Knowles spoke hurriedly, as if impelled by
the spell of the subject. " They gave her an
other name there Elsie Russell. Perhaps
you have heard Margaret Helm speak of her,"
a little wistfully, almost interrogatively. " She
and Margaret were inseparable from childhood,
and after her death Margaret went abroad.
When she came back this summer, and I found
out she was up there in the mountains, I went
there because I wanted to know Elsie's friend
and because I hoped that sometimes she might
talk to me of Elsie. And yet you you would
have denied me even that, Morgan Tunstall !
Is there no end to your malignancy? "
Tunstall, whose eyes had been fixed dream
ily on a faint beam of sunlight that flickered
on the wall through the partially closed blinds,
turned now to Mrs. Knowles.
"There is an end to everything," he said
quietly, " and I shall deny you nothing more.
I am sorry to have put you to the inconven
ience of coming here, and Mr. Driggs will make
what amends he can. Oh, John ! " he called.
Driggs opened the door and entered.
" Mrs. Knowles is ready to go, John," Tun
stall said. " Please do me one more service
won't you ? and look after her in any way
336 The Opponents
that will add to her comfort, or that she may
suggest."
"Yes, sir, Mr. Tunstall; indeed, I will,"
Driggs answered humbly, as if he were already
in the presence of the dead.
He stood with his hand on the open door,
waiting. Grace Knowles caught her breath, a
sudden surge of color in her face, her lips
parting with the impulse to speak. But no
words came; and seeking Tunstall's eyes, she
saw that they were again fixed dreamily, in ap
parent forgetfulness of all else, on the flicker
of sunlight on the wall.
Gathering her skirts cautiously in her hand,
she turned away and with bowed head went
noiselessly from the room, seemingly touched
with something of Driggs' own humbled spirit.
Driggs followed, gently closing the door.
The eyes of Tunstall remained long on the
flickering sunlight. He had, indeed, forgotten
Mrs. Knowles and Driggs, almost before they
were out of the room. For the moment he
had forgotten everything except that Margaret
Helm was free from the menace he had be
lieved hanging over her. Not only was he
relieved of the thought, revolting in itself, that
Margaret had in her veins the blood of Julius
The Sunlight on the Wall 337
and Grace Knowles, but he was relieved of the
dread that she might some time discover that
such a curse was upon her. He could think of
Margaret now without sullying his thought of
her by wondering how it was possible for such a
girl as she to spring from such parentage ; but,
better than that, he could also think of her
without the foreboding that she might find un-
happiness and humiliation through her knowl
edge of such parentage. The golden sunbeam
lengthened upward on the wall; through the
open window the air stirred, languid with the
warmth of the August afternoon ; and across
the peaceful town drifted the mellow tones of
a distant church bell. For once Tunstall
seemed at peace with himself and the world.
It should not be inferred that his discovery
of the mistake he had made in assuming Mar
garet Helm to be Grace Knowles' daughter
plunged him into anguished repining for what
he had lost through that mistake. He was not
harrowed, as he lay there now, by any delu
sions as to what might have been. If he should
get well now, his attitude toward Margaret
could not be different from what he had seen
it must be on the day he had followed the
wandering brook in the woods and had fought
22
338 The Opponents
out his fight while stretched on the ground be
neath the pine. It is true he knew now that
it was a mistake which precipitated that fight
a mistake which seemed a flimsy trick
played on him by his own hastening senses
but it was a mistake which, as by a glaring
flash, revealed and illuminated the impassable
chasm between himself and Margaret, or all
such as she. Margaret was not Grace Knowles'
daughter, as he had then supposed she was,
but what mattered that? She might have been.
At any rate, Grace Knowles had had a daughter,
and she might have been in innocence and
loveliness all that Margaret was. Margaret had
taken to her heart Grace Knowles' daughter;
but even if she had not done so, no such girl as
Elsie Russell might have been and as Margaret
Helm was, could be for him, the self-appointed
judge and executioner of Grace Knowles. His
way, forever sundered from Margaret's, had
been perfectly clear to him ever since those
hours under the pine, and now that he knew it
was an error which had shown him that way,
the way itself remained, no whit less clear or
fixed. He did not now even review his decisive
conclusion then made, or its compelling motives.
Nor had he a regret for any step he had taken
The Sunlight on the Wall 339
since, nor did he, to the last, have a vengeful
feeling toward Poindexter, his murderer.
He died two days later, and as Sidney Gar-
rard and Hugh Letcher stood beside him and
looked down on him in his coffin, Hugh said :
" He had his faults, but perhaps, after all, it
is death that unveils the real man. There is
something godlike in the expression on his face
now."
Sidney bent over and took Tunstall's hand
for the last time, as he answered in a choking
voice :
" He was a big man, Hugh big as an oppo
nent, big as a friend. And it would have been
different for him if life had been such that he
could have looked upon it with such an ex
pression as this with which he looks upon
death."
But the expression on Tunstall's face was
only that which had come to it on the quiet
Sabbath afternoon when he had turned from
Grace Knowles to the flickering sunlight on the
wall.
XXVII
INTO THE COMING SPRING
LATE in February, a year and a half after the
events of the Bracebury convention, Sidney
Garrard, serving his first term in Congress, left
Washington for Kentucky, in order to be
present at the wedding of Florence Letcher
and Robert Nixon. Garrard would have trav
elled much farther than Kentucky to attend
Florence Letcher's wedding, even if he had not
known that Florence would have as one of her
guests on this occasion Margaret Helm.
He had not seen Margaret now since the
first of the winter, when he had stopped off,
on his way to Washington, at the little Virginia
town in which she lived. He had made several
pilgrimages to this town during the preceding
year and a half, and once, a few months after
his nomination by the Bracebury convention,
he had ventured an effort to find whether the
time had yet come for him to press his love to
an issue, and had quickly found that it had not.
Into the Coming Spring 341
With another woman he might have boldly
taken the aggressive and won, but with Mar
garet he knew that such a course would be
fatal, and that his one chance was in his patience
to wait. But his patience was becoming pre
cariously strained.
The afternoon before the wedding he had
out his roadsters and started over to Letcher
Tavern for Margaret, who had promised to drive
with him, " if she could possibly get away."
He was full of that promise of Margaret's.
" Don't you think," she had said archly,
" you are asking a great deal of a girl to leave
all these delightful wedding preparations and
go off driving with a mere man? "
" But there is a house full of girls to attend
to the wedding preparations," he had answered.
"That makes it all the harder for one of
them to leave."
" Besides, there is something more than a
mere man. There are the horses."
" Oh, those horses ! Well, for the horses I
would give up much. So I '11 promise to go if
I can possibly get away."
There had seemed something in her manner,
if not in her words, that set his hopes tingling.
If she had not been standing out on the front
342 The Opponents
porch, with two or three of the other girls
chattering at her side and Shelby Letcher in
cessant in his personal inquiries about the
" old-timers " at Washington, Garrard felt that,
in spite of his patience, it would have been
difficult for him to resist the impulse to gather
her in his arms and take her, as the primeval
in a virile man prompts him to take a woman,
by sheer force that is not to be withstood.
As he turned his horses toward Letcher
Tavern this afternoon, there was again in his
blood the tingle of that new something in Mar
garet's manner, and he gave the eager animals
a light hand. They dashed away at a speed
that must have satisfied the most impatient
lover ; but it is a well-travelled bit of turnpike
between the Garrard farm and Letcher Tavern,
and a " rising politician " like Sidney could
hardly hope to traverse it without interruption.
To most of those he met or passed to-day he
merely waved a salute and tossed a hearty
word of greeting, but there were some who
were not to be denied more leisurely and in
timate interviews. Squire Breckinridge Bodine,
for instance, pulled up his horse across the
road, and waited for Garrard to halt alongside,
which, under the circumstances, he could not
Into the Coming Spring 343
well avoid. Nor could he well pass on until
the Squire had told him what " a grand ree-
cord " he was making in Congress, how zeal
ously and effectively Breckinridge Bodine had
worked to get him to Congress, and how im
possible it would be for Breckinridge Bodine
to lose the next race for county court clerk
if Sidney would only " suppote " him. Further
along the pike Nelse Tigert, driving home from
Plover with Mrs. Nelse Tigert, must have him
stop to shake the pudgy hand of little Sidney
Garrard Tigert. Then Dunk Peabody, astride
of Rufe Wright's aged mare, planted himself
leisurely in the middle of the road.
" Hello, Sid ! " he called out cheerfully.
" How are you, Dunk? " Garrard responded,
throwing his horses back on their haunches.
" Y' ain't done got th'ough Congriss already,
is you ? "
" Oh, no ! I 'm only home on a visit for a
few days."
" I did n't 'low you was th'ough yit, fer you
know we 're thes bankin' on you to do up ole
Mark Hanna an' Jay Goul' an' the res' o' them
plutycrats the fus chanst you git at *em."
" And old Croesus ? " laughed Garrard. " You
don't want me to skip him, do you?"
344 The Opponents
" An' ole Croesus, too, dad-burn him ! don't
you go to skippin' any of 'em. That 's what I
tole the boys when I pulled off my coat an 1
went to 'lectioneerin' fer you."
"Yes; I remember you did finally fall in
line for me before the election, Dunk."
" Fall in line fer you ! Say, I ain't been able
to borry a mount from Uncle Jesse Craik
sence. He 'cuses me o' killin' that mule o'
hisn 'lectioneerin' fer you. But I 'd 'a' s'poted
you, Sid, after you was nominated by the party,
ef I 'd 'a' had to kill a whole drove o' mules.
I 'm a hard-shell, Thomas Jefferson, Andy Jack
son, Shelby Letcher Democrat, I am, an' I ain't
never bolted a nomination er scratched a tickit
yit. Say, len' me a bite o' tobacco, Sid."
Dunk compromised on a cigar, and Garrard
drove on to Letcher Tavern.
Throwing the reins to Minus at the gate, he
was entertained, while he waited on the porch
for Margaret, by Shelby Letcher with a history
of Andrew Jackson's fight against the United
States Bank, accompanied with an urgent sug
gestion that Garrard apply the lesson in deal
ing with certain issues pending in Congress.
But Garrard was listening more attentively
for the coming of Margaret than to the moral
Into the Coming Spring 345
of Jackson's veto of the bank's charter, and a
new light was in his face before Margaret was
visible at the turn of the stairway in the hall.
" So you did manage to get away, after all ! "
he said with ill-repressed exhilaration, as he
took her hand for an instant.
"Yes," she replied with, it seemed to him,
something of his own radiant spirit ; " I could
not resist such a day."
" And such horses."
" And such horses ! Were not the day and
the horses made for each other ? "
" The quicker that young man gets married
the better," muttered Shelby Letcher, as he
watched the two go down the walk to the
gate. " He 's thinking a plagued sight more
of other things than he is of the United States
Bank."
Margaret sprang up into the seat before
Garrard could help her, and he, following,
adjusted the robe about her with a solicitous
care that even Minus must have understood in
some degree had he not been occupied at the
horses' heads.
" All right, Uncle Minus."
At this from Garrard, Minus stepped aside
and the horses leaped forward, but were im-
346 The Opponents
mediately pulled down into their smooth, reach
ing stride that was the admiration of true lovers
of the trotter. They had gone perhaps fifty
yards when Minus shouted :
" Oh, Mr. Sid ! "
Garrard brought the horses to a dancing
stand, and looked around at the old negro.
"What is it, Uncle Minus?" he asked.
Minus shuffled slowly forward, his eyes on the
ground, his head soberly turning from side to
side.
"Mr. Sid," he said, as he came up to the
wheels, " whut sorter pistol wuz dat? "
Garrard stared at the old man blankly.
"What pistol?" he asked, in astonishment.
" Dat ar pistol whut wuz fired fom de b'loon
dat time. Wuz she er 44 er 38, er whut? "
Garrard's burst of laughter was prevented by
a smiling glance from Margaret.
"Haven't you quit worrying about that?"
Garrard replied. " There was n't any such
balloon, nor any such pistol. As I told you
once, years ago, it was a joke of mine that I
made up just to bother you with."
" I don't keer whut you call it joke er no
joke. Hit 's a sum, en a mighty good un, en
it 's boun' to have er answer, en I ain't nuver
Into the Coming Spring 347
gwine res' in peace no mo' tell I works it out.
Only you did fergit to say whut sorter pistol
dat wuz, en 'pears lak I gotter right to know
dat."
The horses were what Minus called " gaily,"
and they sped along the smooth turnpikes and
elastic lanes with little restraint from Garrard.
It was one of those days that sometimes come
in late February, with all the brooding pre
science of spring. Windless, cloudless, with a
pervasive balm in the air and a softer blue in
the sky, all the mellow fallow, all the tenderly
greening pastures, all the stilled bareness of
wood and thicket seemed swelling with the
fecund trance of new life to be.
For a good ten miles the horses had their
heads, making a semicircle around Plover and
swinging back through the village. The talk
of Margaret and Garrard was frivolous and
inconsequential. For instance, driving down
the long street of Plover, Garrard said, as they
passed the establishment of Jaynes & Co. :
" Some time, when I get to be a celebrity,
and a newspaper reporter is sent to ask me
how I made my start in life, do you know
what I shall tell him?"
" Oh ! " with affected awe. " Are you going
348 The Opponents
to tell me before you tell the reporter? No
celebrity ever did me that honor before ! "
"I shall tell him that I made it with my
first quarter in the little Kentucky village of
Plover, in front of the store of one Hi Jaynes,
by holding the horses of high and haughty
ladies."
" And shall you tell him," Margaret laughed,
" that a quarter was more than you deserved,
considering that it was obtained under false
pretences?"
" Probably not. But there are several things
about that quarter I shall not tell the reporter.
I shall not tell him, for example, that I have
sacredly kept it ever since as my lucky piece,
my talisman; that it has brought me all the
good fortune of my life; and that if I have
done anything or tried to do anything worth
doing, or tried to be something that I was not
then, the desire and the inspiration all date
from the day I earned that quarter."
He took from his pocket a card-case and open
ing it, removed a piece of silver. " Would n't
you like to see such a valuable coin ? " he said,
extending it to her.
She turned it over between her gloved fin
gers, eying it with mild curiosity. Garrard,
Into the Coming Spring 349
meanwhile, gazed hard at the ears of his
horses, though he did not fail to note, out of
the corner of his eye, first the dawning rose in
Margaret's face, and then the smile with which
she had taken the coin grow until her lips
parted and her eyes twinkled.
" So you have kept it all these years ! " she
mused, without looking up from the coin in
her hand.
" All these many and long years," Garrard
answered solemnly, his eyes still well to the
front, " the longest, the most determined,
the most despairing, the most hopeful years
a man can ever know."
" Yes, it must be really several years," Mar
garet assented, slowly turning the coin from
obverse to reverse and then again to obverse.
" Several ! It is six six full years next
June ! And during all that time that little
piece of silver has never been out of my pos
session for an instant, until now."
Margaret handed it back to him with the
merriest of laughs.
" Then you must be mistaken about the
length of time you have had it. Have you
noticed the date on it? It was coined only
two years ago."
350 The Opponents
" Two years ago ! " Garrard exclaimed, in
credulous, staring at the minted date in aston
ishment. " So it was. I don't understand it.
I " he searched carefully through the card-
case "I have never kept any other money
in this." He looked through his pockets in
vain. " I can't imagine how it happened.
I 'm afraid I Ve lost it," he concluded dis
consolately.
" Oh, well," Margaret cheerfully assured
him, "the substitute seems to have served
you as well as the original. You Ve had
even better luck the past year or two than
before."
" I 'd rather have lost anything else I had,"
he said with such earnestness that Margaret did
not laugh at him further, but called his atten
tion to the flight of a pair of wild ducks far in
the sky.
They drove homeward by the Old Mill Road,
that skirted Tunstall Paddocks, now the estate
of one of the wealthy New Yorkers who find it
well to have a breeding-farm in Kentucky as an
adjunct to their racing-stables in the East.
They passed Garrard's own home, with Kate
Cockerill running to the door to wave them a
salute, and then struck into the stretch of road,
Into the Coming Spring 351
over which they had driven nearly six years
before, to Letcher Tavern.
Their long and swift journey had taken the
edge off the horses, and they were content to
slacken their pace, in obedience to Garrard's
pressure on the bits. As they passed under
the wild-grape arch, Garrard pulled them to a
walk.
" The Tavern is too near and there is too
little of this rare day left to hurry through it,"
he said.
"Yes," Margaret assented, "drive slowly
along here. It is the loveliest road we have
been over to-day, and it may be winter again
to-morrow. But this afternoon, and here, one
may feel the spring, if he may not see it."
" But one may see it too, or at least some
signs of it. Look how the stubble is being
ploughed under yonder. Look what a com
motion the crows are making over the ploughed
ground. Look at those horses in the pasture
there ; do you notice how their shaggy winter
coats are stained with clay? They have been
lying down and rolling over and over in the
good, soft dirt."
" And look at the pasture itself. Could any
thing be more exquisitely fresh than the new
352 The Opponents
green under the dead weeds and brown grass?
And over there, along the river, can you not
see a faint mist of color on the tops of the
bushes? And, really, isn't that a redbud down
there?"
" Surely you do not see a redbud yet ! There
is a redbud tree along here, but there is a dog
wood beside it, and they always bloom together.
You don't see any signs of dogwood blossoms,
do you? And do you know what that odor
is?"
" Of course ! The odor of the ploughed
ground."
"Do you smell that, too? I was speaking
of an odor not so subtle that of burning brush.
You can see the haze of smoke, away over there
in one of the fields behind Letcher Tavern.
And you can also hear the coming of spring at
Letcher Tavern, even at this distance. Have
you ever noticed before, this winter, such an
exuberant chorus from the Letcher Tavern
fowls?"
" But listen to the river ! What a crooning
new song it has ! It did not have it yesterday."
The slowly walking horses stopped, almost
of their own accord, and Margaret and Garrard
looked out over the peaceful scene stretching
Into the Coming Spring 353
to the widely circling horizon. Then they
turned simultaneously to each other.
" Margaret."
" Yes," she faltered, her eyes falling in spite
of her.
" Do you remember it was here, nearly six
years ago, that you would not let me speak of
what I most wished to speak of?"
" Yes," so low that he would not have been
certain of it but for the motion of her lips.
" And of what I have most wished to speak
of ever since?"
There was a moment during which she made
no sign. Then there was a tremor of the
lashes, and when she raised her eyes there was
a light in them that not even the sun of such a
day as this ever struck into the heart of the
singing river. She laid her hand in his.
" I shall never tire of listening to it now,"
she answered.
It was an hour yet to Letcher Tavern, as
Sidney Garrard drove, for there were many
things to say and to hear, now that the last seal
of constraint was removed from these two.
Half of this hour had flown when Garrard was
asking:
" Tell me, when did you know? "
354 The Opponents
"I was not sure until recently until this
winter."
" Until some time after I saw you last in
Virginia?"
She nodded affirmatively.
" That is no news to me," he said, as one
who looks back on perils passed. " I have
always known, until this last visit to Kentucky,
that you were not sure."
" There is something else I ought to tell
you, perhaps," she ventured with a little
hesitation.
" Tell me anything or nothing, as you like,"
he answered in content. " Nothing but what
you have already told me to-day can matter
now."
Away to the left, under the western sun, lay
the fences and stables of Tunstall Paddocks.
On the side of a low hill, in a clump of young
pines and willows, was the family burying-
ground, from which rose an ostentatious granite
shaft erected in Morgan Tunstall's memory by
some of his political admirers. Margaret's eyes
rested on this monument for a little, and then
she turned again to Garrard.
"While Mr. Tunstall was alive, I was not
sure," she said simply.
Into the Coming Spring 355
" Yes, I understood that," was Garrard's
quiet reply.
" And and if he had not died, I am not
sure even now whether in the end it would
have been you or he."
" You have told me nothing that I did not
know already, dear," Garrard said, pressing her
hand, " and nothing that can make any differ
ence now that I know that, whatever might or
might not have been, it is I."
The horses picked their way along the smooth
road toward Letcher Tavern. Behind now
were Tunstall Paddocks and the granite col
umn ; in front, the sunlight on the broadening
river. Margaret and Garrard, looking forward
or into each other's eyes, went on into the
coming spring.
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