COMRADE 
 
 i 
 
 MERW1N-WEBSTER 
 
THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 Mary Randall 
 
tfjer 330ofes &g tlje Same 8tatfjorg 
 
 By Merwin- Webster 
 CALUMET "K" 
 THE SHORT-LINE WAR 
 
 By Samuel Merwin 
 
 THE MERRY ANNE 
 THE ROAD BUILDERS 
 
 By Henry K. Webster 
 
 THE BANKER AND THE BEAR 
 THE DUKE OF CAMERON AVENUE 
 ROGER DRAKE 
 TRAITOR AND LOYALIST 
 
COMRADE JOHN 
 
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK BOSTON CHICAGO 
 ATLANTA SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED 
 
 LONDON BOMBAY CALCUTTA 
 MELBOURNE 
 
 THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. 
 
 TORONTO 
 
 GIFT 
 
BEECHCROFT 
 
COMRADE JOHN 
 
 BY 
 
 MERWIN-WEBSTER 
 
 AUTHORS OF "CALUMET K, " "THE SHORT- 
 LINE WAR," ETC., ETC. 
 
 WITH A FRONTISPIECE IN COLOR 
 BY GEORGE E. BURR 
 
 gotfc 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 1907 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1907, 
 BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 
 
 Set up and electrotyped. Published October, 1907. 
 
 Ipresss 
 
 J. 8. Gushing Co. Berwick & Smith Co. 
 Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. THE FLOWERING OF THE BEECHCROFT 
 
 SPIRIT * , i 
 
 II. THE MAN ON THE TABLE .... 26 
 
 III. LOOKING GLASS COUNTRY . . . .51 
 
 IV. ELLEN . 77 
 
 V. THE PERSON WHO GASPED . . .109 
 
 VI. GODDESS EXCELLENTLY BRIGHT . .140 
 
 VII. THE STAKE AND THE PLAYERS . . .171 
 
 VIII. WIRES AND THE MARIONETTE . , .191 
 
 IX. GOD AND MAMMON 209 
 
 X. THE PRICE . . . . . 226 
 
 XI. CYNTHIA DISCOVERS THE WORLD . . 249 
 
 XII. THE MAN AT THE DOOR . . . 278 
 
 XIII. THE BEECHCROFT MIRACLE .. .312 
 
 XIV. O MISTRESS MINE 341 
 
 
 vii 
 
 M85238O 
 
COMRADE JOHN 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 b 
 
 THE FLOWERING OF THE BEECHCROFT SPIRIT 
 
 HERMAN STEIN was, at forty-five, a success as 
 the prophet of a new and growing religion. Of 
 his book, "Toil and Triumph," he had sold three 
 hundred and sixty thousand copies ; and as he had 
 published it himself, and had disposed of two-thirds 
 of this number through the mails at the list price, 
 the profits were large. His mind was filled with 
 a not unpicturesque mixture of Ruskin, William 
 Morris, Froebel, Whistler, The New Testament, 
 Rossetti, and St. Thomas Aquinas. He had 
 outgrown and put behind him both the dissipa 
 tions of his youth and his early career as a charla 
 tan and a wanderer on the outer coast of the social 
 order. Just how much of a charlatan he re 
 mained, it would be difficult to say. With the 
 tremendous pressure of his success and of the 
 
2 Comrade John 
 
 loyal belief of several hundred thousand follow 
 ers urging him on to cross the line that sepa 
 rates prophetic leadership from mere grotesquery, 
 it grew steadily more difficult to hold himself in 
 check. But he recognized this difficulty, and he 
 had determined to keep himself resolutely in the 
 background during the expansion of the "Toil 
 and Triumph" movement which he believed must 
 be undertaken at once if the ground he had 
 already gained was not to begin slipping away 
 from him. 
 
 The religion he was promoting was constructed 
 with some skill. He had been quick to see that 
 where people were even fifty years ago aroused by 
 miracles, they are to-day attracted by specious 
 reasoning. He knew, too, that a new religion, 
 if it is to compete with the old ones, must offer a 
 spiritual something for nothing. The germ of the 
 "Toil and Triumph" theory was that one may 
 build character and soul, which together make 
 beauty, by working with the hands. The more 
 intrinsically beautiful the object made, the more 
 rapid the attainment. Commercial labor, with a 
 money return in view, was vitiating and degrading. 
 Drudgery, also, was immoral. Work, to be of 
 the slightest value, must be entered into with joy 
 
The Beechcrojt Spirit 3 
 
 and lightness of heart, and therefore (though this 
 was not stated) must be easy. The working 
 hours, too, must be short, in order to allow time 
 for meditation and the bliss of solitude. Natu 
 rally the simplest way to draw considerable 
 numbers into this sort of thing, and to induce 
 them to put some part of their money and property 
 into his hands, was to establish one or more se 
 cluded retreats where they could dwell and toil 
 together, removed from the real cares and work 
 of the world, and in this, again, Herman Stein 
 was successful. He had been known, on occa 
 sion, to supplement the undoubted therapeutic 
 value of his mountain settlement, Beechcroft, with 
 occasional feats of healing for which his real skill 
 as a hypnotist, as well as his dominating person 
 ality, singularly fitted him, especially when dealing 
 with women and with the less rugged types of men. 
 Stein had set about the business of extending 
 his enterprise into a big, international religion, 
 with foresight. It would not do to change its 
 character, or he would lose many of his present 
 disciples. The development must appear to be 
 spontaneous while it must really be laid out as 
 cautiously as a political movement. Two things 
 seemed to him essential. The first was to rebuild 
 
4 Comrade John 
 
 Beechcroft, which was in the mountains of eastern 
 New York State, into the most beautiful place in 
 the world. He knew that he was not competent 
 to plan the work himself, and yet he did not think 
 it would do to employ an architect and contractors ; 
 the development of the place must appear to be 
 the flowering of his own genius under the hands 
 of his disciples. Therefore he proposed to find 
 another genius, preferably inhabiting a young and 
 comparatively unknown man with the training 
 of an architect and the practical force of an ex 
 perienced contractor, who could direct the work 
 in the guise of his personal disciple and overseer. 
 
 The second thing was to find a young, beautiful, 
 emotional woman who could be trained and 
 moulded in his own hands into an exponent of his 
 theories, and who could be used to interpret 
 them to the outside world and to win converts. 
 
 It was like Herman Stein that when these ideas 
 first came to him he did not know that two such 
 persons existed. It was also like him that he 
 had found them both, or that he was on the point 
 of finding them. The woman he had not yet 
 seen ; she was abroad with her aunt ; but he had 
 seen five striking, fascinating, bewildering por 
 traits of her at Moberly Pole s exhibition. The 
 
The Beechcrojt Spirit 5 
 
 man was in Pittsburg, where he had created and 
 built that extraordinary spectacle, "Through the 
 Looking- Glass," at the great Industrial Exhibi 
 tion. His name was John Chance. 
 
 The two things which have made the modern 
 exposition possible are the electric light and the 
 sort of construction material which is cheap as 
 well as beautiful. These things have also made 
 possible the modern amusement park, with its 
 lagoons, its chutes, its scenic railways, its astonish 
 ing illusions, and its quadrangles of grotesque, 
 yet showy, solid-looking buildings. And just 
 as the older day of the strap-railroad, the kerosene 
 light, and the district school, developed the type 
 of showman of which P. T. Barnum was the 
 highest exponent, so the newer day of the trolley 
 car, the electric light, and the ten-cent magazine 
 has developed the type of showman of which 
 John Chance seemed likely to become the highest 
 exponent. 
 
 This new sort of showman had studied at the 
 Beaux Arts, and had triumphantly shattered the 
 ancient traditions by applying to architecture the 
 principles of pictorial composition and color. 
 He was a man of education and feeling, was, in 
 short, what the world on this side of the Atlantic 
 
6 Comrade John 
 
 understands to be a gentleman, but was, none the 
 less, in his every fibre, a showman, as completely 
 wrapped up in his ideas for entertaining and 
 thrilling his "public" as is the actor, the painter, 
 the writer, the poet, the musician. Like these, 
 he had his moments of deep feeling, of, one might 
 even say, inspiration. And like many of these he 
 was young ; not yet turned thirty, smooth shaven, 
 blue of eye, with a certain easy carelessness of 
 dress, and with an air of unquestioning com 
 mand in the set of his not overbroad shoulders 
 and in the face which seemed now boyish, now 
 unexpectedly mature. He feared no one; he 
 had nothing to conceal. His ideals were in the 
 lavish and almost unnecessary beauty of his 
 show-creations. He always gave his "public" 
 more than their money demanded. But within 
 these broad limits of honesty and fair dealing 
 he was frankly, good-humoredly commercial. 
 
 The only drawback to John Chance, in his 
 relation to Stein s plan, was that his work at 
 Pittsburg, topping that at Atlanta, Omaha, 
 and St. Louis, had already given him a certain 
 reputation. No man could create anything so 
 new, so bizarre, so grotesque, so riotously fanci 
 ful, and yet, as a whole, such a triumph of archi- 
 
The Beechcrojt Spirit 7 
 
 tectural and aquatic grace and beauty as Chance s 
 five-acre spectacle, "Through the Looking- 
 Glass," and remain in the dark. But still, he 
 was young. And then his fame was mostly 
 confined, so far, to exposition and theatrical 
 circles, and his temporary disappearance from 
 those circles need hardly call for comment. 
 The great thing about him, above and beyond his 
 unquestionably sound architectural training and 
 his astounding fertility of ideas, was that he 
 carried all his work in his head. The accounts 
 agreed on that. He accomplished his results 
 by being on the ground in person sixteen hours 
 a day. 
 
 It was with a pretty clear notion of the man 
 in his mind that Stein arranged a meeting in 
 Moberly Pole s studio, on Thirty-first Street. 
 The evening was set after Chance s return to 
 New York with his Pittsburg laurels pasted in 
 his scrap-book. 
 
 Oddly enough, Chance came. He had prom 
 ised himself a long vacation. He had seen all 
 the plays in town. It was February, and con 
 sequently no outdoor entertainment was prac 
 ticable. And as he was sailing for Paris in 
 the morning, for Paris, the gay, the incon- 
 
8 Comrade John 
 
 sequent, the charming, he knew of no better 
 amusement for this one evening than a meeting 
 with Herman Stein. He had no plans whatever 
 for the next few months. Sometime within the 
 year he meant to break ground for the aston 
 ishingly new sort of an amusement resort with 
 which he proposed to conquer New York City; 
 but the negotiations for the land were not settled 
 yet. Paris was his inspiration. In Paris he 
 absorbed the light-hearted, the fanciful, the 
 glowing sense of exuberant life and light and 
 color and pleasure which the unthinking public 
 was already coming to take for granted in his 
 creations. He would be back, sooner or later; 
 but meanwhile, as he racily put it, it was Paris 
 for his. 
 
 He came whizzing into Thirty-first Street in 
 his big touring car, at six o clock; ordered the 
 chauffeur to return at ten; and placed himself 
 in the hands of the overripe Moberly Pole for 
 dinner at the Portrait Club. 
 
 Chance found the painter a bore of a vain 
 and unhealthy type, but partly because he was 
 endowed with patience and humor, partly because 
 the situation piqued his interest, he endured the 
 man. When they had returned to the studio, 
 
The Beechcrojt Spirit 9 
 
 and a telephone message had been sent to Stein, 
 Chance whiled away a half hour by strolling 
 about the long room. There was not the slight 
 est doubt that Moberly Pole could paint. And 
 neither was there doubt that the Persian hangings 
 and the bits of tapestry, the really beautiful if 
 cluttered bric-a-brac, the big samovar, the Bengal 
 tiger skin thrown carelessly across the model 
 stand, the nude studies displayed in an artful 
 half light, the quaint furniture, and the three- 
 quarters portrait of Mrs. Eversly Grant, the only 
 object in the room on which a full light was 
 thrown, neither was there doubt that all this 
 had been contrived to catch the fancy of those 
 ignorantly wealthy persons who do not happen 
 to know that a real studio is usually a workshop. 
 A copy of "Toil and Triumph" was lying on 
 the table, and Chance picked it up and examined 
 it. The paper, a fairly successful imitation of 
 the thin paper used in the Oxford Bible, was 
 not good in quality; the printing was bad. 
 The cover was of limp calf, turned wrong side 
 out to give the effect of a rough finish, and it 
 was held to the book body only by the end papers. 
 The cost of manufacture could hardly have ex 
 ceeded thirty or forty cents a volume, but Chance 
 
io Comrade John 
 
 was willing to allow fifty. It was for a duplicate 
 of this copy that he had, a day earlier, paid four 
 dollars and a half. 
 
 The bell rang, and after a moment Chance 
 could hear a heavy step on the stair. Pole 
 opened the door and stepped aside with it ; and 
 Chance, who was standing in the shadow directly 
 opposite, had his first view of the author of "Toil 
 and Triumph." 
 
 Herman Stein was a large man, not fat, but 
 massive. He looked powerful, physically, and 
 he had a big, commanding way with him which 
 his manner of deliberate simplicity could not 
 cover. His face, like his body, was massive 
 rather than fat, a square face, blocked in with 
 rugged strokes and deep shadows. It was framed, 
 under the broad-brimmed hat, with a mass of 
 darkish hair, which was cut off at the neck in 
 a modified Dutch fashion. 
 
 "Mr. Chance is here," said Pole, in the high- 
 pitched, melodious voice, which to most men 
 was repulsive and to some women was exceed 
 ingly agreeable, "Mr. Stein Mr. Chance." 
 
 Chance stepped forward and took the large 
 hand in a firm grip. For one flashing instant 
 their eyes met, squarely, unequivocally. The 
 
The Beechcrojt Spirit n 
 
 big man was deep, there was no doubt about it. 
 He not only knew the world ; he knew also what 
 he wanted from the world, and how he proposed 
 to get it. And he was inscrutable. If ever he 
 had possessed a sense of humor, as Chance was 
 ready to believe, it had been battened under the 
 hatches years ago and starved to death. As 
 for Chance himself, in spite of his easy courtesy, 
 there was a momentary flicker in his eyes, or 
 perhaps it was about his mouth, which, if it did 
 not suggest a mirthful, almost impish delight in 
 the situation, suggested something very near it. 
 That one quick look, and that uncompromising 
 grip, made it plain that these two rather remark 
 able men were prepared to understand each other. 
 Pole, who had no personality, merely a gift and 
 a manner, faded tacitly out of the picture, even 
 went off, after placing chairs and cigars at the 
 round teakwood table, and wrote letters in the 
 adjoining room. 
 
 Chance lighted a cigar, settled back in his 
 chair, and raised his good-humored eyes to the 
 face of the prophet. The vacation spirit was 
 strong within him. He was ready for any sort 
 of an adventure. The only definite hope he 
 permitted himself was the faint hope that this 
 
12 Comrade John 
 
 might really turn out to be an adventure of one 
 mild sort or another. Meanwhile, in a certain 
 tolerant way, he was ready to think that he liked 
 Stein. If the man was a faker, he was a good one. 
 
 Unexpectedly, while Stein was arranging his 
 thoughts and framing his first few sentences, 
 Chance decided to open the conversation him 
 self. He removed his cigar, smiled a boyish 
 smile, and said: 
 
 "I read your book last night." 
 
 Stein had no data for concluding that Chance 
 had set about it to jolt him off his pedestal as 
 a preliminary to getting down to business, but 
 the suspicion sprang up in his mind. And he 
 was right. He looked at the young man out of 
 inscrutable eyes, and replied: 
 
 "I hope you found something in it to interest 
 you, Mr. Chance." 
 
 "A great deal." 
 
 Stein looked at him in silence for a moment. 
 The notion occurred to Chance that he was 
 revolving his ponderous mind in order to bring 
 another side of it to the front. Finally he spoke. 
 
 " You have had a rather unusually wide ex 
 perience for a man of your years, Mr. Chance." 
 
 A slight inclination of the head was his reply. 
 
The Beechcroft Spirit 13 
 
 "Among other things, you are an architect 
 and builder, I understand." 
 
 Again Chance inclined his head. 
 
 "Are you open to consider a professional en 
 gagement?" 
 
 "That would depend." 
 
 "On what?" 
 
 "On a great many things." 
 
 Again Stein paused. Then he produced a big 
 manila envelope, and spread out on the table a num 
 ber of photographs, some plans, and a map which 
 Chance recognized as one of the large-scale sheets 
 published by the National Geographical Survey. 
 
 "These photographs," said Stein, "will give 
 you some idea of Beechcroft." 
 
 "It seems to be an attractive spot," said 
 Chance, as he looked them over. 
 
 "It is very beautiful," Stein replied. "It 
 is a narrow valley, with Mount William rising 
 almost sheer at the head, and a brook descending 
 in a series of cascades. The trees are nearly 
 all beeches. Now, Mr. Chance," the prophet 
 leaned forward and clasped his large hands on 
 the table, "I propose to make Beechcroft 
 the most beautiful spot in the world." 
 
 Chance looked up, frankly interested. 
 
14 Comrade John 
 
 "More, Mr. Chance, I propose that this beauty 
 shall be recognized everywhere as a flowering 
 of the Beechcroft spirit, beauty through toil. 
 I propose to show convincingly that the most 
 beautiful place in the world may result from the 
 simple, day-by-day work of loving hands, when 
 guided by perfect faith in the beautiful. The 
 means at my disposal are limited, I will say 
 this frankly, considering the extent of the 
 work to be done. I should like to use nothing 
 but stone in constructing the buildings, the 
 only enduring material. But I am afraid that 
 stone is out of the question." 
 
 "What is the extent of the work, Mr. Stein?" 
 "The community buildings must include wood 
 carving, furniture, carpet, lace, and silver work 
 ing shops, publishing and printing shops, dor 
 mitories and assembly rooms, a library, and 
 studios. I mean also to include in the plan an 
 imposing temple, to seat two thousand persons, 
 with a great organ." 
 
 "And how much money have you to spend?" 
 "Any sum," Stein replied, not unimpressively, 
 "up to half a million dollars." 
 
 "That certainly does eliminate stone," said 
 Chance. 
 
The Beechcrojt Spirit 15 
 
 "What could you suggest?" asked Stein, 
 watching the expression of growing interest 
 on the young man s face. 
 
 "Something that looks like stone and isn t. 
 If you don t mind my telling you precisely what 
 I think, Mr. Stein " 
 
 He waited, and the prophet indicated that he 
 did not mind. 
 
 " this is a showman s problem. As a show 
 man, it interests me. Your Beechcroft must be 
 made an immensely impressive place, and it must 
 be done as cheaply as possible. Well, it can be 
 done." As his interest deepened, his eyes took 
 fire, and his words came faster. Stein had ap 
 proached him right. The notion of creating the 
 most beautiful place in the world that was 
 what appealed to John Chance. "You want it so 
 that the first glance will strike in hard, will make 
 a woman, even a man, feel grandly solemn. You, 
 just as much as I, must get results. After your 
 publicity man has brought the people out, you ve 
 got to thrill them. You ve got to make them gasp 
 with delight. The dividends are in that gasp." 
 
 Stein was a little surprised. "I am not sure 
 that you understand," he said, after a moment. 
 "Beechcroft is not a side-show." 
 
1 6 Comrade John 
 
 "I think I understand, Mr. Stein. I used the 
 word gasp advisedly. Architecture can be 
 made to stir people up, as music does. In my 
 trade, in the side-show trade, if you like, we shake 
 the people up, handle them roughly, and we find 
 that the dividends are in the squeal. That s 
 where the chutes come in, and the scenic railway. 
 It is your plan, with Beechcroft, if I get you, to 
 stir their emotions, to give them what I suppose 
 you might call an uplift, to make them think 
 of sublime things. If you can t produce some 
 such effect, you wouldn t be justified in spending 
 five thousand dollars, let alone half a million." 
 
 " Can such an effect be produced, Mr. Chance ? " 
 
 The young man looked up and nodded. 
 "Architecture is the most backward of the arts," 
 he said; " music has broken loose, literature has 
 broken loose, painting has broken loose. In all 
 of them, big men have overridden the ancient 
 traditions in order to express themselves and their 
 time our time. But the architects go end 
 lessly on copying the ideas that expressed some 
 other time, but that have nothing whatever to do 
 with ours." 
 
 "Can you explain how architecture is to break 
 loose, Mr. Chance?" 
 
The Beechcrojt Spirit 17 
 
 Like a good many other big-caliber men, Her 
 man Stein recognized his sort of ideas wherever 
 he found them, and gladly took them for his own. 
 This was certainly his sort of idea, free, bold, 
 big. Poor Burkett used to have such ideas. 
 Burkett had rewritten "Toil and Triumph," 
 fifteen years earlier, on a salary from Stein, and 
 had added form and finish to Stein s shrewd 
 but badly expressed conceptions. Then Burkett, 
 like so many other of the weak men and women 
 who had contributed to Stein s relentless de 
 velopment, had dropped out. In his case it 
 had been drink, ending in degradation and a 
 drifting back to the outer coast where he and 
 Stein had first met. Then Stein had taken over 
 the care of his wife, and later, on a rumor of his 
 death, had married her. The rumor proved to 
 be misleading ; but Burkett had sufficient decency 
 of spirit to stay away until a second and this time 
 a well-grounded rumor to the same effect found 
 its way to Beechcroft. 
 
 Stein was looking at Chance, awaiting an 
 answer to his question. 
 
 "I could hardly say," replied the younger man, 
 with a slight shrug. "I rather guess that is 
 where the individual enters. I can feel these 
 c 
 
1 8 Comrade John 
 
 things and I can work them out, but it would take 
 some time to put what I feel in words. I will 
 say this much, however. Suppose your temple, 
 which, by the way, ought to express a conception 
 as new architecturally as your religion expresses 
 philosophically, suppose it were to take the 
 form of a tower, or a cluster of towers, with that 
 upper cascade issuing from its base. Then sup 
 pose you were to lead up to it with the other 
 buildings in a half ellipse, backing up against 
 the hills on each side." He spread out the 
 Geological Survey map, and studied the brown 
 contour lines for a moment. 
 
 "Treat the elliptical enclosure and the curving 
 driveway around it conventionally, and paint 
 all the buildings to represent white marble. 
 Now suppose you were driving into the valley 
 for the first time, along the road that swings 
 around the end of this hill, he indicated the 
 place on the map, "and the thing burst on you 
 all at once, the green enclosure with the two 
 rows of snow-white buildings curving around it, 
 leading up to the great white temple, all standing 
 out sharply against the green slope of Mount 
 William, wouldn t something like that make 
 you sit up and catch your breath, seen on a clear 
 
The Beechcrojt Spirit 19 
 
 day, under a blue-and-white sky? You might 
 add a touch of color, to warm it up, humanize 
 it. Say, red tile roofs all around, and a touch of 
 red about the temple. If red tiles cost too much, 
 you could make it out of staff excelsior and 
 cement plaster, that is and paint it. Staff 
 lasts quite a few years." 
 
 The prophet was looking squarely at Chance. 
 Now, without the slightest change of expression, 
 he said, "Will you undertake, Mr. Chance, to 
 make Beechcroft what I want it to be?" 
 
 Outwardly Chance was as inscrutable as the 
 prophet, but he was none the less really surprised. 
 Until this moment it had simply not occurred 
 to him to take the situation seriously. Stein 
 was a joke, Beechcroft was a joke, "Toil and 
 Triumph" was a joke. The something very 
 like admiration that Stein inspired in him grew 
 out of the fact that Stein, too, was a showman, 
 and a good one. He, too, knew how to handle 
 crowds, knew how to sway and dominate them. 
 But now, really, if Stein would pay enough, why 
 not make Beechcroft the most beautiful place 
 in the world? He could do it, he knew, in six 
 or eight months. It would solve the problem 
 of keeping his foremen employed. And there 
 
20 Comrade John 
 
 ought to be money in it. If Stein wanted to hire 
 a creative genius, he would have to pay for him. 
 
 These things passed through his mind during 
 the smaller part of a minute, while he sat quietly 
 looking across the table. "Yes," he said then, 
 "I ll undertake it." 
 
 Stein s interlocked fingers gripped together 
 more tightly. He was now at the critical point 
 in this situation. He had to ask Chance to do 
 a highly unprofessional thing, a thing which no 
 regular architect who was big enough and ex 
 perienced enough to undertake the work would 
 for an instant consider doing. He knew that 
 Chance was not a regular architect; but he had 
 no means of knowing that the nearest thing to a 
 bitter strain in Chance s character grew out of 
 the fact that most of the regular architects, 
 wrapped in their traditions and their dogmas, 
 scorned John Chance, where they gave him any 
 notice at all, precisely because he was free, and 
 bold, and big. He had no means of knowing 
 that John Chance was a very lonely young man, 
 standing by himself, really the first exemplar 
 of a new sort of profession which was not even 
 that of a regular showman. So he put the 
 question with some inward concern, because if 
 
The Beechcrojt Spirit 21 
 
 Chance should refuse him, he did not know, 
 at this moment, where he could turn. 
 
 "I have only one condition to make, Mr. 
 Chance. It must be clearly understood that the 
 entire plan is mine. The new Beechcroft is to 
 be a realization of my ideals carried out under 
 the hands of those who accept my principles. 
 If you do this work, you must appear only as one 
 of my followers. You and what few assistants 
 you bring with you, must dress as we dress, and 
 live as we live. It is vitally important that those 
 who see you at Beechcroft shall not know your 
 history or your name. Frankly, if it should get 
 out that I had employed you to do this work, the 
 unthinking public would jump to the conclu 
 sion that the whole Beechcroft idea is a fraud. It 
 would ruin me, and those who are dependent 
 on me. The public, as you doubtless are aware, 
 Mr. Chance, is too capricious, too unreasonable, 
 to be taken into our confidence." 
 
 Chance s face did not change expression, but 
 his eyes shot one swift look into the massive, 
 shadowy face. During that look his price went 
 up exactly one hundred per cent. Granting 
 Stein s premises, the stipulation was sound enough. 
 Stein s religion was based on the doctrine that 
 
22 Comrade John 
 
 beautiful things were the result of work with the 
 hands and of faith. If the new Beechcroft 
 should be the result, apparently, of anything 
 but the handiwork of the Beechcrofters, Stein 
 would be stultified. Chance saw all this clearly 
 enough, and had there been no business considera 
 tions involved, he would probably have indulged 
 in a good laugh. 
 
 "What is the dress?" he asked. 
 
 "A modified Grecian tunic and sandals for 
 the summer. In winter, we dress more heavily, 
 of course." 
 
 "Chance s eyes strayed off to the Japanese 
 hangings, the feminine little writing desk, and 
 Moberly Pole; and that same mirthful, impish 
 flicker which had appeared about his mouth at 
 the beginning of the conversation, reappeared 
 there now. He was trying to imagine Bill 
 Hemenway, his superintendent of construction, 
 in a tunic and sandals. 
 
 "All right," he said. "My price is fifty thou 
 sand dollars for a year s work, or for the job if it 
 takes less than a year." 
 
 Stein swallowed something. "But what if 
 it should take more than a year?" he asked. 
 
 "It won t." 
 
The Beechcrojt Spirit 23 
 
 There was a long silence. Finally the prophet 
 inclined his head very deliberately. "We are 
 agreed, then," he said, and extended his hand. 
 
 But Chance had another question. "How 
 am I to be assured, Mr. Stein, that you can pay 
 me this money?" 
 
 Stein again revolved that big mind of his. 
 Then he turned to Moberly Pole, who was 
 writing busily. "Have you a messenger call, 
 Mr. Pole?" 
 
 The painter shook his head. 
 
 "Wait a moment," said Chance, glancing at 
 his watch. He crossed to the window, parted 
 the thin silk curtains, and looked down into 
 Thirty-first Street. The row of old-fashioned 
 brownstone houses opposite, all alike, and all, 
 taken together, like any other row of brownstone 
 houses on any other cross street in that part of 
 town, had about them a wholesome air of per 
 manence which was refreshing after the un 
 healthy atmosphere of Pole s studio. Except 
 for his motor car, which stood at the curb below, 
 and for a few pedestrians, the street was empty; 
 but over at the corner he could just see the lights 
 and the thinnish stream of vehicles that marked 
 Fifth Avenue. From the other direction came 
 
24 Comrade John 
 
 faintly the clang and rumble of street cars, which 
 he knew meant that Broadway lay there, with 
 its glaring lights, and its restaurants, and its 
 gay, brazen, costly sense of living fast and well. 
 He rather liked Broadway next to Paris. 
 It was stimulating, if you stopped just short 
 of taking it seriously. 
 
 When he turned back into the studio, he saw 
 in it what he had seen when he first entered, a 
 picture that rang hollow with artifice. It did 
 not look quite real, even including Stein and 
 Pole, who were quietly talking together. 
 
 11 My car is here," he said. "You are welcome 
 to use it for any message you wish to send." 
 
 Accordingly, Stein wrote a brief note, and 
 shortly afterward received a reply which he handed 
 to Chance. "It is addressed directly to you, I 
 see." 
 
 Chance read it, and for the first time nearly 
 gave expression to his astonishment. The letter 
 was written in longhand, and was signed with 
 a name familiar to every one who knows anything 
 whatever about Wall Street and its corpora 
 tions. It was an agreement to pay John Chance, 
 in consideration for his work in reconstructing 
 Beechcroft, the sum of fifty thousand dollars, 
 
The Beechcrojt Spirit 25 
 
 in four equal quarterly instalments, the first of 
 which would be payable on the first day of 
 March. Chance replaced it in the envelope, 
 and pocketed it. 
 
 "That is all right," he said, with a cheerful 
 nod. " I am with you, or I soon shall be. I 
 am going away for a little rest a few weeks. 
 When I get back, I shall be ready to pitch in. 
 You had better let me take the map and the 
 photographs." 
 
 He said good night, ran down the stairs, let 
 himself out, and with a brief "Hoboken, 
 Claude, the Deutschland" curled up on the 
 broad seat in the enclosed tonneau and went to 
 sleep. He was to have a number of interesting 
 experiences had he known it. He had entered 
 into a new set of relationships, and for a while 
 he was to see more of the long arm of circumstance 
 than he had ever happened to see before. But 
 he did not know it. And in any case he would 
 probably have slept as soundly. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE MAN ON THE TABLE 
 
 JOHN CHANCE had, on the afternoon of Mardi 
 Gras, exactly the best place in Paris for watching 
 the carnival, a table not quite in the front rank 
 before the Cafe de la Paix. He had a cigar 
 between his fingers and a little asbestos mat over 
 his glass of coffee to keep the confetti out of it. 
 
 It was a sparkling, frosty day, and the great 
 living river, the Boulevard, where the police had 
 stopped all wheel traffic hours before, was flowing 
 bank full with a stream of irresponsible, irre 
 pressible, good-humored, childlike humanity. 
 Here was an eddy where a close-packed ring of 
 folk gazed in serious wonder, while two grave and 
 apparently much- embarrassed Englishmen exe 
 cuted a painstaking dance, and a pretty girl in 
 the brass helmet and breeches of the Garde 
 Rtpublicaine officiously kept back the crowd. 
 Now and then a pair of grotesque masks would 
 26 
 
The Man on the Table 27 
 
 go by, and once a whole riotous platoon of 
 pierrots and harlequins. 
 
 But these costumes were, after all, exceptional. 
 The spirit of the frolic was spontaneous enough, 
 went far enough below the surface, to be enjoyed 
 in whatever clothes one happened to have on. 
 There was just one rule of conduct in force to 
 day, to take everything for granted and to keep 
 your temper; and subject to this rule everybody 
 was equally invited to come out and play, regard 
 less of the uniform society had imposed on him. 
 In general, the only modification of one s every 
 day appearance was that effected by the confetti ; 
 the confetti that lay thick upon shoulders and 
 drifted in hat brims, that powdered rich furs and 
 caught in dishevelled hair and wedged itself into 
 the meshes of lace ; the confetti that crunched and 
 crept under foot like snow, and that hung in the 
 air a veritable varicolored mist, spouting up in 
 little jets and shimmering down upon the per 
 fectly miscellaneous, perfectly homogeneous crowd. 
 
 Paris would have got up this celebration, no 
 doubt, even if John Chance had not arrived the 
 day before, but it was as good a recognition of 
 the beginning of his holiday as if it had been 
 planned for him expressly. He was the very same 
 
28 Comrade John 
 
 man who at Pittsburg a little while ago had been 
 producing one brilliant idea a minute, like a 
 human spark coil, the same man, but animated 
 now by a milder current. He lounged back in 
 his chair, taking little sips of smoke and coffee, 
 and feeling very, very much at home. It sur 
 prised him how small a difference a year s absence 
 makes, how many people he knew, among the 
 stream that went crowding past. He saw a few 
 really old friends, men whom, a little later, he 
 would look up and talk out the nights with, but 
 they got nothing from him now but a gay hail 
 and a wave of the hand. He was visiting Paris 
 to-day, and no single one of her inhabitants could 
 get more than a momentary spark of his attention. 
 But even this indolent sort of enjoyment in 
 volved for him some sort of occupation, and the 
 party at the next table provided him with it. 
 There were three of them, a stout, bourgeois 
 young Frenchwoman and two men, apparently 
 her husband and his brother. She was dressed 
 in what was patently her gala attire; her cloak 
 and hat the latter a large and rather sprawly 
 confection had evidently felt the restraint 
 of her husband s hold on the purse-strings, but 
 the gown was the unchecked efflorescence of her 
 
The Man on the Table 29 
 
 own fancy. She threw back the cloak on taking 
 her seat, though the day was sharp enough to 
 suggest her retaining it, and the glory of the gown 
 was revealed. It was a papery satin of that shade 
 known as magenta and it caught John Chance s 
 attention like a shout in his ear. He gazed at it 
 in nai ve amusement for a while, then bought two 
 sacks of blue confetti from a passing vender. 
 The effect of an overtone of blue on that shiny 
 purply pink ought to be electrifying. He lazily 
 sprinkled handfuls of it over her, and so success 
 ful was the resulting color effect that most of the 
 passing crowd caught the idea and humored it. 
 Those who did not, he gently but gravely re 
 monstrated with, in French or in English, as 
 it happened. She retaliated by shaking her pink 
 confetti into his coffee every time he tried to 
 drink it and, with her two escorts, passed the 
 time of day with him as one does on Mardi Gras, 
 and on no other day in the calendar. 
 
 The game needed only occasional moments 
 of his attention, but it was during one of these 
 that a man, an American, about his own age, 
 struggled out of the crowd and got near enough to 
 slap him on the shoulder before he was recog 
 nized. 
 
30 Comrade John 
 
 " Hello "he began. 
 
 Chance looked up, and saw in the newcomer 
 an old companion of his Beaux Arts days; it 
 was all of three years since they had met, but 
 to-day was carnival. "You haven t any blue 
 confetti, have you?" he said, by way of greeting, 
 and nodded toward the lady in the magenta gown. 
 
 The new man looked and smiled, but rather 
 absently. He had something more serious on 
 his mind. "Has she gone by here?" he asked. 
 Have you seen her?" 
 
 Chance laughed, an outright, boyish laugh. 
 "You do take a chap back. Yes, I ve seen her. 
 For a rough guess, I ve seen about nine thousand 
 of her." 
 
 The other man smiled, drew up to Chance s 
 table an opportunely vacated chair, and rather 
 deliberately lighted a cigarette. "You haven t 
 seen her, then," he said quietly. "You ll know 
 it when you do. You and all the rest of you in 
 this cafe will be standing on your tables. She s 
 just one of those freaks of nature that happen 
 along once a century or so, and can make men 
 do such things. She s dressed in white and 
 I mean this absolutely literally she s lambent ; 
 like a great cathedral candle, burning. I actually 
 
The Man on the Table 31 
 
 believe she s luminous. She made me think of 
 the angel of the resurrection." 
 
 The man was speaking, between long inhalations 
 of the cigarette, quietly, and out of a varied and 
 abundant experience; it was clear that he meant 
 exactly what he said. Chance looked at him with 
 a glint of real interest, but he answered, smiling, 
 as he had done before. 
 
 "What Paradise does she inhabit, this angel? 
 Folies Bergere ? Moulin Rouge ?" 
 
 11 She s an American, and she s out with that 
 little shrimp Hollister. Do you remember him?" 
 
 The corners of Chance s eyes screwed down 
 a little. "The last time I saw Tommy Hollister 
 was one rainy evening when he was walking down 
 Mont-Parnasse, past the Dome. He wore sandals 
 instead of shoes, and no socks, and I can see his 
 muddy trouser legs now, flapping around his bare 
 ankles. He had that English girl with him 
 you remember ? and they slopped along in the 
 rain with their arms around each other s necks, 
 and smoked the same cigarette, alternately." 
 
 The other man frowned. "I know," he said. 
 "But this girl, oh, I ve no brief for her, but 
 it s patent that she doesn t belong anywhere 
 in the same world with Tommy Hollister. It s 
 
32 Comrade John 
 
 only some rather grotesque accident that can have 
 thrown them together. She ought to be taken 
 away from him and sent home to her mother. 
 She is to be taken away from him, I understand, 
 but I m afraid that the sending home to her 
 mother will be postponed indefinitely. And 
 that will be a pity." 
 
 Chance looked at him curiously. "It s not 
 in the least like you, a man at your time of 
 life, this taking appearances so seriously. Any 
 how, there never was a carnival that somebody 
 hadn t to pay for." 
 
 His friend s only reply was to lay a compelling 
 hand on his arm, and with the other point into 
 the crowd. "There she is," he said. "I caught 
 a glimpse of white. Get up on your table so 
 that you can see her." 
 
 That course it seemed a perfectly obvious 
 one to the man who suggested it proved un 
 necessary, for an opening in the crowd at that 
 moment revealed her, her and the little shrimp 
 Hollister at her side. Their view lasted perhaps 
 five seconds, and for the better part of one of them 
 her eyes were on John Chance. All around them, 
 in literal fulfilment of the terms of the prophecy, 
 people mounted their tables and craned their 
 
The Man on the Table 33 
 
 necks, and many scrambled out into the street 
 to follow her. But the two men sat just as they 
 were for rather a long time, in silence. It was 
 Chance who broke it, speaking in a rather dry, 
 analytical voice. 
 
 "It s partly her hair partly. You re right in 
 saying it flames, and yet it hasn t a particle of 
 red about it. It s a little the color of deep water 
 with sunlight through it. That sounds fanciful, 
 but it s not far wrong. But it s more in her eyes. 
 She has the most the most curious, questioning 
 eyes I ever saw. I wonder how far a man might 
 go to satisfy that look or to set it alight again." 
 
 He was silent for a while after that; then he 
 shook his head, and with a rather rueful laugh, 
 turned upon his friend. "Confound you, it s 
 all in the carnival. But you re right ; she doesn t 
 belong in the same world with Tommy Hollister. 
 And she oughtn t a girl like that to be loose 
 in Paris at all to-day. I d like to know how 
 fast her pulse is going and what pitch her nerves 
 are keyed to." 
 
 "They re nothing to what they ll be before 
 the day is over. That crowd of young savages 
 from the Julian are getting up a float, and they 
 mean to take her away from Hollister and put 
 
34 Comrade John 
 
 her up on it and haul her down the Boulevard. 
 There ll be no stopping them, either; they ll 
 have all the crowd with them. That s when the 
 real sensation will begin, the sort of thing that 
 makes the authorities nervous. Why, if that girl 
 should start singing the Marseillaise, she could 
 take the whole crowd across the river and sack 
 the Luxembourg." 
 
 "And when the show is over," said Chance, 
 thoughtfully, " a girl like that, blazing like that, 
 she will be burnt out as clean as the ash on 
 this cigar. That is, supposing they do get her 
 in the first place." 
 
 "They ll do that. As a matter of fact, there 
 comes the float now. And only think how she ll 
 look up on top of it ! They do things well, those 
 boys, when they seriously set out not to be serious." 
 His enthusiasm mounted as the float came slowly 
 nearer along the Boulevard. "Can t you see 
 how she ll blaze, up there? And isn t it bully 
 architecture, the way it all leads up to where 
 she ll be ? And where do you suppose they com 
 mandeered those three big white Normans to 
 pull it? Just unhooked them from a passing 
 bus, likely enough. Oh, she s too inevitably a 
 part of it to get off. Come along and see." 
 
The Man on the Table 35 
 
 "I think," said Chance, rather slowly, "that 
 I ll stay here." 
 
 " Bones too old for the fires of spring to get 
 into them?" Well, mine aren t. So long." And 
 he was out of range of a reply in the crowd that 
 pressed along behind the empty float. 
 
 Chance caught the eyes of a waiter and ordered 
 two fresh glasses of coffee. One was for himself, 
 and he explained the other to the waiter by saying 
 that the gentleman would return in a moment. 
 It gave him rather more elbow room, having two 
 chairs. He might not want the extra one at all, 
 but it was in his mind that he might. Associated 
 with this idea was a certain smiling incredulity 
 over his friend s remark that it would be impos 
 sible to stop those young savages from Julian s. 
 Impossible was a pretty big word. 
 
 With that reflection, he settled back into the 
 spirit of the carnival. He was at the beginning 
 of his holiday, he was in the most irresponsible 
 of places on the most irresponsible day of the 
 year, and he did not propose to waste it worrying 
 over the antics, or the fate though it was likely 
 to be tragic enough of any American girl who 
 had been silly enough to go out with Tommy 
 Hollister. He could not pretend that it was not 
 
36 Comrade John 
 
 a pity she had done it, but once he had acknowl 
 edged it was a pity, which he ungrudgingly did, 
 his duty was fully performed. He could make 
 himself comfortable, and take little sips of smoke 
 and coffee he lighted a fresh cigar to prove it 
 and sprinkle confetti over the lady in paper 
 satin magenta, just as he had been doing before 
 his friend had come along to stir him with 
 talk about a resurrection angel. "The fires of 
 spring, " indeed ! The man who wrote that line 
 would never have gone pushing about in the 
 crowd. He would have stayed right here at his 
 little table, contented to leave the event with 
 Allah, where it belonged. Chance felt grateful 
 to his friend for having quoted the line, and to 
 old Omar Khayyam for having written it. 
 
 Whoever was to have charge of the event, 
 Allah, or those young savages from the Julian, 
 it was clear enough that an event was coming off. 
 There was some sort of leaven at work out there 
 in the crowd, the organizing force of some single 
 focal idea: the stream was flowing all one way 
 now; people had ceased strolling and were 
 going somewhere. Those who could not move 
 for the press were standing on tiptoe, their hands 
 on any pair of shoulders that offered support, 
 
The Man on the Table 37 
 
 looking up the Boulevard toward the Madeleine. 
 The people about him in the cafe* were looking too, 
 in the same direction, and though he felt sure there 
 was nothing to see, and in spite of the restraining 
 influence of Omar, John Chance leaned far out 
 and craned his neck with the rest. He was, in 
 fact, so busy looking that a stranger who had laid 
 hands on his extra chair, was in the very act of 
 dragging it away before Chance observed him. 
 Then he laid a detaining hand upon it. 
 
 "Pardon," he said, nodding toward the un 
 touched glass of coffee, "madame will return in 
 a moment." The Frenchman raised his polished 
 hat and expressed thousands of polished apologies, 
 while Chance, equally serious, prolonging the 
 scene all he could just to see how far so tenuous 
 a situation could be made to stretch, replied with 
 an equal number of thousands of regrets at being 
 obliged to assume so disobliging an attitude. 
 
 He was talking over his shoulder, for the French 
 man stood behind him, so that for the first time 
 his eyes were away from the Boulevard, and as 
 he ran on with his inexhaustible stock of regrets, 
 he suddenly became aware that he had lost the 
 man s attention. The attitude was still politely 
 at his service, but the eyes, with an odd expres- 
 
38 Comrade John 
 
 sion in them, were looking beyond him. Others 
 were looking the same way, men and women were 
 getting to their feet, and one heard a metallic 
 scraping sound as the little iron chairs and tables 
 were moved about. Chance turned. 
 
 The Boulevard was no longer a river, it was a 
 turbulent lake ; a lake of faces all turned toward 
 him. And right before him, not five feet away, 
 stood, incarnate, the idea that had transformed the 
 crowd, the lambent girl, the cathedral candle, burn 
 ing, the prospective sacrifice to the spirit of carnival. 
 
 But that was not the way he saw her. For 
 the moment he took for granted her beauty and 
 her mystery; his trained, observant eyes were 
 busy with details. His former impression that 
 she was fantastically dressed for the carnival 
 was wrong ; she had simply assumed the shackles 
 of convention and conquered them. She wore 
 a long half- fitting coat of ivory broadcloth; her 
 small, smart toque was in the same tone, with a 
 warm touch of sable about it. At her throat was 
 an immense and very fine opal in an art nouveau 
 setting of pearls. She was quite alone, the soiled 
 little man who had been her companion having 
 disappeared. She was breathing fast, and a faint 
 quiver observable in her eyelids and about her 
 
The Man on the Table 39 
 
 fine nostrils and lips indicated an overmastering 
 excitement. She had the air of standing still 
 only because she did not know which way to turn, 
 and a look that might turn to fear but was at the 
 moment hardly more than perplexity. 
 
 Clearly she did not know; had she known, 
 her look would have spoken no mere half-hu 
 morous dismay, but downright terror. Chance 
 knew. He knew the reckless, good-humored, 
 highly talented young savages who had impro 
 vised that float, and who meant now to enthrone 
 her on it, knew them because he had once been 
 one of them, and in a way was one of them still. 
 There came pretty vividly to his mind the memory 
 of a half-naked young beauty who had queened 
 it all one night at a QuatV Arts ball, and from 
 that picture his mind ran ahead to the hour when 
 this present brief reign of Misrule should be over, 
 to the time when this cathedral candle, burnt low 
 and guttered, should be put out. If they had 
 her for their queen to-night, to-morrow well, 
 she would belong in the same soiled, spent world 
 with Tommy Hollister. They meant to have her. 
 The rules of the game were all in their favor, 
 the spirit of the day, the temper of the crowd, 
 and more than all, the imperative fitness of the 
 
4o Comrade John 
 
 girl for the position they had designed for her. 
 They were coming for her now, worming their 
 way through the mob it was a mob, you could 
 tell by the noise it made. Chance could see here 
 and there about the outskirts of it the white batons 
 of ineffectual gendarmes. 
 
 And at that he smiled, a buoyant, boyish smile. 
 Allah had turned the job over to him ! 
 
 The girl stood there, not five feet away, looking 
 straight into his face. And his job was to take 
 her away from those highly talented, perfectly 
 merciless young savages, and return her, virginal 
 of soul, to whoever was responsible for her. It 
 was a large order his friend s statement that 
 a platoon of police could not do it was probably 
 well within the truth. Perhaps that was why 
 Allah had turned the job over to him. 
 
 So he stood there, his hat in his hand, smiling 
 a pleased, boyish, half-shy sort of welcome to 
 her. Then he held out his hand. 
 
 "Here s your chair, waiting for you," he said, 
 "and here s your coffee. I d begun to be afraid 
 you weren t coming." 
 
 Her answering smile was instantaneous. All 
 day she had been aware that she was just a 
 spectacle in the great crowd, but still something 
 
The Man on the Table 41 
 
 utterly apart from it, and the consciousness had 
 induced a wild sort of exhilaration that missed 
 being happiness only because of a vague disquiet 
 which underlay it all. But in this smile of friendly 
 welcome, in the boyish mixture of eagerness 
 and deference of voice and word, there was some 
 thing sane and wholesome; something that 
 quieted her excitement and at the same time made 
 her fear seem a little ridiculous. Somehow it 
 took her away altogether from this garish world 
 of confetti and made her think of a sparkling 
 early morning and a southwest wind riffling 
 over the sand-dunes. She had an impulse to 
 take the outstretched hand in a good grip and 
 sit down beside the man who held it out to her. 
 
 She was sure she did not know him. He was 
 completely a stranger, and his friendly greeting, 
 pleasant as it was, could be nothing after all but 
 a fresh trick of the carnival. Still she was not 
 sorry that she had smiled back at him, and she 
 rewarded his invitation with a not unfriendly 
 shake of the head as she turned away. At that 
 he spoke again, lower, and so swiftly that the 
 words trod on each other s heels. 
 
 " You ve only a minute left. Don t be fright 
 ened, but sit down here. Quick." 
 
42 Comrade John 
 
 The violence of the surprise drenched her face 
 with color. With an impulse of obedience that 
 was wholly automatic, she seated herself in the 
 chair he pointed out. Then she turned and 
 looked at him curiously. The eager, buoyant 
 confidence was still in his face; there was even 
 a half smile about his big, expressive mouth. 
 But she saw something else that made her feel 
 sure that there was more than the mere folly 
 of the carnival involved in the adventure. He 
 was looking at her, too, but not personally nor 
 exclusively. His thoughtful eyes seemed to be 
 taking her in merely as a part of the scene. 
 
 " That s better, but it s not good enough yet." 
 His eyes strayed from her to some one else, an ab 
 surd figure of a woman in a screaming magenta 
 gown, snowed up in blue confetti, a gaudy, Bon 
 Marche cloak and a big bushy hat. Then they 
 came back to her. 
 
 "I want you to give me your hat; your hat 
 and your coat too. I want them for a present." 
 
 It was the third complete surprise that he had 
 dashed over like so many buckets of water, since 
 their acquaintance had begun, considerably less 
 than a minute ago. This time the deeper curi 
 osity in her eyes took fire. 
 
The Man on the Table 
 
 43 
 
 "I know you re in earnest," she said slowly, 
 "but I don t in the least understand why. You 
 don t know me and well, I don t know you, 
 either." 
 
 "Not each other s names. But you do know 
 that I m the other sort from Tommy Hollister. 
 And I know that you don t belong up on top of 
 that float a six hours Boulevard sensation. 
 Won t you give me your hat and coat ? Quickly ? " 
 
 The light in her face seemed to flare up at that, 
 and her lips parted. " Is that what they wanted ? " 
 she said, quietly enough. "But they won t take 
 me if I don t want to go. I m safe here with you." 
 
 "Don t look up; but listen. They ll be in 
 over the tables in a minute. It s a Paris crowd, 
 and it s only waiting for a spark. You have 
 to handle it like guncotton. It s not dangerous 
 if you know how, and it s my trade to handle 
 crowds. I ll help you with your coat. Don t 
 stand up. Don t look up." 
 
 She disobeyed him; for just one moment she 
 looked. Then, with bowed head and shaking 
 fingers, she began unpinning her hat. The crowd 
 she had been a part of, the endless stream of star 
 ing, good-humored persons had transformed itself. 
 The close-packed inner ring, which was all she 
 
44 Comrade John 
 
 could see, holding on by main force against the 
 grinding, milling compression that was going on 
 behind; the flushed faces and spirituous eyes, 
 the palpable excitement that mounted higher and 
 higher as the physical pressure increased; the 
 sense of unmeasured and uncontrollable physical 
 strength which the ineffectual rise and fall, here 
 and there, of the white batons of the police only 
 made the more terrifying it all proclaimed one 
 fact. They ceased to be many, that crowd, had 
 become one, and this one a sort of monstrous 
 deformation of humanity. 
 
 When she lowered her eyes they were unsteady 
 with panic. At that moment the only stable 
 thing in her universe was John Chance s hands 
 on her shoulders, waiting till she had got off her 
 hat to strip the coat back from them. 
 
 A moment later, with the hat, a marvel of 
 Brussels point and sable, balanced on his fingers, 
 and the long white coat over his arm, Chance 
 sprang up on the table. 
 
 Once there he became curiously deliberate. 
 He had shifted the focus of the mob from the girl 
 to himself and he continued to hold it. Stand 
 ing there, grave in manner, serious voiced, he 
 made the mob feel that he knew exactly what he 
 
The Man on the Table 45 
 
 was going to do next and that they did not, and 
 that they must wait just a minute longer to see. 
 Before saying anything, he turned the coat about 
 on his arm to give him access to a large inside 
 pocket, from which he then drew its contents, 
 a spare pair of gloves, a handkerchief, and a small 
 card-case. These he stowed away in a pocket 
 of his own. Then he addressed the crowd at 
 large. 
 
 "Madame my wife " he began, but at that 
 the crowd interrupted him with a roar of derision. 
 He waited in smiling good humor for a chance 
 to go on, and presently they gave it to him. If 
 his next words were to be as amusing as these, 
 they would be worth waiting for. 
 
 " Madame my wife returns these beautiful 
 garments, these borrowed plumes, to the true 
 queen of the carnival, to whom they belong. 
 And since it grows late, and the little ones will 
 be waiting, she asks the return of her own cloak 
 and hat. With ten thousand thanks." And 
 at that he bowed, seriously and respectfully, 
 to the lady in magenta. 
 
 The effect was galvanic. The woman s two 
 escorts sprang to their feet as though stung, and 
 her own face shone purple through the rouge. 
 
46 Comrade John 
 
 But in her eye Chance saw the thing he had 
 been counting on, the betraying glint of avarice. 
 The crowd was roaring again, and under cover 
 of the noise he spoke to her. You ll do my wife 
 a great favor if you ll take it, and if you don t, 
 the crowd will. If you ll give me yours, and pin 
 this on your head, you ll be safe with it. But 
 you must do it quickly." 
 
 With just one more glance at the Brussels lace, 
 she began unpinning her own hat, dismissing 
 her husband s horrified protest with a mere shrug 
 of her ample shoulders. In another moment 
 the exchange was effected, and the attention of 
 the crowd transferred to the vivacious domestic 
 squabble it entailed. With the bushy hat in his 
 hand and the Bon Marche cloak over his arm, 
 Chance climbed down from the table, while the 
 crowd, with its fixed idea somewhat out of focus, 
 uttered uncertain murmurs. 
 
 But at this moment a new voice was heard, 
 one that had no uncertainty about it. The 
 speaker stood by Chance s vacant chair, a good- 
 looking young Frenchman, dressed in clothes 
 that had evidently been made across the Channel. 
 His soft hat had a tilt to it, his slender mustaches 
 a finely pointed upward twist ; he carried a little 
 
The Man on the Table 47 
 
 rattan for a cane, and one of his eyes blinked 
 behind a monocle. He was talking English that 
 appeared more broken than it really was, and 
 addressing his remark to the girl. 
 
 "Madame no doubt prefers the homage of her 
 husband to any other?" he ventured politely. 
 Her face confirmed his suspicion that she had not 
 understood the purport of her latest escort s ora 
 tion, and he went on swiftly. 
 
 "Mademoiselle, we students would like to ex 
 press our admiration and present our homage, 
 too, our respectful homage, to the most beautiful 
 woman in the world. The throne we have built 
 for you is not, indeed, worthy, but it is our best, 
 and it will not will not make you ridiculous, 
 as this gentleman seems to have it in mind to do." 
 With that he turned, and she did too, upon John 
 Chance, standing there with the bushy hat in 
 his hand and the bargain cloak over his arm. 
 They smelled strong of cheap perfume even at 
 a distance, and the broad collar of the cloak was 
 greasy. At that a new emotion showed in her 
 face, angry, flat rebellion. 
 
 "Get my own back, please," she said, as im 
 periously as if she had been a queen indeed. 
 "I will not wear these; I will not be ridiculous. 
 
48 Comrade John 
 
 And if they want me to be queen of the car 
 nival" 
 
 She was blazing now as she had blazed when 
 she walked by the cafe with Tommy Hollister, 
 and the people had mounted their tables and 
 cheered her. She dazzled Chance, but at the 
 same time she betrayed the Frenchman into a 
 serious mistake. Without giving her time to 
 finish the sentence, his role of respectful meekness 
 falling from him like a garment, he sprang upon 
 the table and began shouting to the crowd in a 
 voice that had the wire edge of reckless triumph 
 in it. She did not understand the words, but 
 the tone of them and the sound they drew from 
 the crowd turned her pale again. There was 
 fear as well as defiance in her next words to 
 Chance. 
 
 "We sail for home to-morrow morning. I 
 can t buy anything else to wear, and and I 
 won t go ashore at New York in those." 
 
 Chance answered her in a tone so matter- 
 of-fact, so free from every trace of emphasis, 
 that his words had the staggering effect of a blow. 
 
 "If you will tell me where you can buy a new 
 immortal soul to-morrow, you may have your coat 
 and hat again." 
 
The Man on the Table 49 
 
 For a moment she stared at him; then with 
 a shudder she buried her head in her arms, and 
 stayed so until roused again by his voice. "Can 
 you pin this on yourself ? " he asked. " I d better 
 not try to touch you." 
 
 She looked up and held out her hands for the 
 bushy hat. He dropped the cloak across her 
 knees and stepped up on the table behind the 
 Frenchman, interrupting him with a tap on the 
 shoulder. Again it was obvious that he had some 
 thing to say, and even the orator waited to see 
 what it would be. 
 
 "Volunteers are wanted," he announced, with 
 a grin. "Twenty strong men to unpin a hat from 
 the unwilling head of one lady and fasten it upon 
 the unwilling head of another. Are there any 
 engineers present? Any sappers or miners? 
 Any volunteers whatever for a work of especial 
 difficulty?" 
 
 He turned to the young man on the table 
 beside him. "You, monsieur, will you not be 
 the first? A mere matter of some lace and a 
 few pins, and twenty strong men to help you?" 
 
 The crowd roared at this, and their many- voiced 
 derision betrayed the young man into an exhi 
 bition of temper. He flushed, and his hand 
 
50 Comrade John 
 
 tightened as he drew back his rattan with a hint 
 of menace. 
 
 It was not much, but it served. It violated 
 flagrantly the spirit of the day, and it gave John 
 Chance the victory. He laughed, and playfully 
 tossed a handful of confetti over his opponent. 
 
 "This is the carnival," he said, "not the Four 
 teenth of July. You shall play at the fall of the 
 Bastile next summer." 
 
 Then for the last time he turned to the magenta 
 lady and emptied the last of his confetti over her. 
 "Long live the queen!" he cried. "The true 
 queen of the carnival." 
 
 Deliberately he climbed down from the table 
 and seated himself beside the girl. She was no 
 longer lambent, no longer the great cathedral 
 candle, burning; she was just a shaken, ex 
 hausted young girl, her beauty in temporary 
 eclipse under a bargain cloak and a big bushy 
 hat with drifts of confetti over it. 
 
 "Waiter," said Chance, "bring a fresh glass 
 of coffee. This of madame my wife has become 
 cold." 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 LOOKING GLASS COUNTRY 
 
 So far as the mob was concerned, the adventure 
 was over. All the girl had to do now, he told her, 
 was to sit tight and drink her coffee as if she liked 
 it. The crowd was transformed back to what 
 it had been an hour before, an endless stream 
 of idle, good-humored folk, exhibiting no more 
 concern over this girl who had so wrought upon 
 them and the man who had just beaten them 
 than over any other couple. 
 
 Over his own coffee Chance was carrying on 
 a desultory monologue as nearly as might be 
 in the vein he would have taken if he and this 
 acquaintance of ten vivid minutes had been, in 
 stead, old married people, a little tired after a 
 long holiday together and mildly impatient to 
 get home. All at the same time, in the back of 
 his head, he was casting about for some plan for 
 disposing of her, and with his eyes was automati 
 cally surveying the crowd. 
 
52 Comrade John 
 
 But it was not many minutes before one face 
 out of the stream that flowed by brought his 
 widely dispersed wits into instant focus, the face 
 of Tommy Hollister. He stood just where the 
 girl had stood, and was staring at her, a little 
 in drink, but not far enough to have forgotten that 
 he had abandoned her to the crowd, nor quite 
 to dare speak to her until a glance of recognition 
 should give him some sort of leave. And before 
 that happened, before she raised her eyes, Chance 
 spoke himself, blandly, half smiling, in much 
 the manner and in the same tongue in which 
 he had addressed the crowd. 
 
 "Talk to me, and in French, if you have any 
 thing to say. If you speak to her or say a word 
 in English to either of us, I will knock you down 
 and call the police. I don t know which of us 
 they d arrest, but I guess it would be you. Any 
 how, you d have the black eye." 
 
 At Hollister s sullen reply (evidently he agreed 
 in Chance s forecast of the result of speaking 
 in English, for it was in the argot of the "Boule 
 Miche " that he answered), at the sound of his 
 thick, syruppy voice, the girl shuddered visibly. 
 Somehow just the sound of it interpreted much 
 that she had been seeing and hearing all day, 
 
Looking Glass Country 53 
 
 uncontaminated, because unconscious of con 
 tamination. Then, as once before, she felt 
 John Chance s hand on her shoulder, resting there 
 a moment in a casual, matter-of-fact sort of 
 caress while he tilted his chair back on its hind 
 legs. 
 
 He was speaking now himself, and though her 
 finishing-school French was of no use in trans 
 lating what he said, she was pleasantly aware 
 that a clean- cutting edge underlay his good- 
 humored manner. She caught the contemptuous 
 staccato in his use of the second person, singular, 
 and when the speech ended as a snapper ends 
 a whiplash, with a "Va-t-en!" she knew that 
 Tommy Hollister was dismissed, finally and 
 forever, so far as she was concerned, to his own 
 world, whence an indiscreet letter of introduction 
 and a credulous aunt had conjured him. 
 
 The little dash of pleasurable excitement about 
 the episode had, for a moment, a tonic effect. 
 She turned to the man beside her, the man whose 
 name she did not know and of whose identity 
 she had no hint, the man whose hand still rested 
 half affectionately on her shoulder, smiled and 
 said, "Thank you." The tone was easy, gracious, 
 without emphasis and without embarrassment, 
 
54 Comrade John 
 
 and it caused Chance to turn rather red and 
 take his hand away. 
 
 "You spoke in French so that I couldn t 
 understand, didn t you?" she asked. 
 
 He turned redder still. " Gracious ! you didn t, 
 I hope?" 
 
 She smiled again over his open alarm, and 
 answered that she had not. "Not the words, at 
 least." 
 
 But she was a long way from stable equilib 
 rium yet ; it was only a minute before the pendu 
 lum swung back again. She shivered and pressed 
 her bare palms against her eyes, with a whispered 
 exclamation of half-sick physical disgust. 
 
 "He s not worth it," said Chance. "A poor 
 thing, to be sure, but there are thousands like 
 him in this town, and no one of them will ever 
 have a chance to speak to you again. You re 
 wasting enough good current on him to make 
 a flash of lightning, when he s not really worth 
 more than a rap with a fly-killer." 
 
 "Yes, he s gone," she assented lifelessly, and 
 then added, with a shaky laugh, "and he s the 
 one person in Paris that I know by name." 
 
 Chance took this rather tremendous announce 
 ment without betraying any surprise; in fact, 
 
Looking Glass Country 55 
 
 surprise is hardly the name for the sensation it 
 gave him. It piqued his curiosity and it pleased 
 him by adding a difficulty to a problem which 
 he was beginning to fear would turn out to have 
 a perfectly commonplace solution. 
 
 Who in the world could she be? An Ameri 
 can clear to the surface, innocent of Continental 
 veneer; evidently of his own class, or more ex 
 actly, a cut or two above the class into which he 
 had drifted, the sort of girl his mother would 
 have approved of, a girl with a bloom so delicate 
 that the first touch of a rude hand would rub it 
 off. And this girl sat beside him in front of a 
 Boulevard caf on Mardi Gras, her only author 
 ized protector the man he had just dismissed. 
 Chance would have enjoyed, rather, an oppor 
 tunity to free his mind to whatever idiot it was 
 who had abandoned her to such hands. 
 
 She made an effort to get her former mo 
 mentary manner back again, but without much 
 success. "That was true," she said, " about 
 my not knowing any one else in Paris, but it isn t 
 so bad as it sounds. You mustn t bother about 
 me any more. I shall never forget what you ve 
 done for me, and some day I shall tell you better 
 but won t you leave me alone now? I shall 
 
56 Comrade John 
 
 get on somehow." She paused to get control 
 of her voice again, said, "Please please go " 
 and stopped there only because it would not 
 obey her further. 
 
 "Pretty soon," he said. "Neither of us is in 
 a hurry." 
 
 As a matter of fact, he was in a hurry ; he must 
 find some sort of plan at once if he was to be of 
 any further service to her. And she needed help 
 badly. To get on "somehow," to set about find 
 ing her own way out of the woods, was some 
 thing she would doubtless be competent enough 
 to do once she was fairly poised again on her 
 feet. But it was something she was obviously 
 unfit to try just now, shaken as she was, over 
 wrought, swaying back and forth between a 
 lambent excitement and a slack, nerveless de 
 pression. She would not let him sit there think 
 ing very much longer, either, and he thought fast. 
 
 There were plenty of the right sort of good 
 American home folk who would, in the natural 
 course of things, be pressing their latch-keys upon 
 him as soon as they knew he was in town, who 
 would be really pleased to take the girl in for as 
 long as might be necessary. She could have her 
 choice of a temporary mother or sister or maiden 
 
Looking Glass Country 57 
 
 aunt, just about as she pleased; and then there 
 was the Girls Club over in the rue Chevreuse. 
 But he felt an instinctive certainty that allowing 
 him to present her at any one of these places, 
 along with such explanations as might seem ap 
 propriate, was precisely the last service in the 
 world that she would accept from him. And 
 he felt pretty sure, moreover, that she would not 
 allow him a single miss, that the very first sug 
 gestion of his which failed to carry her would 
 put an end to his hold upon her and his power 
 to help her. 
 
 It was the shabby cloak she wore that again 
 came to his assistance. "Those clothes," he 
 said, "are a bit depressing to me, and I guess 
 they affect you in about the same way. I gave 
 away your others, and I m not going to leave 
 you stranded with these. You can t get any 
 more to-night because every store in Paris is 
 shut tight, but I can, and I m going to." 
 
 Without waiting for a sign of assent, and 
 equally without excuses or explanations, he left 
 his seat and went into the cafe. His only errand 
 was to order a cab brought up to the side entrance 
 in the rue Auber, a thing he could have ac 
 complished as well from his place beside her, 
 
58 Comrade John 
 
 only that this method gave her more chance to 
 wonder and less to question him. 
 
 When he returned it was to say, " Here s our 
 cab, and a horse that really goes on all four legs, 
 which is pretty good luck in Paris. You re 
 ready, aren t you?" 
 
 "But I m not going with you," she said. "I 
 won t be left on anybody s hands, and I won t 
 let you bother about me any more. Won t you, 
 please, just leave me alone? I shall get on all 
 right somehow." 
 
 "We can talk about that in the cab. It will 
 be more comfortable and less conspicuous than 
 standing here. You re not afraid to trust me 
 so far, are you?" 
 
 It was not much of a resistance she had made, 
 but the best she was capable of. With a nod of 
 acquiescence she obeyed his gesture, preceded 
 him through the cafe and out to the cab in the 
 rue Auber. They drove off in silence. So long 
 as he made no explanation, suggested no plan, 
 simply left her to the grateful dark, the comfort 
 of the soft cushions and the soothing, swaying 
 motion of the cab as it sped over the asphalt, 
 she was content to remain inert, ignorant of 
 what lay before her. 
 
Looking Glass Country 59 
 
 She did not know where they were going; she 
 had a glimpse of the river over the rampart of 
 one of the bridges, a long view of the tapering 
 lights of a quiet, dignified boulevard, and then 
 their way threaded a tangle of narrow, twisting 
 streets, and brought them up at last in the bottom 
 of a mean and rather ill- smelling impasse, the 
 predominant odor, the left-over smell of a laundry, 
 being explained by a large black and white sign, 
 LAVOIR, across the blank wall at the foot of 
 the street. 
 
 "Back in five minutes," was all he said when 
 the cab stopped, and with that he disappeared 
 through an open gate and down a dark little 
 alley. 
 
 Any idea she might have entertained of taking 
 this opportunity to slip away and escape was 
 dispelled by a single look at her surroundings. 
 The wretched little shops, the groups of hulking 
 figures in the street, whose gestures seemed so 
 bellicose and whose voices so menacing, the weird, 
 strident cries of an old woman peddling Camem- 
 bert cheese, the effect of all this was to make her 
 shrink as far back as she could into the corner of 
 the cab and to make John Chance s five minutes 
 seem very long indeed. 
 
60 Comrade John 
 
 She was not much surprised, though, on sight 
 of him coming back, to see that he had a woman s 
 hat in his hand and a woman s coat over his arm. 
 He had said he would get them, and she had 
 come to take him for granted. But she uttered 
 a little exclamation of genuine pleasure when 
 he put them into her hands; they had the feel 
 of her own clothes ; they were her kind of clothes 
 unmistakably. 
 
 "The hat will look well on you," he said, "and 
 I think the coat will fit. You re about the same 
 dimensions. Anyhow, they take off the curse of 
 the others; putting those dreadful things on 
 you was the first act of downright desecration 
 I ever committed, and I hope it will be the 
 last." 
 
 He helped her out of the bargain cloak, wrapped 
 it around the bushy hat which she had taken off, 
 and laid the bundle on the floor of the cab while 
 he helped her into the trim-lined, military-looking 
 coat he had brought for her. While she was 
 pinning on the new hat, he took up the discarded 
 bundle and eyed it with a thoughtful smile; 
 then he took a look about the impasse. A short- 
 legged, stodgy-looking man, with a good deal of 
 bourgeois importance about him, was coming 
 
Looking Glass Country 61 
 
 down the sidewalk ahead of his meagre, ill- 
 dressed wife. Him Chance accosted, seriously, 
 and with an elaborate, commanding courtesy. 
 
 " Pardon, monsieur," he said, and without 
 another word placed the bundle in the man s 
 helpless, outstretched hands. He lifted his hat, 
 sprang with a kind of cat-like quickness to his 
 seat beside the girl, and as he shouted an address 
 to the grinning cabman they wheeled smartly 
 around and clattered out of the impasse. 
 Through the back window of the cab they could 
 see the man still standing there, the bundle still 
 in his hands, his outraged dignity venting itself 
 on his ill-dressed wife. When they passed the 
 next light, Chance looked at the girl beside him. 
 There was good natural color in her face, and 
 the remains of a smile. 
 
 She rebelled again, though, when the cab 
 pulled up before what she discovered to be a 
 restaurant, and he, after stepping out himself, 
 intimated that she was to alight. 
 
 "I m not nearly so silly as I was," she said, 
 "but I honestly don t want anything to eat. 
 Please get it for yourself, and let me wait for you 
 out here. I don t believe I could even look a 
 dinner in the face." 
 
62 Comrade John 
 
 There came a glint of mischief into his eyes. 
 "You needn t," he said; "I promise I won t 
 ask you to. But won t you share two cups of 
 coffee with me?" 
 
 " That s not much to do for you," she said. 
 
 The room felt pleasantly warm after so many 
 hours in the sharp February air; in fact, it was 
 only now that she realized how cold she had been. 
 She took off her gloves, and it was his glance 
 that directed her attention to the blue at the 
 bases of her finger nails. 
 
 "This coffee does taste good," she admitted. 
 "I m glad you made me come in." 
 
 He gave an order to the waitress. "I wish I 
 could understand French," she said. "There 
 were two words then that sounded grotesquely 
 like plum pudding. I wonder what they meant. 
 I suppose they never heard of one of those over 
 here, but it would be good, wouldn t it? " 
 
 And when it came in, crackling triumphantly 
 amid blue flames, she could not quite keep back 
 an exclamation of delight. It was set down 
 between them, and she held out her cold hands 
 and warmed them over the little blaze it made. 
 Presently she noticed that the waitress had put 
 down two plates before him. 
 
Looking Glass Country 63 
 
 "I wish I could have some," she said plain 
 tively. "It smells so good. But you can t offer 
 me any. You promised." 
 
 "I promised I wouldn t ask you to look a dinner 
 in the face. You re not. You re going to ap 
 proach it stealthily from behind." 
 
 Her eyes widened. "You re not going to 
 make me " she began, but Chance interrupted 
 her with another order to the waitress. And 
 at sight of the start of amazement with which 
 this order was received, her face took an ex 
 pression to match Chance s own, grave, indif 
 ferent, and her eyes, full of smiling mockery, 
 accepted the challenge in his. 
 
 Deliberately, punctiliously, they ate that dinner 
 backward, course by course, salad, roast, vege 
 table, entree, fish, soup, hors-d cevre, behaving 
 over it as any two quiet, well-bred, matter-of- 
 fact young people would be expected to behave 
 over their dinner. Their talk, until they had 
 finished the hors-d cevre of radishes and caviar, 
 was quite fragmentary and inconsequential. 
 Then she said, "You re going to smoke, aren t 
 you?" 
 
 He hesitated. "Not just before dinner, I 
 guess." 
 
64 Comrade John 
 
 "You didn t smoke right after," she retorted. 
 "Anyway, that would be carrying the joke too 
 far. And it will feel more natural if you do." 
 
 She was quite right about it, and he assented. 
 She let him get his cigar well alight, then settled 
 back a little in her chair, as if, somehow, the pre 
 liminaries were finally out of the way, and the 
 real thing, whatever it might turn out to be, 
 about to begin. 
 
 She began by checking off on her fingers. 
 
 "I ve run off with a man I don t know, to a 
 place I don t know. I don t know whose clothes 
 I have on, and I ve just eaten my dinner back 
 ward. I feel as if I must have gone through the 
 looking glass." 
 
 "Why that?" he asked rather suddenly. 
 
 "It was what Alice did, you know; I suppose 
 I thought of it because some one was telling me 
 about a place called that at the Pittsburg fair 
 last summer, and I thought it would have been 
 fun to see it. But this is nicer; this is the real 
 thing. I never knew there was such a country, 
 and I don t a bit want to go back to the other 
 the country where you always know just what 
 to expect and have to take things called conse 
 quences. I ve a lot of questions to ask; and 
 
Looking Glass Country 65 
 
 the first one is, whose pretty clothes are these, and 
 why did you go into that dreadful alley to get them, 
 and are they bought or borrowed or stolen ? " 
 
 "I ll answer no questions," he said, "except 
 in the way of barter." 
 
 She nodded, smiling. "How many does that 
 one of mine exchange for? Never mind; I ll 
 pay." 
 
 "You might have seen those clothes on the 
 boulevard this afternoon; I did. They belong 
 to the famously pretty wife of a pretty famous 
 portrait painter. She has the best-looking clothes 
 of any American on the left bank. She buys 
 them, that is; she never has them, for they re 
 always being borrowed to be painted. She 
 had three gowns in the Salon last year, and one 
 of them got an H. C., and was bought for the Lux 
 embourg. She s been very much set up about 
 that ever since." 
 
 The girl looked at him rather dubiously. 
 "Have a lot of models been wearing these to be 
 painted in?" 
 
 "Oh, they re quite new; she just got them 
 home to-day, herself." 
 
 "And she loaned them to you? What did 
 you have to tell her?" 
 
66 Comrade John 
 
 "Just that I wanted to borrow them. She 
 said she had never had any of her gowns treated 
 architecturally before, and seemed quite pleased." 
 
 "You re an architect?" she asked quickly. 
 
 "Not by a long way," he told her. "But I 
 played at it once." 
 
 "Well, why, if they have money enough to buy 
 such clothes, do they have to live in that dread 
 ful alley?" 
 
 "Down that alley is a perfect burrow of in 
 teresting people, as thick as rabbits. They live 
 there because they like it, and there s no one to 
 tell them they mustn t." 
 
 "How much better it would be," she said, 
 with hot young scorn, "if they all had to live in 
 a row of brownstone houses and do exactly 
 what a lot of stupid people who don t know any 
 better think they ought to. Well, now I ll 
 answer your first question; it ought to have 
 been mine, too, if I d been polite. My name 
 is Cynthia" 
 
 He interrupted quickly enough to forestall the 
 next word. "And mine is John," he said, "but 
 we mustn t tell each other any more than that." 
 
 She looked at him for an instant in simple 
 astonishment, then with a grave sort of curiosity. 
 
Looking Glass Country 67 
 
 "Why?" she asked. " You ve done enough 
 for me to deserve to know who it was for, and 
 I ve let you do so much I ought to be told who 
 did it." 
 
 "If I were to let you tell me, I d have to go 
 into a pigeonhole with all the other young men 
 who ve done you a small service for the sake of 
 scraping your acquaintance ; I guess that pigeon 
 hole is fairly full already, and I like more room, 
 myself. And then, if you don t know my last 
 name, you ll have to call me John, and I shall call 
 you Cynthia and shall remember you that 
 way." 
 
 She smiled faintly over that, but it was to the 
 idea that went before that her next words re 
 ferred. "I don t imagine that you ve ever found 
 yourself crowded in a pigeonhole, or that you 
 ever will. But what is your first question, if you 
 don t want to know who I am?" 
 
 "How Tommy Hollister ever got to know 
 you, and who it was oh, not by name who 
 abandoned you to his protection this afternoon. 
 It was an act of incredible folly, whoever did it." 
 
 The words were uttered without emphasis or 
 color, just as they had been in the afternoon 
 when he had spoken of her immortal soul, and 
 
68 Comrade John 
 
 they stung like the unlooked-for touch of the 
 spur. 
 
 "It s I who am the incredible fool, then," 
 she said with an edge of anger in her voice. 
 "But it happened naturally enough. We sail 
 for home to-morrow, and my aunt can t sleep on 
 the train, so she went on to Cherbourg this noon. 
 I wanted to see the carnival, so I stayed with Mr. 
 Hollister, and was to take the boat train to-night. 
 I didn t exactly like him, but he was introduced 
 to us in a perfectly regular way, by a letter from 
 Mr. Pole, Mr. Moberly Pole, the portrait painter. 
 He painted a portrait, several portraits, of me, 
 and when we were coming over he said he would 
 see that Mr. Hollister looked after us while we 
 were here. And he has been very nice to us ; very 
 attentive, that is, he meant to be nice. Oh, 
 it was foolish, dreadfully foolish, but it wasn t 
 incredible, if you only knew. I shall always 
 remember you and go on thanking you for taking 
 me away from him and sending him off to where 
 I ll never see him again, but " 
 
 She broke off there with a rather startled look 
 which puzzled Chance by resolving into an ex 
 pression of half-humorous dismay, the humor 
 coming to the surface and the dismay fading 
 
Looking Glass Country 69 
 
 out during the little pause that ensued before she 
 spoke again. When she did, her eyes had a glint 
 of mocking defiance in them, too. 
 
 "You don t know what it means to me," she 
 said, "to have found this Looking- Glass Country. 
 I ve been looking for it all my life. You live 
 in it, and you don t know what the other is like, 
 the silly people you re expected to make friends 
 with, the silly things you re expected to do, stupid, 
 proper, empty things. That was what I broke 
 away from this afternoon just for a breath 
 I needed it. And now, in spite of my incredible 
 folly, I ve found what I ve been looking for 
 always. And, please, I m not going away. I 
 don t have to say I won t because I just thought 
 of a reason why I can t. That was why I laughed. 
 Mr. Hollister has my purse with my money and 
 my tickets and my letter of credit everything. 
 So I couldn t possibly go to-night, anyway. I ll 
 have to telegraph Aunt Augusta to come back." 
 
 Chance looked at his watch deliberately, 
 absently rather, and then up at her, smiling in a 
 manner singularly free from mockery, and shook 
 his head. "Incredible folly, just the same," 
 he said, "though I don t think it s you who are 
 the incredible fool. But who in the world is 
 
yo Comrade John 
 
 responsible for you? Who is it you have to 
 mind?" 
 
 " To mind ? " she repeated incredulously. " Like 
 a child? But I m grown up; I don t have to 
 mind anybody." A ripple of amusement came 
 over her face. " You ve made me do more things 
 this one afternoon than any one else has since 
 I was little ever so little." 
 
 "Everybody has to mind, grown up or not," 
 said Chance. "If they don t have to mind a 
 person who s responsible for them, they have to 
 mind a thing they re responsible for. But you re 
 not grown up. You haven t a job." 
 
 He had a stump of a pencil in his hand and had 
 been scrawling little decorations in the margin 
 of the wine list while he talked. He looked up 
 now and found that same deeper curiosity 
 which he had noted in his first glance at her 
 alight in her eyes. 
 
 "Tell me more about that," she commanded. 
 " Tell me what you mean." 
 
 "Why, this is the nub of it," he said, and his 
 unconscious pencil began making a little star 
 in the middle of the paper; "when you re a child, 
 you re a part of some one else s job, and you have 
 to mind that person because he s responsible for 
 
Looking Glass Country 71 
 
 you. But when you ve a job of your own, when 
 there s a piece of work that you have to mind 
 because it s up to you, then you re grown up. 
 I ve known boys of twelve who were, and men of 
 forty who weren t. But either way you ve got 
 to mind something, or you re on the way to ever 
 lasting smash." 
 
 "But how can you obey people who don t know 
 anything," she protested hotly; "people who 
 haven t it in them to make you obey, or how can 
 you obey things that aren t worth doing ? like 
 all the things I ve ever had in my life? I ve 
 never had a better reason for doing a thing than 
 that it was what everybody was supposed to do. 
 That s why I want to stay here in the Looking- 
 Glass Country." 
 
 "For just this evening," Chance said soberly, 
 "you can go on obeying me." He clasped his 
 hands and pushed them forward on the table. 
 "I m on a holiday, but I took a job this afternoon, 
 the job of taking you away from Hollister, and 
 from that crowd of young savages who meant to 
 take you away from him, and handing you back 
 safe" he paused there; then went on, steadily 
 and gravely, "handing you back as good as you 
 were this morning to whoever it was who was 
 
72 Comrade John 
 
 responsible for you and had failed in his duty. 
 I took the job; and I m not through with it yet." 
 
 He was not looking at her nor she at him. 
 Her hands were clasped, but under the table, for 
 they were quivering like every other part of her. 
 He had paused again, but after a moment went 
 steadily on. 
 
 "If this were a looking-glass country I d be 
 inclined to let you stay in it, but it s not. Even 
 that side-show faker at Pittsburg was nearer it. 
 A man could go there and ride in the scenic 
 railway or shoot the chutes and get the thrill of 
 danger and abandonment without the conse 
 quences. Somebody that he didn t know about 
 was responsible for his safety; that was some 
 body s job. He was free to yell and catch his 
 breath and be as reckless and adventuresome as 
 he pleased. Whenever he d had enough he could 
 stop, and when he was tired he could go away. 
 He d had two or three hours in a place where, 
 apparently, there were no such things as con 
 sequences. But here 
 
 " People come here," he went on, and now he 
 looked up at her, "people without jobs, who 
 think this is a looking-glass country. It looks 
 like it, but you get what s coming to you here 
 
Looking Glass Country 73 
 
 just as surely as in a steel mill. Tommy Hoi- 
 lister was hunting for a looking-glass country, 
 and if you asked him now where he lived, and 
 he were capable of telling you the truth, which 
 he isn t, he d tell you he lived in Hell." 
 
 He pushed his chair back from the table and 
 smiled at her with the same look of almost boyish 
 deference that she had seen in his face when he 
 had invited her to sit down at his table in front 
 of the Cafe de la Paix. "We ve just comfortable 
 time for the boat train," he said. 
 
 She was holding tightly the edge of the table 
 with both hands. "I can t go," she protested; 
 "I haven t any money or ticket or anything." 
 
 He laughed. " That s my job," he said easily. 
 "That doesn t concern you at all." Then, so 
 bering suddenly, he reached across the table 
 and took both her hands in his. It was a real 
 grip; a little tighter and it would have hurt, 
 and his eyes all the while held hers, calmly, 
 coolly, with almost a smile in behind them, some 
 where. When she remembered that moment 
 afterward, it seemed almost that he had pulled 
 her, physically, up over the brink of a precipice. 
 "The big part of the job is yours," he said, " 
 and you ve done it." 
 
74 Comrade John 
 
 The grip of his hands slackened, became a sort 
 of friendly caress ; then he released her and came 
 around behind her chair to help her on with her 
 coat. 
 
 Five minutes before the hour for the train to 
 leave they stood on the platform outside Cynthia s 
 compartment. Her hand-bag had been extracted 
 from the consigne where it had been deposited 
 earlier in the day; she had her tickets and a 
 handful of John Chance s bank-notes. 
 
 "We shall have to give up our mystery," she 
 said, "because I shall have to know where to 
 send the money and the clothes." Then she 
 laughed, for she caught a fleeting look which told 
 her that this necessity had taken him unawares. 
 He smiled too. 
 
 "Wait a minute," he said. Then, "Let me 
 have one of your cards. Hand it to me face 
 down," he added, as she was getting it out of her 
 card-case. He pencilled on the back of it : 
 
 Monsieur Jean 
 
 9 Impasse du Maine, Paris. 
 
 "You can send the clothes there," he said. 
 "The concierge knows me, and will let me have 
 them. As for the money where do you bank ? 
 Monroe s?" 
 
Looking Glass Country 75 
 
 She nodded. He began feeling in his pockets. 
 "I want something we can tear in two," he ex 
 plained. 
 
 She drew an American dollar bill out of her 
 card-case. "I ve been carrying this around to 
 remind me of home," she told him. "Will it 
 do?" 
 
 " Just !" he said. He tore it across and handed 
 one-half of it to her. "You can send it with a 
 draft for the amount to Monroe s and tell them 
 to deposit it to the account of the man who pre 
 sents the other half. And while you re about it, 
 you d better tell them to stop payment on the 
 letter of credit. That s better than trying to 
 get it back from Hollister." 
 
 It was time she was getting into the train. 
 He helped her in. The guards were already 
 locking the doors. 
 
 "Good-by," he said. 
 
 She held out both hands to him, seemed to 
 catch at his and hold fast. "I don t know what 
 I m going to do," she said. "I shan t have you 
 to to make me mind, and there s nobody 
 else." 
 
 "Get a thing to mind. That s better than a 
 person. Get a job." 
 
76 Comrade John 
 
 ."Yes," she said. 
 
 He sprang down from the train and it pulled 
 slowly out of the station. 
 
 He paused in the entrance to light a big cigar; 
 then swung out gayly across the square. His 
 holiday had begun well. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 ELLEN 
 
 BUT holidays end; and April found John 
 Chance back in this country and deep in the job 
 which he had agreed to mind for a good many 
 months to come. Stein had thrown an unex 
 pected interest into this job by asking him to get 
 some part of the work done, to get up as brilliant 
 and telling an effect as he possibly could, in time 
 for the "Toil and Triumph" convention, which 
 was to be held at Beechcroft on the tenth and 
 eleventh of June. 
 
 To reach Beechcroft from New York you left 
 the West Shore Railroad at a point where a rock- 
 walled creek joined the Hudson, took the Kinder- 
 kill Valley Railroad to a subdued little village 
 known as Broadrib s Station, and there, were 
 you locally known as a "toiler," you entered a 
 dusty, three-seated mountain wagon for the final 
 stage of the journey. But if, instead of alighting 
 at Broadrib s Station, you had gone on eight or 
 77 
 
78 Comrade John 
 
 ten miles farther up the Kinderkill Valley, and 
 had glanced out the car window, you would 
 perhaps have observed, on a shed beside the 
 track, the words, "Excelsior Siding." The name 
 was not commemorative of Longfellow s poem; 
 it indicated that here was the shipping- point for 
 a small excelsior factory. 
 
 From the Geological Survey Map, which, 
 mounted on linen, was always in a convenient 
 pocket, Chance had learned that Excelsior Siding 
 was much nearer the spot where he was to live 
 and work for the next four months than was 
 Broadrib s Station. It had been regarded as 
 a less convenient place of approach because of 
 the mountain ridge which separated Beechcroft 
 Valley from the valley of the Kinderkill. The 
 map told him, however, that the old wood road, 
 which entered the upper Beechcroft by way 
 of the Mt. William notch, while steep, was not 
 impracticable for teams. This gave him what he 
 wished, to begin with, a base of supplies which 
 was not on the railroad and not in a settlement; 
 and it also gave him what was as good as a private 
 road for his line of communications. 
 
 Accordingly, he built a power plant at the 
 siding, and laid a cable through the notch for 
 
Ellen 79 
 
 the transmission of the electric current to his 
 lamps at Beechcroft. He had finally got Stein s 
 permission for those lamps. Directly in the 
 notch, two miles from Beechcroft, stood the shops 
 and shanties of his workmen. And midway 
 down the road were the rough shacks, sided 
 with pine slabs and roofed with hemlock bark, 
 which were occupied by himself, Henry Bau- 
 mann, his chief draughtsman, and Bill Hemen- 
 way. Here they could dress for either direction, 
 in tunic and sandals for Beechcroft, in working 
 clothes or business suit for the camp, Excelsior 
 Siding, or New York. Here also was the 
 draughting and model room. There were stables, 
 with working and driving horses, at both the sid 
 ing and the camp. Telephone wires connected 
 the siding with the camp, the model room, and 
 the temple site, with an extension down the 
 valley to the home of Hobbema, Stein s " general 
 overseer." 
 
 On a sunny afternoon, late in April, John 
 Chance, bareheaded, barearmed, barelegged, 
 clad in knee-length gray tunic and gray sandals, 
 sat on a projecting ledge, far up on the hillside, 
 gazing down into the upper valley. "It won t 
 do," he was thinking, as he puffed slowly at a 
 
8o Comrade John 
 
 brier pipe. "The whole valley is the wrong 
 shape. It is too narrow and gloomy it is 
 all shadows, even at this time of day. I ve got 
 to change it brighten it up make it smile." 
 He drew a pencil from the pocket of his tunic, 
 tore off a broad strip of birch bark from the tree 
 at his back, and began making desultory free 
 hand sketches. 
 
 The location of the buildings was a fixed 
 quantity; they were to stand on the natural 
 terrace which roughly encircled the little valley 
 at a height of thirty to fifty or sixty feet above 
 the stream. It was the narrow, winding gorge 
 through which the stream came tumbling down 
 that bothered him. It could only be widened 
 and straightened into conventional terms at a 
 prohibitive cost; and yet there it lay, a gloomy 
 little jungle in the very centre of his picture. 
 
 Suddenly a question came into his eyes; then 
 they lighted up with the answer. He began to 
 sketch rapidly, almost nervously, on a fresh strip 
 of bark. His eyes sought the notch, which par 
 tially separated the upper and lower valleys, 
 and he nodded. Finally, after a long survey 
 of the scene, he slipped the roll of bark into his 
 pocket, and struck off down the old lumber trail 
 
Ellen 81 
 
 toward his shack. The problem was solved. 
 It had been a pretty problem, of its kind; and 
 it was with a feeling of keen satisfaction that he 
 tramped through the fresh green woods, leaping 
 the mossy logs that lay across the trail, and plung 
 ing through the little thickets of nettles and black 
 berries which had encroached upon it. 
 
 Henry Baumann was at work on the large 
 clay model of the new Beechcroft when Bill 
 Hemenway dropped in to pass the time of day. 
 The superintendent of construction wore the 
 valley costume. The draughtsman had hidden 
 the greater part of his person behind an apron, 
 which was smeared, like his hands, with the bluish 
 clay. There were flecks of clay in his hair and 
 in his full brown beard. 
 
 "I should think," he was saying, "that these 
 people would know that they were getting fooled." 
 
 Hemenway, a wiry little man, shook his head. 
 "Not for a minute, Henry. You don t know 
 the human bird. And you in the show business." 
 
 "But when they see our men up here, how can 
 they think they are doing the work themselves? " 
 
 "If I ve learned anything these last ten years, 
 Henry, it s that facts don t count with the crowd." 
 
 "What is it that counts, then?" 
 
82 Comrade John 
 
 "Looks. You can do anything you like so 
 long as you keep your face straight. It s losing 
 your face that knocks you under. Those near- 
 toil fakers think they built this place. Do you 
 suppose they made those five miles of road to 
 Broadrib s Station? Never. It takes sweat to 
 make a road, and they ain t sweating much. 
 Do you suppose they built the houses and shops ?" 
 
 " I thought so." 
 
 "Never. The only building they ever put up 
 was a hen-house for that man Hobbema. And 
 have you seen it ? It s going to blow down in the 
 next high wind. They only make the dinky 
 things. When there s real work wanted, Stein, 
 or the other faker, hires some real men to do it. 
 That don t bother em any. They go on talking 
 about the flowering of beauty through toil. 
 It ain t the things of this life that counts, Henry. 
 It s the names of things. Barnum s the only 
 real philosopher that s happened along lately 
 Barnum and Stein. Stein knows that the 
 poor fools want to be lied to, when they re sick 
 of themselves." 
 
 "Off course," said Baumann, musingly; "I 
 am not a religious man. One off them looks 
 like another to me." 
 
Ellen 83 
 
 " One of what?" 
 
 "One off religions." 
 
 "You don t call this a religion?" 
 
 "Yess, I do. It iss." 
 
 "Hardly," said Hemenway. But a troubled 
 expression came into his face. 
 
 " You are one off them," said Baumann. "You 
 wear their clothes." 
 
 Hemenway was looking down at his tunic. 
 The troubled expression deepened. 
 
 "That iss where you are funny odd," 
 Baumann continued. "You are a religious man. 
 Maybe it iss the names off things that counts 
 with you. What counts with me iss my family, 
 and my insurance, and the money in the savings 
 bank." 
 
 Suddenly the tunic was pulled up over Hemen- 
 way s head, stripped off his arms, and thrown 
 flying into a corner. The superintendent was 
 aroused, and he stood forth in all the dignity 
 of five feet and five inches of underclothing, 
 spidery arms, and blazing eyes. 
 
 "What is it, boys?" asked a quiet voice. 
 
 Both turned, and saw John Chance, who had 
 paused midway between the door and his roll- 
 top desk. The Beechcroft costume set him off 
 
84 Comrade John 
 
 very well. His face and neck, and his bare arms 
 and shapely legs, were tanned an even brown 
 by the spring sun. 
 
 "Now look here, Mr. Chance," cried Hemen- 
 way, "is this thing a religion, or ain t it?" 
 
 "Certainly it iss a religion," said Baumann, 
 rubbing his hands on his apron. 
 
 "That s what I want to know, Mr. Chance. 
 Is Henry right, or ain t he?" 
 
 "It iss a religion, and Toil and Triumph iss 
 their Bible." 
 
 "You hear what Henry says. Now I ve stuck 
 by you, Mr. Chance, and I haven t a word of 
 complaint about the way you ve treated me. 
 You tell me to ride the wild elephant, or to bring 
 down the bronze lady from Madison Square 
 tower, or to go out and blow up your touring 
 car, and I do it to-night. I don t ask questions, 
 and I don t send somebody else. I do it. But 
 you ve never asked me to change my religion, 
 Mr. Chance. I m a Methodist, and I m going 
 to stay a Methodist. If that circus dress means 
 that I ain t a Methodist any longer, it stays right 
 there, and I go out." 
 
 He paused for breath. 
 
 "It iss a religion," said Henry Baumann. 
 
Ellen 85 
 
 "Is it, or ain t it?" cried Bill Hemenway. 
 
 Chance shook his head good-humoredly. "I 
 never thought of calling it a religion," he said. 
 And observing that his superintendent was still 
 in doubt, he added, "I think of it as a show." 
 
 He seated himself at the desk, glanced at the 
 pile of correspondence which was awaiting his 
 attention, and pressed a button. In a moment 
 his stenographer, a young man, entered, note 
 book in hand. Chance took up the letters, and 
 either dictated a reply to each or jotted down a 
 memorandum on the margin. When the ste 
 nographer had withdrawn, with a full evening s 
 work before him, he took up the sheets which the 
 timekeeper and the accountant had turned in, 
 and made a note or two on his scratch pad. 
 Next he tipped back in his swivel chair, pad on 
 knee, and jotted down a number of items which 
 he hung up on the hook marked "Purchasing 
 Agt," on the wall beside the desk. 
 
 These matters disposed of, he swung around, 
 and asked Hemenway and Baumann to draw up 
 chairs. 
 
 "I have a job for you boys," he said, "a 
 real job, this time. We re going to floor the 
 upper valley." 
 
86 Comrade John 
 
 The two assistants looked at each other. 
 "Floor the upper valley" mused Bill. "With 
 jasper, maybe." 
 
 Chance smiled. "No, Bill, with a looking- 
 glass with a lake. We re going to throw a 
 dam across the notch, just above Hobbema s 
 house. No one is to know of this until the morn 
 ing of June tenth. We shall have nearly six 
 weeks for preparation, but the actual work of 
 throwing the dam together will be done at the 
 last moment. We ll give them a little surprise. 
 Now how fast can you build that dam?" 
 
 The two men looked at each other. 
 
 "What material?" asked the superintendent. 
 "Concrete?" 
 
 Chance shook his head. " That would take too 
 long. We shall use timber and planking, weighted 
 down with stone. I ll have you start in pretty soon 
 building masonry abutments on each side, fifty feet 
 apart. They will appear to be buttresses for the 
 promenade. You will put spme men at work on the 
 hillside the south hillside, above the dam get 
 ting out rock and breaking it up ; and have an aerial 
 trolley ready so that you can run the cables across 
 after dark and slide the stone down. "Now, how 
 much time shall you want for the work?" 
 
Ellen 87 
 
 "It could be done," observed the draughtsman, 
 "in four or five days." 
 
 "We can beat that," Hemenway said, slowly 
 and thoughtfully. "With everything ready, as 
 you say, Mr. Chance, I could throw that dam 
 together in two days. With a little luck to help, 
 it might be done in thirty-six hours." 
 
 "I ll give you twelve to fifteen hours," said 
 Chance. 
 
 "All right, sir." 
 
 "Plan to start in at six o clock sharp, in the 
 evening of June eighth." 
 
 "Build her at night?" 
 
 "Yes. That will give from the morning of 
 June ninth to the morning of June tenth for the 
 water to run in. By six or eight o clock on the 
 morning of June tenth, I want the lake brimful." 
 
 "All right, sir." 
 
 "Work up the details between you. I am 
 ordering the materials now. Well, good night, 
 boys." 
 
 "Good night, Mr. Chance." 
 
 When they had left the room, the two men 
 looked at each other. 
 
 "He d say it just that way, Henry, if he was 
 asking us to drain out the East River before 
 
88 Comrade John 
 
 supper so he could run his car over to Brooklyn 
 without getting caught in the bridge crush." 
 
 The draughtsman thrust his pencil through the 
 thick hair above his ear, and leading the way 
 into his sleeping-room, seated himself on the bed. 
 "He iss a genius, iss John Chance. He sees 
 pictures vishions. He flies to them he iss 
 impatient off men who haff their feet on the 
 ground." 
 
 "You re talking about me, now, eh?" 
 
 "I am talking about John Chance. I, too, 
 see the picture he sees. It is beautiful." 
 
 "All right, Henry. While you re seeing the 
 pictures, I m going to put in about three hours " 
 he glanced at his watch "about four hours 
 sleep. It s my job to build this here picture so 
 everybody else can see it, and my feet stay right 
 on the ground until she s done. If I was to 
 go up in the air now, there d be a holy show at 
 Upper Beechcroft. Do you mind, Henry, the 
 time the building fell in at Atlanta, a week before 
 the opening, and John Chance sent for me. 
 We put up a sign, Nothing daunted Will 
 open in Ten Days. You painted the sign, and 
 the boss and I put it up. And we did it oh, 
 we did it." 
 
Ellen 89 
 
 "Yess," repeated the draughtsman after him, 
 "we did it." 
 
 "Well, good night to you, Henry." And with 
 this the superintendent went to his room, set 
 his alarm clock, and threw himself on the bed. 
 
 A few moments later the sound of wheels came 
 in through the open windows, a horse was pulled 
 up at the door, and after a moment the pur 
 chasing agent, a despondent-looking young man 
 who wore his hat on the side of his head, entered 
 the draughting room. He greeted John Chance 
 with a half-perceptible wave of the hand and 
 inclination of the head, and took down the order 
 slips from the hook. 
 
 Item (he read), 6 self-dumping buckets for aerial 
 trolley. (Do not let Green-Hackett Co. 
 figure on this. They delayed the last job.) 
 Item. Pair of swans (extra large white). 
 Item. Do. Blue herons. 
 Item. 1 60 timbers 12" x 12" x 20 . 
 Item. 72 planks (undressed) 2" x 12" X i6 S". 
 Item. First chair made by Morris. 
 Item. 3 bbls. hard grease. (Our claim of leakage 
 on last order not yet allowed. See to this.) 
 Item. The oldest bell and the oldest pulpit in 
 any of the California mission churches. 
 
QO Comrade John 
 
 Must be attested by priest or caretaker and 
 by mayor of nearest town. 
 
 Item. Coyote Bill s Wild West Show seized by 
 sheriff last week at Paterson, N. J. Buy canvas 
 enclosure at the sale, also dressing- tent. 
 Item. Gondola, with gondolier (must have tenor 
 voice). 
 
 The purchasing agent, like Baumann and 
 Hemenway, had been with John Chance in all 
 his enterprises, and had long ago arrived at the 
 state of mind where nothing his employer might 
 say or do could surprise him. 
 
 "Looks like it was going to be quite a show 
 here," he observed, turning the order slips over 
 languidly. 
 
 "It is," Chance replied cheerfully. "Oh, 
 by the way, Frank, I ll give you a blanket order 
 to rush everything." 
 
 The purchasing agent nodded, and left the 
 room. But before driving back to the siding he 
 poked his head in at Baumann s door. 
 
 "Know of any Morris in the chair business, 
 Henry?" 
 
 The draughtsman shook his head, and looked 
 at the order. "It may be that he means William 
 Morris," he observed. 
 
Ellen 91 
 
 "Who s he?" 
 
 "He was an English writer, but I think he 
 made some chairs." 
 
 The purchasing agent turned the slip over in 
 his hand and gazed at the back of it, while his 
 other hand shoved his hat still farther to one side 
 and absently rumpled his hair. Then, without 
 further questioning, he left the room; and a 
 moment later Baumann heard the scraping of the 
 buggy wheel as he turned about in the narrow 
 road and headed back to catch the night train 
 South. 
 
 There was still an hour before the supper bell 
 would ring, and Chance, laying his watch before 
 him on the desk, settled down to think. Before 
 he had dwelt very long on the Beechcroft propo 
 sition, his imagination had taken fire. It had 
 puzzled him at first that a big, presumably sane 
 Wall Street financier should ally himself with such 
 a man as Stein, but he was now beginning to 
 understand. As a proposition, the thing stirred 
 him up, made his eyes dance. There were simply 
 no limits to the potential profits in it. Beside 
 it, the show business paled away, faded out. 
 Where an amusement park would be lucky to 
 get two dollars from a man, a Beechcroft could 
 
92 Comrade John 
 
 take everything he had, sell him a tunic, and have 
 his labor ever afterward for nothing. As for 
 Stein, while probably the financier kept a pretty 
 close eye on him, there was no board of auditors 
 to poke around among his books, there was 
 no committee of stockholders to ask questions 
 and get out injunctions. It was beautiful. 
 Stein was welcome to the glory and the profits. 
 All Chance asked was the opportunity to play that 
 tremendous hand, and play it right. And that 
 opportunity seemed now to be his. 
 
 He proposed to do it with something which 
 would have the effect of a miracle, the wonder 
 ful, glowing, uplifting picture of the new Beech- 
 croft, built by inexperienced hands, the sponta 
 neous flowering of the prophet s dream. Stein s 
 attitude on the miracle question disturbed him 
 not at all that was where the beauties of human 
 inconsistency entered in. He could trust Stein 
 to deny blandly that the marvellous new Beech- 
 croft was anything more than a working-out of 
 the Beechcroft idea. The only danger lay in the 
 possibility of some reporter finding out that it 
 was John Chance, of Atlanta, and Omaha, and 
 St. Louis, and Pittsburg, who was really re 
 building Beechcroft, and stumbling on a hint of 
 
Ellen 93 
 
 the fact that he had been hired to do it. That 
 would blow up the miracle; it might even blow 
 up Stein and Beauty through Toil. But that 
 was the hazard of the game, and he accepted it 
 with a chuckle. What made the whole thing 
 really interesting, what gave it the twist he rather 
 enjoyed, was that he had a very little over six 
 weeks to do it in. 
 
 A large part of the construction work he would 
 not begin at all until after the convention. But 
 the temple and its adjoining buildings must go up; 
 and, as they should rise above the foundations, 
 the surrounding scaffolding would be enclosed 
 in canvas until the morning of June tenth, when 
 the picture would be unveiled. All this would 
 be the more easy of accomplishment because the 
 dwellings and shops of the older settlement lay 
 farther down the valley, where the slopes were 
 not so rugged. It was the narrow little bit at the 
 head of the valley, where the cascades were, 
 hardly more than a quarter of a mile of it, 
 that Chance had chosen for practically all of 
 his work. There was but one building here, 
 a cottage that nestled among the foliage, and it 
 would have to go. After supper, accordingly, 
 carrying an unlighted square "art" lantern, 
 
94 Comrade John 
 
 with a candle inside and holes punched through 
 the sides, he swung off down the dusky wood 
 road to see Hobbema about it. 
 
 Hobbema, the general overseer of Beechcroft 
 life and activity, lived in a house which was 
 .second only to Stein s in size. Like all the struc 
 tures in the valley, it was built and furnished along 
 the lines which those persons who talk about 
 "arts and crafts" call "artistic." The local 
 intrigues had always been focussed on Hobbema, 
 and in consequence he looked like a man who did 
 not sleep well of nights. 
 
 Chance walked briskly down the valley road 
 past the outlying cottage and the dark shops. 
 He met one of Stein s "Beechcroft Guards," 
 an alert country boy with well-knotted biceps 
 and calves and with the blue band of authority 
 over one shoulder, passed the time of night with 
 him, then turned in at the house of the overseer. 
 He swung the big brass knocker, and in a mo 
 ment was ushered in by a soulful-eyed little maid, 
 evidently one of those Beechcrofters who, in lieu 
 of money, were giving domestic service. Hob 
 bema would have liked to keep an English butler 
 and a retinue of servants, like Stein. But that 
 little inconsistency was permitted only to the 
 
Ellen 95 
 
 prophet. Chance walked into the long, low- 
 ceiled living-room, and settled himself comfort 
 ably, knowing from a former experience or two 
 that the overseer, being a small soul, would keep 
 him waiting for a while; and finding a flabbily 
 bound copy of Rossetti s poems at his elbow, he 
 picked it up and skimmed the pages. 
 
 "Good evening, Comrade," said a thin voice; 
 and he looked up to encounter the nervous, 
 shifting eyes, and the narrow face and forehead 
 of Samuel L. Hobbema, ex-preacher, ex-college 
 professor, ex-lecturer, ex-real-estate broker, who 
 was known in the Beechcroft vernacular as 
 "Comrade Samuel." Neither he nor his wife 
 ever addressed Chance by his full name, because 
 they did not know it; indeed, their evident dif 
 ficulty in placing him and his relations with the 
 prophet was one of the humorous little facts that 
 made the necessity of talking with them at all 
 not unendurable to him. 
 
 The overseer was soon followed by his wife, 
 who was taller than he, and certainly not younger. 
 
 "What can I do for you, Comrade?" asked 
 Hobbema. 
 
 Chance settled back in the big Morris chair, 
 and gave himself a moment for thought. He 
 
g6 Comrade John 
 
 would have to do business pretty steadily with 
 the overseer for some time to come, and so he 
 deliberately put by the desire he always felt, when 
 he talked with him, to handle him brusquely. 
 From the depths of the chair he spoke, unaware 
 that he was exploding a bomb in the bosom of 
 the Hobbema family. 
 
 "Who lives in that cottage in the upper valley ? " 
 
 Both started perceptibly, and looked at him. 
 Then Mrs. Hobbema fixed her eyes on her hus 
 band, and he stared out for a moment through 
 the small-paned window into the twilight. And 
 then, as the question was still resting unanswered 
 on the air, the overseer turned and made an 
 effort to overcome his embarrassment. 
 
 "You mean ah " 
 
 "Where the road turns," said Chance. 
 
 Husband and wife looked at each other, the 
 one furtive, the other stern. 
 
 "A young woman lives there," said Hobbema. 
 " She is known as " Comrade Ellen," and he added, 
 "she makes baskets." 
 
 There certainly was nothing appalling in her 
 occupation. Chance would have enjoyed a good 
 laugh as he looked across at this singular pair, 
 the man so insignificant in his tunic, the woman 
 
Ellen 97 
 
 so large and forbidding in her severely chaste 
 white robes. But since his interest ran no farther 
 than the cottage in question, he went on to dis 
 pose of the business. 
 
 "I shall be sorry to inconvenience her, Mr. 
 Hobbema, but our plans make it necessary to 
 remove the building." 
 
 "To remove it!" both repeated. And the 
 overseer added, awkwardly, "It was Mr. Stein s 
 idea putting it up there. I should not like to 
 do anything so drastic without an order from him." 
 
 "You might wire him, if you prefer." 
 
 Again the overseer turned to his wife. 
 
 "I am perfectly willing to take the responsi 
 bility," Chance added, "if you will look after 
 the young lady." 
 
 "She could be put in with the Weavers, 
 Samuel," suggested Mrs. Hobbema, "while other 
 arrangements were being made for her. I 
 think they would take her for a few days if you 
 explained it." 
 
 "Or we might take her in here, my dear." 
 
 "No, we might not!" came the uncompro 
 mising reply. 
 
 Chance s mild interest in the situation was 
 dying out. "If you re willing, I ll move the 
 
 H 
 
98 Comrade John 
 
 house down this way. I shall have to do some 
 thing about it this week." 
 
 "Is it as urgent as that, Comrade?" 
 
 "It is." 
 
 "Then perhaps we had better walk up there 
 now, and explain it to her." And with this, 
 braving his wife s frown, the overseer went out 
 into the hall and lighted his lantern. 
 
 When they were out on the road, and had 
 turned up the valley, he went on to say: 
 
 "This thing is a little awkward, coming up in 
 just this way, Comrade. I am glad that you 
 spoke to me about it. I think you understand 
 that I am the man at the throttle here. All the 
 business of Beechcroft passes through my hands. 
 Mr. Stein talks everything over with me. He 
 has to, as a matter of fact, if our work here is 
 to go on at all. But of course, if you feel 
 sure that your authority as the master builder 
 permits you to do this, I will step aside in the 
 matter. We must not have any conflict of au 
 thority, Comrade, in the absence of our leader." 
 
 He looked up out of the sides of his eyes. He 
 was wondering how much Chance could be led 
 to tell about himself and his singular position at 
 Beechcroft. As overseer, he alone knew how 
 
Ellen 
 
 99 
 
 singular that position was. And he knew too 
 many of Stein s secrets to remain for long com 
 fortably ignorant concerning the details of this 
 one. It was clear enough to him that the master 
 builder was not a regular devotee. But, on the 
 other hand, he had so far discovered no record 
 of payments made to him. 
 
 "I suppose you are informed," he ventured, 
 "about the great work Mr. Stein is developing 
 at New York?" 
 
 "I m afraid I am not." 
 
 "He expects very soon to announce a splendid 
 addition to the "Triumph" movement, Comrade, 
 
 something which will give a new impetus to 
 the work. Of course it is not announced yet, 
 
 it is confidential, you understand, but he 
 expects to bring a woman who is very young 
 and very beautiful. If she comes, she will study 
 here with the purpose of carrying Mr. Stein s 
 truth to the country to the world. She will be 
 our Joan of Arc, rousing the country to enthu 
 siasm. There seems to be little danger of a 
 slip now. The new convert, the famous Mr. 
 Pole, has been a great help to him. I cannot 
 say more than that he is anxious that our new 
 Beechcroft shall make the most striking im- 
 
ioo Comrade John 
 
 pression on the tenth of June, when he brings 
 his party up from town." 
 
 Chance smiled a little, and looked off up the 
 starlit valley. He saw it, not as it was, but as it 
 was to be when he should be through with it. 
 It would fetch them he knew it. The mark 
 he had set himself was to make old Stein himself 
 gasp nothing less when his eyes should first 
 rest on the completed picture. The only thing 
 that could spoil that wonderful first impression 
 would be clouds, or a fog. All he asked was sun 
 shine. He would provide everything else. 
 
 " The movement is bound to be a triumph indeed, 
 Comrade," the overseer was saying at his elbow. 
 " We are destined to sweep this broad land, to throw 
 the light of truth into every dark corner. What 
 are the roots of unhappiness, Comrade ? Are they 
 not idleness and luxury? It is only by ceaseless 
 toil that we may build the beautiful, that we may 
 achieve character. It is only by achieving character 
 that we may be happy, that we may know the 
 perfect peace of mind. It is all so simple, so easy 
 to grasp, Comrade. Think what it will mean when, 
 instead of a paltry quarter of a million believers, 
 we shall have a million, five millions, ten millions ! 
 Think what it will mean to this nation!" 
 
Ellen 101 
 
 They were passing through the narrowest 
 part of the valley, where there was room for little 
 more than the stream and the road. With a brief 
 "I beg your pardon," Chance stopped short, 
 held his lantern aloft, and scrutinized the steep 
 walls on either side, where the bare, wet rock of 
 the mountain side, cropping out here and there 
 through the thin covering of soil and brush, threw 
 back the shine of his lantern. He caught at a 
 sapling and swung himself down to the stream, 
 looking closely at the shelving banks, and tak 
 ing rough measurements with his eye. It would 
 be easier than he had supposed; absurdly easy, 
 considering the remarkable result to be obtained. 
 Then, with a little nod of satisfaction, he 
 scrambled back to the road. 
 
 "All right, Comrade Samuel," he said cheer 
 fully. "Here s the house, just ahead of us." 
 As they walked briskly on, he added, "By the 
 way, I shall have to change the road all round, 
 where it passes through the notch here." 
 
 Hobbema knocked and then entered. The 
 door gave directly into the living-room which, 
 with its flat wall surface, its green-stained beams 
 overhead, and its absence of any but the simplest 
 ornaments, was very restful. What caught the 
 
IO2 Comrade John 
 
 eye at once in a manner to disturb somewhat 
 this harmony of outline, were the long rows of 
 baskets, of all sizes and colors and shapes, that 
 stood along the walls, and the heaps of baskets 
 in the farther corners. After the one sweeping 
 glance about the room, Chance found his eye 
 drawn to the young woman who was putting by 
 an unfinished basket, with streamers of colored 
 raffia trailing from it, and rising to meet them. 
 Her robes were not white, like those of most of 
 the other Beechcroft women, but yellow a 
 yellow that was almost green in the lamplight. 
 She was tall, and so slender that she seemed to 
 sway as she walked, or glided, toward them. 
 She was not beautiful, so much Chance de 
 cided at once, but there was about her a cu 
 rious sort of distinction. Her face was long and 
 almost angular, set off severely by the straight, 
 parted hair. Her eyes were large and dark, and 
 seemed at one moment lustrous, at another clouded. 
 But her hands were her most striking feature 
 long and slender, with tapering, restless fingers. 
 
 She merely inclined her head toward the over 
 seer. Her eyes were fixed on Chance in a way 
 that made him a little uncomfortable. She laid 
 her hand in his, looking steadily into his eyes, 
 
Ellen 103 
 
 and said, in a voice of some natural depth and 
 freshness, but expressionless : 
 
 "You are Comrade John, the builder. I am 
 glad you have come here. I think we shall be 
 friends." 
 
 They seated themselves beneath the tall, 
 green-shaded lamp, and she resumed her work 
 on the basket. 
 
 "You have come to tell me something," she 
 said, speaking directly to Chance. 
 
 "Comrade John has a a matter to discuss 
 with you," began the overseer; but she inter 
 rupted him, positively, but without emotion. 
 
 "Then let him speak to me," she said. 
 
 There was something attractive about her 
 in spite of her strange ways, something which 
 Chance felt to be utter, uncompromising honesty. 
 He looked at her for a moment and then said, 
 with a touch of deference in his voice : 
 
 "The subject will not be pleasant for you, 
 Comrade Ellen." The words seemed a natural 
 enough mode of address, as they fell from his lips. 
 "It will be necessary to move this house into the 
 lower valley." 
 
 She lowered her work and looked at him. 
 "Why?" she asked. 
 
IO4 Comrade John 
 
 " Because, I am very sorry to say, it is in the 
 way of our work here." 
 
 There was a long silence, while she read the 
 face of the master builder. Then she slowly 
 turned to the overseer. 
 
 "You would not have brought him to me with 
 this news a year ago before Herman Stein 
 before" 
 
 She did not finish. Hobbema s narrow face 
 grew slowly red. His eyes shifted about, and 
 finally fixed themselves on the half-formed basket 
 in her lap. And Chance, as he looked, first at 
 the flushing charlatan, then at the fearless, 
 misguided, terribly lonely young woman, who, 
 whatever she might be, had at least the courage 
 of the child and the simpleton, the courage 
 which drags out that which cowardice would 
 conceal, began to understand this . singular situa 
 tion; and he forgot even his contempt for the 
 man in his great pity for the woman. So this 
 was the trail of Stein ! So Beechcroft was not 
 a joke ! 
 
 "Well," she said, "is that all?" 
 
 Chance bowed. 
 
 "Then I suppose there is nothing more to be 
 said?" 
 
Ellen 105 
 
 Chance arose ; and then, as the overseer moved 
 toward the door, he turned and extended his 
 hand. He met her gaze unflinchingly, and with 
 out lowering his hand. Finally she took it. 
 
 "I am sorry," he said. "I did not know 
 how much it might mean. I did not even know 
 whom I should be disturbing. I am sorry." 
 
 "It marks the end," she replied, in the same 
 low, expressionless voice. And then, evidently 
 moved by a swift impulse, she added, so low 
 that the overseer could not hear, "Come back 
 in twenty minutes." 
 
 He bowed and walked away. And a moment 
 later he was saying good night to Hobbema, out 
 in the road. 
 
 "I have been thinking, Comrade," said the 
 overseer, with a glance toward the house, which 
 looked very snug in its setting of vines and shrub 
 bery, all a- rustle in the night breeze, "I ve been 
 thinking that perhaps it would be better if you 
 understood " 
 
 "Good night," Chance broke in. And he 
 walked rapidly away, up the dim road. 
 
 That something which had been aroused within 
 him had not wholly quieted down when he re 
 turned a quarter of an hour later. She was 
 
106 Comrade John 
 
 standing in the open doorway looking off into 
 the night. 
 
 "Come here," she said, leading him in behind 
 the vine that screened the veranda, and deliber 
 ately placing him where the soft interior light 
 fell on him; "I don t know who you are you 
 whom they call Comrade John. But I know 
 that you do not belong at Beechcroft. Men with 
 eyes like yours do not come here. Women come 
 here, and fools. Tell me why are you here?" 
 
 Chance deliberated a moment. 
 
 "You have asked me a question which I would 
 not answer without thought," he said. "I am 
 not sure that I would answer it at all. Would 
 it be fair, after saying that, to ask you a very 
 similar question?" 
 
 "From you it would," she replied slowly. 
 "I was one of the fools." 
 
 "Why do you stay?" 
 
 "There is no other place for me." 
 
 Suddenly her eyes flashed. 
 
 "What have they told you about me?" she 
 demanded. "What do they say about me?" 
 
 And as suddenly she spared him a reply. "I 
 don t know why I asked you to come back," she 
 said" unless it was your eyes. Perhaps 
 
Ellen 107 
 
 some day you may be able to help me. You 
 will, I think, if you can. Possibly, even, I may 
 be able to help you." 
 
 "Yes," he replied, looking at her with frank, 
 grave interest. "It may be." And all the way 
 up the dark mountain road this new gravity 
 hung over him. 
 
 Henry and Bill were playing pinochle in the 
 model room. Chance nodded in through the 
 doorway and passed on into the little room in 
 which he slept. There were a good many fools 
 in the world, and he had never felt much personal 
 responsibility for them. Plenty were drawn un 
 der in the show business feeble little moths, 
 attracted by the glitter and the sparkle, burning 
 their wings and dropping from sight. But if 
 the show business could not be made fool-proof, 
 still it stood forth frankly for what it was, and 
 you could take it or leave it. 
 
 The Beechcroft proposition would probably be 
 well enough, in supplying the popular demand, 
 if always some hardworking, inconspicuous mana 
 ger stood by to see that none of the fools were 
 hurt on the chutes or ground up on the scenic 
 railway. But to lure in the deluded ones and 
 
io8 Comrade John 
 
 wreck them that was different. If that was 
 the game, somebody, some day, would have to 
 pay the shot. He felt no more responsibility 
 for Stein than a lawyer or an architect feels for 
 his client. But Stein had a job on his hands, and 
 if he failed to mind it he would undoubtedly 
 have to pay the shot. And if, or when, that 
 payment should fall due, the resulting spectacle 
 would probably be worth seeing. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE PERSON WHO GASPED 
 
 DURING the first few weeks Chance permitted 
 some of the disciples to mingle with his work 
 men, in order to support the illusion of what he 
 felt inclined to term "Beauty through incom 
 petence." But on the first of May he washed his 
 hands of Beechcroft labor. He was keyed up 
 to a big job, and he refused to be hampered by 
 incompetents. He had no time for playing a 
 part. At any moment he was likely to crash 
 through all restraints, and come out with sharp, 
 driving orders. Then, the incompetents were a 
 drag on his real workmen. It is a nerve-racking 
 experience to keep several hundred men up to 
 top pitch for six weeks; once you lose the pace 
 you cannot regain it. So he asked Hobbema 
 to place guards where they could keep everyone 
 from Beechcroft out of the upper valley. And 
 then rapidly the oddly shaped canvas enclosures 
 mounted upward. Hammers and sledges rang 
 109 
 
no Comrade John 
 
 all day, and, as soon as the electrical connection 
 was established, all night. Two hoisting engines 
 puffed and rumbled unceasingly. Long strings 
 of wagons crawled, creaking, down the upper 
 road and back again. Tunics and sandals were 
 discarded for overalls and boots. Men swarmed 
 down into the narrow valley, felling trees and 
 clearing out underbrush. A steam roller came 
 up from New York, puffed, clanked, and groaned 
 its way through the settlement, and went heavily 
 to work on the elliptical promenade for which 
 Chance had imported crushed limestone, at con 
 siderable expense, in place of the dark native blue- 
 stone. He wished that promenade to be white. 
 
 May ran on into June. The days grew warmer, 
 and there was real sweat at Beechcroft, plenty 
 of it. One Saturday night some West Street 
 whiskey found its way into camp, and Chance 
 and Hemenway and a sturdy foreman or two 
 fought and bullied and cajoled twenty-odd 
 riotous, wood-alcohol-crazy laborers out of a 
 raid on the peaceful settlement in the lower 
 valley, which was sleeping softly amid its green 
 trees and by its bubbling, swirling little stream. 
 By way of result, one man went down to New 
 York in the baggage car with a broken jaw, and 
 
The Person who Gasped in 
 
 neither Chance nor Bill Hemenway was pre 
 sentable for a day or so. 
 
 The eighth of June dawned clear and warm, 
 and Chance, fresh from camp cot and tin bath 
 tub, clad in conventional city costume, was up 
 almost with the sun. This day he planned to 
 spend in New York, telegrams to that effect 
 had gone down the day before, but before 
 evening he would be back, keen, vigorous, ready 
 for the lively forty-eight hours ahead of him. 
 There had been no allowance for mistakes or 
 accidents. Before noon, two days later, Stein 
 and his Joan would be on the ground. The 
 convention would be in session, with delegations 
 from every state and territory, and even from 
 the foreign countries. An earnest little band of 
 Japanese disciples had already arrived at Broad- 
 rib s Station. There could be no doubt that Stein 
 was a great press agent, he possessed the subtle 
 art of " bringing the people out." And now it 
 rested with John Chance (in his own phrase) 
 "to deliver the show." But first he proposed to 
 play the press agent himself. Stein had never 
 yet drawn any but derisive comment from the 
 New York papers. Now it was a part of Chance s 
 plan that a full force of reporters should be in 
 
H2 Comrade John 
 
 his audience on that tenth of June, to see for 
 themselves the triumph of blended incompe 
 tence and faith, and that they should come not 
 in jibing mood. Accordingly, after a light break 
 fast, a pipe, and a last word with his foremen, 
 he sprang into his buggy, drove up through the 
 notch and down the winding road to the siding, 
 and caught the seven-twenty-two train for New 
 York. 
 
 , When he walked through the ramshackle, ill- 
 smelling ferry house at Forty-second Street and 
 caught the blend of familiar odors and the warm, 
 humid air which are New York in summer, he 
 became sharply conscious of the fact that he 
 must not be recognized. It would be difficult 
 to answer certain questions that would be asked. 
 He had almost forgotten that part of his contract. 
 After all, he had allowed himself to be drawn in 
 as a party to a fraud of some magnitude, and it 
 was with a half-conscious little shrug that he 
 realized that he was committed to seeing it 
 through. A casual paragraph in one of the even 
 ing papers, to the effect that John Chance, the 
 showman and architect, was the real brain be 
 hind the spontaneous flowering of Herman 
 Stein s prophetic spirit, might easily wreck the 
 
The Person who Gasped 113 
 
 prophet s career and bring his elaborate structure 
 tumbling down around him. 
 
 The first object that caught his eye was his 
 own big limousine Panhard waiting just outside 
 the wagon shed, the chauffeur scanning closely 
 the crowd of country folk which was streaming 
 through the gates. With an impatient gesture, 
 Chance stepped out of the crowd and in among 
 the wagons on the roadway. He was beside 
 the car before the chauffeur saw him. 
 
 " Don t look at me, Claude," he said, "don t 
 speak to me. Get out of here, and stay away. 
 I m in Paris understand !" 
 
 A few steps more, and he had disappeared 
 within a four-wheeler cab, and was rattling east 
 ward over the broken, bumpy pavement of Forty- 
 second Street. As he passed the stage door of 
 Hammerstein s Victoria Theatre he leaned far 
 back in the cab. This was the showman s 
 quarter of New York, and there was a greater 
 possibility than he liked to think about of his 
 being recognized. The driver turned down 
 Broadway, and pulled up before a building which, 
 judging from the gilt legends on every window, 
 was given over to the managers of show and 
 theatrical enterprises. Chance entered the build- 
 
H4 Comrade John 
 
 ing, mounted one flight of stairs, and opened a rear 
 door which bore the words, " Office of John Chance 
 Skelton H. Dunning, Press Representative." 
 
 " Good morning, Skip," he said, with a nod. 
 
 " Hello, Mr. Chance." The tall, humorously 
 cynical, very dressy young man, who had been 
 tipped back in a swivel chair, feet on desk, ex 
 changing banter with a pretty stenographer, 
 brought down his feet with a bang, and pushed 
 his Panama hat still farther back on his head as 
 a preliminary to shaking hands. "I got your 
 message all right. Did Claude meet you?" 
 
 "He came altogether too near it," Chance 
 replied dryly. "Don t do that again, Skip." He 
 observed his telegram of a day before lying open 
 on a conspicuous corner of the desk, and reaching 
 over, he carefully tore it up, and threw it into the 
 waste-basket. Then he passed on into the inner 
 office, followed by the press representative. 
 
 "Sit down, Skip. Now, suppose we take a 
 good look at each other. Do you see me?" 
 
 "I m afraid I do. You haven t put me wise." 
 
 "No, you don t see me. I m in Paris." 
 
 "All right. I m next. Just a few lines 
 say a stickful in the gossip column Evening 
 Globe, Telegram" 
 
The Person who Gasped 115 
 
 "No, Skip. Not a stickful anywhere." 
 
 "I see. Nothing doing. Haven t heard from 
 you lately motoring in the Riviera, maybe." 
 
 "You d better try saying nothing at all. Now 
 take a look at this." And handing over a big 
 envelope full of typewritten manuscript, Chance 
 turned to the accumulation of papers on his 
 desk. 
 
 Dunning read rapidly, letting his trained eye 
 run from paragraph to paragraph. Finally he 
 looked up with a low whistle. "It s beautiful, 
 Mr. Chance beautiful." 
 
 "Now I ll tell you what I want you to do, 
 Skip. First go over the thing, and make it read 
 right. See that the miracle part of it, the idea 
 of those imbeciles," he smiled, "Bill calls 
 them the near-toilers, working out Stein s visions 
 in the real wood and stone, and actually making 
 it the most beautiful spot in the world, see 
 that it is played up for all it will stand. Work 
 out more fully the admission that they haven t 
 pretended to do the rougher part of the labor 
 themselves. And put in some humor scattered 
 along through it. Guy the whole show a little 
 to make it interesting." 
 
 "Sure sure." 
 
n6 Comrade John 
 
 "Get the stuff ready to-night." 
 
 "And let one of the newspaper boys have it?" 
 
 "That is where you do a little work, Skip. 
 Nobody is to know that it comes from us. We ve 
 got to get the newspaper boys up there on the 
 tenth, but we can t ask them to come. If we 
 did, or worse, if Stein did it personally, 
 every paper would send up its humorist. I want 
 this thing handled as news. It will show them 
 that something is really doing at Beechcroft 
 something they can t afford to miss. They won t 
 see me, I ll be well out of the way, but 
 they ll see Stein and Stein s miracle; and mira 
 cles are fairly scarce these days. Get it into to 
 morrow s World, if you can, or the Herald. 
 There are pictures of Stein and Hobbema in 
 that envelope, and a group of the women in 
 costume, and another group of the Beechcroft 
 guards." 
 
 Dunning looked down at the photographs, 
 then up at his employer, and his face expanded 
 in a sly, slow grin. "Pretty good graft this man 
 Stein is working up," he observed. 
 
 "Pretty good," Chance replied. 
 
 "The only outfit he seems to need is a straight 
 face and a place to put the money." 
 
The Person who Gasped 117 
 
 "That s about all." 
 
 The press representative mused. "I know 
 him," he said. "He used to lecture on soul 
 culture to suburban ladies." His eyes strayed 
 back to the photographs, and again came that 
 slow grin. "But this proposition has the lecture 
 graft skinned alive." 
 
 "You d better get at it, Skip," said Chance, 
 who was back in his correspondence. "And 
 remember, the thing must be air-tight no 
 leaks in it not a suspicion that the story comes 
 from the inside." 
 
 "All right, Mr. Chance. I know a little girl 
 who won t be sorry to sell the World a choice 
 special story on her own account. We ll make 
 little old New York sit up and take a long look 
 around." He rose, gathering up the manu 
 script and the pictures. "The Beechcroft miracle 
 will leave the Elijah invasion mired at the quarter 
 pole. Peace be with thee!" And with this 
 mildly ribald comment, the press representative 
 withdrew to the outer office and set to work. 
 
 Chance left New York as cautiously as he 
 had entered it, and at four o clock was back at 
 his desk in the model room, putting the details 
 of his correspondence in such shape that his 
 
n8 Comrade John 
 
 stenographer would be able to handle it for a 
 few days. At five he slipped into his Beechcroft 
 dress and went down to "the job." 
 
 Bill Hemenway was ready in the gorge with 
 a dozen carpenters and fifty to sixty laborers. 
 Another gang of laborers was waiting by the 
 heaps of broken stone on the hillside. Chance 
 clambered up beside them and ran an observant 
 eye over the coils of cable, the running tackle, 
 and the lines of buckets ready filled with stone. 
 He scrambled down and glanced at the timber 
 piles, then walked over to the waiting super 
 intendent. 
 
 "All right, Bill," he said. "Go ahead." 
 At this the superintendent waved his hands, and 
 a dozen men, with double timber hooks, picked up 
 one of the big timbers and staggered with it 
 down the slope, across the clear, shallow stream, 
 and over to the blue-stone abutment on the 
 farther side. Another stick followed, and an 
 other, until the rocky ground, ready levelled 
 for the purpose, was floored for twenty feet on 
 either side of the water. The men on the hill 
 side were at work uncoiling wire cables and run 
 ning them down through the underbrush, across 
 the gorge, and up the farther bank. As soon as 
 
The Person who Gasped 119 
 
 the dusk had fairly begun to settle down, Chance 
 gave another order, and the cables were hauled 
 up taut in the air, from hillside to hillside. A 
 few moments more, and a timber hoist slowly 
 lifted its head above the trees and settled into 
 place. It was all accomplished as nearly silently 
 as possible. Chance and Hemenway gave their 
 orders in low tones, and McCune, the Irish fore 
 man, on the hillside, restrained his tongue val 
 iantly, swearing in so soft a voice that it came 
 down to the ears of the men below only as a low, 
 almost continuous murmur. 
 
 It was a bright evening, and with the help of 
 a few well-placed gasoline flares, a relic, like 
 the canvas about the buildings, of the late la 
 mented Coyote Bill, the men were able to 
 place the upright timbers. Then, at the wave 
 of a lantern, the first bucket of stone came career 
 ing down the cable, paused in mid-air, and let 
 fall its burden on the timber flooring. Chance 
 was satisfied now that the work would go on 
 properly under the eye and hand of Bill Hemen 
 way, and he walked up the promenade to the 
 temple. 
 
 , It was certainly not a typical Beechcroft scene, 
 this narrow gorge littered with building 
 
i2O Comrade John 
 
 materials, swarming with the gnome-like figures 
 of half-clad, grunting men, the whole lighted with 
 flares that wavered and flickered and kept the 
 shadows dancing but it would soon be over 
 with. Within less than two days the gloomy 
 ravine would smile. 
 
 About the temple and its adjoining buildings 
 there was still the scaffolding and the dingy, 
 loosely hung canvas. The painters were at work 
 here and there, but already the work of taking 
 down the scaffolding had begun. He entered 
 the temple, from which all the interior scaffolding 
 had been removed. It was cool and lofty in 
 here, and he took off his hat, smiling a little as 
 he did so, and seated himself for a breath and a 
 look around. It was impressive, even to this 
 man who had designed and built it, and who 
 knew, what others would not know, that the 
 walls were merely old boards, covered on the 
 outside with sheet- iron and on the inside with 
 lath and plaster. He looked up, in the faint, 
 mysterious half light thrown in by the arc lamps 
 outside the windows, at the speaker s platform 
 with its quaint old mission pulpit, and nodded 
 with satisfaction. What a setting it would make 
 for the massive figure of Herman Stein ! 
 
The Person who Gasped 121 
 
 After a moment he rose, mounted the platform, 
 and passed on through the curtained doorway 
 at the rear of the stage into the robing-room. 
 Back of the robing-room was another, larger 
 room, which he entered by unlocking a heavy 
 oaken door with a flat key. He groped along 
 the wall near the door, and by clicking a switch 
 turned on a drop-light at the farther end of the 
 room. There were big leather chairs here, and 
 a long centre-table, and a roll-top mahogany 
 desk, and a steel safe bearing the initials, "H. S." 
 There were no windows. This room, this inner 
 retreat, was the only thing Stein had expressly 
 demanded. The walls, floor, and ceiling were 
 of steel, faced with oak and plaster. Chance 
 took it that Stein wished a burglar-proof room, 
 secure against even the prying eyes of Hobbema, 
 for his personal documents, and perhaps for his 
 personal profits, and the desire seemed rational 
 enough. "You never can tell," Chance re 
 flected, as he looked about him, "how soon un 
 expected events will turn a peaceful community 
 into a riotous mob." There was but the one door, 
 and this, like the walls, was of steel sheathed with 
 oak. The telephone was here, for during the 
 construction period Chance was using the room 
 
122 Comrade John 
 
 as an office. In addition to the camp connection, 
 he had run a wire to Hobbema s house. 
 
 The temple, at least in the interior, was as im 
 pressive as Chance could wish. If the exterior 
 proved, in its green setting, as nearly like the dream 
 that had for months filled his mind, there could 
 be no doubt about the success of the new Beech- 
 croft. 
 
 Even the old Beechcroft was apparently in 
 teresting to the convention visitors, who, during all 
 of June ninth, came pouring in by every train, fill 
 ing the hotels at Broadrib s Station, the board 
 ing-houses along the road, and the dormitory 
 tents which Hobbema was putting up in the 
 clearings between Beechcroft and the Kinder- 
 kill. They swarmed up the valley, women with 
 earnest eyes and children wht> asked questions. 
 They peered into the shops, and grouped them 
 selves before the house of the prophet. They 
 picked leaves and wild flowers to press between 
 the pages of "Toil and Triumph." Before noon 
 of June tenth, the opening day, the pink- and- white 
 mountain laurel, which had peeped out every 
 where a few days earlier, through the hillside 
 trees, had all but disappeared. The guards at 
 the gorge, doubled in number, were already 
 
The Person who Gasped 123 
 
 yielding momentarily to outbursts of impatience 
 with the wandering, pressing crowds that tried 
 endlessly to circumvent them and have a look 
 at that mysterious upper valley. 
 
 At noon of the great day Chance stood at the 
 lower end of the promenade, just above the dam, 
 and surveyed his work, and his pulses quickened 
 a little as his eyes took it in. The picture was 
 perfect he knew that, as the artist always 
 knows when his eye and hand have played him 
 true. Stein would gasp. Chance was sure of 
 it. He had set his stage with the greatest care. 
 Below the dam the promenade descended on 
 both sides of the stream in broad flights of stone 
 steps to the ends of the valley road, which he 
 had here depressed to a lower level. 
 
 Bill Hemenway, clad like Chance, in his tunic, 
 came up the steps behind him. 
 
 "Well, Mr. Chance, how does she strike you, 
 now she s done?" 
 
 "First-rate, Bill." 
 
 Bill stopped beside him and indulged in a long, 
 sweeping look around. "It s the first time I ve 
 really stopped to take it in myself, Mr. Chance. 
 There s no doubt you ve got em. It s the goods. 
 He yawned, and stretched his bare, wiry arms. 
 
124 Comrade John 
 
 "If I loaf around here much longer, I ll be get 
 ting the Steineetis too, like them victims of the 
 hook worm, down yonder. I guess they can 
 manage to pull off their circus parade without 
 my assistance. I m going to tumble in and sleep 
 till half- past ten to-morrow morning. Are you 
 coming up to the shack?" 
 
 "Not just yet, Bill. Don t wait for me." 
 
 "Going to take in the show, eh? It s certainly 
 a big day for Beechcroft. There s thousands 
 of em waiting around down there. And I heard 
 the new boy choir practising when I come by 
 the old chapel. They were singing Soldiers of 
 Toil, Arise, Arise, and the one about Character 
 and Beauty. Well, it s Morphee-us and the 
 downy cot for mine." 
 
 And with this, Bill went up on the promenade, 
 leaving his employer still gazing at the white 
 temple against the green mountain side. 
 
 A little later Chance looked around toward the 
 lower valley, and for the first time became con 
 scious of the stir and activity there. He heard 
 the confused murmur of many voices, the shouts 
 and cries of children playing, the whinnying and 
 stamping of horses. During these busy days 
 and nights the world had doubtless been moving 
 
The Person who Gasped 125 
 
 along as usual. It was evident that the little 
 Beechcroft world had been moving pretty rapidly. 
 He had known that the temple was to be dedicated 
 to the cause, and that there would be some dis 
 play and ceremony, but the work at his hand had 
 lately been so engrossing as to drive everything 
 else out of his mind. Now, as he looked down 
 through the foliage, and caught glimpses of the 
 throngs of eager men and women there, and 
 of banded Beechcroft guards, with their long 
 staves, moving about and pressing them back, 
 he realized what was going on. For Herman 
 Stein was no fool; and this was the moment in 
 which Herman Stein must play up the Beechcroft 
 miracle for all it was worth. Stein had been 
 working, that was plain. And Hobbema had 
 been working. And neither had taken John 
 Chance into his confidence. Chance had con 
 structed and delivered the miracle, as per agree 
 ment. And this done, also as per agreement, 
 Chance dropped out of the picture. The toil 
 had been for Chance; the triumph was now 
 for Stein. 
 
 Stein and that mysterious party of his must 
 have arrived at Beechcroft some little time earlier ; 
 Chance recalled that he had heard the whistle 
 
126 Comrade John 
 
 of the Beechcroft Special long before noon, and 
 it was now a little after. But Stein would play 
 it deliberately trust him for that ! And he 
 would dress the part how he would dress it ! 
 Well, this place here, at the top of the steps, and 
 off to one side, would be as good as any from 
 which to see the show. It commanded the steps, 
 as well as the upper valley, and a little of the 
 roadway at the bottom. The rest of the road 
 way and most of the lower valley was hidden 
 behind the closely interlacing foliage. Yes, here 
 he would stand, an inconspicuous figure, and 
 watch another take the credit for what he had 
 done. It would be a new, a not uninteresting 
 sensation for John Chance. 
 
 Above the confusion of sound, and nearer 
 at hand, he heard the tramp of marching feet, 
 and then a high-pitched order. Hobbema came 
 into view, bearing his staff of office, with the 
 blue-and-gold knob at the top of it. There was 
 always something a bit ridiculous about Hobbema 
 in full regalia. After him, marching two and two, 
 blue-knobbed staves on shoulders, came twenty 
 of the Beechcroft guards. Hobbema gave another 
 order. The guards fell into line across the road, 
 just below the steps, and the crowd swarmed 
 
The Person who Gasped 127 
 
 over the road and pressed up close. Chance 
 heard another sharp voice, a little farther off, 
 and through the leaves he could just make out 
 that a smaller squad of guards had taken a 
 similar position at the steps on the other side of 
 the stream. Hobbema must have drilled a 
 special force for the occasion. Four trumpeters, 
 in white tunics with red girdles, red caps, and 
 red cross-garters, mounted the steps and took 
 position directly across the promenade. 
 
 Chance allowed himself a momentary smile. 
 The stage management was excellent. He looked 
 down the steps and bowed slightly in mock con 
 gratulation toward the back of Hobbema s head. 
 But Hobbema could never have got it up alone. 
 Behind Hobbema was Stein, Stein the prophet, 
 Stein the showman, and for him, by way of his 
 overseer, that mocking little bow was intended. 
 
 There was a hush. The crowd at the foot of 
 the steps was falling away to the sides of the road, 
 and leaning out to peer down the valley. The 
 guards broke ranks and came running up the 
 steps, forming in two lines from top to bottom, 
 with the width of the stairway between them. 
 The four trumpeters, who had been lounging 
 on the hillside, straightened up and began looking 
 
128 Comrade John 
 
 to their instruments and watching Hobbema for 
 their signal. 
 
 The hush deepened. The only noise, for a 
 moment, was the gentle music of the brook. 
 Then softly through the foliage, some little way 
 off, came a burst of melody from the throats of 
 two score boy and men singers. And never did 
 boy voices sound clearer and purer than on this 
 still afternoon. Chance felt it. He forgot to 
 think of the stage management. Something of 
 the almost religious awe which had settled over 
 the throng of people along the road and on the 
 hillsides touched even the sceptical young show 
 man who had made this day possible, this day 
 of Stein s triumph. The processional swelled 
 louder. If he could have caught the words, 
 their pathetically unconscious humor would have 
 upset his gravity. But he had never opened 
 Stein s hymnal; and now he could hear only the 
 music of the fresh young voices. 
 
 Two women and a man were slowly coming 
 up the stairway. Chance saw Hobbema bow 
 very respectfully, and then his eye rested on the 
 little party. His wits had gone wool-gathering, 
 and the newcomers were halfway up the steps 
 before his eyes really took them in. 
 
The Person who Gasped 129 
 
 The man he recognized, after a slight sense 
 of surprise and a momentary searching of his 
 memory, for Moberly Pole, the painter. The 
 surprise was occasioned by Pole s costume, 
 for the man was a Beechcrofter from the sole of 
 his sandaled foot to the crown of his bare head. 
 The older of the two women also wore the Beech- 
 croft dress. It was not very becoming to her; 
 and there was something dispirited, something 
 more of toil than of triumph, in the way she was 
 ascending the steps. The younger woman alone 
 still wore the dress of the outer world. Either 
 she had not surrendered to Stein and Beechcroft, 
 or she had too keen a sense of her beauty to 
 swathe herself in shapeless draperies like those 
 of her companion. She was beautiful; Chance 
 knew that, even though her hat hid her face, 
 from the movements of her lithe young body and 
 from the poise of her shapely head and the stray 
 ing locks of her hair. But it was not her beauty 
 that now puzzled him, that suddenly roused his 
 jaded faculties and straightened up his lounging 
 figure, he was standing very straight, one hand 
 gripping the stone post at the end of the dam, 
 it was something else. He knew her, he was 
 sure --almost sure. A slight, hardly distin- 
 
130 Comrade John 
 
 guishable flush spread across his forehead. Then 
 she looked up. She glanced at him as if he had 
 been a guard or a trumpeter or a tree. Then, 
 a puzzled question in her eyes, she looked again. 
 He knew her now; and with an expression that 
 lay midway between bewilderment and dismay, 
 he turned his gaze from her to the picture at the 
 head of the valley and back again. And the 
 voices of the boy singers, now only a little way 
 down the road, soared in clear, careless triumph ; 
 it seemed as if they might be singing to her. 
 
 There she stood on the top step, motionless, 
 gazing at the picture before her. Her face, too, 
 was flushed. Her eyes grew moist. She caught 
 her breath and then almost smiled. She was 
 radiant; she was the cathedral candle he had 
 seen on the day of carnival. And he, when he 
 had looked at her, standing unconscious there, 
 until his dismay had conquered his bewilderment, 
 turned his eyes again to the picture which he 
 had created, and which she was now the first to 
 see. 
 
 The semicircle of red-roofed, white- walled 
 buildings, at the head of the little valley, leading 
 up from either side to the temple, still caught 
 the morning sun on their flat surfaces and thre\r 
 
The Person who Gasped 131 
 
 it back with a brilliancy that was dazzling to the 
 eyes. The temple itself, placed high up on the 
 slope at the top of a great flight of white steps, 
 reared its towers far above the idealized work 
 shops at its base with a triumphant, exulting 
 lightness and strength in every outline. Towers, 
 we have called them, but that is not the word. 
 They were nearer minarets, but without the fan 
 tastic elaboration. In Chance s thoughts they 
 had always been a cluster of great cathedral 
 candles. That was what he had worked out, 
 he had caught himself working it out; and it 
 had seemed humorous at first, the feeling that 
 the Mardi Gras girl, the girl who was searching 
 with questioning eyes for that looking-glass coun 
 try which she would never find in this world, 
 the feeling that she had aroused in him when he 
 first saw her with Tommy Hollister on the boule 
 vard. And so they were not exactly towers, they 
 were not exactly minarets, they were not exactly 
 spires; they were the expression, in terms of 
 architecture, of a sensation he had once expe 
 rienced. Out of the centre of the cluster rose 
 one larger than the others, which was capped with 
 burnished bronze. That bronze, shining in the 
 sunlight, was her hair. 
 
132 Comrade John 
 
 Back of the buildings, of the temple, of the 
 cathedral candles, was the velvety green slope 
 of Mt. William; above them was the clear 
 blue-and- white sky. But the lake was the master 
 stroke, the mirror with which he had floored the 
 valley. The swans were swimming there. A 
 solitary blue heron stood on one leg, shank-deep 
 in the shallows, and gazed mournfully about him. 
 The gondola, the single black note in the picture, 
 gathering to itself all the shadows, was drifting 
 lazily about near the upper end, the white-clad 
 gondolier leaning on his oar. The stream had been 
 diverted into a conduit through the basement of 
 the temple, and it came shimmering down the 
 central flight of steps, within two low stone bar 
 riers, and leaped off a sheer thirty feet, half losing 
 itself in mist before it reached the water below. 
 And every detail of the picture sky, mountain, 
 temple, gondola, swans was reflected in the 
 mirror. The gentle ripples from the waterfall, 
 and the occasional slow movements of the gon 
 dolier s oar did not break the reflection; but 
 they stirred the clear outlines, and set the broad 
 patches of red and green and blue and white 
 to over- lapping and mixing in little waves of 
 gay color. 
 
The Person who Gasped 133 
 
 There was a stir behind him at the foot of 
 the steps. He half turned; and then he saw 
 that the little party had moved over to his side 
 of the promenade. Pole and the older woman 
 were peering down through the foliage; but 
 the girl was looking at him, bewildered, almost 
 timid, a look of recognition hovering about her 
 eyes, ready, at a sign, to break into a smile. 
 He smiled, not quite the easy, honest smile 
 which had stayed in her memory, but something 
 very near it; and then she was certain. She 
 came straight to him, knowing no more than he 
 what to say, but so glad to see him that she 
 grew suddenly self-conscious, and extended her 
 hand. 
 
 "You didn t tell me " her voice was low, 
 and not quite firm. 
 
 "How could I? I did not know" 
 
 She looked up at him, and her eyes filled again, 
 and a little wave of color came into her face. 
 "I can t talk now," she said. "It is so beautiful 
 
 so wonderful and Mr. Stein will be here in 
 a moment. But now I know you are here 
 
 and " Then she made an effort to draw 
 herself together, and looked up again. Her 
 voice trembled, but her eyes were smiling. "You 
 
134 Comrade John 
 
 have settled it for me again, Monsieur Jean. 
 I will stay here. I have found my job." 
 
 The trumpets blared out. The choir ascended 
 the steps and passed out, two and two, along the 
 promenade, their pale yellow stoles over the 
 white surplices adding a new note to the color 
 harmony. The guards followed, and took up 
 a position in advance of the choir. Then a 
 solitary, massive figure appeared at the foot 
 of the steps and slowly mounted. The squarely 
 outlined head was bare. Over the white tunic, 
 gathered at the left shoulder and falling in broad 
 folds over the massive frame, he wore a white 
 toga, bordered at the hem with a wide band of 
 royal purple. And set in the purple hem, at 
 short intervals, were golden stars. The leader, 
 the master, spoke in every line of that solid figure. 
 Stein was playing it up. 
 
 At the top step the prophet stopped short. 
 The poise, the wonderful self-control on which 
 he prided himself, fell suddenly away from him. 
 He drew in a long breath and looked. And 
 then, like the orator who turns a mishap into a 
 deliberate effect, he raised his hand, and the 
 trumpeters stopped, and the people were silent. 
 A moment passed; then Stein, himself again, 
 
The Person who Gasped 135 
 
 walked deliberately forward. And now in his 
 face, in his carriage, even in his back as he moved 
 away, there was evident a supreme, a perfect 
 satisfaction. This was his great moment. His 
 visions had flowered. He was the master builder, 
 the creator of all that lay before his eyes of the 
 solid, the serene, the beautiful, the aspiring, the 
 triumphant Beechcroft-to-be. 
 
 " Pardon me, Miss Cynthia I think we 
 had better go." It was Moberly Pole, speaking 
 in his high, melodious voice. "Mr. Stein has 
 arranged for you to sit near the platform." 
 
 Chance started a little, and tightened his hold 
 on the hand that was still resting in his, not 
 until this moment had he been conscious that it 
 was still there, and looked at Cynthia with an 
 involuntary drawing together of his brows. 
 For she, still with that rapt, radiant expression 
 about her eyes, was gazing after the prophet. 
 
 "I think we had better go, Miss Cynthia," 
 Pole repeated. 
 
 Chance leaned forward, drawing her, at the 
 same time, a little nearer to him. He could not 
 bear to see those questioning, luminous, innocent 
 eyes fixed on Herman Stein. He was on the point 
 of telling her, brutally, that she had made a 
 
136 Comrade John 
 
 mistake, that this, again, was far, far removed 
 from the looking-glass country of her dreams. 
 He did not care if Pole heard him he did not 
 care who heard him he did not care if Beech- 
 croft went to smash. But he did not tell her. 
 Instead, he said, in a quick, low voice, "We will 
 see each other again. I want to talk with you." 
 She inclined her head dreamily; and he re 
 leased her hand and looked after her as she walked 
 slowly toward the temple, beside the procession. 
 The choir, at the head, was singing again, and 
 the trumpeters were playing the melody. The 
 toilers, each guild wearing its color, and bearing 
 its implements, were filing by, bright-eyed, light- 
 hearted, buoyed up by the exhilarating brilliancy 
 of the day, by the magic of the picture, by the 
 splendor of the prophet and his works. The 
 printers, in russet brown, carried composing 
 sticks in their right hands. The weavers, in dull 
 green, carried bobbins. The furniture-makers 
 wore Indian-red, and carried hammers. And 
 after these duller notes, the silver-workers, in 
 white, with silver embroidery, and a little band 
 of artists in crimson, added gayety and charm 
 to a color-scheme that might otherwise have 
 appeared sombre. 
 
The Person who Gasped 137 
 
 Chance, still frowning a little, was absently 
 watching the various guilds pass by, when he be 
 came conscious that a man was working his way 
 down the hillside through the trees and the under 
 growth. He raised his eyes. After a moment 
 the man emerged on a projecting rock and took 
 a long look around. And Chance, when he had 
 made him out, paused not at all to collect his 
 thoughts, but turned and ran down the steps, 
 past the marching toilers and through the crowd. 
 For the man was Jimmy Heath, occasional 
 Washington correspondent and leading reporter 
 of the New York World. 
 
 Chance crossed the brook on the stepping-stones, 
 picking his way through a group of wading chil 
 dren, who knew little of the comedy, with its 
 half-hidden suggestion of a tragic denouement, 
 which was being enacted all about them. The 
 crowds were streaming up the steps on the farther 
 side, and through them Chance forced his way. 
 He crossed the road, plunged into the bushes, 
 and climbed, by a path he knew, to an old wood 
 road which circled around the hillside behind the 
 temple to the upper camp. The view was shut 
 off by the dense foliage, but after a little he came 
 to an open spot and paused to look out and down. 
 
138 Comrade John 
 
 The masses of color were now extended the 
 entire length of the promenade. The trumpeters 
 and the choir were standing before the temple 
 doors, at the top of the cascade. Their music 
 rang out triumphantly through the valley, and 
 a hundred little echoes rebounded from hillside 
 to hillside, from rock to rock. A solitary figure, 
 in white and purple, was ascending the long 
 flight of white steps, very deliberately. And at 
 the foot of the steps, just above the mist of the 
 cascade, stood a small group, one of whom, a 
 slender young woman, wore the costume of the 
 outer world. 
 
 Chance turned and moved on through the 
 shadowy, sunflecked forest. The wood-thrushes 
 sang as he walked rapidly, heedlessly along. 
 The chipmunks looked out from the rocks and 
 chattered angrily at him. A porcupine lumbered 
 out of the path in fright and hid his head under 
 a log until the danger was past. But Chance was 
 blind to-day to the myriad life of the mountain 
 side. He was wondering if Allah was turning 
 another job over to him, a job singularly like, 
 in certain particulars, the one he had undertaken 
 in Paris a few months ago. If so, it would be 
 less simple to manage. For this time he was 
 
The Person who Gasped 139 
 
 not a disinterested spectator. This time he 
 could hardly play the care-free young god out 
 of the machine. This time he was one of the 
 crowd from Julian s. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 GODDESS EXCELLENTLY BRIGHT 
 
 NOT until his next cautious visit to New York, 
 a day or two after the close of the convention, 
 did John Chance realize how completely his 
 Beechcroft " miracle" had fulfilled its purpose. 
 The tide of visitors which flowed and ebbed every 
 day between Broadrib Station and the new 
 Mecca, and never gave the dust a chance to 
 settle between the hours of the first train from 
 town and the last train back, was after all only 
 an insignificant manifestation of a curiosity which 
 was stirring all the country. It was a curiosity 
 of different sorts, to be sure; reverent in some, 
 coolly sceptical in others, impertinent in many 
 more, but in one form or another it infected pretty 
 much all the newspaper- reading public, east, west, 
 south, everywhere. 
 
 The "Toilers" were triumphant. Of course 
 they were satirized in " feature stories" and 
 frivolous editorials of the metropolitan press. 
 140 
 
Goddess Excellently Bright 141 
 
 The construction camp, for example, and the 
 steam roller provided fuel for mirth. But this 
 sort of painless martyrdom is just what a new 
 religion thrives on. Even the threatened "ex 
 posure" of Stein in one of the ten-cent magazines 
 would help. Anything that served to keep "Toil 
 and Triumph" in the focus of the public eye, 
 that prevented the wide-awake national curiosity 
 from diverting itself with something else, was 
 grist to the mill. 
 
 And there were indications, apparent to 
 Chance s observant eye even in Beechcroft, that 
 this curiosity, while it lasted, was to be worked 
 for all it was worth. The huge hotel at Broad- 
 rib Station, rushing to completion as fast as the 
 flimsiest construction would permit, and a second 
 one out near the entrance to the lower valley, 
 which was to be twice as expensive and only half 
 as ugly, these hinted at it plainly enough. But 
 down in New York were the mountains of "Toil 
 and Triumph" which amazed the eye in all the 
 book stores; it was the new edition, hot from 
 the press in time for the convention, and changed 
 just enough from the former one so that all the 
 faithful would have to buy it; and it was half 
 a dollar more expensive, too, for they were charg- 
 
142 Comrade John 
 
 ing "what the traffic would bear" for it. There 
 were jewellers windows solid full of souvenir 
 spoons bearing the Beechcroft stamp, and selling, 
 on the strength of it, at a rate of about two dollars 
 and a half an ounce. And these things told of 
 a wider public. 
 
 The last thing Chance had noted before tak 
 ing the new "Beechcroft Special" at Weehawken 
 was the pyrographic and raffia- work outfits which 
 he saw in one of Macy s windows, selling, by 
 virtue of this same Beechcroft stamp on the box, 
 for a good sixty per cent more than they were 
 worth. The sight of them set Chance to won 
 dering whether Stein s financial executive had 
 taken the trouble to buy the output of the factory 
 and put the label on, or whether he had adopted 
 the simpler expedient of charging a royalty for 
 the use of the precious stamp. 
 
 The fact that he did not know brought it 
 home to him that he was not in Stein s confidence 
 any further than his own part of the work took 
 him, and that was less and less as he got on with 
 it. The beautifully organized financial orbit 
 of the game intersected his only at the point of 
 his quarterly check for twelve thousand five 
 hundred dollars. There was something ele- 
 
Goddess Excellently Bright 143 
 
 mental about Stein, something as remorseless 
 as the forces of nature. He absorbed everything 
 about him that he could use, and the residuum 
 he cast up in a sort of moraine along his trail. 
 He gave nothing back; there were no tracks 
 leading away from his den. Poor Burkett, if 
 Chance could have introduced his evidence, 
 Burkett, who had written "Toil and Triumph" 
 at a weekly salary, might have expanded that 
 thesis to formidable proportions. 
 
 But on the warm June afternoon when Chance 
 climbed unobtrusively down from the Beechcroft 
 Special at Excelsior Siding, he was in no mood 
 to quarrel with anything, let alone his exclusion 
 from the prophet s confidence and his inner 
 councils. Having the boundaries of his job 
 defined in this way, defined also his responsi 
 bility. He had agreed to "reconstruct Beech- 
 croft to the satisfaction of Mr. Stein," and he 
 was doing that amply. That the new religion 
 was immensely profitable to Mr. Stein and to 
 his financial backers, or that it was immensely 
 unprofitable to Mr. Stein s disciples, was positively 
 none of his business. 
 
 Anyway, they were having a good time, those 
 disciples. They had nothing hard or disagree- 
 
144 Comrade John 
 
 able to do, and one of the loveliest places in the 
 world in which to do it. They were a lot better 
 off, when all was said, with their bare legs and 
 tunics, up in this sweet- smelling valley, than the 
 sweaty, derby-hatted disciples of Mammon down 
 town, and perhaps no worse deluded. 
 
 He took off his own hat and let the wind rumple 
 his hair. Now that the back of his task was 
 broken, he meant to enjoy taking things easy for 
 a while. He was glad of an excuse for donning 
 his tunic again and spending a few weeks more 
 out in the tingling mountain air glad that he 
 was a Beechcrofter himself, temporarily. 
 
 But being a Beechcrofter, it seemed, had no 
 charm for Bill Hemenway. Bill was waiting 
 for him in a buggy at Excelsior Siding, cloaked 
 in a black melancholy which seemed to deepen 
 at Chance s smile, and on which the cheering 
 effect of a big cigar was no more than momentary. 
 
 "Temple burned up?" Chance inquired ironi 
 cally. 
 
 "No," said Bill, "everything s about as you 
 left it, Mr. Chance. Just about." 
 
 Chance laughed. "Our imitation disciples 
 haven t struck, have they? Against a six- hour 
 day and full time for ten?" 
 
Goddess Excellently Bright 145 
 
 "They might about as well, for all they re 
 getting done. You can get about as much real 
 work out of them as you could get out of a litter 
 of yellow pups. We can t do nothing with them. 
 What can we do, with all them Steinites mooning 
 around all day, bringing them drinks from the 
 spring and putting fool ideas into their thick 
 heads? McCune goes around and swears at 
 them nights, but it don t do no good on the job 
 if you call this a job. Everybody has got 
 lazy but McCune and me, even Henry." 
 
 "Good for Henry," grinned Chance. "I feel 
 lazy myself. But if you re feeling energetic, you 
 can whip up this old plug of a horse. I want to 
 get into my tunic again." 
 
 The play of the whip about the old horse s 
 flanks was less perhaps to the purpose Chance 
 suggested than as a vent for Bill s otherwise un 
 expressed exasperation. They drove a mile or 
 more in silence, and it was not until their road 
 took them through the now abandoned construc 
 tion camp that he turned to his chief again. 
 
 "Bring them back here, Mr. Chance," he 
 
 pleaded. "Put up your canvas again around the 
 
 buildings, and tell those long-haired never- 
 
 sweats to get to hell out of there. And make 
 
 L 
 
146 Comrade John 
 
 those boys work. Let me and McCune get busy 
 and drive them some. No job ever got done this 
 way but Hobbema s hen-coop. And that s about 
 the way these last buildings will look if we go on 
 like this. We can do it, do it in a month, like 
 we done the dam and the temple, if you ll only 
 give us a chance." 
 
 "The trouble with you, Bill," his chief said 
 thoughtfully, "is that you only understand one 
 kind of a job, the kind we did on the temple and 
 the dam. That job was to get something done, 
 no matter how. We did it so fast we took their 
 breath, and it was all over and the canvas put 
 away before they knew what had happened. 
 But it wouldn t work again. We took long 
 chances trying it once, and we only did it because 
 there was no other way." 
 
 "Well, it worked," said Bill. "They all 
 believed it; it was too easy and too successful 
 for them to do anything else. And I don t see 
 why it wouldn t work again." 
 
 "In the first place, there are sceptics looking 
 on now as well as believers, people who can see 
 through a ladder. And the believers themselves 
 don t really believe it; they think they do, that s 
 all. The whole job from now on is to make them 
 
Goddess Excellently Bright 147 
 
 believe it so that they won t have to stop to think. 
 Frame that idea up where you can look at it 
 twice a day. Make these few men we ve kept 
 act like the Beechcrofters. Of course they ll 
 be lazy; I kept the laziest and the stupidest ones 
 of the whole bunch, and you ought to be able to 
 see why. And get the disciples to help; draw 
 them into it talk their talk if. you can. 
 See that the men themselves and McCune don t 
 talk at all. It s one of the ground rules here that 
 you don t have to answer when people speak to 
 you; you re supposed to be in contemplation, 
 as they say, and it s precious lucky for us it s so. 
 Rub that into McCune; he mustn t swear at all, 
 at anybody; not even nights." He had been 
 talking with a good deal of emphasis and a touch 
 of impatience, for this was by no means his first 
 attempt to impress the significance of the new 
 job on his superintendent. But now, after a 
 moment s silence, he smiled. "I d hate to be 
 one of McCune s gang when he gets a job marked 
 rush again," he said. 
 
 When most of the real workmen at Beechcroft 
 had been paid off, and the score or so Chance 
 retained had been dressed in tunics and housed 
 in the lower valley like real disciples, he had 
 
148 Comrade John 
 
 moved his quarters too. He had a pleasant, 
 though, needless to say, "artistic" little cottage 
 not far from the stream, and about in the middle 
 of the valley. Hither he now made his way, 
 intent on shedding his city clothes and getting 
 into his cool gray tunic and sandals as speedily 
 as possible. 
 
 The change once effected, his manner became 
 leisurely again. He strolled out into his shady 
 veranda and idly scanned the valley, at first 
 merely with the eye and then, though not as 
 if looking for anything particular, with a field- 
 glass. The scrutiny was productive of nothing 
 in the way of interest, and he stood musing awhile 
 after putting them down. Presently he went 
 out across the already sun-tanned meadow to 
 the flat top of a big rock that jutted over the 
 stream. 
 
 The surface of a pool, ten feet or more below, 
 smiled an invitation to him, which the warm, 
 late June, mid-afternoon sun, beating on his 
 bare head and reflecting from the smooth face 
 of the rock, seconded. His tunic and sandals 
 interposed no veto, so, straightening his arms 
 above his head, he sprang well out into the air, 
 seemed for an instant to hang, motionless, like 
 
Goddess Excellently Bright 149 
 
 a bent bow, and then, straightening out, shot 
 downward and cleft the smiling, placid surface 
 of the pool with hardly a splatter. 
 
 But in the midst of his flight he heard an ex 
 clamation of surprise that made him check the 
 momentum of his shallow dive as quickly as 
 possible and strike out for the nearer shore. 
 He scrambled out on a. shelving bit of gravel, 
 picked his way round a big boulder into a dry, 
 moss-grown grotto, formed by the jutting ledge 
 of rock from which he had dived, and stood face 
 to face with Cynthia. 
 
 He looked at her, tried, with an impatient 
 gesture, to wipe away with his wet hands the water 
 that was trickling down into his eyes, then looked 
 again, still without speaking. She looked at 
 him, too, flushing a little, her lips slightly parted. 
 The silence lasted until, with something of an 
 effort, she broke it. 
 
 " I didn t know you were back from New York." 
 
 "I only came this moment," he said absently. 
 "I searched the valley with a glass, not 
 knowing, quite, for what not knowing it 
 was for you." He repeated his former gesture 
 and shook the water from his hair. 
 
 " There are some lines of poetry some- 
 
150 Comrade John 
 
 where," he said, "but I can t quite recall them. 
 1 Queen and Huntress They won t come 
 for me." 
 
 " Oh, I know them." She spoke with a sort of 
 nervous eagerness, and began repeating old Ben 
 Jonson s lovely little hymn to Diana. But 
 under his gaze the flush in her cheeks mantled 
 deeper and deeper, and soon, a little out of breath, 
 she broke off, leaving the hymn unfinished. 
 
 " Goddess, excellently bright! " he echoed, 
 and added thoughtfully, "it s your hymn, you 
 know. Cynthia was just one of her names. 
 How did they know that you were going to look 
 like moonlight?" 
 
 For a moment she had no word at all to say; 
 then, with an effort, she managed to rally her 
 scattered wits. A glint of mockery came into 
 her eyes. "They named me after my Aunt 
 Cynthia," she said, "Aunt Augusta s sister." 
 
 He did not smile; his eyes still gazed thought 
 fully out over the shining surface of the pool, 
 and she became clearly aware that if any one were 
 to command this situation, and it seemed high 
 time that some one did, it must be herself. It 
 had always been his task before, but to-day, 
 without warning or ceremony, he had abandoned 
 
Goddess Excellently Bright 151 
 
 it and she must take it up. She did not much 
 want to; she had to resist pretty hard an im 
 pulse to fall in with his own new mood. Her 
 voice jarred horribly on her own ears when next 
 she spoke. 
 
 "How do you like my new clothes?" she asked. 
 
 It was the first time he had seen her in any 
 dress but that of the twentieth century. In 
 fact, the thing that had first mitigated his dismay 
 on discovering that she had chosen the unhealthy, 
 sentimental atmosphere of Beechcroft in which 
 to work at the job he had once advised her to 
 find, was the reassuring fact that she had brought 
 her sense of humor along with her. She had 
 spurned the lank robes of her sister disciples 
 and announced her intention of devising some 
 thing which should at once accord with the simple 
 beauty of the new religion and still possess the 
 added advantage of not making her look like 
 a frump. She would not consent to look like 
 a figure out of the chorus of Patience for her 
 Aunt Augusta nor the prophet, Stein, nor for 
 anybody. She pleased John Chance, and ma 
 terially relieved his mind, by telling him so. If 
 she were in as sane a mood as that, he reflected, 
 Beechcroft would not hurt her much. 
 
152 Comrade John 
 
 Well, she had solved her problem triumphantly. 
 The white serge robe with its silver embroidered 
 "walls of Troy" had the look of an Empire gown, 
 but with all the Gallic frivolity purified out of it. 
 She was clad, not swathed, in it, like her sister 
 toilers, and the dead white and silver of the robe 
 made warm and faintly flushed and human what 
 it revealed of her throat and slender arms. Her 
 amazing, luminous hair was confined in a broad, 
 pale gold ampyx with opal buckles and a net of 
 finely corded gold threads. 
 
 Chance did not look at her when she asked 
 him how he liked them, and his reply made the 
 fact that he did not significant. "I suppose 
 they were a part of what took my breath," he 
 said slowly. "I ve never seen you so before. 
 You ve always been shaded, before; even that 
 afternoon of carnival." 
 
 She had a reply ready this time, the light 
 common- sensical sentence she needed to pull 
 him back to the plane of every day ; but she hesi 
 tated to utter it, hesitated until he spoke again. 
 
 "I came up from New York a day sooner than 
 I meant. I felt in a hurry to be back. I was 
 impatient of the slow drive from the station, and 
 of Bill Hemenway, who had come to meet me 
 
Goddess Excellently Bright 153 
 
 and wanted to tell me his troubles. Something 
 was drawing me back here, and I didn t know 
 what it was. I didn t know until I came around 
 from behind that rock and saw you." 
 
 "I wish," Cynthia began; her voice did not 
 sound quite right, but she went steadily on. "I 
 wish I could solve the problem of my life here 
 as successfully as I seem to have solved the 
 problem of my clothes." Her speech was broken 
 by many pauses, and punctuated by the little 
 pebbles which idly, from time to time, she tossed 
 into the pool. " Though I m not sure that I ve 
 succeeded with them. Aunt Augusta thinks 
 they re too conspicuous, and of course she s right. 
 But I just couldn t put on those clinging, drag 
 ging things the rest wear. Oh, I d have done 
 it if you had " she looked at him, smiling, 
 "ordered me to; but you didn t. And 
 Mr. Stein likes these. He said something 
 well, about letting my light shine and about it 
 being my duty." 
 
 His silence no longer troubled her. She was* 
 no longer making up things to say, and as she 
 went on she was talking quite as much to herself 
 as to him. "I suppose one ought to have some 
 thing I lack, or to lack something I have, to be 
 
154 Comrade John 
 
 even a good disciple; and Mr. Stein wants me 
 to help him inspire the others and and convert 
 them. When he talks to me I can feel it all. 
 And I feel it still more when I look up at the upper 
 valley and see what he did what he is doing 
 right before our eyes. When I see that lovely 
 dream of his coming true, coming true under our 
 clumsy hands, I feel ashamed that I m so petty 
 and frivolous. There s a sort of glow away down 
 deep in me that tries to come out, tries to make 
 me something different. But the rest of it 
 
 "Oh, it will be hard for you to understand. 
 You re one of his builders, you re right there, 
 a part of the miracle. But when I try to make 
 things, it doesn t make my soul flower; it just 
 makes me feel ridiculous. And what the others 
 make is ridiculous, sometimes. Aunt Augusta 
 is weaving a rug, and she s so solemn and earnest 
 about it that it s well, downright common and 
 ill-bred to smile over it. But I do. I make 
 fun of it, and hurt her feelings dreadfully. I bite 
 my tongue for it afterward, but that s too late 
 to do any good." 
 
 This time it was a larger pebble that fell with 
 an impatient splash into the pool. "I suppose 
 you re wondering whether it was worth the trouble 
 
Goddess Excellently Bright 155 
 
 sending me home from Paris, from what I thought 
 was looking-glass country. I m not much good. 
 I m idle and discontented here just as I was 
 before, except when I look up the valley at that 
 dream that s coming true. If I could have it 
 before my eyes always perhaps I could be 
 the the priestess he wants to make me. If 
 you would help me again the way you did that 
 night in Paris It isn t very inspiring to have 
 Mr. Pole painting another portrait of me." 
 
 That stung her companion out of his revery, 
 and he turned upon her. "Pole !" he exclaimed. 
 
 "Mr. Stein wanted him to. It s not begun 
 yet. He s still fussing around trying to find 
 a pose and the place to paint me. I suppose he 
 will go making arrangements for weeks before 
 he really begins. That s why we came down 
 to this grotto. He s gone back to his studio to 
 get some draperies and pillows and things." 
 
 "So he s coming back here," said Chance. 
 Then he got briskly to his feet and held out his 
 hand to her. "Come," he said. 
 
 A little surprised, but with a smile flowering on 
 her lips, she said, "Where?" 
 
 "Wherever we shan t have to expect him to 
 make a third." 
 
156 Comrade John 
 
 She hesitated, but still smiling. This brusque, 
 decisive man was much more like the one she 
 felt she knew. Already he was leading the way 
 around the boulder and toward the upper end 
 of the pool. With something like a laugh, she 
 followed. 
 
 An awkward row of stepping-stones crossed the 
 brook at this point, but the water was high, and 
 two of them, in the middle, were submerged. 
 He turned and held out his arms. "I ll carry 
 you over," he said. 
 
 She smiled and colored a little, but shook her 
 head. "I d hardly do what you did, dive into 
 the pool just as I am, but I don t mind going 
 ankle deep." 
 
 He hesitated, but finally nodded assent. "It 
 will rid us of Pole, anyway. Six inches of water 
 will stop him." 
 
 "He s like a bloodhound, isn t he," she sug 
 gested, and both of them paid the small joke rather 
 more in the way of laughter than it was worth. 
 She crossed with no more assistance than the 
 clasp of his hand, and even this was gratuitous. 
 
 And when they were over, when they had 
 crossed the rock ledges on the farther side, even 
 when they began the easy assent of the broad, 
 
Goddess Excellently Bright 157 
 
 well-beaten trail, when what had been a mere 
 courtesy became a caress, he still held the hand 
 in his. 
 
 The action brought up to her mind a memory 
 which had frequented it much of late; of an 
 evening in a Paris restaurant and a moment 
 when he had reached across the table and taken 
 both her hands, held them, for a breath or two, 
 in a grip that almost hurt, a moment when it 
 seemed as if he were pulling her up, bodily, 
 over the brink of a precipice. After a moment 
 like that he had a right to her hands if he wanted 
 them. It would be absurd, childish, to deny 
 them to him. That was the way the matter 
 and no great matter, either, she told herself 
 would certainly have appeare d to the cool, 
 friendly, well-poised Cynthia she was still trying 
 to be; so for a little while it lay, trembling very 
 much in spite of her, against his palm. 
 
 But she could not endure it; the contact was 
 too live. It carried a message only half intel 
 ligible and wholly bewildering. Presently, as 
 gently as she could, she drew it away. He walked 
 on steadily beside her, helping her, where she 
 needed it, over the rough parts of the way, as if 
 nothing had happened. They had left the trail, 
 
158 Comrade John 
 
 and soon came out at the place he had been leading 
 her to, a pleasant, warm little terrace she had 
 never found before, well up the side of the north 
 ridge. 
 
 "Is this where you were taking me ?" she asked, 
 but seated herself without waiting for a reply on 
 a big, half- embedded stone and clasped her knee 
 in her two hands. "It s lovely How near your 
 house looks down there If we could only see 
 the lake and the temple, it would be perfect." 
 
 "There are times when I like not to see the 
 lake and the temple," he said. 
 
 She wondered why, but he offered no explana 
 tion, and she asked for none. She sat there, 
 nursing her knee and letting her gaze run idly 
 over the cottages and trim gardens of Beechcroft. 
 
 "Some one is trying to get into your house," 
 she said presently. "He s been knocking at 
 your front door, and now he s going around to 
 the back. It can t be Mr. Pole, can it?" 
 
 "He d never try both doors, even if he wanted 
 to see me, which he doesn t. We can forget 
 him altogether." 
 
 "I d feel a little guilty about that letting 
 him carry those pillows and silk draperies down 
 there to the grotto for nothing if you hadn t 
 
Goddess Excellently Bright 159 
 
 ordered me to do it." She laughed. "I wonder 
 why I go on minding you. I do, somehow. It s 
 getting to be a habit with me. I never did it 
 for any one before, and I seem to like it." 
 
 "You mustn t mind me any more," he said 
 soberly. 
 
 "You don t want the responsibility?" she 
 questioned, mocking. "You re tired of having 
 me for part of your job ? " 
 
 But she could not get a smile from him. "I m 
 not fit for the job," he said. Then he roused him 
 self and added, almost roughly: "Don t mind me. 
 Don t mind anybody. Don t mind Stein." 
 
 A puzzled look came into her eyes. "But you 
 mind Mr. Stein, don t you?" The quietness 
 of her manner contrasted strongly with his. 
 "We all do, don t we?" 
 
 "Not in the way I mean you shouldn t. He s 
 not the gate of heaven. He s a man. He s 
 fallible, like any other man." 
 
 She sighed. "I suppose I see what you mean. 
 But I wish things were clearer. I wish I could 
 make it seem worth while to bind flabby little 
 books, or weave rugs like Aunt Augusta s." 
 
 "Oh, as for that," he said, "I suppose one 
 could find a real job, even here at Beechcroft." 
 
160 Comrade John 
 
 The words were part of the expression of a 
 mood as new to himself as it was to Cynthia. 
 From the moment he had come upon her beside 
 the pool he had been in the grip of a set of forces 
 he did not understand. He was bewildered, 
 half afraid, like those Genoese mariners whom 
 the mysterious trade-wind was carrying out to 
 the world s edge ; like one following an unknown 
 clew through a labyrinth. And in this mood 
 he kicked impatiently at the Beechcroft Idea as 
 a man does at an insignificant obstacle he stumbles 
 over in the dark. 
 
 But Cynthia s next words had an imperative 
 quality in them that pierced even so heavy an 
 abstraction as his. "You believe in Beechcroft, 
 don t you? You re here with us because you 
 believe it ? It isn t for some some other reason 
 altogether that you re here?" 
 
 "No," he said. "It s not for any other reason." 
 
 The moment the words were uttered silence 
 settled down between them, a silence that vi 
 brated with a strange sort of excitement. He 
 went over to the edge of the terrace and stood 
 looking down the valley. He was not thinking 
 of the lie, nor even of the fact that he had 
 lied to her. He was not really thinking at 
 
Goddess Excellently Bright 161 
 
 all, but standing astonished, rather, in the pres 
 ence of a miracle. 
 
 For the lie, which had come to his lips auto 
 matically enough, had been like the magic chemi 
 cal reagent added to a muddy compound in a 
 beaker, transforming it in an instant into a flash 
 ing, crystalline liquor with a slimy deposit at the 
 bottom of the glass. It had been a sword-flash 
 which had shorn asunder the veil that hung 
 before his Holy of Holies. A long time he stood 
 there in the deep recessed silence of the hills, 
 a hazy June sky, cloud-streaked, before his un 
 seeing eyes. The blood was drumming in his 
 temples, drumming a wild song. He knew, at 
 last, whither the mysterious, eternal trade-wind 
 had been carrying him. He had discovered his 
 New World. 
 
 She had risen too, and stood not far away, 
 out in the frank sunshine, the wind blowing her 
 robe into a closer embrace of her lithe body. 
 Her unblown hair, held fast in the ampyx and 
 the golden net, looked, in its strange contrast with 
 the clinging, fluttering robe, like the steadfast 
 glory of a saint. "She made me think of the 
 Angel of the Resurrection," some one had said 
 of her once before, and the sentence came back 
 
1 62 Comrade John 
 
 into Chance s mind as, after a stolen, momentary 
 glance at her, he lowered his eyes. 
 
 "I wonder," he said unsteadily his voice 
 was curiously harsh in quality, hardly articulate 
 at all "I wonder whether any man has ever 
 told you that he loved you." After a little silence 
 he went on more evenly, but still without look 
 ing up at her. "A man couldn t do that 
 couldn t offer that, unless he expected it 
 back ; unless it seemed natural and right 
 that it should be given back to him. And with 
 you, a man would be more likely to go away, 
 and keep you among his dreams, not daring 
 to think they could come true. After the day 
 in Paris you seemed like that to me, seemed like 
 an apparition. I suppose that is the real reason, 
 though I didn t know it, why I wouldn t let you 
 tell me your name; because I felt you belonged 
 with my dreams and not with my realities. The 
 only way I tried to make the dream come true 
 was by trying to build you into that temple 
 at the head of the valley. And yet, in these 
 days since you came here, until to-day when I 
 found you there beside the pool, you ve seemed 
 different. All the way up from New York this 
 afternoon I was as happy as a boy just because 
 
Goddess Excellently Bright 163 
 
 I was coming back to you, no more in awe of you 
 than if you had been a child. You ve been a 
 comrade to me for this little handful of days. 
 I liked the way you made a parade of obeying 
 me, liked feeling older and more experienced 
 and " he interrupted himself with a short 
 laugh " wiser than you. But to-day, when 
 I came upon you, crowned, when I saw the full 
 glory of you, unshaded, you seemed an apparition 
 again. To-day, suddenly, I found myself 
 afraid." 
 
 She did not speak, but he heard her moving 
 past him on the grass, and knew, without raising 
 his eyes, that she had gone back to the half-em 
 bedded rock that had served as her seat before. 
 At last 
 
 "Look," she said. 
 
 He obeyed her. She had been fumbling at the 
 opal buckles which held the pale gold ampyx 
 and the net, and at the moment he raised his 
 eyes she succeeded in releasing them. Her hair, 
 bound before, immobile, a steadfast glory like 
 an angel s aureole, fell in a loose coil on the nape 
 of her white neck, and little crinkled love-locks 
 of it caressed her ears. And somehow the 
 simple decoronation made her a girl again. Her 
 
164 Comrade John 
 
 eyes were bright, but with tears, with a light that 
 was very human, very wistful. The ampyx and 
 the golden net dangled from her trembling fingers. 
 
 He understood. And yet he hesitated ; he, too, 
 stayed trembling where he was. A new sort of 
 timidity held him, a timidity bred of the very 
 things that are supposed to destroy such a feel 
 ing, sophistication, experience, long life in the 
 " world," in various worlds. The numerous little 
 will-o -the-wisps of love he had followed at one 
 time or another with such care-free abandon, 
 made the effulgence of this light an awesome thing 
 to approach. It was not as a goddess that she 
 awed him, it was as a maid. He met her eyes, 
 indeed, but that was all. 
 
 The silence that fell between them was invaded 
 by a sound below on the hillside, a sound of 
 crackling twigs and the swish of bushes that caught 
 at some intruder in a vain attempt to stop his 
 progress. The steady crescendo of these sounds 
 made it evident that he, whoever he might be, 
 was coming straight toward their terrace, and 
 presently Chance, who had walked down to the 
 edge of it, caught sight of him. He was a car 
 penter named Hicks, one of the precious twenty 
 retained because they could be trusted not to 
 
Goddess Excellently Bright 165 
 
 work too hard nor to exercise an embarrassing 
 amount of intelligence. 
 
 The sight of him affected Chance unpleasantly. 
 It was not the moment he would have chosen for 
 having this fraud, in which he had been Stein s 
 partner and of which Cynthia herself was one 
 of the victims, thrust in his face. It came to 
 rather more than that, too. Seeing him there, 
 as he supposed, alone, the man was likely enough 
 to say something which would betray, if not the 
 whole thing, at least altogether too much. The 
 expedient which instantly occurred to him, of 
 silencing him by a sight of Cynthia, he as promptly 
 dismissed. She should not be profaned at this 
 moment by any other eyes than his, let alone 
 should she be used, unconsciously, in playing any 
 part of his game. 
 
 What he did was to walk down the hill a little 
 way to meet Hicks. He felt like a sneak for 
 doing as much as that, and his manner to the 
 carpenter was not conciliatory. 
 
 "What do you want?" he asked curtly. 
 
 "They told me as I d find you at your ouse, 
 sir; and I went there and waited. And when I 
 got tired waiting I took a look around with your 
 glass and made you out up ere. So I took the 
 
1 66 Comrade John 
 
 liberty to follow. I want to arsk just one ques 
 tion. Oo is the boss of this job?" 
 
 "Don t shout," said Chance, sharply. "I am, 
 and you know it. What s your real question?" 
 
 "Well, then, here s my real question, if you 
 want it. That little rat with the blue band around 
 him, him they call the Overseer, is he to come 
 overseeing me and indering my work whenever 
 he takes the notion? Am I to take orders from 
 im?" 
 
 "You know the answer to that, too," said 
 Chance. "You are." 
 
 "I was minding my own business, sir, filing 
 a cross-cut saw, and this overseer, e comes along 
 and begins giving me abuse about my infernal 
 din ; those was his words. And when I paid 
 no attention to him, he tried to take away the saw. 
 I didn t want to make trouble, so I let him take 
 it, and came stright for you, sir." 
 
 " Go to the store keeper and get a new saw," said 
 Chance. "I ll see about the other later. You 
 should have stopped when he first told you to." 
 
 The words were accompanied with a nod of 
 dismissal, but the carpenter did not take the hint. 
 He stood rubbing his hands together a moment, 
 and then laughed. "Well, it s a queer job, sure 
 
Goddess Excellently Bright 167 
 
 enough," he said. "And maybe there s nothing 
 scaly about it, and maybe there is. I ll not pre 
 sume to say." He laughed again, and set off 
 down the hill. 
 
 Chance stood watching him as he crashed his 
 way through the bushes down to the trail ; watched 
 until he was out of sight and remained gazing 
 awhile after. He understood now why the new 
 job made Bill Hemenway unhappy, why he 
 couldn t understand it. Bill was an honest man ! 
 And the job was so patently dishonest that even 
 Hicks s thick wits had discovered the fact. But 
 he himself 
 
 A wry smile came on his lips. What a man 
 the prophet was ! How well he appraised men ! 
 How well he had known what he was about when 
 he made him that proposition up in Moberly 
 Pole s studio ! 
 
 And then the smile, mirthless as it was, faded. 
 Cynthia was waiting there on the terrace for him 
 to come back to her; Cynthia, whom he loved, 
 and who yes, he was honest enough to face 
 the situation without blinking who, he was 
 sure, loved him. Cynthia, to whom he had lied, 
 and who must, by now, have at least an uneasy 
 inkling of the truth. 
 
1 68 Comrade John 
 
 Well, she should know the truth now, without 
 palliation, should know the worst there was to 
 tell, as starkly as he could tell it, whether it left 
 any residue of him that she could love and respect 
 or not. It was with a feeling of grim satisfaction 
 that he made his way back to the terrace. 
 
 But when he found her, when he saw her rise 
 and come, half eager, half timid, a little way to 
 meet him, he saw, even though blind love of her 
 blurred his sight, that hers was not the face of one 
 waiting to sit in judgment. She guessed much; 
 the eager, vivid curiosity in her eyes made that 
 plain. But it was not for the purpose of assessing 
 the good and the bad in him, finding a verdict 
 and giving sentence, that she wanted the truth. 
 She wanted it because she wanted to share his 
 soul; wanted all the sin and sorrow in it as well 
 as the joy, just because it was his. He knew, 
 when he had read that look, that he would be for 
 given; indeed, forgiving was hardly the term 
 she would apply to it. And then then they 
 would shake the dust of Beechcroft from their 
 feet and go out into a cleaner, sweeter world, 
 together. 
 
 But at that, with the words of his confession 
 already framed on his lips, there came something 
 
Goddess Excellently Bright 169 
 
 that checked him like a tap on a great bell; 
 something that surcharged itself in staring black 
 letters straight across his moral retina. 
 
 The one thing more despicable than to lie 
 to her, would be to tell her the truth. 
 
 Already he was a fraud ; he was Stein s partner 
 and had pocketed his share of the swag. But 
 what term would be mean enough to describe 
 him if, after all, he peached ; if he turned state s 
 evidence against his partner to secure immunity 
 for himself. That, just that, was what telling 
 Cynthia the truth she wanted would come to. 
 
 He dared not trust himself to reason, to think. 
 He just held on, throttling by main strength 
 of will the wild cry of confession that his soul 
 set up. Something of the struggle showed in 
 his face ; he was white under his coat of tan, and 
 his lips pressed tightly together. But he stood 
 straight before her, courageously meeting her 
 eyes. He watched the light die out of them and 
 come again, accompanied this time by a faint 
 flush of anger. And he saw that die out, too. 
 
 "I must go back to my work," he said. 
 
 He turned to leave her, then paused. "Can 
 I help you down the trail?" he asked. "It s 
 pretty rough." 
 
170 Comrade John 
 
 "No, thanks," she said. Her voice had the 
 perfect nuance of careless amiability, and it hurt 
 like a knife-stab. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE STAKE AND THE PLAYERS 
 
 THE curious and disquieting behavior of the 
 carpenter Hicks, though not forgotten, came to 
 be rather lost sight of in the general demoraliza 
 tion of the working force that daily, during the 
 ensuing week or so, was coming more and more 
 seriously to be reckoned with. There was no 
 work to be got out of them, there was no pos 
 sibility of enforcing discipline, and at last Bill 
 Hemenway s grotesque prediction came true. 
 The men actually struck. 
 
 When that happened, there was only one thing 
 to do. To listen to a word of their complaints 
 would only make matters worse. Chance ordered 
 them rounded up at the old shack behind the 
 temple, had the whole crew paid off, and in order 
 to be completely rid of them as quickly as possible, 
 promised an extra week s pay to all who should 
 catch the evening train to the city. 
 171 
 
172 Comrade John 
 
 The bonus was large enough to be attractive 
 to such riff-raff as they were, and Chance was a 
 little surprised, at the end of an hour s work in 
 the model room of the shack, to be informed by 
 Henry Baumann that one of the workmen had 
 not gone, and insisted on seeing him. 
 
 "Who is the man?" Chance asked. "What s 
 his name?" 
 
 "A carpenter named Hicks," Henry told him. 
 
 " All right," he said. " Send him into the front 
 office." 
 
 And then, during the minute or so that elapsed, 
 his mind worked at top speed. Who was this 
 man, Hicks? Why had he, instead of certain 
 other, noisier men, been the one to complain to 
 him so insolently. He recalled now, for the first 
 time, that there had always been something dimly 
 familiar in the face and figure of the man, some 
 thing familiar in the way he climbed a scaffold 
 and in the way he swung a hammer. Then 
 abruptly his fingers stopped drumming the table. 
 A curious expression came into his face. For, 
 after all, in spite of his care from the moment 
 he first entered Beechcroft to employ men who 
 knew nothing about him, who did not even know 
 his surname, here was a fellow who had worked 
 
The Stake and the Players 173 
 
 for him at Atlanta no, at Omaha no, at 
 But no matter where. Hicks knew him. That 
 was sufficient to complicate an exceedingly 
 delicate situation. More than this, the man was 
 evidently aware that the knowledge might be 
 worth something, or he would not so causally 
 have forfeited an extra pay envelope. 
 
 Well, whatever was to be done, must be done 
 quickly. Wherever he was, at Beechcroft, or 
 at New York, Hicks was pretty likely to prove 
 a high explosive. With what he knew, he could 
 blow up the place. Chance had not the slightest 
 hold at this moment, on any plan which would 
 effectually close his mouth. The only plan he 
 could hit on, as he sat there listening to the 
 approaching footsteps, was the temporary ex 
 pedient of holding the man at Beechcroft until 
 he could somehow dispose of him. 
 
 Hicks came slowly and sullenly into the room. 
 Chance gave no sign that he heard him. Hicks 
 cleared his throat. "Look here," he observed, 
 "I ve got something to say to you." 
 
 The remark faded out, for the back of the 
 master builder was imperturbable. And when 
 at last he swung around in his chair, apparently 
 he was not aware that Hicks had spoken. 
 
174 Comrade John 
 
 "I wanted to see you," he said, curtness and 
 buoyant good -humor in his manner, " because I 
 shan t let you go with the others. I need you 
 on the millwright work for the present. That s 
 all." 
 
 He swung around again to the table. The 
 only next move which Hicks could hit on with 
 any sense of fitness was to withdraw. Accord 
 ingly he left the room and the shack, and walked 
 down the road into the cool, early June evening. 
 
 When he had gone, Chance reached for the 
 desk telephone, and tried to get Hobbema s 
 house, but could not connect. This was annoying. 
 But he could telephone from the steel-room in 
 the temple. He had turned that room over to 
 the prophet, but he happened to know that one 
 of the two keys still lay here in a drawer of his 
 desk. He did not propose on this evening to 
 go to Stein. He proposed that Stein should come 
 to him. And so he found the key, went down to 
 the dark temple, mounted the platform, crossed 
 the robing-room, and coolly unlocking the sacred 
 steel door and switching on the drop-light that 
 ornamented the mahogany table, he called up 
 the house of the overseer. Hobbema himself 
 answered. 
 
The Stake and the Players 175 
 
 "Well, Comrade," he said, "what can I do 
 for you?" 
 
 "You can find Mr. Stein, if you will be so 
 good," said Chance, "and ask him to meet me, 
 before dark, on the steps of the temple. It is 
 important that he come to that place just as 
 soon as possible." 
 
 Hobbema mused. This was an extraordinary 
 request. But it was explicit; and he knew the 
 master builder well enough now to indulge in 
 no questions. It was simply a matter of com 
 plying, or not. He complied. And a little be 
 wildered by the note of authority in Chance s 
 voice, his narrow mind groping darkly through 
 a situation which had grown out of his com 
 prehension, he hurried over to the prophet s 
 house. This was, it would seem, to be an evening 
 of surprises for the general overseer of the Beech- 
 croft activities. 
 
 The house of the prophet was not only im 
 posing, on its broad terrace, and under its great 
 beeches, it was also, or it always had been, a 
 symbol of all that was methodical, orderly, 
 serene. There was never any noise in or about 
 Mr. Stein s dwelling; there was never confusion; 
 nothing was ever out of place. The butler, 
 
176 Comrade John 
 
 the coachman, and the five maids who made 
 up that devout, silent household, were but parts 
 of a well-regulated little machine, whose object 
 was to surround Stein, the man, with every com 
 fort. And the directing of this machine, the con 
 stant regulating and adjusting of it, had been the 
 life-work of the plain, sad, gray little woman 
 known, when she was known at all, as Comrade 
 Louisa, the wife of Herman Stein. 
 
 Hobbema swung the knocker, and waited. 
 He swung it again, and still he waited. This 
 was unusual. Through the open windows came 
 occasional sounds of activity within. A third 
 time he knocked. He walked slowly the length 
 of the veranda and back again. Finally, through 
 the broad glass in the upper part of the door, he 
 saw the butler approaching, but without his usual 
 expression of utter woodenness. Something not 
 unlike emotion was written on his smooth-shaven 
 face. His hands were dusty; and his coat was 
 partly unbuttoned, as if he had been interrupted 
 in manual labor, and had hastily thrown it on. 
 
 Hobbema looked narrowly at him. "Is Mr. 
 Stein here, Joseph?" 
 
 "No, sir." 
 
 "Can you tell me where he is?" 
 
The Stake and the Players 177 
 
 " I can t, sir. He has been away since morn 
 ing." 
 
 There were several packing-cases in the hall, 
 and heaps of excelsior on the floor. Books were 
 scattered about. Pictures, some crated, others 
 not, were leaning against the wall. 
 
 Hobbema half turned, hesitated, then peered 
 in again through the doorway. "What is all 
 this ? " he asked. " Who is going away, Joseph ? " 
 
 The butler looked out toward the beeches. 
 His hand gripped the door-knob more tightly. 
 "Mrs. Stein is going away, sir." 
 
 Hobbema s eyes flashed with a curiosity so 
 eager that it was fairly morbid. "This is a 
 surprise, Joseph. I I should like to see her, 
 if she " 
 
 "Very sorry, sir, but she has asked to be ex 
 cused from seeing anybody." 
 
 There was a silence, then the overseer drew on, 
 with an effort, the cloak of solemn dignity with 
 which he habitually covered his mental naked 
 ness, and walked down to the road. Here he 
 did not hesitate. He felt pretty certain that he 
 knew where to go next. 
 
 The pleasant cottage which was occupied by 
 Cynthia and her aunt stood halfway down the 
 
178 Comrade John 
 
 lower valley, close by a little brook which lingered 
 beside it as if unwilling to lose its identity in 
 the larger stream just beyond. There were pines 
 here among the beeches, and they were so grouped 
 on the western side that the evening shadows 
 fell early over the cottage, and deepened the color 
 of its malachite green stain, and softened the 
 interior tones on its flat, simply ornamented walls. 
 And so now, although daylight still held in the 
 valley, twilight had entered the cottage, and had 
 brought with it the mysteries that hover midway 
 between daylight and dark. The door and 
 the windows were open, and the faint noises of 
 early evening came floating in from tree and 
 meadow to blend gently with the tinkle and gurgle 
 of the brook and with the deepening shadows. 
 
 Cynthia sat curled up on the window-seat, 
 gazing out and down, cheek resting on hand, 
 into a black pool just below, where the dusky 
 reflections ceaselessly wavered and broke and 
 re-formed and wavered again. There was a 
 fascination almost hypnotic in the dark, quivering 
 surface of the water. Her delicately outlined 
 face seemed to have grown, in that half light, 
 suddenly fragile. Herman Stein stood silent 
 in the shadow, looking down at her. He was 
 
The Stake and the Players 179 
 
 big, commanding, yet gentle. She could feel 
 his steady eyes upon her. They frightened her 
 a little. And still, so long as it was impersonal 
 this way, so long as his closeness to her seemed 
 mental, even spiritual, rather than physical, 
 there was something almost restful in his mastery. 
 
 On the square-legged little table at her elbow 
 lay an open copy of "Toil and Triumph," 
 dog-eared and pencilled. Scraps of paper 
 lay about, covered with snatches of exegesis in 
 Stein s unformed hand a hand which he never 
 employed when an amanuensis or a stenographer 
 was available, and which was the only outwardly 
 weak thing about him. 
 
 Finally he spoke, slowly and with deep feeling. 
 
 "I wish I could tell you, Comrade, what your 
 progress in the spirit of our faith means to me, 
 and to us all. It has been hard for me. I have 
 stood alone. I have known what it means to 
 fight for the faith. I have often stumbled 
 oh, so often ! It has not always been given me 
 to see the light. Sometimes I have wished that 
 another a better, a stronger leader might be 
 given to carry my people forward." His deep, 
 still eyes did not waver from the dim outline of 
 her cheek and from her straying, luminous hair. 
 
180 Comrade John 
 
 "And now you have come like a shining light 
 into our lives. I do not mean to speak in a 
 personal way, Comrade. It is not I, the poor- 
 spirited man, speaking to you, the girl who is 
 so full of youth and charm and feeling. No 
 it is not like that. It is something higher and 
 better than you or I which moves me to say this 
 something so much higher and better that we 
 can only serve it, and give our lives to it, and 
 perhaps, some day who knows die for it. 
 That "he paused; there was suppressed emo 
 tion in his voice "that would be wonderful, 
 Comrade." 
 
 He saw that she was listening. 
 
 "What we have needed now when we 
 have come almost within sight of our triumph 
 is the inspired leader the leader with a spark 
 from the flame of Heaven in her eyes what I 
 have hoped for, prayed for, is the Joan of Arc 
 who could lead us over the line that separates 
 toil from triumph. And that that inspired, 
 that almost divine one, must be a woman. I 
 can lead no farther. No man can lead us far 
 ther." 
 
 She looked up in quick protest. She was con 
 scious of the uprush of a great, a splendid pur- 
 
The Stake and the Players 181 
 
 pose within herself, of a possession which seemed 
 to exalt her above the weaknesses and desires 
 of humankind. Her eyes were shining as they 
 had shone when first they saw the splendid picture 
 in the upper valley; but suddenly, when they 
 met his, they fell away, and her cheek again 
 rested on her hand, and again she looked into the 
 dusky pool. 
 
 "Oh, Comrade," he continued, "you can never 
 understand what it would have meant to us if 
 we could have had you ten years ago could 
 have had you as you are to-day, young, beautiful, 
 full of the glamour of spring. If if my wife 
 could have been like you ! If somebody had 
 supported me in my work if somebody had 
 believed in it if somebody had cared ! But 
 that " he seemed to be steadying himself 
 "even that is over now. She never cared; and 
 now she is leaving me. Once more I stand alone. 
 But I am learning. It has taught me that human 
 alliances are feeble. I will not be weak again 
 I will not be a man, with a man s desires. 
 I will be a prophet. I will live only for the tri 
 umph of our faith. When that is achieved, I 
 will die. And it is you, Comrade, who have in 
 spired me, lifted me, who have shown me that 
 
1 82 Comrade John 
 
 the true way is not the poor, human way, but 
 that it is the divine way. What is this world 
 that it should claim our bodies? What are the 
 joys and sorrows of this world that they should 
 sway us from the work we have to do?" The 
 emotion that was stirring within him suddenly 
 broke through the restraint he had put upon it. 
 "Yes," he said, "it is you. It is you who shine 
 out of my temple. It was you the splendid 
 woman who dominated me, who guided my 
 hand, when I built it when I built you into 
 it !" He did not see the odd, startled expression 
 that flitted across her face at this. 
 
 He looked at her hair, at the soft outline of her 
 cheek, turned halfway from him, at her slender 
 hand, at her young body. He could not take 
 his eyes from her. The earthly man his tongue 
 had just renounced was surging within him. 
 He had made her listen. She was almost his. 
 His hands were tingling to grip hers and hold 
 them. He wavered and took a half step forward. 
 And then, the other man within him, the cooler 
 man, still the stronger, took the reins. He stood 
 motionless, his hands clenched, his shadowy face 
 hard and expressionless. The great mind was 
 revolving slowly, oh, so slowly ! and settling 
 
The Stake and the Players 183 
 
 normally on its axis. A false step now would 
 spell disaster. And he knew, his colder mind 
 knew, that the man could never accomplish his 
 new purpose, that only the prophet could win 
 her. 
 
 Slowly, master of himself now, he drew up a 
 chair, and sat beside her. 
 
 "You are tired, Comrade," he said gently. 
 "I have tired you. It means so much to me. 
 After all, our course is not difficult to plan now. 
 With you by me, I can see the light. We will 
 stand together for the faith. Side by side, we 
 will renounce the world, and carry the banner 
 onward. We will travel far, and spread the 
 truth in every corner of the land, in every land. 
 We will live, together, for the best there is in us, 
 in order that our lives may inspire my people 
 our people." And without the slightest pause 
 or change of manner, he went on: "It will 
 perhaps be well to observe the conventions of the 
 world, foolish as they sometimes seem. It may 
 seem best, as our work develops and defines itself, 
 that the separation between my wife and myself 
 be made legal, and that you and I submit to the 
 outward forms of marriage. But that hardly 
 matters." He paused, now, and said, very 
 
184 Comrade John 
 
 quietly : " The only thing that matters is what we 
 may be able to do for our fellow-men. Let 
 us hope and pray that we may lead them 
 millions of them into the peace and beauty 
 of soul that is built on character. It is a splendid 
 thought." 
 
 And again, as he looked at her, his hands 
 tingled and his fingers pressed into his palms. 
 
 There was a knock at the door. 
 
 Cynthia started up, and gave a nervous little 
 exclamation, and shook back the loose locks of 
 her hair. 
 
 And then a man came a few steps into the 
 room; and peering forward, they both made out 
 the thin figure and the narrow shoulders of over 
 seer Hobbema. 
 
 Stein slowly rose and stood solidly. In the 
 dusk he looked the prophet, calm and self- 
 controlled. Hobbema could not see the mo 
 mentary glitter in his eyes. 
 
 "Well, what is it?" he said. 
 
 Hobbema was not at his ease. "I have just 
 had a message from Comrade John. He asks 
 very urgently that you meet him, at once, before 
 dark, on the steps of the temple. * 
 
 "Did he give no reason?" asked Stein. 
 
The Stake and the Players 185 
 
 "None." 
 
 There was a long silence. Cynthia drew back 
 into the shadows beside the window. Hobbema 
 took a desultory step or two toward the door. 
 
 "Very well," said the prophet then. He turned 
 and extended his hand. " Good night, Comrade," 
 he said. 
 
 "Good night," she replied in a low voice that 
 she herself hardly recognized. 
 
 They were gone. Those inscrutable eyes 
 were no longer fixed on her. And combating 
 her memory of their power, fighting with them 
 for the possession of her thoughts, was the mem 
 ory of the man she had thought she loved 
 not Comrade John, she did not understand him, 
 but the other, the Monsieur Jean who had made 
 her mind. 
 
 Trembling a little, she leaned on the sill, and 
 looked out again at the pool, and watched the 
 foam-flecks that now and then set the deep re 
 flections quivering. There was no one, now, to 
 tell her what to do. 
 
 A solitary figure was coming deliberately up the 
 north promenade. John Chance, sitting on the 
 top step of the great flight before the temple, 
 
1 86 Comrade John 
 
 waited until the figure began to ascend the slope, 
 then he moved down the steps and waited. The 
 twilight was not far advanced here in the open. 
 A moment more, and the two men stood face to 
 face. The prophet bowed coldly, but Chance 
 ignored his manner. 
 
 "I have asked you to come up here in person, 
 Mr. Stein, because what I have to say will be 
 enforced by the spectacle this valley makes right 
 now." 
 
 Stein s eyes followed the gesture, and rested 
 on the row of half-built structures on either side 
 of the lake. These structures were the shops, 
 dormitories, and studios which Chance had begun 
 after the convention visitors had returned to 
 their homes. There was no doubt that in their 
 present condition they gravely impaired the beauty 
 of the valley. Wooden skeletons, partly hidden 
 behind rough boards (many of which came from 
 lots of second-hand lumber which Chance had 
 picked up) stood boldly out, naked, angular, 
 fringed with scaffolding and bordered with lumber 
 piles, dirt heaps, and mortar beds. The sheet-iron, 
 with which the more nearly completed buildings 
 were sheathed, had not yet been painted, and it 
 added broad surfaces of rust to the picture. 
 
The Stake and the Players 187 
 
 "The conditions have changed since we built 
 the temple," Chance continued. "Nowadays 
 visitors, dozens of them at a time, are coming in 
 here to see the miracle they have read about. 
 The papers are watching us, too. We have no 
 time to lose in completing these buildings, paint 
 ing them, and clearing away the rubbish. The 
 interiors don t matter. But we must patch up 
 the looks of this valley, and do it quick. I m 
 too much of a showman, myself, to enjoy it as 
 it is. There s no triumph in that mess." 
 
 On that other occasion, when the master builder 
 had coupled his character as a showman with the 
 spirit of Beechcroft, the prophet had let it pass 
 as the mental vivacity of a young man. But now 
 it irritated him; and it was not easy for him to 
 present the gravely inquiring countenance which 
 Chance saw. 
 
 "And now," the younger man went on, very 
 deliberately, "you are wondering why I brought 
 you here to tell you this. It is because I dis 
 charged all my men this afternoon, all but 
 one, to be exact, and the work has stopped." 
 
 Stein gave him a quick look. "I have no 
 doubt you had a good reason for that course?" 
 
 "I felt that I had." 
 
1 88 Comrade John 
 
 "And can t you employ other men?" 
 
 Chance shook his head. "No, for two reasons. 
 The plan of making imitation Beechcrofters out 
 of hired workingmen is a failure. They can t 
 be handled that way. It seemed worth a trial, 
 but I know now that it won t work. It s better 
 to let the buildings rot as they are than to give 
 the Associated Press a two-column story on the 
 strike of the workmen who were making Herman 
 Stein s visions to blossom like the rose with 
 drunks, riots, and incidental shootings on the side." 
 
 The master builder delivered this thrust with 
 cool scorn. He was sick of Stein. 
 
 "And he other reason ?" 
 
 "I kept one of the men here because I found 
 that he knows my name and my history, and he 
 has the beginnings of an understanding that we 
 shouldn t like him to give either to the Associated 
 Press." 
 
 Stein was finding it difficult to keep his temper 
 in the presence of this self-possessed young man 
 who despised him. 
 
 "What have you to propose?" he asked, with 
 a new snap in his voice. 
 
 "That we try to get a little real work out of the 
 Beechcrofters." 
 
The Stake and the Players 189 
 
 "What do you mean by that? 
 
 "That you and I, Stein, stop lying for a few 
 weeks. We can t stop altogether you will 
 still claim that you conceived this picture, and 
 that s a lie. But we can make your people do 
 the rest of the work. It won t hurt them." 
 
 Chance cared no more for the flush of anger 
 that spread slowly over the heavy face than he 
 had cared for the imposing dignity of the 
 moment before. And so, while Stein was strug 
 gling with the slow temper that threatened to 
 master him, he finished what he had to say. 
 
 "I have no authority to call out the guilds and 
 set everybody at work to-morrow morning. But 
 that is the course I recommend to you." And 
 with that he turned away, and tossed a bit of 
 stone into the mist of the cascade. It would not 
 be good business for Stein to lose his temper at 
 this stage, and Chance gave him a little time in 
 which to recover it. 
 
 Stein walked a few steps away, and stood by 
 the parapet. The evening was quiet, except for 
 the music of the little waterfall. In the western 
 and northern sky a warm red afterglow was 
 spreading, and some of its color got into the still 
 water, and added, as the ugly objects on the banks 
 
190 Comrade John 
 
 receded into the dusk, a new charm to the picture 
 Chance had made. Above them, on its eleva 
 tion at the top of the wide stairway, towered the 
 temple, which meant so much to them both. 
 
 As if by some tacit understanding they turned 
 and faced each other. Each was squarely un 
 compromising Chance firm, Stein hard. And 
 each was cool now. Their eyes met, and an 
 odd little flash passed between them. Yes, 
 Stein was big. He would be a hard man to 
 fight and defeat. There was something ad 
 mirable, after all, in the way he had put down 
 that slow, cold temper of his. If it ever broke 
 away from him, the spectacle would be worth 
 seeing. Men do not like to be told that their 
 lives are a lie, especially if the charge be true. 
 It is not the sort of thing a man forgets. Stein 
 would not forget it. But it was the impassive, 
 the impersonal prophet who now spoke. 
 
 "I have a little work to do now at the temple, 
 he said, speaking slowly and very distinctly, 
 "before I go down. But I will consider your 
 suggestion, and communicate with you a little 
 later. I am inclined to believe that your plan 
 is the best perhaps the only one to follow." 
 
 With a slight bow he ascended the steps. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 WIRES AND THE MARIONETTE 
 
 THE prophet s road from the temple to his 
 house led him past Hobbema s, and the light 
 from its windows arrested his attention and put 
 a term to his revery. It was another manifesta 
 tion of the immense reserves of Stein s power, 
 that after two such scenes as he had just come 
 through, the exaltation of one and the violent 
 revulsion of the other, and with his dismantled 
 home before him, he was able to take up and 
 dispose of a practical detail suggested by these 
 lighted windows. 
 
 If a strong premonition was on him that his 
 master builder was dangerous, this steady-eyed 
 young man whose tongue was so trenchant and 
 whose mind so incorrigibly honest, whatever his 
 deeds might be, he was entirely without mis 
 givings of this sort in the case of his overseer. 
 Any notion that Hobbema would one day dis 
 place him and reign in his stead at the head of 
 191 
 
192 Comrade John 
 
 the new religion, he would have dismissed as 
 nonsense. 
 
 "I find that the builders are in trouble," the 
 prophet said, as he seated himself ponderously 
 in a massive slab-sided chair in Hobbema s 
 library. "I have tried leaving them to them 
 selves for this latter and less important part of 
 the work, and I find them unequal to it. Com 
 rade John confessed as much to me this evening." 
 
 " Comrade John?" The overseer affected not 
 to know whom he meant. 
 
 " Comrade John, the master builder," said 
 Stein, with no trace of impatience. " You brought 
 me a message from him this evening." 
 
 Hobbema had never been able to discover who 
 the master builder really was, though he had 
 tried scores of times in just such little ways as 
 this to trip him or the prophet into revealing it. 
 Surnames were not as a rule made a matter of 
 mystery at Beechcroft, though they had no place 
 in the prescribed form of address. Still was it 
 explicitly stated in what Chance had irreverently 
 referred to as the " ground rules" that when a 
 disciple sought the shelter of Beechcroft he might 
 abandon, if he liked, the burden of his former 
 identity and the label which attached him to it. 
 
Wires and the Marionette 193 
 
 A respectable minority of others besides Comrade 
 John had taken this course, but none of these 
 worried Hobbema. His fine nose had caught 
 a whiff of the one real mystery among them 
 all and he was always sniffing at it. 
 
 "These new buildings," Stein went on, "are 
 so far a failure. They are ugly, and I will allow 
 no ugly things at Beechcroft. But from now 
 on I shall make the completion of those buildings 
 my first duty. We will turn this failure into a 
 source of fresh inspiration." 
 
 He made an involuntary pause there. He 
 would have liked, he had meant, to carry the 
 jargon a little further, but a sudden weariness 
 of it stopped him. The fact that the overseer 
 suspected a good deal, and perhaps knew a little, 
 was partly accountable for it, and Chance s 
 suggestion that they stop lying for a while, still 
 more. The quality of his voice changed, and he 
 spoke brusquely. "I tell you this because I wish 
 you to carry a message to the masters of all the 
 guilds at once, to-night. At the regular hour 
 of assembly to-morrow, the guilds will march to 
 the temple to hear my words in the matter." 
 
 But by the next morning Stein was himself 
 again. The jargon, so lifeless when he had tried 
 
194 Comrade John 
 
 to talk it to Hobbema, had its old-time sonority 
 back. His harangue to the disciples was in a 
 fine vein of buoyant earnestness. He admitted, 
 without mincing words, that the new buildings 
 were a failure. His own guiding hand had been 
 removed from the work. The builders, misled 
 by pride in the triumphant achievement of the 
 first stage of the work, had gone on vainglori- 
 ously in their own strength, without the aid of the 
 true Beechcroft spirit. But the failure should be 
 after all only a fall forward. To-day, with their 
 prophet at their head, the triumph band was to 
 assault the last fortress of Ugliness which reared 
 its head amongst them. There could be no 
 defeat. Beechcroft should be the oasis of the 
 world, the flowering of its perfect beauty. 
 
 He gave out a hymn, upon this conclusion, 
 "Onward, Toiling Soldiers," and while the organ 
 was pealing out the opening strains he disap 
 peared through the heavy curtains which closed 
 the passage into the robing-room. 
 
 Near the end of the last stanza the curtains 
 again parted, and the figure of the prophet again 
 appeared, clad the first time many had seen 
 him so in the simple working tunic of a disciple, 
 and bearing in his hand a small silver trowel. 
 
Wires and the Marionette 195 
 
 He pronounced the benediction, "Toil without 
 weariness and achieve Beauty" an injunction 
 which must, for most of them, have taken on an 
 ironical significance before night and then, pre 
 ceded by the overseer with his staff of office, he 
 led the hosts of Beechcroft out to something they 
 had never bargained for, to a real job. For there 
 was much weariness and precious little achievement 
 of beauty that long summer day at Beechcroft. 
 
 But the important things that happened that 
 day, and there were many, were not affected one 
 way or the other by the attack of the triumph 
 band upon the fortress of ugliness in the valley. 
 A little scene between Hobbema and Hicks, 
 for instance, which lasted not more than five 
 minutes, counted for far more. 
 
 Hobbema, after leading the procession from 
 the temple to the scene of the new work, had 
 modestly sought the background, and here, 
 in the same pursuit, apparently, he found the 
 carpenter. The sight of the man always inflamed 
 his anger, ever since the day of the saw-filing 
 episode ; now, fortified by Comrade John s 
 assurance that all the workmen had been dis 
 charged, he bustled up to this one, intent on 
 making short work of him. 
 
196 Comrade John 
 
 "What are you doing here?" he demanded. 
 "You have no right to that uniform nor to be 
 loafing about Beechcroft. You were discharged 
 last night." 
 
 "Go slow, there, little mister," said Hicks. 
 "I worn t laid off last night. Not me. Oo 
 told you that story?" 
 
 "All the workmen were discharged last night," 
 said Hobbema, with a sarcastic staccato, better 
 adapted to a class room than to his present 
 auditor. "I presume you are one of them." 
 
 "You presoom wrong, then," blustered the 
 other. "I m J. Hicks. The boss won t turn 
 me off, yet awhile." 
 
 "Whom do you mean by the boss ?" asked 
 the overseer, sticking to his former manner. 
 "Evidently you do not mean me or Mr. Stein." 
 
 "No, I don t mean you or Mr. Stein. I mean 
 the real boss, the man who built those buildings 
 up there." The carpenter was vaguely aware 
 that he ought to stop here, but he had got fairly 
 started talking and he could not stop himself. 
 "I mean Mr. John Chance, that s oo I mean. 
 And e knows oo I mean, too. I worked for 
 im at Atlanta and he forgot me. But I didn t 
 forget im." 
 
Wires and the Marionette 197 
 
 Hobbema drew a step nearer and lowered his 
 voice. "You know him?" he demanded eagerly. 
 "You say his name is Chance? Are you sure? 
 Do you know what his business is?" 
 
 " Didn t I tell you I worked for him at Atlanta ? " 
 The carpenter s voice betrayed a tolerant con 
 tempt for the overseer s ignorance. " E s the 
 man that builds things like this at the exposi 
 tions." He waved his hand toward the upper 
 valley, the temple, the lake, the whole Beech- 
 croft miracle. "But he s done better than this. 
 That Looking- Glass Park at Pittsburg was three 
 times as big. Do I know him! " 
 
 Hobbema s tact, which was the thimble-rigging 
 sort, was blown clean out of adjustment by the 
 violence of this revelation. He stared blankly 
 at the carpenter a moment, and then gasped 
 out: 
 
 "And did Stein hire him to come here? Was 
 he paid to do it?" 
 
 This question took Hicks quite beyond the 
 tether of his knowledge, and the jerk reminded 
 him that he was giving away something that was 
 valuable. 
 
 "I don t have to answer your questions 
 I don t want none of your lip. I ve got no time 
 
198 Comrade John 
 
 for you. My business is with the boss. If 
 you want anything, you can go to him." 
 
 It took the overseer an hour or two to get his 
 intricate but cheaply made mental machinery to 
 going again. When he did, when he fully com 
 prehended the fact which explained the Beech- 
 croft miracle in its entirety, the fact which pro 
 claimed Stein a fraud and a traitor to the religion 
 of which he masqueraded as the prophet, he 
 was almost beside himself with excitement. 
 
 At last, after one and another of the fine-spun 
 webs of intrigue he had been weaving all these 
 years had fallen to pieces, suddenly, almost by 
 clear luck, he found he had the prophet s feet 
 in a net that would hold. All Stein s strength 
 and subtlety would not avail him to escape from 
 it. And he had found it in time; he was still 
 Stein s heir. The mantle would fall on his 
 shoulders, and on no others. All he would have 
 to do now with the facts in his hands, after he 
 had got Hicks to put them in writing, would be 
 to give them to the world, and he would find him 
 self seated on the throne that had been desecrated 
 by an impostor. 
 
 And then the thought of Comrade Ellen oc 
 curred to him. What was that line of poetry 
 
Wires and the Marionette 199 
 
 about hell having no fury like a woman scorned ? 
 Well, she had been scorned. Now he came to 
 think of it, she must have regarded the rise of 
 the new priestess with feelings as poignant as 
 his own. And when she should hear an intima 
 tion of what was happening in the prophet s own 
 home, when she had had repeated to her a phrase 
 or two out of the scene Hobbema had overheard 
 at Cynthia s, when finally she should learn what 
 sort of man it was for whom she had sacrificed 
 herself, when the weapon that would demolish 
 Stein at a single blow should be unobtrusively 
 slipped into her hand 
 
 Yes, that was clearly the way to do it. She 
 would have no qualmish fears. She would need 
 no prompting, no urging on. Indeed, it was 
 likely that she would take matters so completely 
 into her own hands that the overseer would be 
 able to keep an attitude of mild remonstrance 
 against her doing anything. That would make 
 his subsequent part in the affair much more 
 dignified. He could be properly scandalized, 
 at first over the charge itself, and later over the 
 proven truth of it, perfectly free from the faintest 
 suspicion of self-interest. And then, if the dis 
 covery should turn out to be nothing but a mare s 
 
2oo Comrade John 
 
 nest after all, he would be left just where he was 
 to-day. He had not seen Comrade Ellen since 
 the night of his encounter with Chance at her 
 house, and he slyly assured himself that this fact 
 would make his position with her all the stronger. 
 He was a great man for finesse, was Hobbema. 
 
 He found her carrying a jug of water to a tired 
 little group of toilers, and spoke to her with an 
 air which he meant to make at once bland 
 and authoritative. He could not come very near 
 it though, could not even keep his lips from 
 trembling. 
 
 "I have something to say to you which 
 is for your ears alone. Will you come with 
 me?" 
 
 She assented in a matter-of-fact, incurious way, 
 and followed him; she asked no questions, and 
 seemed perfectly indifferent as to what the sub 
 ject of his momentous communication was to be. 
 But when he had led her along a disused trail 
 which mounted the steep side of the upper valley, 
 out to the very outskirts of Beechcroft civiliza 
 tion, she stopped him. 
 
 "This must be far enough. You will be safe 
 enough in saying anything you can want to say 
 here." 
 
Wires and the Marionette 201 
 
 "It was for you " he began, but she cut 
 him short. 
 
 "There is nothing you can say that I had not 
 as lief you said before all the congregation. I 
 have no secrets left. You, I think, have a good 
 many. But this is a safe place to tell them, if 
 any is." 
 
 A natural opening in the timber below the trail 
 enabled them to look across to the abandoned 
 construction camp, the shack, and the barracks 
 where the real workers of the Beechcroft miracle 
 had lived. She seemed utterly negligent of him 
 and of his errand, as she stood gazing down upon 
 the plain, work-a-day buildings below. 
 
 "It is about the man who lived there," he said, 
 following her look, "that I wished to speak to 
 you. You have shown your interest in him. I 
 find that he has no right to be here at Beechcroft ; 
 that he is not a disciple at all." 
 
 He looked for some expression of surprise 
 here, but saw nothing in her face that betrayed 
 a spark of it ; his own manner grew a little more 
 impressive and pedagogic in consequence. "He 
 is an architect, the builder of those vile amuse 
 ment places which have been the disgrace of our 
 great expositions. And the builder of a place 
 
2O2 Comrade John 
 
 called Looking- Glass Park at Pittsburg has been 
 permitted to desecrate Beechcroft!" 
 
 She was looking at him now, frankly inter 
 ested, but still without surprise. Her reply, 
 on the other hand, fairly staggered him. 
 
 "I knew he was some one like that. I knew 
 he was here as a matter of business." 
 
 "You knew!" 
 
 "Oh, not as you mean," she said impatiently. 
 "I never tricked any one into telling me his name. 
 But I knew he was a real man, not the kind who 
 come here for any other reason. I asked him 
 why he was here the night you brought him to 
 see me, but he wouldn t tell me. He couldn t, 
 I suppose." 
 
 Hobbema found himself flushing a dull red. 
 "I will not discuss that slur upon our brother 
 disciples," he said. "It is beneath discussion. 
 But what I wish to point out is that, by hiring 
 him to come here to do this work for gain, 
 Mr. Stein has shown himself a traitor to our prin 
 ciples. Do you understand ? Stein Stein is a 
 fraud!" 
 
 Remote as they were from all hearing, the over 
 seer trembled, stammered a little as he uttered 
 those portentous words. But on the girl they 
 
Wires and the Marionette 203 
 
 produced no more effect than the most obvious, 
 casual comment would have done. 
 
 "Yes, he is a fraud," she assented listlessly. 
 "That is not all he is; he is many things, some 
 bad, some good. He is a fraud, sometimes, 
 when it seems necessary to his purposes." 
 
 "But," cried the scandalized overseer, "he 
 claims the credit, the credit and the high honor, 
 of being the founder and the prophet of this great 
 religion. Is he to go on " 
 
 He would have gone on, for there was much 
 on his glib tongue to say, but she was looking 
 at him in a thoughtful, impersonal sort of way, 
 that somehow made it impossible, that reduced 
 him to an uneasy silence. The scene was not 
 going just as he had planned it. 
 
 "I have been wondering," she said at last, 
 "why you brought me here to tell me this; what 
 purpose of yours was served by telling me of 
 Comrade John, and why you thought it necessary 
 to tell me that our prophet is a fraud." 
 
 She paused here, as again after a sentence or 
 two, but these silences were broken by no speech 
 from him. "Did you think that I would ex 
 pose him? That perhaps I would add to this 
 that you have told me, something more, some- 
 
204 Comrade John 
 
 thing that would make his ruin complete ? Well, 
 I will not. If you want his place, you must pull 
 him from it yourself." 
 
 This time the silence was longer. " Perhaps," 
 she then said slowly, " perhaps you cannot do 
 that. Perhaps you are afraid that you would 
 merely expose yourself with him." 
 
 At that he burst into speech ; he was breathless 
 with anger. " Don t go too far," he gasped. 
 "I warn you, do not presume too far upon my 
 kindness to you. What you say is false as well 
 as malicious. I can prove that I knew nothing 
 of the matter." 
 
 "You mean that others would find it hard to 
 prove that you did. I suppose so. At any rate, 
 you preferred to leave the burden of making the 
 charge to me, and to keep yourself free to dis 
 credit me if I failed. And, as I said, I will not 
 do it." 
 
 He was not yet self-possessed, but he had his 
 tongue and his lips under control again, and he 
 managed to summon an ugly smile. "It is 
 plain why you will not," he said. "You think that 
 some day he will come back to you; that if you 
 wait and watch your opportunity you can win 
 his favor back again. Well, I assure you that 
 
Wires and the Marionette 205 
 
 you cannot. He has your successor already 
 chosen." 
 
 "Why do you say such things? Don t you 
 know that nothing you say can hurt me? You 
 can t think that I don t take you for granted, that 
 I don t know that you are a coward and a liar. 
 I know whom you speak of. But she is safe; 
 she has a friend here who will not let her come 
 to harm." 
 
 He was shaking a long forefinger in her face 
 before she had done speaking, and his voice, 
 when he found it, squeaked with rage. 
 
 "But she will be more to Stein than you ever 
 were. Listen; listen to me. He means to 
 divorce his wife. I found her packing to go 
 away when I went to his house last night. And 
 he means to marry this precious new priestess 
 of his. I heard him tell her so, myself. That s 
 all your chance is worth. And you have thrown 
 away what I would have offered you. You re 
 too late for that now." 
 
 "That is one insult the less," she said quietly. 
 Except that she looked rather gray, even out here 
 in the frank sunshine, one would have thought 
 her perfectly composed. "Won t you please go 
 away now? There can t be anything more that 
 
206 Comrade John 
 
 you want to say. Or else stay here and let me 
 go alone." 
 
 He looked at her with what was meant for 
 scorn, and then, with what was meant for dignity, 
 went off down the trail. 
 
 Comrade Ellen seated herself on a fallen log 
 and let the grateful spell of utter silence and 
 emptiness fold around her. It was plain, now 
 that she had none to spy upon her, that the nerve 
 less apathy with which she had listened to the 
 overseer s revelations, had been real, not as 
 sumed. She sat there with no play of emotion 
 whatever across her face, with no sign of life or 
 energy in any line of her body. The fire had 
 indeed passed over her, and had left not gold, 
 but ashes. If there were left at the core of her 
 a coal still glowing, her only wish was that nothing 
 might ever come into her life again that would 
 blow it into flame. 
 
 And yet, the reviving breath was blowing on it 
 even as she sat there. The thought of Cynthia 
 and of the trap the prophet had set for her feet 
 kept coming to her mind again and again and 
 from a dozen different angles. The girl had been 
 much under her eye as well as in her thoughts 
 ever since her dramatic arrival the day of the 
 
Wires and the Marionette 207 
 
 miracle. Comrade Ellen, with her listless eyes, 
 observed the everyday life of Beechcroft with more 
 precision and detail, perhaps, than any other 
 person in the colony. She had noticed how often, 
 during those first days, she had seen Cynthia 
 in John Chance s company, she was glad 
 to have that good, sane-sounding name to call 
 him by, and it was under the impression 
 created in those days that she had assured Hob- 
 bema that the girl was in no danger from Stein. 
 
 But now as she sat thinking about them with 
 an interest which in spite of herself was kindling 
 into eagerness, she remembered that she had not 
 only failed to see them together once in the whole 
 of the past fortnight, but that she had, at least 
 once or twice, seen them obviously avoiding each 
 other. 
 
 And at that, the idea that the girl might not, 
 after all, be safe from the very fate that had over 
 taken her, surged up in her like a wave of giddy 
 nausea, and left her with cold limbs and a clammy 
 forehead. 
 
 Unless she herself interposed ! She resisted 
 that idea fiercely, at first. She, Ellen, was dead ; 
 there was no more duty upon her to try to thwart 
 Stein s base desires than if she had been a veritable 
 
208 Comrade John 
 
 ghost. And yet the breath kept blowing gently 
 but stronger on the coal that till to-day she had 
 thought dead, and her eyes grew light and eager 
 again; and when at last she retraced the trail 
 to Beechcroft, her journey ended at Cynthia s 
 doorstep. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 GOD AND MAMMON 
 
 BY half-past eight that same evening the Hicks- 
 Hobbema intrigue had ceased to exist. The 
 total net result of it was the sending of Ellen to 
 Cynthia s doorstep. So far as the two principals 
 were concerned, it was as if it had never been. 
 
 Hobbema s excitement over what the carpenter 
 told him of John Chance s identity and former 
 career had inflated Hicks to a most unwieldy 
 and dangerous extent. He swelled visibly under 
 Bill Hemenway s eye all day, talked bigger and 
 louder and more recklessly every hour, until it 
 became evident, both to Bill and his chief, that 
 he must burst before night. 
 
 The crisis came just as the Beechcroft "ange- 
 lus" which summoned the faithful to evening 
 service was beginning to ring. Hicks took this 
 occasion to threaten to "blow the whole thing 
 up," attempted to hit Bill on the nose, and had to 
 be knocked down and carried away into one of 
 p 209 
 
2io Comrade John 
 
 the unfinished buildings while the procession of 
 the guilds went by to service. When the pro 
 cession had got safely inside the temple, Chance 
 sent the mutineer under guard, up to the model 
 room in the old shack behind the temple to cool 
 off and get into a fit state to be talked to. 
 
 When Chance went up to him, a little before 
 eight, the whole difficulty proved ridiculously 
 easy to settle. Ten minutes clever cross-exami 
 nation elicited the fact that Hicks had already 
 told all he knew to Hobbema. When he tried 
 to bluster and wanted to know "what his 
 information was worth," Chance laughed at 
 him. 
 
 "The reason you ask that is because you don t 
 know yourself," Chance told him. "You know 
 two words, John Chance. You don t know 
 who wants to know them or who wants them to re 
 main unknown. You don t know who d be willing 
 to pay for them or how much he d be willing to 
 pay. You ve already given them away to Hob 
 bema and you ve an idea, now, that you can sell 
 them to Stein, who knows more about me than 
 you ever will. You ve been turning this thing 
 over and over in your head for weeks, and you 
 don t understand it yet. Turning you loose with 
 
God and Mammon 211 
 
 a blackmailing proposition would be like giving 
 a baby a stick of dynamite to play with." 
 
 Chance said it all good-humoredly, got him 
 to forget the drubbing of the afternoon by the 
 simple means of a good supper and a big cigar, 
 and then stated his terms. They were plainly 
 final, and they were more liberal than Hicks had 
 secretly expected. Hicks wrote an explicit de 
 nial to Hobbema of all he had told him that 
 morning. Chance dictated it and Hicks labori 
 ously wrote it down in lead pencil. Then Chance 
 packed him off to town on the evening train under 
 escort of Jones, the purchasing agent, whose in 
 structions were to buy him a second-class ticket 
 to Liverpool by to-morrow s steamer and to give 
 him twenty pounds in sovereigns just before the 
 ship sailed. 
 
 Hicks went away in the best of humors. Then 
 Chance enclosed a copy of the denial with a note 
 of his own to Hobbema, stating that the matter as 
 yet had not come to Mr. Stein s notice, and that 
 if the overseer were satisfied that Hicks had made 
 a mistake, there was no need that it should. If 
 Hobbema wanted to go farther in the matter, 
 however, no doubt Mr. Stein could satisfy 
 him. 
 
212 Comrade John 
 
 Chance understood the overseer pretty well, 
 and was sure that this would hold him. Hob- 
 bema would hardly have nerve enough to move 
 against the prophet with the evidence right under 
 his hands, and for him to set about to get it 
 in the face of Stein s certain knowledge of what 
 he was about, was utterly out of the question. 
 Hobbema, as a matter of fact, was cut out not 
 to pull wires, but to dangle at the loose ends of 
 them. 
 
 "Well," said Bill, as he and Chance were 
 making their way down the valley after the trans 
 action was complete, "I suppose it s easy when 
 you know how. I didn t think you could stop 
 him; he s such a fool." 
 
 "A fool s no harder to handle than anybody 
 else if you go at him right. It was easier than 
 I wanted it to be. I wanted something hard 
 to-night ; something I could get my teeth in." 
 
 "It s a funny sort of job," said Bill, rumina- 
 tively. "I had that feeling myself this afternoon. 
 I wished Hicks had been a harder man to lick." 
 
 They walked on down the valley in silence for 
 a while and then Chance spoke again, stopping 
 in his tracks to give emphasis to what he had to 
 say. "But we re going to put it through, Bill. 
 
God and Mammon 213 
 
 That s the only satisfaction we ll ever get out 
 of this job. To put it through in spite of Hicks 
 or Hobbema or Hell and the devil ; to get it done 
 and wiped off the slate, and then go back to 
 Forty-second Street and start something that s 
 on the straight, to get the taste out of our mouths. 
 And the harder we have to work to get it done the 
 better I ll like it." 
 
 Bill was a little embarrassed by the extent of 
 this confidence, but he said, "I m with you there," 
 and they walked on again in silence. Nothing 
 more passed between them until they had come 
 near enough to Chance s cottage to see that 
 there was a light in his sitting-room. " Some 
 body s waiting in there to see me: Hobbema, 
 like enough. Good night, Bill; and thank 
 you." 
 
 But his visitor was not Hobbema, nor Stein, 
 nor any one else whom he had the least expec 
 tation of seeing; it was Comrade Ellen. He 
 had entered the room in his swift, noiseless 
 fashion, and had not only recognized her, but had 
 noted the curious tenseness of her attitude as 
 she sat in his big easy-chair, an attitude strangely 
 at variance with her wonted languor, before she 
 had time to rise. 
 
214 Comrade John 
 
 She acknowledged his "Good evening" with 
 a bow, stood looking at him eagerly a moment, 
 as if anxious to speak, but lacking the words 
 or the voice to make a beginning; then, turn 
 ing away from him, walked restlessly to the 
 window. 
 
 "I hope," he said, to take the edge off the 
 silence, "that you haven t been kept waiting for 
 me very long. I am usually at home at this 
 time, but to-night " 
 
 Still she said nothing ; so after a moment he 
 drew a little nearer. "I told you once, a good 
 while ago, it seems, that if ever I could help you, 
 I would. I m very glad if you ve taken me at 
 my word." 
 
 At that she began speaking, and her voice had 
 a kind of dry scorn in it. "A man came to me 
 to-day with the knowledge of some facts which he 
 said proved Herman Stein a fraud. He thinks, 
 he has always thought, that I knew other things 
 which proved him that and worse. He wanted 
 me to expose him. I told him that I would not 
 do it; that if he wished to wear the prophet s 
 mantle he must pull it from his shoulders him 
 self." 
 
 "He won t be able to now," said Chance. 
 
God and Mammon 215 
 
 "At least he won t dare run the risk involved in 
 trying." 
 
 "With my help he could, with my help or 
 with yours. And I refused." It was strange, 
 almost uncanny, the way her voice kept its dry, 
 lifeless quality through the next words she uttered. 
 "It was not out of regard for the prophet that I 
 refused. I would not turn my hand so 
 to save him from death nor from torment. 
 And it was not because I hated hated the 
 way you hate a rat the man who asked me 
 to do it. It was because I was, well, dead, and 
 did not want to live again. I took life in my 
 hands once and it hurt me, and I said I would 
 never touch it again ; that I would do no more to 
 ruin Herman Stein than I would do to save him. 
 That is why I refused. But why do you refuse? 
 Why do you shield him?" 
 
 "He is my employer," said Chance, thought 
 fully. "I hired myself out to him to do the thing 
 he wanted of me. I knew then what I was getting 
 in for, or I might have known. So I am as much 
 of a fraud as he. And the only way I know to 
 save a shred of self-respect is to stay loyal to 
 somebody at least, through to the end. To do 
 what I d agreed to do and well, take the 
 
216 Comrade John 
 
 consequences, pay the price, no matter how 
 heavy it was. And it s going to be heavy; 
 heavier than you are likely to guess. As for the 
 overseer, who has neither your reason nor mine, 
 nor any other for shielding him, he will not expose 
 him, either, after he gets the note I shall send him 
 in the morning." 
 
 She moved about the room a little restlessly 
 while he was speaking, and did not immediately 
 take up the thread of talk when he dropped it. 
 "I could say all I have come here to tell you in 
 ten words. I wish that were all I wish that 
 I could get off as cheaply as that, but I am afraid 
 that you would not understand. Have you pa 
 tience to listen to a long story, a long and ugly 
 one?" 
 
 "It won t tax my patience," said Chance. 
 "And I ll do my best to understand and save 
 you as much as possible. Tell me just what 
 you think I need know, to be of real service to 
 you" 
 
 He caught the look that fleeted across her face. 
 "Or is it you who mean to be of help to me? 
 I ve an idea I need it." 
 
 He nodded toward an easy chair, but did not 
 force her to take it by remaining standing him- 
 
God and Mammon 217 
 
 self until she did ; instead, he rather ostentatiously 
 made himself comfortable, seating himself before 
 his writing table and leaning his elbows on it. 
 He did not move from that position, did not in 
 terrupt with a word or a look, all the time she 
 was telling the story, and it took above an hour. 
 For her part she remained standing through it 
 all at the window, her face averted from him as 
 if she had been looking out, though the black re 
 flecting surface of the diamond-shaped panes gave 
 her nothing but a dim, distorted vision of herself. 
 
 The story she told him was of Herman Stein s 
 coming into her life, of his existence in it, of his 
 going out of it, the three acts making up a com 
 pleted tragedy. She spared nothing, para 
 phrased nothing, not a single ugly detail, but 
 poured it all out, down to the dregs. She told 
 it without excitement, without shame, without 
 interest one might almost have thought. She 
 carried it down to the end, down to the night 
 when Chance himself had come with the news 
 that her house must be moved from its isolation 
 in the upper valley to make room for the Beech- 
 croft miracle. 
 
 Through the whole story the figure of the 
 prophet loomed big, formidable. Her own part 
 
218 Comrade John 
 
 had been pitiful, but, after all, only a variant on 
 the tragedy of the lives of many American women ; 
 an opulent soul whom life offered no investment 
 for its riches, an easy prey for the plausible pre 
 tence that happiness can be manufactured, can 
 be attained by direct pursuit, the ready dupe of 
 the pedlers of patented and copyrighted soul- 
 balm, of the promoters of the get-rich-quick 
 religions whose smooth tongues are glib in the 
 assurance that by a newly discovered process he 
 who saveth his life may save it, after all. 
 
 But the prophet, in her narrative, presented 
 a much more extraordinary figure. A senti 
 mentalist, an epicure in passions, all the way 
 from the height of religious ecstasy to the depths 
 of downright bestial lust, pitiless as all such self- 
 pampering egotists are bound to be, so far he 
 was by no means a rare phenomenon. But in 
 this, that he joined to this temperament the power 
 to gratify its demands to the uttermost, that he 
 possessed a powerful though cumbrous mind, 
 a burly courage, a formidable will, in this com 
 bination of qualities he was rare indeed. His 
 self-control was, up to a certain point, for an 
 occasion, invincible. He made disciplining him 
 self a luxurious sensation. 
 
God and Mammon 219 
 
 His semi-occult qualities which Chance had 
 always been curious about were all the more 
 impressive for being kept in the background. 
 One of the things Ellen told, told with a 
 short laugh which sent a shiver over Chance s 
 body, was of seeing him cure " miraculously " 
 by hypnosis a woman suffering from an hysteri 
 cal simulation of a tumor. 
 
 "He never hypnotized me, I think," she said. 
 "Except, of course, that I always knew he could 
 if he should want to. It came to about the same 
 thing." 
 
 And the end of the story was that Comrade 
 Ellen, when she had served her turn, when she 
 had given without stint, and he had taken all 
 she had, was cast aside, empty, lifeless as a worn- 
 out glove. 
 
 "That s not the end, though," said Chance 
 quietly, after a little silence had fallen on her 
 story. "Not the end, either for him or for 
 you." 
 
 "Not for him, no. But for me Don t you 
 understand, after all ? It isn t that I was wicked, 
 nor that I m unhappy. Good God, if only I 
 could be ! I m burnt out, I m ashes, I can t 
 care, I can t want to care. That s worse than 
 
22O Comrade John 
 
 being wicked, and dying, and going to hell, isn t 
 it? To be just nothing at all." 
 
 "Up to now," said Chance, he was draw 
 ing little meaningless pictures on his blotting- 
 pad, "up to now you ve been telling me the 
 truth. But that isn t true. You do care. You ve 
 cast a spell over yourself, hypnotized if 
 you like yourself into the belief that you 
 didn t care, and your real self is struggling now 
 to rouse itself. It s partly succeeded. You 
 came to me to-night because you cared, cared 
 for yourself, or for me, or for some one else, 
 enough to make you open a door that you thought 
 you had sealed shut forever. It was a struggle, 
 and you won it. Your real self won it." 
 
 His pencil was still busy; he did not look up. 
 There was a moment of silence, and then : 
 
 "It s true," she whispered breathlessly. "I 
 did care. I " The sentence ended in a 
 great gasp. She crossed the room swiftly and 
 stood before him, the table between them, and 
 she leaning far over it toward him. Her eyes 
 were blazing with excitement. 
 
 "I did I cared this afternoon, when the 
 overseer told me what he had spied and listened 
 to find out, and what he hoped would make 
 
God and Mammon 221 
 
 me jealous of my successor. I told him she 
 would never go the way I had gone because she 
 had a friend " 
 
 The pencil dropped from his fingers and he 
 looked up, his eyes suddenly bright; his lips 
 pressed together a little more firmly, and he drew 
 a long, slow breath through his nose. You would 
 have said, looking into his face, that he was 
 almost smiling. 
 
 The rush of her words carried her over the 
 silent interruption. " a friend who was 
 a real man, and who would never let her go to 
 the hell I live in. But when Hobbema had gone 
 away, the thought began to trouble me, and at 
 last I went to her house. She was not there, and 
 I set out to find her. I found her on the little 
 terrace where she has been so often lately 
 You know the terrace I mean ; you ve been there 
 yourself. I cared I cared enough to find 
 her. I told her to go to you and not to Mr. Stein. 
 And when she said that he was willing to help 
 her and you weren t, I tried to tell her my own 
 story. I cared enough for that. And when she 
 would not let me go on " 
 
 Chance frowned. " Would not let you?" 
 he interrupted incredulously. 
 
222 Comrade John 
 
 Ellen made a little gesture of impatience. " She 
 had heard Mr. Stein s version of it. You knew 
 he had provided himself with one. How I was 
 a poor, weak-minded thing with a mania on a 
 subject inexpressibly painful to him, and how, 
 instead of having me locked up in an asylum, 
 he kept me here and was kind to me You 
 must have heard it." 
 
 He shook his head. "And that s believed 
 here?" he asked. "And that s the version of it 
 she has heard?" 
 
 She nodded assent to both questions. "She 
 was very kind to me, but she would not listen. 
 And then I came straight here for you. I have 
 been waiting here all these hours, afraid to go 
 away for fear I shouldn t have the courage to 
 come again. I I am crying crying and 
 I had no hope that I could ever cry." 
 
 She sank to her knees, her arms out over the 
 table and her head buried in them, her body 
 shaken in a paroxysm of sobs. 
 
 But gradually she became quieter, and the 
 room grew silent except for the tall clock, ticking 
 away sixty to the minute. Five and then another 
 five of these crept away, and then Chance spoke. 
 
 "Can you help me a little more? Can you 
 
God and Mammon 223 
 
 tell me what it was that Hobbema heard and that 
 you came to-night to tell me?" 
 
 "He overheard the prophet telling her that 
 he meant to divorce his wife." She answered 
 the question almost absently, as if it were not in 
 the focus of her mind; and, still without raising 
 her head, she added in the same tone: "He 
 told me that, once, and said that I was to be his 
 inspiration, and that he would marry me for the 
 sake of the religion. That is what he has been 
 telling her." 
 
 "And you think " Chance began. The 
 thing that startled her out of herself was nothing 
 more than the trumpet-like timbre of his voice; 
 he spoke as quietly as before] " you think 
 that there is danger that she will do as he 
 wishes?" 
 
 "She has decided; she decided this evening." 
 
 With a brusque movement Chance slid his 
 chair back from the table and got to his feet. 
 Ellen raised her head, but remained kneeling 
 at the other side of it. She spoke quietly, but 
 with her mind for the moment fully upon the 
 subject, and very impressively. 
 
 "It is a good many days since she has attended 
 a service at the temple. She has spent most of 
 
224 Comrade John 
 
 her hours on the terrace where I found her this 
 afternoon. But to-day, when she left me there, 
 she went straight to the temple, just before the 
 evening service. It shows that he has won. You 
 may be sure he understood. It must have in 
 spired him to see her there, and he must have made 
 his victory complete. She will belong to him now, 
 soul and body, unless you can save her." 
 
 "No," he said. "I promise you that." 
 
 Her head drooped again between her arms; 
 she was not crying, and Chance thought that 
 perhaps she prayed. He went silently into an 
 inner room. 
 
 When he came back five minutes later he found 
 her in the same position, but she looked up im 
 mediately upon hearing his step, and smiled on 
 seeing that he had put off his tunic and was 
 dressed in the garments of the outer world. She 
 rose to her feet and greeted him with a touch of 
 color in her cheeks. 
 
 "It seems good to see you dressed that way; 
 it s like getting a breath of fresh air. And I ve 
 never seen you so before." 
 
 But she was incapable of sustaining that man 
 ner for more than a moment. She clasped her 
 hands tightly together to keep them still. 
 
God and Mammon 225 
 
 " You will save her ! You won t let her become 
 what I am. You ll tell her that I was a woman 
 once, too. You ll tell her my story? Just what 
 I have told you?" 
 
 "That is not the story I shall tell her," he said. 
 
 A shadow, deepening into a pathetic look of 
 doubt, came into her face. "But it s true 
 isn t it true ? That I told you to go and help her ? 
 That I really cared that I ve been crying? 
 I haven t been just raving. You did say I d 
 broken the spell didn t you?" 
 
 "You have broken more spells than one," he 
 assured her very gravely. "You have saved her 
 and me, and you have saved yourself. You never 
 need believe the lie again, that you don t care." 
 
 She would not let him take her home, and he 
 did not press the matter. Five minutes after 
 she had gone he had Bill Hemenway on the tele 
 phone. 
 
 "Come down here and get a bunch of tele 
 grams that you will find on my desk. They must 
 go to-night. If the station is locked, break in 
 and send the messages off yourself. I shall be 
 out all night, so you needn t report to me till 
 morning. You ll understand from the messages 
 about what s going to happen." 
 Q 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 THE PRICE 
 
 AT the first signs of the activity of a new day 
 about Cynthia s house, Chance went to her door 
 and knocked. The maid, who rather precipi 
 tately answered the summons, showed surprise 
 both when she saw who the untimely visitor was 
 and when she heard his errand. 
 
 "I wish to see Miss Cynthia," he said. He 
 had used the word Comrade for the last time. 
 
 "But she has not come down yet " 
 
 "I suppose not. I will wait. But tell her, 
 please, that it is a matter of importance." 
 
 He walked past her into the living-room and 
 found himself a chair. Ten minutes later he 
 heard Cynthia on the stairs and met her at the 
 foot of them. 
 
 It was not alone the clothes he wore that carried 
 
 her back, in the space of a single quickly intaken 
 
 breath, to the Paris boulevard on carnival day; 
 
 to the man who had made it his job to save her 
 
 226 
 
The Price 227 
 
 against her will from a peril she did not under 
 stand. She found herself facing the same eyes, 
 eager, confident, imperious, that had challenged 
 hers that day. And his speech made the memory 
 still more vivid. It was as it had been then, 
 abrupt, full of surprise, and prefaced by no word 
 of conventional greeting or explanation. 
 
 "I asked you once do you remember? 
 to give me your coat and hat, and to put 
 on what I offered you in exchange. And you 
 believed, without knowing me, that I was right 
 to ask it, and you obeyed me. I want you to do 
 something now in the same spirit. I want you 
 to dress in the clothes you wore the day you came 
 here, travelling clothes, and come with me. But 
 get your breakfast first. I ll wait here for you." 
 
 Her decision was taken, her great decision, 
 in reaching which she had looked to him for help 
 and he had failed her, and she had been telling 
 herself, ever since last evening, that nothing he 
 could do or say now must be allowed to alter it 
 or to raise a question in her mind. But as she 
 stood there looking down at him from the first 
 landing of the stairway, she could feel the blood 
 flooding her cheeks and her heart pumping it 
 more and more madly. She could not help that, 
 
228 Comrade John 
 
 nor could she phrase her answer into the flat 
 denial of his request that she had meant to 
 make. 
 
 " Yesterday I could have done it," she said 
 at last. " Yesterday a good many yester 
 days I waited I wanted you to come. But 
 to-day " 
 
 "It is not too late," he said. "I know. I 
 have watched outside your house all night. 
 And I ve the same right to what I ask to-day that 
 I had to what I asked of you in Paris *, to what I 
 asked when I was all unknown to you." 
 
 She looked at him a moment longer, then, 
 nodding a brief assent, went back to her room. 
 She pretended at first that she had done it in 
 order not to be influenced too much in deciding 
 whether or not to do as he asked by the sight of 
 him there. But she threw that pretence over 
 board with a faint smile when she found that she 
 had stripped off the Beechcroft dress and was 
 hooking herself into the stiffer harness of civ 
 ilization. The change took some time in spite 
 of the nervous haste with which she attempted it, 
 for her hair rebelled at the long unaccustomed 
 pompadour, and the smart frock he had specified 
 was not easy to get into without assistance. It 
 
The Price 229 
 
 set her wondering why he had put her to so much 
 trouble, why he had delayed, for so trivial 
 purpose, the important thing he had to say 
 to her. 
 
 But before the toilet was completed, she began 
 to have an inkling. Beechcroft, the new re 
 ligion and her devotion to it, the classic costume, 
 tossed in a heap on the still unmade bed, suddenly 
 began to seem unreal, fantastic, to the trim, 
 tailored young beauty who stood looking at her 
 so curiously from the mirror. That was why 
 he had been willing to wait ; he had foreseen this 
 result, had counted on it. The discovery moulded 
 her lips into a firmer line. It gave her something 
 to resist with, something to hold her steadfast 
 to her great decision, to counteract the effect of 
 the old, dear memories of those hours with him 
 in Paris, and of the newer picture, which she 
 tried not to let her mind dwell on, of his vigil 
 outside her house last night; last night which 
 she had spent in dreaming and starting out of 
 dreams, crying a little and wondering a great 
 deal, trying to persuade herself that she was 
 very happy. 
 
 Why he had thought it necessary to watch 
 against what peril, or what the great thing might 
 
230 Comrade John 
 
 be which he was waiting now to tell her, were 
 questions whose answers, curiously enough, she 
 did not think of trying to guess. 
 
 They left the cottage in silence, and walked on 
 so for a little way, but at the first turning from 
 the main road, thinking she knew now where he 
 meant to take her, she stopped. 
 
 "Not to the terrace," she said, rather breath 
 lessly. "It s too late, I tell you. I was there 
 yesterday, and and I said good-by to it. 
 I I am never going back there again." 
 
 "No, not to the terrace," he said; and she, 
 looking quickly up at him, surprised a wry smile 
 on his lips, as if he had tasted something bitter. 
 "The terrace is as impossible for me as it can 
 be for you." 
 
 Those words, for the rest of the way they walked, 
 she kept turning and turning in her mind, and 
 at every turn they hurt her deeper. He had 
 added: "It s to my house that we re going. 
 There are some things there I want you to see;" 
 but she hardly heard him, and remained ap 
 parently oblivious to her surroundings, even after 
 he had ushered her into his sitting-room and 
 got her seated in the big chair at the far side of 
 his writing table. 
 
The Price 231 
 
 He seated himself before it and rummaged for 
 a few minutes in a drawer, getting some scattered 
 papers together before he spoke. They were both 
 rather pale. The tenseness of the situation grew 
 through the silence and still more in the quiet, 
 almost matter-of-fact tone in which he at last 
 began to speak. 
 
 "That evening in the restaurant in Paris " 
 
 It was almost like a cry from under the sur 
 geon s knife that interrupted him. "Don t! 
 It can t be necessary to go back to that. That 
 that is buried." 
 
 "No," he said, still quietly. "That is the 
 only thing that is not buried. The man who 
 came into your life for a little while on carnival 
 day and went out of it again without telling you 
 his name or letting you tell him yours, who doesn t 
 know it to-day and never will know it, is the man 
 who is talking to you now. It isn t Comrade 
 John, not the man who spent that wonderful 
 day with you on the terrace, not the man, John 
 Chance, he will turn into in a few hours more, 
 when he s done his last job here at Beechcroft. 
 He would have no right to bring you here, no 
 right to concern himself with you or with your 
 world. But I, the the Monsieur Jean to 
 
232 Comrade John 
 
 whom you returned the borrowed clothes, I have 
 taken another job, with the same authority I 
 had for the one I undertook in Paris ; that I find 
 you again in a danger you do not see, a danger 
 graver now than then." 
 
 He paused there for an instant and smiled at 
 her, the same odd, engaging smile that she re 
 membered across the restaurant table where they 
 had eaten their dinner backward. It brought 
 the color back into her cheeks and brightened 
 her eyes with tears. "Can you keep that dis 
 tinction straight ? hold on to it tight ? For 
 it is the whole point of the story. The man 
 whose fraud betrayed you into danger and whose 
 cowardice kept him from saving you from it 
 was Comrade John, himself." 
 
 He saw her eyes widen suddenly at that, with 
 incredulous protest, and after a moment lowered 
 his own, but his voice went straight on without 
 a falter. "His real name was John Chance. 
 He was a showman, a bit of a faker, but he had 
 a knack of making buildings and landscapes 
 into pictures that made the people who came 
 to look at them feel gay and, for a little while, 
 care-free. He built the Looking-Glass Park at 
 Pittsburg, that you and I talked about that night 
 
The Price 233 
 
 in Paris. Well, a man came to him one night last 
 February in need of a miracle, a man who needed 
 such a thing in his business. He had invented 
 and patented a religion that was making him 
 rich. It was built, like all the copyrighted gos 
 pels, on the lie one of the oldest of all lies, 
 I guess that you can get something for 
 nothing. He said you could achieve something 
 worth while by toil without weariness, or sweat, 
 or suffering; that you could be happy by just 
 pretending hard enough that you were. He pre 
 tended to offer another looking-glass country 
 that is about the size of it where you could 
 find character and happiness ready-made. People 
 are credulous in the direction of their hopes, and 
 this pretence of his was making him rich, him 
 and the men who had organized him and stood 
 behind him financially. 
 
 "But he was ambitious. Where he was get 
 ting hundreds of thousands he wanted millions, 
 and for that he needed the miracle. He wanted 
 what would look like a demonstration that the 
 religion would work. He asked John Chance 
 to undertake it, and John Chance was ready to, 
 for twenty-five thousand dollars. But when 
 he found that the work was to be a fraud, that 
 
234 Comrade John 
 
 he would be expected to help delude people into 
 the idea that his work was the miraculous flower 
 ing of the soul of Herman Stein, well, he 
 didn t refuse to do it; he just doubled his price. 
 He would do the work for so much, and he would 
 cheat for as much again. He would dress up 
 like one of Stein s dupes, and hide his name, and 
 keep his models and working drawings and es 
 timates out of sight, and at last stand by with a 
 straight face when the prophet took the triumph 
 he had made for him. John Chance agreed to 
 do it all. He was under contract to do it while 
 we were together you and I in Paris. He 
 came back here and hired hundreds of men. 
 He brought them to Beechcroft and worked them, 
 night and day, worked them till they sweated and 
 ached with fatigue. He built that temple under 
 canvas, he dammed the valley overnight and made 
 the lake, and when the day came for Herman 
 Stein s miracle to be displayed, it was ready." 
 
 It was the thing he had meant least to do, 
 letting that thrill of triumph in a difficult piece 
 of work, consummately well done, creep into his 
 recital. He had meant to keep the bald and 
 naked outline of the fraud unobscured. But this 
 thing, it seems, could be told in no other way. 
 
The Price 235 
 
 It was part of the essential truth of the story and 
 he could not keep it out. Equally involuntarily, 
 as he concluded, he looked up at the girl. 
 
 The things he had been saying were calculated 
 to pull her whole world down about her 
 ears. They cut, one by one, all the roots she 
 had been putting out into what she had believed 
 to be, an hour ago, the true soil and nourishment 
 for her life. But no consciousness of any such 
 thing showed in her face. It was all alight. 
 He lowered his eyes and clenched his hands as 
 she began to speak. 
 
 "And it was yours, all yours? That lovely 
 dream?" 
 
 His voice was harsh with emotion when he an 
 swered her, the voice of a mutineer to the iron 
 discipline he had imposed on himself. "Yes, 
 it was mine; every form, every color, every 
 reflection. It was my dream and my work 
 there s a clay model of it in the next room there. 
 Do you want to look at it?" 
 
 She rose, nodding an eager assent, and he 
 opened the door for her. 
 
 The first expression on her face as she looked 
 at it was of a sort of puzzled disappointment. The 
 thing was a small-scale clay model of the whole 
 
236 Comrade John 
 
 of upper Beechcroft. The color looked dead in 
 the gray, ill-lighted room, and the cluster of 
 little buildings hanging halfway up the side of 
 the narrow, gloomy, deep-cut valley had hardly 
 a hint about it of the thing she knew. He read 
 her look. 
 
 "No, that s not the way you saw it," he said. 
 He switched on a warm, intense light, specially 
 calculated to illuminate it, and then lifted a heavy 
 plate of silvered glass which had been leaned 
 against the wall and slid it into grooves prepared 
 for it. "We floored the valley with a mirror, 
 so. It was frowning before, and I wanted it to 
 laugh and sing." 
 
 She looked at it in silence, and then again, in 
 hardly more than a whisper, "Your dream!" 
 
 "Yes," he assented; "but it s easy to dream. 
 It s making the dream come true that counts. 
 It means facing the facts and taking them in 
 both hands, even if they hurt. It means turning 
 your dreams into mathematics and your mathe 
 matics into hard, rough, refractory materials. It 
 was real work that did the miracle, not Stein s 
 painless imitation of it. Look !" he commanded, 
 and strode over to the model. " Down to here, all 
 this upper group of buildings and the dam that 
 
Tlie Price 237 
 
 held up the mirror, we built we real work 
 men, in sixty-three days. And then we dis 
 charged most of them, and dressed up the ones 
 we kept in imitation of Stein s disciples. We 
 let them work the way the disciples worked, six 
 hours a day, and loaf whenever they felt tired. 
 We paid them all along for ten hours work. 
 The expectation had been that the real Beech- 
 crofters would work with them, but well, 
 to make a building, any sort of a building that 
 will stand up, you have to put real work into it. 
 And at last, two days ago, the men got demor 
 alized to the point where they struck, and I 
 discharged them all, packed them off to the city. 
 And then I telephoned Hobbema to find Stein 
 for me and send him up to meet me at the temple 
 steps before dark." He heard the sharp, sudden 
 intaking of her breath at that, but had no clew 
 to it, and went steadily on. "When he came, I 
 told him what I had done. I told him if there 
 was a chance of saving his religion from being 
 a laughing-stock, it lay in making his followers 
 do a little real work, even if it hurt their backs. 
 There wasn t much left to do, but it was work 
 that had to be done. And yesterday, Beechcroft 
 tried it. They accomplished, the whole of them, 
 
238 Comrade John 
 
 about five men s work. And to-day well, 
 to-day, it s too late to matter." 
 
 To the suggestion in his last words she paid, 
 for the moment, no heed. She leaned against 
 the edge of the bench which held the model, still 
 looking at it with half-shut eyes. Then, in a 
 thoughtful voice which sounded scorn a hundred 
 fathoms deeper than any more vigorous expres 
 sion could have done, she quoted the prophet s 
 benediction, "Toil without weariness and achieve 
 Beauty." Then she turned upon him. "How 
 could they go on believing it, with the truth right 
 there before their eyes, all the time?" 
 
 "People are ready enough to believe in any 
 easy thing. It s the hard thing they re incredu 
 lous about." 
 
 "And all the while, you you kept a straight 
 face. You went to the temple, you wore the 
 clothes, and followed observances, you never be 
 trayed the contempt you must have felt for 
 all of them. Yes, once you did. You told me 
 you supposed a person might find a real job, 
 even here at Beechcroft." 
 
 She spoke the words in just the tone she used 
 before, impersonally, with no hesitation. But 
 the sound of them in her ears as in his was like 
 
The Price 239 
 
 the solemn statement of a tragic theme toward 
 the end of a symphony. The current of their 
 talk had given them a little respite, which they 
 had taken eagerly, and now it was over. The 
 real issue, so far as they were concerned, was star 
 ing at them out of each other s eyes; there was 
 no blinking it any longer. They had got down 
 to the quick at last, where every stroke of the 
 knife must hurt. 
 
 He stood gazing into her eyes, fascinated by 
 the look he saw dawning there, bewilderment and 
 then fear. He did not note her increasing pallor 
 nor that she swayed about giddily, until he saw 
 her clutch at the edge of the table to save herself 
 from falling. "That light, up overhead, seemed 
 to get into my eyes," she said, as he helped her 
 into a chair in the other room. He offered to 
 loosen her collar, and went around behind the 
 chair to do it, but she told him it was not necessary. 
 She would be all right in a moment. She had 
 spoken, and when she went on it was still true, 
 in almost the quiet tone of casual conversation. 
 His attitude, there behind her chair, had brought 
 something to her memory. "Put your hands 
 on my shoulders, please," she said. "Things 
 are all falling falling in, somehow, the way 
 
240 Comrade John 
 
 they were that day when you did it before." But 
 his hands were not as they had been that former 
 time, steady, magnetic, the one stable thing 
 in her universe. They were shaking as if some 
 spell laid upon him had palsied them. 
 
 "It is true," she began. "But you needn t 
 stand there. Come around where I can see you. 
 It is true, isn t it, that people are incredulous 
 about the hard things? It took me so long to 
 see what it all meant. To see " Oh, if only 
 her voice would break, that light, even ghastly 
 voice, that made him shudder "to see that 
 all my little fool s paradise had tumbled down to 
 gether. That what you had told me that day 
 on the terrace was just a part of it." 
 
 "Not that, God forbid, not that ! All the rest 
 of my life may have been a lie, a cowardly lie, 
 but that was true. That, that I loved you, that 
 I will go on loving you so long as there is such 
 a thing as I in earth or heaven, that was truth 
 dug out of the very core of my soul. God knows 
 I had no right to tell you, but God knows I told 
 the truth." 
 
 "But that very day, that very moment, " 
 still that quiet, unbroken voice, "you told 
 me that you were just one of the disciples, like 
 
The Price 241 
 
 the rest of us. That there wasn t any other 
 reason than that why you were here." 
 
 " That was the moment I knew the truth ; knew 
 that I loved you. It was the lie that taught me." 
 
 She sat there unmoved, her eyes wistful, indeed, 
 but her lips almost smiling. "You came back 
 to me after all, after you knew my answer to you, 
 and even then you denied me the truth, though 
 I asked for it." 
 
 "I was a coward," he said. "I was afraid to 
 give you up." 
 
 She arose quickly and stood looking straight 
 into his eyes. 
 
 "That is not the truth, even now," she said 
 sadly, but still with no trace of vehemence. 
 "You knew there was nothing then that I would 
 not forgive you; no, nothing that I would see 
 a need for forgiving. I wanted your heart s 
 heart, as I had offered you mine. And you knew ; 
 you were not afraid. You would have smiled 
 at fear." 
 
 To that he had no answer to make at all, and 
 after looking at him a moment, and seeing that 
 this was so, she turned away from him. The 
 action marked the end, not of her self-control, 
 but of the curious numbness which had so closely 
 
242 Comrade John 
 
 resembled it. She dropped back into the chair, 
 her head cowering between her arms, her body 
 shaken with sobs, like some frail thing smitten 
 suddenly by a tempest. And when she could 
 find voice, when in the lulls of the storm she could 
 force her lips to articulate, it was to beg him to 
 make her believe that what he had said was true, 
 make her. He must give her something to cling 
 to, for all the world was falling down. 
 
 He stood by through it all, until the storm 
 should beat itself out, in a miserable silence, 
 with no word to say, his mind running helplessly 
 in a circular groove, to no purpose whatever. 
 It was with no aid from him that she got control 
 of herself at last and turned again to him. 
 
 She sat up straight in her chair and brushed 
 her handkerchief across her eyes. " There! * 
 she said. "It is buried now; it is all buried, as 
 you said, except you, except Monsieur Jean, 
 who helped me when I needed help so badly 
 before. Will you help again, tell me what to do, 
 and make me mind, before you go away without 
 letting me tell you my name ?" Her eyes met his 
 bravely, and there was even a smile, an uncertain 
 smile, on her lips. The sight of that smile, after 
 all the agony he had been looking at dry-eyed, 
 
The Price 243 
 
 brought a sudden rush of tears that blurred his 
 vision of her. He wiped them away with both 
 hands, frankly, but with a touch of impatience, 
 as he had once wiped away the water that blinded 
 him after his plunge into the pool. When she 
 could see his face again, he was smiling, too. 
 
 "It s the same old story," he said, "I have 
 to tell you just what I told you in Paris, and to 
 make you do what you did then. This is a 
 looking-glass country, and you must go away 
 from it. I want you to take the morning train 
 for New York" he looked at his watch as he 
 spoke "and that means hurrying a little. But 
 Bill Hemenway has a horse hitched up, and I 
 will drive you down. You will have time to 
 write a note to your aunt from here, telling 
 where you have gone, and asking her to pack 
 your things with hers and follow you." 
 
 Haste spoke more loudly in his manner and 
 voice than in the words themselves, and she looked 
 at him curiously. "I shall go away, of course," 
 she said. "If you are in a hurry because you 
 are afraid I shall change my mind about that 
 that I can be duped a second time, it is a ground 
 less fear. Is there any other need for haste than 
 that?" 
 
244 Comrade John 
 
 "Yes," he said gravely, "there is urgent 
 need." 
 
 "Even in Paris, Monsieur Jean, you told me 
 the reason why." 
 
 "And won t you go now without knowing?" 
 
 She thought a moment. Then: "No," she 
 said. "I think I will wait for the reason. This 
 looking-glass country can hardly be dangerous 
 now that I shall not go blindfold." 
 
 "But the looking-glass is going to be broken 
 to-day; that is the reason you must go now, 
 quickly." 
 
 "Broken? To-day? I don t understand." 
 
 He drew a step nearer her, and spoke more 
 swiftly. "John Chance is going to break it. 
 He has sent back the pay he got for the work, 
 for the work and for the fraud, to the man who 
 hired him. And in this room, this morning, he 
 has paid the rest of the price, paid what he had 
 to pay before he could be free to do this thing. 
 And now he is going to pull down the whole house 
 of cards. He is going to do it within an hour. 
 There will be no prophet and no band of disciples 
 here to-night. There may be a mob, and there 
 will certainly be one desperate and discredited 
 man. Herman Stein, sitting amid his ruins, will 
 
The Price 245 
 
 be dangerous whether the mob is or not, and he 
 will be dangerous most of all to you. Now do 
 you see? Will you go now, at once?" 
 
 She stood thoughtful, quite unmoved by the 
 urgency of his voice, and repeated his words, 
 "amid his ruins," under her breath. Then she 
 looked up at him, into his face with a sort of 
 eagerness, as if she were searching for something 
 there, and not finding it. At last, turning away 
 from him, she seated herself again in the big chair. 
 
 "We can t do it, either of us," she said un 
 evenly. "I can t make believe you re Mon 
 sieur Jean and you can t make me mind." 
 
 "You re going to stay?" he asked, and then, 
 with more emphasis, "You re not going to give 
 Herman Stein another chance to talk with you?" 
 
 She nodded affirmatively to both questions. 
 "Can t you understand why? I can t separate 
 you into two men, and call the man who did wrong 
 Comrade John, and bury him, and call the man 
 I love Monsieur Jean yes, I did love him, 
 from that very first hour, from the very first 
 minute when he smiled at me and made the whole 
 world seem clean and fresh and happy all at 
 once I can t go on loving him and letting 
 him make me mind. I thought perhaps I could. 
 
246 Comrade John 
 
 If I could even have pretended to, I would have 
 done it. But you see it was no use. And, now, 
 don t you see that perhaps there are two men in 
 Mr. Stein, and one of them honest, really trying 
 and hoping for something. And I can t go away 
 without hearing that man s story, too." 
 
 "There is more of his story that you haven t 
 heard," he said. "I thought that this I have told 
 you would have been enough " 
 
 "It was enough," she interrupted, "enough 
 to open my eyes, enough to keep me from ever 
 being his dupe again. But suppose there is 
 another man altogether, a man you don t guess 
 at any more than I guessed " 
 
 She had no need to finish, and saw as much 
 in his face. There was nothing more to be said, 
 by either of them. But still she did not rise. 
 
 He was quick to comprehend her difficulty. 
 She felt she could not leave him so, leave him 
 forever with no gentler valedictory, and yet to 
 go beneath the surface again, to stand soul to 
 soul with him for that last moment was a thing 
 she lacked the courage and the strength to do. 
 Here, at last, was a situation he was equal to, and 
 something of his old look of whimsical command 
 touched his eyes and lips. 
 
The Price 247 
 
 "We needn t say good-by, then," he said. 
 "I shall be here until I have finished this job of 
 mine, and you won t be leaving before this after 
 noon. So we shall see each other again." 
 
 She smiled in grateful acknowledgment of 
 his tact in sparing her, smiled a little tremulously, 
 for that old, familiar look pierced, somehow. 
 She met his outstretched hand with a pressure 
 that could pass for merely friendly courtesy, said 
 a word or two she did not know just what 
 and was gone. 
 
 But neither his face, nor his walk, as he went 
 back into the big room, nor the poise of his 
 shoulders as he seated himself at his desk, none 
 of them belonged to a beaten man. His slate 
 was clean. He had sought no discharge in 
 bankruptcy, but had paid every ounce of his 
 debt. He was not beaten. For the first time, 
 mind and soul and body, if need were, were free 
 to fight. 
 
 The note he was writing to Herman Stein 
 flowed out of his pen so easily that it hardly 
 obstructed the current of his thoughts. He was 
 thinking of his promise to Ellen. It was not 
 defaulted yet, and it should not be. 
 
 This is the note he was writing to Stein : 
 
248 Comrade John 
 
 DEAR MR. STEIN: 
 
 I telegraphed last night to Mr. James Heath, 
 of the New York World, that I had something 
 of great importance to tell him, and asked him 
 to come down here this morning. He is due in a 
 few minutes. When he comes I shall tell him 
 all the facts regarding my contract with you and 
 the interests backing you for the construction 
 work that has gone on here at Beechcroft. I 
 shall also tell him what further facts I have re 
 garding your connection, financial and otherwise, 
 with the Toil and Triumph movement. If you 
 care to be present at the interview, I shall be very 
 glad to have you. If not, I shall send Mr. Heath 
 around to you as soon as I have finished with 
 him. 
 
 I have returned the first instalment of my fee 
 for the work to the source from which I received 
 it, and shall send back the check for the second 
 as soon as I have shown it to Mr. Heath. 
 Yours very truly, 
 
 JOHN CHANCE. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 CYNTHIA DISCOVERS THE WORLD 
 
 HERMAN STEIN was standing by his study 
 window. One James Heath, of the World, had 
 come and gone, had come with a dry little 
 note of introduction from John Chance, and a 
 pocketful of affidavits and other documentary 
 evidence of the great, the humorous, Beechcroft 
 fraud; had driven off in the dusty old livery 
 surrey without the slightest reflection of Stein s 
 heat on his fat, cynical face. Hobbema, too, had 
 come and gone, leaving a scrupulously kept set 
 of books and an impression of impenetrable 
 trickery behind him. With his wife and his 
 luggage he was by this time well on his way to 
 New York. Perhaps the papers would be on the 
 street by the time he stepped off the ferry-boat. 
 There was a certain Wall Street financier who 
 would also read the account ; the cynical reporter 
 had spoken of bringing it to his notice. 
 249 
 
250 Comrade John 
 
 Stein had been standing there longer than he 
 knew. There were a good many things to think 
 about. He had found money pretty tight lately, 
 for one thing. Extensive building and landscape 
 work can rarely be kept within estimates; and 
 it was a disturbing thought that between Stein 
 the triumphant overlord and Stein the beggar 
 there stood nothing but a bundle of notes 
 judgment notes and a few thousand dollars 
 in currency, some of it in the steel room at the 
 temple, the rest of it in Hobbema s safe. To 
 set over against these notes he had only his pres 
 tige, his success, only what might be technically 
 called his "good- will." What if this scathing, 
 blistering exposure of Stein the sybarite, Stein 
 the liar, Stein the cheap fraud, were, at a blow, 
 to wipe out that " good- will "! What if a few 
 hundred thousand admirers should overnight 
 cease admiring and begin to laugh ! There would 
 be no dividends in that laugh. 
 
 The prophet s face could hardly now be called 
 impassive. There were momentary sparks in 
 the eyes, and the muscles on his jaws stood out; 
 but the deeper lines about the mouth showed that 
 the will which had ruled a thousand men and 
 women as a king rules was still doggedly 
 
Cynthia Discovers the World 251 
 
 holding the command. The real change was 
 in the man s body, in the muscles, and in the 
 nerves which controlled those muscles. At last 
 he found himself plunged into a struggle which 
 would demand all his steadiness of hand, every 
 ounce of his courage, and his big frame was 
 responding to the call. All his reserves were 
 rushing to the front. He was burning up energy 
 now as he never had burned it before. 
 
 The tall mission clock in the hall struck five, 
 and he turned. Chance s note was still crumpled 
 in his hand, and he dropped it into the fireplace. 
 Then, with a heavy sort of deliberation, he set 
 off down the valley toward the little cottage that 
 stood among the pines. It was now a fight to a 
 finish between himself and John Chance. Quar 
 ter would be neither granted nor asked. And so 
 he went to Cynthia first. 4 
 
 She did not keep him waiting. He had little 
 more than crossed the dim living-room, to the 
 window that overlooked the brook, before she 
 came down. The color had left her face, and 
 she carried herself a little wearily, but there was 
 a brave light in her eyes. If all her gods had 
 crumbled, she would still walk forward in the 
 dark. All this he saw, and he did not offer his 
 
252 Comrade John 
 
 hand. He stood in the shadow, looking gravely 
 into the troubled eyes. 
 
 "Tell me what disturbs you, Comrade," he 
 said. 
 
 She sank on the window-seat, but did not lean 
 back among the cushions. She wished he would 
 take a chair, it would make it easier to say 
 what she had to say. Finally she spoke out: 
 "I wish you would sit down, Mr. Stein." But 
 he continued to stand, an erect, solid figure, and 
 to look gravely, compassionately down at her. 
 
 "Tell me," he said again. "You are in 
 trouble." 
 
 She glanced up at him, but her eyes fell away. 
 She had not foreseen the difference his mere 
 presence would make. One hand strayed to a 
 cushion and fingered the cord that bound it. 
 Then her slender fingers straightened a little. 
 "I am wondering," she said slowly, "what I 
 ought to think of people like my parents and my 
 aunt people who let a girl go where she likes, 
 act as she likes, meet whom she likes. My parents 
 knew I was not happy in our little city they 
 let me go to my aunt. I went because I wanted 
 to find the looking-glass country where people 
 don t live in rows of stupid houses and wear the 
 
 
Cynthia Discovers the World 253 
 
 things that other stupid people think they ought 
 to wear, and eat the things that other stupid 
 people think they ought to eat. That never was 
 real to me; it was not life, as I had dreamed of 
 it." She paused, musing. " Yes, I had dreamed. 
 It seemed to me then that I might find, somewhere, 
 a country made up of real things and real people, 
 where I could be happy. I was so tired of the 
 little things. I wanted something that could 
 thrill me I wanted to feel real life flowing 
 through me." 
 
 She looked thoughtfully out at the brook. 
 The first twilight shadows were creeping out from 
 beneath the pines. "I thought I had found it in 
 Paris I wanted to stay there and live, really 
 live. And then the only person who had ever 
 made me mind told me that I must go away. 
 He said I remember exactly he said that 
 there is no looking-glass country. He said that 
 everybody has to mind, grown up or not, that 
 when you re a child you re a part of some one 
 else s job, and you have to mind that person 
 because he s responsible for you, but when you ve 
 a job of your own, " an oddly breathless quality 
 had come into her voice, " when there s a piece 
 of work that you ve got to mind because it s up 
 
254 Comrade John 
 
 to you, then you re grown up. And he said that 
 either way you ve got to mind something, or you re 
 on the way to everlasting smash. It frightened 
 me when he said that Paris was so beautiful 
 
 so real. It was carnival time and I thought 
 I was part of it I thought I belonged there 
 
 until he frightened me that way. He said 
 that people without jobs go to Paris because they 
 think it is a looking-glass country, but that they 
 get what is coming to them there just as surely 
 as in a steel mill." 
 
 There was a long silence. He was afraid that 
 she had stopped, but after a time she went on. 
 "I told him I had no one to mind, and he said 
 that I must get a job then. So I didn t stay in 
 Paris. I let him send me away as if I had been 
 a child." She smiled faintly, reminiscently, 
 and a touch of color came into her face. Stem s 
 great chest moved with a slow inhalation. But 
 the thoughts that surged and clashed in the back 
 of his mind were held in an iron leash. His 
 reserves were at the front, but he had not yet 
 thrown them into action. His last resource had not 
 yet been drawn on ; and as he studied that fresh 
 young face, with the eyes that dreamed, and the 
 mouth that smiled, even in the presence of golden 
 
Cynthia Discovers the World 255 
 
 illusions that had turned to brass, and the color 
 that came and went in soft, utterly charming 
 little waves, and as he felt the power which this 
 last resource gave him, the very blood in his veins 
 and arteries tingled with the mad lionlike joy 
 of it. She was playing so naively into his hands ! 
 He watched that unconscious half-smile fade out, 
 and gave a very little rope to the exulting thoughts 
 that were clamoring within him as a pack of 
 hounds clamor at the kennel door. He must not 
 let them out, yet, but they were there, and 
 he was their master. 
 
 "Yes," she repeated, "I let him send me away. 
 I came back. And I found a job. I believed 
 it was a real job one big enough to live and 
 die for because he was here he was a part 
 of it and I believed in him. And now he 
 tells me that this is not a looking-glass country 
 either that it is a lie, like Paris. I could not 
 believe it. He had to tell me that that he 
 was a lie himself, before I could believe it. And 
 he told me that you " 
 
 It was harder than she had foreseen. A sob 
 came unexpectedly into her throat. She tried 
 to go on, but could not get out the words that 
 her fine spirit of fair dealing insisted on his 
 
256 Comrade John 
 
 hearing, and from her. She tried to look out 
 at the brook, but could see only a blur of light and 
 shade. Another miserable sob shook her, and 
 still another. A wild impulse caught her to run 
 upstairs out doors anywhere to escape 
 this net of sinister circumstances which seemed 
 to settle more snugly about her whichever way 
 she turned, whatever she did or left undone. 
 She covered her face with her hands, ashamed, 
 yet angry that she was ashamed. 
 
 It was not pretty, this sudden glimpse of the 
 truth. There was about it none of the dreamy 
 beauty of the looking-glass land she had travelled 
 so far to find. Chastened, saddened, yet after 
 all oddly relieved, she saw at last with her own 
 eyes that life is very real, and that ready-made 
 happiness is not one of the facts which make it 
 up. She was accountable for herself, it began 
 to seem, for this empty, silly life of hers. No 
 matter now what was to follow she would 
 simply try to face it as it came. 
 
 So Cynthia, sailing out of unreality, discovered 
 the world. And then, suddenly, when she needed 
 it most, the beginning of a clear path opened 
 up in her bewildered mind, leading, not out, but 
 a few steps in the direction which might ulti- 
 
Cynthia Discovers the World 257 
 
 mately take her out. And all at once she heard 
 again the murmur of the brook, and the evening 
 song of the thrushes, and the faint human sounds 
 from the lower valley. What Monsieur Jean 
 had said was running clearly through her head. 
 " Everybody has to mind if they don t have 
 to mind a person, they have to mind a thing 
 they re responsible for." She could hear his 
 voice, she could see his honest smile. She had 
 not believed it then, because she had not under 
 stood it. She had merely accepted it, because his 
 personality was stronger than hers. She had 
 minded him, that was all. But now, with as 
 tonishing suddenness, she believed it, she saw 
 it for herself. It was not, after all, a great dis 
 covery. And such as it was, the idea was still 
 too young, too weak, to carry her very steadily 
 or very far when the deep ruthless understanding 
 of Herman Stein blocked the way, but it was a 
 beginning. 
 
 Over her, while she swayed there on the window- 
 seat, stood the prophet, with a look on his face 
 which she did not find there when she dropped 
 her hands to her lap and with new, quiet courage 
 leaned back against the cushions and looked 
 straight up at him. What she saw was a gravely 
 
258 Comrade John 
 
 gentle face gazing down at her, so grave and so 
 gentle that her doubts were shaken. And when 
 the prophet spoke, the compassion in his rich, 
 low voice seemed to pour out around her and 
 envelop her. 
 
 "My poor child," he said, "my poor child." 
 "What," she faltered, "what am I to think? 
 What am I to believe?" 
 
 He ignored her question. "I wish I could have 
 spared you this trouble, Comrade. I should be 
 happier if I had it in my power to make your road 
 always clear, always easy. I would not ask it 
 for myself, I must fight, as I have always 
 fought, I must face a hostile, an ugly world, 
 I must smile at misrepresentation. I must be 
 patient with those who try to dishonor my name. 
 That is the part I must play. I have committed 
 myself to the truth, and this deluded world about 
 us does not want the truth. They stoned the 
 prophets. They shrink from the light. They 
 turn on me and would destroy me. I am weak, 
 I have but one defence, the light I bear. They 
 cannot stone that. They cannot put that to 
 death. When they bury me beneath misrepre 
 sentations, when there is no way for me to turn, 
 I cling to that light and I know I see." 
 
Cynthia Discovers the World 259 
 
 He paused and drew a long, deep breath. She 
 was sitting erect now, her hands clasped. 
 
 "Oh, Comrade," his voice throbbed with 
 feeling, "I wish I could say to you that it is 
 an easy road. But I never said that." 
 
 "No," she breathed, "you never said that." 
 
 "I told you what I have told no one else 
 that it might yet be my privilege to die for my 
 faith that it was a wonderful thought to me. 
 If it is true that I would die for it, what manner 
 of man would I be were I to shrink from mere 
 suffering. No, Comrade, I face it proudly. 
 The world misunderstands me I smile. The 
 world lies about me I smile. The world 
 laughs at me still I smile. For I bear the 
 truth, and the truth shall make them free." 
 
 His tense muscles relaxed, and he walked off 
 a little way, and back again. There was now 
 a gentle, luminous smile on his deeply shadowed 
 face. "Comrade," he said softly, "I should 
 have spared you this. You came to me with 
 your troubles, and I have replied with my 
 own. I am sorry." For the first time he 
 permitted himself to sit on the window-seat, 
 frankly facing her. And Cynthia was con 
 scious of something friendly, of something 
 
260 Comrade John 
 
 pleasantly human in the action. But she 
 thought he looked tired. 
 
 "I am in trouble, too," he continued, "in 
 great trouble. They are attacking me again 
 in a new way but with all the old phrases 
 fraud, liar, false prophet ! How many times 
 must I face those worn-out words!" His face 
 grew slowly grave again. "They all misunder 
 stand me. I am not defending myself, Comrade. 
 I Herman Stein, the man am not worth 
 defending. I have made many mistakes; I 
 shall doubtless make many more. You see, 
 Comrade, " again came that friendly, wist 
 ful smile, the smile of a lonely soul resigned to 
 utter solitude, "Providence calls on men to 
 carry its banners. The men are poor things 
 they wander, and stumble, and fall. But the 
 banners must somehow go on. I must carry 
 my banner until I fall. I have hoped that you 
 would go forward with me, and that when I fall 
 you would snatch it from my hand and press on. 
 Perhaps perhaps I was wrong to hope for so 
 much. You are young. You are very beautiful. 
 The world still looks fresh and bright to you. 
 The things of this world are still real to you." 
 He leaned a little forward. "Comrade, you are 
 
Cynthia Discovers the World 261 
 
 still dreaming. You have not yet made your 
 choice." 
 
 There was a long silence. Finally the prophet 
 got to his feet. He was not smiling now. His 
 weight seemed to rest heavily on his frame. He 
 looked older. She glanced up inquiringly. 
 
 "I must face them," he said. "But first I 
 must go to the temple. I can see the light more 
 clearly there. I must see it. Without it I shall 
 be beaten, for without it I shall be but one man 
 against the world against the laughing, jeering 
 world." He tried to smile again, "Come, 
 Comrade," he said. "Your time has come, too. 
 You must face your decision as I face mine. 
 Come to the temple. We will seek the light 
 together. I will find it, for I must. And you 
 must find it if you are to go on the way you have 
 chosen. If it does not come to you, then we shall 
 know, you and I, that my path is not your path." 
 
 He waited. She looked out at the brook. 
 She was surprised to observe that the twilight 
 was already deep in the valley. Then she turned 
 back to the dusky room and slowly rose. With 
 a sort of defiance she put on a walking hat; 
 and together they left the cottage and walked up 
 the valley road past the dwellings and the shops. 
 
262 Comrade John 
 
 The way was heavily shaded, and few of the 
 passers-by recognized them or noted her worldly 
 dress. They ascended the steps by the dam, 
 and paused at the beginning of the promenade; 
 for before them spread the Beechcroft Miracle, 
 softened in the shadow of the hills to a mystery, 
 and crowned with a wonderful rose and gold 
 sky. 
 
 They paused again within the temple. It was 
 dark in there, but the faint evening light that 
 floated in through the tall windows served to 
 suggest the lofty vaulting of the roof. She fol 
 lowed him down the aisle. She could just make 
 out the bulky outlines of his figure. At the side 
 of the platform she stumbled, and he turned and 
 felt for her hand ; then, leading her, he mounted 
 the steps, crossed the platform and the robing 
 room behind it, with his free hand unlocked a 
 door, and led her forward. They stopped and 
 she made an effort to withdraw her hand, but 
 his hold tightened. His hand was trembling 
 and she could hear him breathing heavily. Sud 
 denly she was frightened. She made another 
 effort to release her hand. Then she felt that 
 he was drawing close to her, and she sprang back 
 and struggled with him. 
 
Cynthia Discovers the World 263 
 
 "Wait Cynthia," she heard him saying; 
 but she struggled the harder. He was hurting 
 her now. And then his grip relaxed, and she 
 staggered back a little way, against a wall, and 
 leaned there catching her breath, all aghast at 
 what he had done. 
 
 There they stood, neither seeing the other, 
 neither speaking. Finally she heard the door 
 close. He was moving about apparently groping 
 for something. Then came the click of a key, 
 the room was flooded with light, and she was 
 closing and opening her blinded eyes and shading 
 them with her trembling hand. She did not at 
 first take in the details of this comfortably fur 
 nished, windowless room, with its leather chairs, 
 its desk and table, its steel safe in a corner, for 
 before her stood Herman Stein. 
 
 It was not Herman Stein the prophet; some 
 thing had gone from him, something that seemed 
 to mark the difference between triumph and de 
 feat. This was a beaten man. The story of 
 a lost battle was written in every line of the solid 
 face, in the set of the broad shoulders. It was 
 not that he had been unfair with her; he had 
 been unfair with other women, and had left them 
 coldly behind as he climbed; it was that the 
 
264 Comrade John 
 
 hounds had slipped their leash and had got away 
 from his controlling whip. His self-mastery 
 had failed him. He knew it. He knew that he 
 had lost his grip. And he knew that that grip 
 was all he had. 
 
 He was looking at her not squarely, but 
 with eyes that told a furtive story. Her breath 
 was coming back, and with it the knowledge that 
 it was she who commanded the situation. No 
 matter what he might say or do, no matter even 
 if he tried to keep her here, she now saw through 
 the mask, and he knew that she saw. He was 
 waiting, now, for her to speak. There was noth 
 ing that he could say. 
 
 "I think " her voice was less steady than 
 she had expected "I think you had better open 
 the door and let me go." 
 
 His eyes wandered away, then back. 
 
 "Will you please open the door?" 
 
 He cleared his throat. "You see what has 
 happened to me how you have shaken me. 
 Has it occurred to you to be a little sorry for me 
 Cynthia?" 
 
 "I have asked you to let me go." 
 
 "And I can t do it I can t. I am in trouble. 
 My position is attacked my credit is threatened 
 
Cynthia Discovers the World 265 
 
 it may be that to-morrow I shall be just another 
 exploded prophet. In the face of all this I 
 can think only of you. Everything else fades 
 when I think of you. I want only to be with you, 
 to try to make you love me." She looked away 
 and shivered at this. "I can make you love me. 
 You don t know me yet, Cynthia. They may call 
 me a prophet they may call me a fraud 
 whatever they like. They are wrong." He 
 was little by little regaining a part of his self- 
 command. "They are wrong, Cynthia. I am 
 not a fraud I am not a prophet I am a 
 man; and I can make you love me. I can t 
 stay here now. If I am to save anything I must 
 go down there. But I will be back soon I want 
 you to wait for me here. We are not through yet. 
 I won t let you go until at least you know me." 
 What was the source of this dogged look on 
 his face, of this dogged note in his voice ! It 
 was unlike anything she had ever seen in him. 
 It was not his old mastery, but neither was it 
 the abasement that had immediately followed 
 his loss of that mastery. He was thinking of 
 something. There was another string to his 
 bow, and he had pulled himself together with the 
 deliberate purpose of employing it. And while 
 
266 Comrade John 
 
 she looked at him, her heart sank. She reached 
 out to the back of a chair and steadied herself. 
 
 "Mr. Stein," her mouth was dry; she moist 
 ened her lips, "will you please let me go?" 
 
 He was still looking at her, the man Stein. 
 Then, suddenly, with a mechanical sort of deter 
 mination, he opened the door and started out. 
 She rushed after and got her arm through before 
 he could close it, and clutched the outer knob. 
 
 "Let go, Cynthia," he said. "You will hurt 
 your arm." And he waited, holding the door 
 firmly while she struggled to open it. 
 
 She tried to call out, but her voice failed her. 
 
 "Let go, Cynthia," he said again. Suddenly 
 he reached down, worked her ringers loose from 
 the knob, pushed her back into the room, closed 
 the door, and turned the key in the lock. And 
 then, for a moment, he stood motionless. She 
 was working at the knob from the inside. There 
 was something uncanny in the rattling, clicking 
 noise, the only sound that broke the gloomy 
 silence of the temple. He had lost utterly. 
 And how easily he might have won, if only he 
 could have kept his head, if only he could have 
 continued to play the game. She might be wait 
 ing there now, willingly, for her prophet to return. 
 
Cynthia Discovers the World 267 
 
 Then Herman Stein s teeth came doggedly 
 together. Yes, he had still another string to his 
 bow. There was a chance that it might succeed. 
 He had not used it of late years, perhaps he 
 had lost his old facility at it, but it had worked 
 before. It would work again. It must work 
 again. He walked slowly through the robing 
 room to the platform and paused there. The 
 spacious temple dark, cool, restful soared 
 above and about him. It was his temple. It 
 Had marked his triumph. It steadied him now. 
 He was glad of that. He needed steadying. 
 After a moment he felt his way heavily down 
 the steps, and let himself out of the building by 
 the small side door. 
 
 The lower valley was astir. Men, and women 
 as well, were moving about from house to house. 
 It was not a placid Beechcroft now. The dis 
 ciples were no longer a humble community, obe 
 dient, characterless; there were leaders among 
 them. The air was electric with rumors and 
 questionings;* startled, bewildered minds were 
 communicating in some new, wireless way. 
 Dismay and irresolution were resolving into half- 
 formed purpose. Far away down the road, below 
 
268 Comrade John 
 
 the last house in the settlement, some sort of a 
 conflict was taking place, and men with strange 
 hoarse voices, of an unmistakable city timbre, 
 were shouting. 
 
 A straggling band of disciples came hurrying 
 up the road, thirty forty fifty of them. 
 Stein hid in the brush and let them surge 
 by him. They were talking in excited voices, 
 and out of the confused clamor emerged 
 his own name, not once but repeatedly. 
 
 He took to the back trails after this, hurrying 
 to his house. He crossed the lawn and mounted 
 the steps. There were lights within. Two 
 men stopped him at the door, roughish men, 
 from the outside world, with broad shoulders 
 and bearded faces. 
 
 "Hold on there," said one, shortly, "you can t 
 go in." 
 
 His comrade touched his arm. "It s the boss," 
 he said. 
 
 "Oh, you re Mr. Stein, are you?" 
 
 "Yes, I m Mr. Stein. Who are you? What 
 do you mean by this?" 
 
 "This means that the sheriff has seized your 
 property, Mr. Stein. You can go in if you like, 
 but I warn you that we may have to search you 
 
Cynthia Discovers the World 269 
 
 when you come out. That s our orders. We re 
 here to see that nothing is carried off the 
 place." 
 
 "But you have no right yourself to enter," 
 cried Stein. 
 
 "Perhaps not. But you d better not try to 
 bring anything out without a court order." 
 
 Stein turned and descended the steps. Stand 
 ing a little way off on the lawn, were five or six 
 men in tunics, all looking his way. As he ap 
 proached, he made out the diagonal band of the 
 Beechcroft guards across the breast of each. 
 He peered narrowly at them, and was relieved 
 by their manner. 
 
 "We re waiting for your orders, Mr. Stein," 
 said one, stepping forward. "We didn t know 
 just what we ought to do." 
 
 Stein drew a long breath. "Where are the 
 rest of the guards?" he asked. 
 
 They looked at one another. "I m afraid," 
 said the spokesman, after a brief pause, "that 
 they aren t with us. Some of them got excited, 
 and ran with the crowd." He hesitated, then 
 added eagerly, "But a few of the boys are down 
 yonder driving off the newsboys. They ll be 
 back and we can trust them." 
 
270 Comrade John 
 
 Stein was thinking rapidly. What was it 
 that had stirred all Beechcroft to this pitch? 
 Certainly not the exposure. That might wreck 
 his credit, but it could hardly take these fools 
 away from him while they were still here under 
 his influence. It hardly seemed that even the 
 presence of the court officers could accomplish 
 that. No, it was something else, it was some 
 unexpected spark that had found lodgment in 
 the tinder of their brains. 
 
 "Tell me," he said brusquely, "what has 
 happened?" 
 
 Again they looked at one another. " Why, 
 it s like this, Mr. Stein. Everything seemed to 
 come at once. The newsboys got in with their 
 papers, and the deputies came and seized your 
 place here, and Mr. Hobbema s, and right on top 
 of that somebody remembered that Mr. and Mrs. 
 Hobbema had gone away this afternoon, bag and 
 baggage. And they want to know what well, 
 what has become of all the money they ve turned 
 in here. We ve tried to straighten it out, but they 
 act like crazy people." The spokesman passed 
 his hand across his eyes. "It s all took place so 
 quick like, Mr. Stein, that I guess we don t any 
 of us quite understand it. Some of them have 
 
Cynthia Discovers the World 271 
 
 gone down to the station. They said they d see 
 that you or Comrade John didn t get away like 
 Mr. Hobbema." 
 
 There was a moment s silence, then a light 
 flashed into Stein s eyes, and he spoke quickly 
 and clearly. "You," he pointed at the spokes 
 man, "go to those people and tell them that 
 I am here to look after them, and that I propose 
 to stay here. Tell them that I must go up to 
 the temple, but that I will be back shortly. But 
 tell them they are right about Comrade John. 
 Don t let them touch him, or harm him in any 
 way, but see that he doesn t leave the valley until 
 he has accounted to me. Now I want the others 
 of you to go to the temple at once. Take 
 possession inside, four of you at the front doors, 
 one at the side door. Don t let anybody enter, 
 the sheriff, Comrade John, anybody. Be 
 as gentle as you can, but keep everybody out, 
 whatever happens ! Remember this ; the sheriff s 
 men have no authority to enter; they can only 
 guard outside to see that nothing is removed. 
 Keep that clear in your mind. If they set guards 
 outside the doors, you will be guarding inside 
 the doors. And don t let Comrade John get in! 
 Watch him!" 
 
272 Comrade John 
 
 They waited only long enough to make sure 
 that he had finished, then they darted off to 
 obey him. Stein looked after them, then paced 
 the lawn. What was that about Hobbema s 
 place? Oh, yes, the sheriff had seized it. And 
 most of the money was there ! He clenched his 
 fists as he walked. Suddenly he stopped, glanced 
 about him and up at the officers on the porch, 
 then hurried off, through the darkest of the shad 
 ows, to Hobbema s house. It was true. An 
 officer was sitting on the top step of the veranda ; 
 another was standing in the rear. He stood under 
 a tree at the roadside, this man Stein, and watched 
 them. It was a clean job. Everything had been 
 foreseen. Everything of the slightest value to him 
 in this Beechcroft of his books, documents, let 
 ters, cash had been taken from him at a stroke. 
 There was nothing personal in evidence, nothing 
 vindictive. There was no one he could strike; 
 there was no one he could even talk to. The cold 
 hand of the law was clapped on Beechcroft, that 
 was all; and Herman Stein, lurking like a fugi 
 tive in Jthe shadows at the roadside, felt the chill 
 of it on his heart. 
 
 He heard light footsteps, and started. A half- 
 grown boy slipped up to him. "Paper, Mister, 
 
Cynthia Discovers the World 273 
 
 paper?" came a hoarse whisper, "all about 
 Stein a fraud!" 
 
 Stein looked down at the boy with a face that 
 was working savagely behind its veil of darkness. 
 Then he snatched the bundles of papers from 
 him, and with a "Damn you take that!" 
 struck him an ugly blow in the face. The boy 
 staggered back, caught his balance, turned and 
 ran swiftly and silently down the road. 
 
 Stein remained for a moment standing in his 
 tracks. His work was still to do, the fight 
 for his throne and his followers still to be fought. 
 It had been to come out and fight that he had left 
 Cynthia in the steel room. But the thought of 
 her there, still unmastered, obsessed him. Cynthia 
 first. She must be his before he could strike a 
 blow for the others. When she was safely won, 
 then he could come out and show himself a man 
 before these fools who yesterday had worshipped 
 him. He turned abruptly and strode back to the 
 temple. As he had half expected, there were 
 deputies here, too. They stood outside the big 
 open front doors. But from the corner of the 
 building he caught a glimpse of a white tunic 
 just within. At the side door he found a soli 
 tary deputy, who accosted him with a 
 
274 Comrade John 
 
 "Stop! You can t get in here." 
 
 Stein slipped his key into the lock. "I can 
 and will," he said. 
 
 The deputy yielded to his authoritative per 
 sonality. "Very well," he replied. "I suppose 
 you re Mr. Stein. But I want to tell you this: 
 We don t like the looks of those guards of yours 
 around here. If they try to interfere with us, 
 there ll be trouble." 
 
 "They won t make trouble unless you exceed 
 your authority," said Stein shortly, "as you tried 
 to do just now. They know their business." 
 And with that he entered the temple and locked 
 the door after him. 
 
 There was a murmur of voices outside John 
 Chance s house, and a loud knock at his door. 
 He opened it. Three men stood there, evidently 
 spokesmen for the excited rabble that was clus 
 tered about the steps. One of them wore the 
 uniform of the guards. 
 
 "Well," said Chance, shortly, "what is it? 
 What do you want?" 
 
 It was the guard who replied. "We want to 
 know what you plan doing next." 
 
 "That s a strange question." 
 
Cynthia Discovers the World 275 
 
 "No, sir, not strange. We want you to under 
 stand that you re not to leave the valley until 
 we re ready to let you. You may as well know 
 that you ll be watched." 
 
 "Oh, that s it, is it ! Well, then, watch me all 
 you like." 
 
 Chance went in and shut the door. But he 
 waited only until the crowd had straggled away 
 whence it came. If things had come to this pass, 
 it was time to act. No matter what Cynthia 
 might feel or think, no matter what she might 
 say, it was time to get her away. And so, with 
 a mind that was curiously cold and clear, with 
 his love, his pride, his sense of degradation thrust 
 fiercely behind him, he went straight to the cottage 
 among the pines. And two men followed him at 
 a distance. 
 
 She was not at home. Her Aunt Augusta 
 met him at the door and in her fluttering futile 
 way told him that much. Where was she? 
 Somewhere with Mr. Stein, at least, she had 
 gone out with him at early twilight, wearing one 
 of her city dresses, even wearing a hat. Chance 
 tried Stem s house, but was convinced, at a glance, 
 that she was not there. All this was baffling. 
 He walked briskly down to the road, and snapped 
 
276 Comrade John 
 
 his fingers meditatively. Comrade Ellen she 
 could help ! He could ask her, anyway. And 
 glancing back at the two shadows behind him, 
 it occurred to him that she could help in more 
 ways than one. "I can t give my parole to those 
 blockheads," he thought, "for I might have to 
 break it any minute." 
 
 He found Comrade Ellen the one apathetic 
 person he had seen this night at Beechcroft. 
 She came to the door with a half-completed 
 basket in her hand and with a long string of 
 raffia coiled around her shoulders. 
 
 He entered. She closed the door and leaned 
 against it. "You need me," she said. "What 
 am I to do?" 
 
 " Go to her house and wait there until she comes. 
 Then stay with her. Don t let him be with 
 her alone." 
 
 Ellen looked straight at him, and voiced the 
 question that was in his own mind : 
 
 "Will she come?" 
 
 "I don t know. I am trying to find her. I 
 shall feel easier if you are there. But wait 
 five minutes. Draw down your shades, please, 
 all of them, so that no one can see in. Is there 
 a light in your kitchen?" 
 
Cynthia Discovers the World 277 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Put it out, please." 
 
 She did so; returning to the living room she 
 encountered him in the dark passage. "Let 
 me out at the back," he said, "very quietly. 
 Careful about making a noise with the door. 
 Now, let me look around " 
 
 "Wait," she whispered. "Where are you 
 going?" 
 
 "To the old camp on the mountain. My men 
 are there, packing up. I need them." 
 
 Then he was off, slipping out among the weeds 
 and undergrowth like an Indian, and down the 
 slope to the brook, and across the brook, and up 
 the farther bank, scrambling through brier 
 patches, stumbling over logs to the other road. 
 
 Ellen looked after him until his dark shape 
 had blended with the night. Then she softly 
 closed the door and returned to the living room. 
 Her little house was empty again. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 THE MAN AT THE DOOR 
 
 CYNTHIA was sitting in a big leather chair beside 
 the roll-top desk in the steel room. This was a 
 farther corner of the room, twenty feet or more 
 from the door. The desk was closed. The 
 centre of the room was occupied by a table which 
 was six or eight feet long, and was mounted on 
 casters. At one side of the table, midway down 
 the room from the desk, was a high-backed mis 
 sion chair. A safe stood beside the desk and 
 immediately beyond the safe was a stationary 
 wash-bowl with running water. From the ceiling 
 an insulated wire hung down and lay in a loose 
 coil about the drop light on the table. 
 
 When Stein opened the door, entered, closed 
 and locked it after him, and pocketed the key, 
 she merely turned her eyes in his direction. But 
 if her manner suggested indifference, what she 
 saw in his face sent a tremor along her nerves. 
 278 
 
The Man at the Door 
 
 279 
 
 He was not dogged now. Some part had returned 
 
 of the mastery which had made him formidable. 
 
 If he was at bay, if the prophet game had been 
 
 layed and lost, the man had no notion of sur- 
 
 ndering. 
 
 He came deliberately around the table and 
 stood before her. She closed her eyes. 
 
 "Cynthia," he said, "look at me." 
 
 There could be no doubt that he had regained 
 control of his voice. It was low, cool, compelling. 
 I He evidently had a definite plan in mind which 
 ihe meant to carry out. She kept her eyes shut, 
 and her fingers gripped the arms of the chair. 
 
 After a moment of silence, she became con 
 scious that he was bending over her. Then she 
 felt a light, firm touch on her forehead and eye 
 lids, and shrank back into the corner of the chair. 
 I But she could not get away from the touch of 
 those fingers. She moved her head from side 
 to side ; the fingers moved with her. 
 
 "Mr. Stein!" she cried, "take your hands 
 
 r !" 
 
 His only reply was a gentle pressure on her 
 Itemples. She caught his wrists and tried to pull 
 I them away, but she could not move them at all. 
 )he could hear his calm, regular breathing. 
 
280 Comrade John 
 
 This was not the broken man who had turned 
 the key on her an hour earlier. This was an 
 inexorable, irresistible personality. Thoroughly 
 frightened, still gripping his wrists, she opened 
 her eyes. There his face was, a little above hers, 
 but close to it, and his eyes were looking straight 
 into hers. And once she had permitted him to 
 fix his eyes on hers she found it difficult to turn 
 away or to shut her eyes. The outlines of his 
 head blurred and wavered. He seemed to grow 
 bigger and farther away, but his bright, steady 
 eyes remained as a focal point for hers, until they 
 became the only real things in the room. 
 
 So far this was satisfactory to Stein. But the 
 task he had set himself was not an easy one, and 
 he went about it with deliberate method. Very 
 slowly, steadily holding her gaze, he drew back 
 his hands, took a firm hold of hers, and lowered 
 them to the arms of the chair. With the same 
 slow, soothing motion he raised his own hands 
 again, placed his thumbs upon her forehead, his 
 forefingers on her temples, and, accompanying 
 the motion with a sudden pressure, brought his 
 eyes an inch closer to hers, staring straight into 
 her pupils, and through them. Everything was 
 slipping away from her now. He was looking 
 
The Man at the Door 281 
 
 into her mind. He knew what thoughts were 
 there. He was forcing himself, steadily, little 
 little, into those thoughts. Her utmost strug 
 gling to resist him resulted in nothing more than 
 a trembling of the eyelids while she hung on that 
 overmastering gaze. Then, accompanying the 
 sound of his voice with a barely perceptible 
 stroking motion on her temples, he began to talk. 
 And in his voice, as in the movement of his fingers, 
 there was a gentle, monotonous rhythm. It was 
 ike a lullaby. Those big, luminous eyes filled 
 the slumbering mind. 
 
 "Your right hand has become very heavy, 
 Cynthia," he was saying. "It is like lead. You 
 can t lift it. Try try you can t lift a rin 
 ger." He was watching her intently. He saw 
 ;he muscles of her upper arm and shoulder 
 straining while the hand lay passive on the chair 
 arm. This was satisfactory, so far. But before 
 he dared venture on the very difficult experiment 
 which was in his mind, he must get perfect con 
 trol, not only of the muscles, but also of her five 
 senses, carefully, one by one. 
 
 "Your hand is growing lighter, Cynthia. 
 Now it is light as air. You can t hold it down. 
 See ! It rises now it is heavier again and it 
 
282 Comrade John 
 
 falls. But what makes it so cold? It is cold. 
 It grows colder like ice it hurts you now 
 it is growing warmer better much better 
 now it is very comfortable." He carefully noted 
 the little sigh of relief that passed her lips. He 
 was succeeding; there was no doubt about it. 
 He took off her hat and laid it on the table. Her 
 beautiful face, under the massing, waving, stray 
 ing charm of her hair, was passive beneath his 
 hands. Her eyes, opened to their full width, 
 reflected every slightest motion of his. He tested 
 it; he moved a little to one side; her eyes fol 
 lowed his automatically, without perceptible 
 wavering of the lids. He tried a more difficult 
 test, quietly removing his hands from her temples 
 and deliberately turning his back on her and 
 looking at the clock on the table. For one full 
 minute a very long minute he waited before 
 he turned. But her eyes had not changed; 
 they were still fixed on him. 
 
 He unlocked the desk, threw back the top, and 
 picked up an empty glass ink-well. "You do 
 not feel well, Cynthia," he said. "Your head 
 aches." Her brows contracted at this. "Take 
 these smelling salts, Cynthia. They will relieve 
 your headache. When you have smelled them 
 
The Man at the Door 283 
 
 you will feel better." She reached obediently 
 for the ink-well and sniffed at it, and almost at 
 once her brows relaxed again. 
 
 "Yes," he went on. His voice neither rose 
 nor hastened. It ran on in the same soothing 
 monotone. "Yes, you feel better your head 
 does not ache any more. But wait ! Listen, 
 Cynthia the temple bell is ringing. It is beau 
 tiful. Listen!" 
 
 She sat upright, her lips parted a little; and 
 an expression of childlike pleasure came into her 
 face. 
 
 So far, so good. The only really difficult test 
 remaining was that of vision. With that same 
 sudden fixity of gaze he had at first employed, 
 he gave an abrupt start and bent down over her, 
 and looked into her eyes. The response was 
 better now. She started, too, as if the nerves 
 and muscles of her body were physically controlled 
 by his mind. After a moment he moved aside, 
 and without taking his eyes from hers, said : 
 
 "Mr. Hobbema is standing just in front of you. 
 You can see him plainly. He is speaking to you. 
 Say How do you do, Mr. Hobbema. " 
 
 Stein reached back and gripped the edge of the 
 table. The veins stood out on the back of his 
 
284 Comrade John 
 
 hand and there was sweat on his forehead. His 
 frame seemed to be drawn compactly together, 
 as if for a mighty effort. For she was looking 
 at him, not at the imaginary Hobbema. 
 
 Then he said again, in a cold, even voice : 
 "Mr. Hobbema is standing just in front of you. 
 Speak to him, Cynthia." 
 
 She slowly turned, and a look of recognition 
 came into her face. "How do you do," she 
 breathed. Then she settled back in the chair, 
 and again rested her eyes on his. 
 
 Stein stood erect, looked straight down at her, 
 and drew in one deep breath after another, until 
 his arms hung easily at his sides and his head was 
 clear and cool. It had really been absurdly easy. 
 And the rest of it should be still easier, for there 
 was need for little more than a clear wit and 
 determined action. As he looked at her lean 
 ing back in the chair, more than ever bewildering 
 now that she seemed little more than a part of 
 his mental being, he could not realize that at 
 last, even if he could not have her heart, he was 
 to have the shell of her. It was, perhaps, just 
 as well that he could not realize it. Once this 
 evening he had lost his self-control, and he had 
 since been fighting the fight of his life to regain 
 
The Man at the Door 285 
 
 the lost ground. There would be time enough 
 to look at her later on. 
 
 He took from a compartment in the safe several 
 bundles of currency and counted them. The 
 sum was not so large as he had hoped, but it 
 would have to sustain them until he could work 
 out a new plan of life in some other corner of 
 the world. He made up the bills into a number 
 of small piles, wrapped about each a strip of 
 paper and gummed it with mucilage; then he 
 gave it all to Cynthia. 
 
 "This money is yours, Cynthia," he said. 
 "There are men at the door who would take it 
 away from you if they knew you had it. You 
 must hide it from them. Hide it in your dress." 
 And he walked across the room while she obeyed. 
 
 He next drew up a chair and sat directly 
 facing her for the final test of his power. "Cyn 
 thia," he said, "the back of your chair is too warm 
 to be comfortable. Sit up straight, and you will 
 feel better." And when she had obeyed, he 
 leaned forward, placed his ringer tips again on 
 her forehead and temples, and fixed her eyes 
 again on his with that same quick little jerk of 
 his own, as if he were establishing some sort of 
 physical communication between her eyes and his. 
 
286 Comrade John 
 
 "What I am going to tell you now, Cynthia," 
 he said, "is the thing you want most to know." 
 He was speaking very slowly, enunciating each 
 syllable with exaggerated distinctness. "You 
 are not happy in this room. You have been here 
 a long time. The air is close and heavy. It 
 oppresses you. You would like to be out in the 
 open air among the trees by the lake 
 where you can feel the fresh night breeze 
 where you can see the stars in the sky. I am 
 going to tell you how you can manage it. You 
 must listen very closely, because there are rough 
 men in this building who would like to take your 
 money away from you and confine you here. 
 You must do exactly what I tell you to do. Listen, 
 Cynthia. I am going away first. I will slip out 
 at the side door of the temple. You will stay 
 here alone, and keep very quiet and let nobody 
 know that you are here. Very soon I shall tele 
 phone you." He reached across to the desk and 
 drew out the instrument to where she could see 
 it. "When you hear the telephone bell ring, 
 you will be awake. He bent forward, looking 
 even more intently at her. "Remember that, 
 Cynthia. Keep it clearly in your mind. When 
 the telephone bell rings, you will be awake 
 
The Man at the Door 287 
 
 you will be yourself. And then you will answer 
 the telephone and you will act exactly as I tell 
 you then. You will listen to the voice in the 
 telephone, and do exactly what that voice tells 
 you to do. If you wish to be free, if you wish to 
 be happy, you will obey the voice in the telephone. 
 And remember fix it in your mind when the 
 telephone bell rings, you will be yourself." 
 
 He got to his feet, and walked slowly and 
 thoughtfully to the farther end of the room. 
 He could not wholly control the elation that was 
 sweeping over him like a wave, and so he allowed 
 himself a moment of relaxation. The plan would 
 work. He could change his clothes in the robing 
 room. The deputy who would see him pass out 
 at the side door who would, perhaps, go so 
 far as to search his person would not be likely 
 to see Cynthia go out at the front. And what a 
 lucky chance it was that he had found her in city 
 dress ! Even if there should happen to be com 
 munication between the two sets of watchers, 
 they would hardly detain her. She would be free 
 to go where she willed or where he willed. 
 And by that time he would be out of the way. 
 They could not trace his movements, at night, 
 on that wooded hillside. He would meet her 
 
288 Comrade John 
 
 at the roadside, and take her over the ridge to the 
 railroad. It might be best to catch a train going 
 west, in order not to risk passing the angry 
 watchers at the town below, and to connect at 
 the western end of the branch railroad with one 
 of the lines that entered New York by another 
 route. He paced slowly back and forth by the 
 door. He would be himself in a moment. It 
 was important that he steady himself now, because 
 it was advisable, before leaving her alone, that 
 he carry her still farther into her sleep in order 
 that all possible memory of the post-hypnotic 
 suggestion he had employed be effaced from her 
 mind. 
 
 And then, without an instant of warning, Stein s 
 house of cards fell, a ruin, to the ground. He 
 was still walking the floor, separated from her 
 by the length of the room and by the long table. 
 She was lying back in the big chair by the desk, 
 to all appearances asleep. No one of the night 
 sounds that filled the outer air entered this steel 
 chamber. The soft fall of Stein s sandals on the 
 thick rug was all that broke the silence. 
 
 Into this silence, with a suddenness that brought 
 Stein up short, startled, caught with all his facul 
 ties aback, like sails that flap useless against 
 
The Man at the Door 289 
 
 the masts came the sharp, business-like ring 
 of the telephone call. And he stood there, his 
 fists clenched, his face working, wearing his 
 mind slowly around to meet this new danger, 
 while Cynthia gave a little start, looked about 
 her with a puzzled expression, and then, in an 
 oddly matter-of-fact way leaned forward, drew 
 the instrument to the edge of the desk, and held 
 the receiver to her ear. 
 
 "Yes," she gasped, with sudden, half-sup 
 pressed excitement, "it is I it is Cynthia!" 
 
 Stein was coming around the table. 
 
 "Quick let me speak!" she cried into the 
 transmitter. 
 
 Another moment and Stein stood over her. 
 He clapped his hand over the transmitter. And 
 while this was taking place; while Cynthia was 
 looking up at him in frightened protest; while 
 Stein, trembling with rage, was struggling to 
 check the torrent of mad words that were crowd 
 ing and fighting on his tongue and spilling out 
 in hot phrases that would have astounded her had 
 she realized what he was saying, had she not been 
 listening, with every nerve alert and keen to 
 something else, during the very short space 
 of time in which all this was taking place, 
 u 
 
290 Comrade John 
 
 the crisp, vigorous tones of John Chance s voice 
 were ringing in her ear and carrying to her be 
 wildered mind a new sense of confidence in her 
 self and in him. 
 
 "In just ten minutes," the voice was saying 
 "at ten-fifteen, by the clock on the table stand 
 by the door and be ready " 
 
 The receiver was snatched from her hand ; the 
 telephone was thrown into the desk with a clatter 
 and bang, the lid was rolled down over it and 
 locked with a click. But when Stein turned on 
 her, the chair she had occupied was empty. 
 Cynthia was on the other side of the room, looking 
 at him across the table with something midway 
 between scorn and terror in her eyes. 
 
 He took one step forward, then paused, and, 
 with fists clenched and breath coming hard, 
 stared at her. Cynthia s eyes shifted from him 
 to the clock and back again. He took another 
 step, but then, still unable to meet the situation, 
 he turned away and fell to walking back and 
 forth across the end of the room, while she, 
 keeping the table between them, moved around 
 near the door. Now and then he glanced up at 
 her, but without speaking. And minute after 
 minute ticked slowly by. 
 
The Man at the Door 291 
 
 Finally, he came to the table, and resting 
 both hands upon it, looked steadily at her. 
 " Cynthia," he said quietly, " whose voice was 
 that?" 
 
 She pressed her lips together, and shook her 
 head. 
 
 He slowly nodded. "I see," he said, as if to 
 himself. Then his eyes searched her face. "I 
 want you to come back here, Cynthia, and sit 
 again in this chair." 
 
 Again she shook her head. 
 
 He smiled, slowly, patiently. "There is really 
 no use in resisting me, Cynthia, because I can, 
 if I wish, put it in such a way that you cannot help 
 obeying me. I am not putting it in that way 
 because I had rather you came voluntarily." 
 
 Her eyes dropped to the clock. 
 
 "Very well, then, Cynthia; suppose I put it in 
 the other way. I am sorry that it is necessary. 
 I am sorry that you force me to exert the power 
 which has been given me in order that I might 
 be a leader among men." He was intently 
 studying her, watching for the slightest sign of 
 weakening in the face which had a little time be 
 fore been passive but which was now alert and 
 scornful. He saw her catch her breath, with her 
 
292 Comrade John 
 
 eyes fixed on the clock, and lean back against the 
 wall directly by the door. He walked around to 
 her, glancing himself at the clock as he did so. 
 It was ten-fifteen. He did not know what this 
 sudden tension of her young figure meant, but 
 it evidently meant something. 
 
 "Are you standing here by the door because 
 you think somebody is going to open it?" he 
 asked, keeping rigidly to the grave, kindly tone 
 of voice which he had deliberately adopted. 
 "If that is what you are thinking of, you are 
 mistaken, because the door is of steel and there 
 is only one key to it. And that key is in my 
 pocket." He stepped close to her, and looked 
 into her eyes. "Come, Cynthia," he said. 
 
 She returned the look, but without a trace 
 of the response he had looked for. He 
 reached out to touch her forehead, and she 
 warded off his hands as if he had meant to 
 strike her, instead of merely touching her tem 
 ples. His jaws came together, and he snapped 
 his fingers. His eyes roved about the room, 
 uncertainly, until they rested on the drop- 
 light, with the loose wire coiled on the table 
 around it. He suddenly caught her arm and 
 drew her across the room. 
 
The Man at the Door 293 
 
 "Mr. Stein!" she said breathlessly. "Stop! 
 Don t you touch me!" She struggled and hung 
 back, but with his set purpose and his great 
 strength he seemed hardly aware of her resistance. 
 He put his hands on her shoulders and made 
 her sit down in the chair by the desk. Then, 
 gripping one of her arms, he reached out for the 
 drop-light, lifted it over, and held it just above 
 her eyes and a foot away from them. 
 
 "Look up, Cynthia," he said, more quietly. 
 "Look up at the light!" 
 
 Her eyes were tightly shut. 
 
 "Look up," he said again. 
 
 A key turned in the lock. Stein gave an ex 
 clamation of utter and bewildered astonishment. 
 And on the instant, without a clear idea in the 
 mind of either of what was taking place, the 
 lamp was back in its place on the table and Cyn 
 thia was standing erect, with Stein s grip still 
 tight about her arm. For in the open doorway, 
 holding the knob with one hand and blinking 
 good-humoredly at the light, stood John Chance. 
 His clothes were torn and muddy, and from his 
 hips down he was dripping wet. 
 
 Chance had not opened the door without a 
 vivid recognition of the fact that an alternative 
 
2 94 Comrade John 
 
 to his plan might be forced upon him. What 
 he had to accomplish might be easy, all over in 
 a moment, or it might not. His first, half- 
 blinded glance into the room sheered the easy 
 alternative away; Cynthia was not standing by 
 the door, but quite at the other end of the room, 
 and Stein s grip was on her arm. He had, in 
 a general way, been able to foresee the problem, 
 but the solution of it would depend on minute 
 details which only the spur of the moment could 
 supply him with. 
 
 The problem was so simple, that was the 
 difficulty of it. Stein had hold of her and 
 meant to keep her; he was strong enough to 
 do it, and really desperate enough to be dan 
 gerous. It would do no good, for example, to 
 hold a pistol to his head, unless one were fully 
 prepared to use it; Stein, in his present mood, 
 would rush a man so armed as certainly as a bull 
 will rush a picador. To make the bluff good, 
 to kill him here in his own castle, would be just 
 plain murder, as undesirable a solution of the 
 problem from Cynthia s point of view as from his 
 own. For other stratagem the plainly furnished, 
 windowless, steel-walled chamber seemed to 
 offer little room. But there was no affectation 
 
The Man at the Door 295 
 
 in the look with which he faced it ; serene, eager, 
 confident, it was the true mirror of his mind. 
 At last, in his goodness, Allah had given him 
 another job. 
 
 At sight of him Cynthia spoke, her voice ex 
 pressing a sort of quiet desperation. "I was at 
 the door and I waited, and then he made me 
 come away." 
 
 "I m sorry I was late," he said. "I was de 
 tained a little. But you ll come with me now 
 that I m here, won t you?" 
 
 It was not, after all, strange, the way the mere 
 sight of him braced her and gave her the begin 
 nings of hope. "Anywhere," she answered, 
 "if you can make him let me go." 
 
 She spoke of the man whose grip was crushing 
 her arm as impersonally as if he had been a big 
 gorilla. She did not look at him or take her eyes 
 away from the man in the doorway. 
 
 Chance stepped inside the room and pulled 
 off his soft felt hat; his smile became a little 
 derisive. "He s going to let you go," he said; 
 "now within five minutes." Then, suddenly, 
 his tone became graver and he looked at her 
 searchingly. "You re sure you want to go, what 
 ever it costs him? You won t think, when he s 
 
296 Comrade John 
 
 at your mercy, that perhaps he deserves another 
 chance? You won t interfere with the execu 
 tion when I ve passed sentence?" 
 
 "No," she said. 
 
 Sheer astonishment up to this moment had 
 held Stein just in the attitude in which Chance 
 had surprised him, and, except for his stertorous 
 breathing, silent. But now, with thick voice and 
 clumsy tongue, he spoke. 
 
 "You here, you fool!" 
 
 Chance sharply threw up his hand. "Hush," 
 he commanded softly. "You don t want your 
 guards to hear do you, Stein ? and come 
 to take a hand in this ? Come and find you 
 detaining a lady here against her will?" With 
 that he came a step farther into the room, far 
 enough to be clear of the door, and softly shut 
 it behind him. 
 
 It had a queer effect, somehow, the soft click 
 of the heavy door. It showed that something, 
 hidden as yet from Stein s slow-moving mind, 
 made this young man, whom his great hands 
 could have crushed to death, honestly believe 
 that he was master of the situation. It had the 
 effect of shifting the focal point of Stein s at 
 tention from the girl beside him to the man at the 
 
The Man at the Door 297 
 
 door. And the tangible result of it was that 
 Cynthia felt the grip on her arm relax, found that 
 she was able, gradually, to free herself and draw 
 back a little, just out of the big man s immediate 
 reach. 
 
 She was watching Chance intently, and though 
 his eyes never strayed to her she saw something 
 in them that made her wonder if it had not been 
 to attain this very result that he had closed the 
 door. A high, confident excitement began mount 
 ing in her veins. He would save her as certainly 
 as he had saved her that day in Paris. Stein s 
 great strength and the windowless walls of the 
 steel room would no more avail against him than 
 the frenzied mob in the Boulevard. 
 
 But she herself must not fail him. Whatever 
 happened, she must not be frightened. She 
 must wait, and she must be ready to play whatever 
 part he might call upon her for. Not the smallest 
 trivial detail of what he did escaped her. When 
 he drew a handkerchief from his breast pocket 
 and wiped his hands with it, she noted that the 
 pocket he returned it to was the outer one in the 
 left side of his coat. 
 
 "And it happens," Chance went on after he 
 had closed the door and again stood facing his 
 
298 Comrade John 
 
 big antagonist, "that I don t want the guards 
 here either. They don t know I m here Oh, 
 they re all at their posts. I didn t come in 
 through any of the doors nor any of the windows. 
 Perhaps you remember the details of your dream 
 of this temple well enough to know what way I 
 used. But never mind if you don t. The point 
 is that I m making a personal matter of this. I m 
 taking your case into my own hands. Nobody, 
 outside the three of us, knows I m here or here 
 about. This is strictly our affair yours and 
 mine." 
 
 Stein s head was sunk forward a little and was 
 rolling just perceptibly from side to side. His 
 lips were drawn back in a dog s smile. "So be 
 it," he said. "I want no better." 
 
 He had been drawing nearer the slight figure 
 at the door as he said it. He was coming along 
 what, from Chance s point of view, was the right 
 side of the table. And Cynthia, on the other 
 side, was coming toward him, too, probably with 
 out being aware of it. She must come no further. 
 Stein was getting ready for a rush, and another 
 step on her part would precipitate it. 
 
 Chance plunged his hands into his two side 
 pockets. His eyes, smiling and alert, were on 
 
The Man at the Door 
 
 299 
 
 the prophet but he spoke to the girl. "Cynthia, 
 put on your hat." 
 
 It lay on the table toward the farther end, so 
 that she had to go back a step in order to reach 
 it. Stein also fell back a little toward his desk. 
 Chance s move with his hands suggested that 
 he had a revolver in one of his pockets and Stein 
 knew enough of the architect s unusual quickness 
 to feel sure that it would be out and in action 
 before he could get near enough to overpower him. 
 As for the desk, there was a revolver of his own 
 in the upper right hand drawer, if he only could 
 contrive a way to open the desk and get it. 
 
 But when Chance took his hands out of his 
 pockets, as he did a moment later, it was only 
 to reveal a cigarette case in one of them and a box 
 of matches in the other. There was an instant 
 of silence. Cynthia was finding the pin-holes 
 in her hat and pushing in the pins. Chance, 
 with that curiously deceptive appearance of 
 deliberation which only very quick men are 
 capable of, was lighting a cigarette and replacing 
 the case in the pocket from which he had taken 
 it; the blazing match in his left hand he tossed 
 carelessly away and it fell upon the rug a yard or 
 more from where Cynthia stood. And Stein, 
 
300 Comrade John 
 
 leaning back against his desk, with one hand be 
 hind him, was trying to open the upper right 
 hand drawer. 
 
 "You d better bring your hands around in front 
 of you/ said Chance. "I m going to be the man 
 who holds the gun while we make our arrange 
 ments." His hand had flashed out of his pocket 
 again and this time the thing in it was a service 
 able looking revolver. He did not hold it out at 
 arms length and sight along the barrel either. 
 The thing lay informally, familiarly in the hollow 
 of his hand and it pointed at Stein s head as if 
 it had been an extra one of Chance s fingers. 
 Before speaking again he raised his left hand and 
 removed the cigarette from between his lips. 
 
 "This is an old-fashioned single-action Colt 
 of Bill Hemenway s," he said, "and I can shoot 
 pretty well with it. Don t move ! It s pointed 
 straight, and I give you my word I m ready to 
 pull the trigger. I had to shoot a dog, once, 
 that some people thought was mad, and I had 
 more compunction about that than I ever shall 
 have about this." 
 
 Cynthia had finished putting on her hat and 
 was about to begin drawing on her gloves when, 
 for the first time since Chance had opened the 
 
The Man at the Door 301 
 
 door, she glanced toward Herman Stein and 
 caught him in the act of withdrawing his eyes 
 from her. He turned slowly toward Chance. 
 "I am unarmed," he said, and his voice was 
 steadier than it had been. "I suppose I must 
 confess that you have beaten me. What are 
 the terms you want me to agree to?" 
 
 He drew himself up as he finished speaking 
 with what was a pretty good imitation of his 
 old dignity, and walked very deliberately, three 
 or four steps alongside the table and nearer 
 John Chance. 
 
 Cynthia wanted all her strength to keep from 
 crying out. The trick was so patent. The 
 man knew that Chance would not kill him in cold 
 blood. If he could just get near enough under 
 pretence of parley to seize a chance diversion, 
 or perhaps create one perhaps smash the light 
 and then make his spring 
 
 To see Chance standing there, showing no sign 
 of suspicion of the new danger, his attitude easy 
 rather than alert, his left hand, cigarette and all 
 apparently, even thrust into his side pocket, 
 tested her courage and endurance and her steady 
 resolve to wait and trust the event to him, clear 
 to the edge of her powers. 
 
302 Comrade John 
 
 She heard him beginning to answer Stein s 
 question. "It is Miss Cynthia " 
 
 And at that she did cry out, indeed. Stein 
 had the opportunity he had been playing for. 
 When Chance had begun to speak of her, his 
 eyes for just an instant, had strayed from Stein 
 to herself. And Stein, who with every nerve 
 and muscle tense had been waiting, hoping against 
 hope for this very thing, took his chance, made 
 his spring. 
 
 But all in the same flash of time other things 
 happened. In the same instant of her horrified 
 outcry she heard the mate to it from Chance him 
 self. As the prophet had rushed upon him he 
 had sprung toward her. The revolver had flown 
 from his hand, struck the table, slid diagonally 
 across it and fallen near the safe. Chance was 
 stooping at her feet now and clutching the folds 
 of her skirt in his hands. 
 
 She bent over. Something was blazing down 
 there and a hot puff of air with the sweetish, 
 pungent smell of burning linen about it, struck her 
 face. Chance was crushing out the blaze with 
 his bare hands. 
 
 It was two or three seconds before he spoke. 
 His voice when he did, was dry and not loud, 
 
The Man at the Door 303 
 
 but it had a compelling, contagious thrill of ex 
 citement in it. " Get some water, Stein. Quick ! 
 She caught from the match I threw down. Quick, 
 will you !" 
 
 For an instant the prophet hesitated. He 
 had caught a glimpse of a blaze, and the sharp 
 smoke was already stinging his nostrils, but 
 
 And then even this was before Chance had 
 finished speaking with a queer look in his 
 face he hurried around the far side of the table 
 to the stationary washstand that occupied the 
 corner by the safe. 
 
 Cynthia swayed where she stood. Stein would 
 get the revolver ! Without the support of Chance s 
 shoulders, as he stooped before her still crushing 
 the folds of her skirt together between his hands, 
 she would have fallen. And she dared not warn 
 him for fear her own words might direct Stein 
 to what, in the excitement of the moment, might 
 otherwise pass unnoticed. 
 
 Behind them, where he stood, they could hear 
 the water running into a basin. 
 
 "Tip over the chair behind you and bolt," 
 whispered Chance very softly. "Tip it side 
 ways. "I ll swing the table around as you 
 do it." 
 
304 Comrade John 
 
 She thought she understood. "Not without 
 you," she barely breathed, bending low over him. 
 "He means to kill you. "He s got the " 
 
 Still crouching before her, he threw back his 
 head and looked up, and her amazed eyes saw 
 nothing tragic, nothing heroic, just a plain, 
 good-humored, reassuring grin with a pucker 
 of what you might have almost called mischief 
 in his eyes. He was holding something in his 
 hand for her to see. The hand was scorched but 
 the thing in it was the charred remains of 
 his own pocket handkerchief and the extinct 
 cigarette. He whispered just the one word, 
 "Quick." 
 
 She rested her hand on the chair behind her as 
 if for its support, then overthrew it, as he had said, 
 and darted past him. In the same instant she 
 heard the thud and creak of the heavy table as he 
 swung it around crosswise. She was in the act 
 of turning the door-knob before she heard Stein 
 bellow, "Stop!" Then, as she pulled it open 
 and Chance springing to her side thrust her 
 through, there came, instead of the shattering 
 report of the revolver which she still dreaded, 
 merely one, and then another, and in all five 
 faint, futile, metallic clicks. 
 
The Man at the Door 305 
 
 "Not loaded," said Chance, quietly. 
 
 He still stood in the doorway, his hand on the 
 outer knob. Stein, who had trusted to the re 
 volver, was still penned in behind the impromptu 
 barricade they had made of the furniture. He 
 had thrown down the revolver and now made as 
 if to vault the table in pursuit of them, but the 
 manifest hopelessness of such a course stopped 
 him, and with something like a sob he sank back 
 into his desk chair. 
 
 "You didn t understand," said Chance, pleas 
 antly ; Cynthia noted in his voice the same cutting 
 edge she had heard in it when he had dismissed 
 Tommy Hollister, and it gave her much the 
 same sensation. "You didn t understand. You 
 weren t sentenced to be shot. There was no 
 question of anything like that. You were sen 
 tenced to be made ridiculous, to be remembered 
 as a joke. That s all the reckoning either of us 
 wanted of you. Did you think you deserved to 
 be promoted to real tragedy?" And as he closed 
 the door, he added one word more, in valedictory. 
 "I m leaving your extra key here in the lock. 
 I shan t want it again." With that he pulled 
 the door to, turned the key, and left it in the lock 
 as he had promised. 
 
306 Comrade John 
 
 "He has a key of his own, you know," Cynthia 
 whispered. 
 
 "But he can t get it into the lock until some one 
 comes along and takes this one out," Chance 
 reassured her, and then added, in a voice of 
 rather different quality, "No, you re done with 
 him." 
 
 There was a momentary silence between them 
 at that, which he broke with the observation that 
 there were some chairs here in the robing-room 
 and they might as well sit down for a minute. 
 He had got out a match while he was speaking, 
 and now he struck it and held it aloft. But 
 instead of using its brief light to note where the 
 chairs were, they just stood still looking into each 
 other s faces. 
 
 In the dark he had imagined her pale, drooping, 
 perhaps about to faint, and what he saw was so 
 different that it drew from him a short laugh of 
 surprise; bright- cheeked, bright-eyed, she had 
 never seemed to him to glow with so warmly 
 human a light before. She had a soft little laugh 
 of her own to echo his, without any reason at all. 
 
 "You don t look as if you needed to be helped 
 into a chair, or fanned, or given a drink of water," 
 he said. "That s good pluck after all you ve 
 
The Man at the Door 307 
 
 been through. I saw I could count on you, and 
 I did, and you made the whole thing easy. And 
 now it s over you ve a perfect right to turn limp 
 if you want to." 
 
 "I wonder," she said thoughtfully, "if anyone 
 else in the world could have done it that way 
 you know what I mean without making a 
 tragedy of it that would have left a streak of 
 horror across my memory of it." 
 
 The tiny flame of the match reached his fingers 
 at last and with some precipitation he flung it 
 down and stepped on it. The action reminded 
 her sharply of something else. "Your hand" 
 she exclaimed, but without raising her voice 
 "it s dreadfully burned, I know, and I had for 
 gotten it. You made me forget, but I ll never 
 forget again. I think I can bind it up with " 
 
 With a touch of his fingers he signalled her to 
 be silent, and listening she heard footsteps ap 
 proaching across the temple floor. "It s just 
 one of the guards," Chance whispered. "It s 
 all right. He won t come here." And as he 
 said, the footsteps gradually receded again. 
 
 "But," she questioned, puzzled, "aren t we 
 all right, anyway? Would it have mattered if 
 he had come here?" 
 
308 Comrade John 
 
 "I d forgotten we weren t in the same case," 
 he said, with a short laugh. "You are safe so 
 far as those guards are concerned. You can go 
 out the front door and you won t be molested." 
 
 "But you?" 
 
 "Oh, it s nothing serious, only I have to lie 
 low. They re buzzing after me like a swarm 
 of bees, the Beechcrofters, I mean. Stein has 
 said, I believe, that I m planning to skip with all 
 the cash on the place, or words to that effect. 
 It s not dangerous, only inconvenient." 
 
 "And it would be easier for you, wouldn t 
 it, if I went out the front door, and left you free 
 to get out alone ? " 
 
 He did not answer instantly and she heard 
 him groping for another match. When he had 
 lighted it, he let it shine directly in her face. 
 "You re to choose which way you d rather go, 
 alone, or with me Wait a minute. I want 
 your real choice, what you would rather do, 
 irrespective of what you think would be easier 
 for me. I may not let you do it after you ve 
 chosen, but, for a favor, I want your real 
 choice." 
 
 "With you," she said. 
 
 He flung away the match, though it was not 
 
The Man at the Door 309 
 
 yet burned out. "Come, then," he said, a little 
 unsteadily. 
 
 "Was that what you meant to make me do, 
 anyway? " 
 
 By that time he was ready with another match, 
 and was leading the way to a door which opened 
 on a flight of steps down to the cellar under the 
 platform. And all she got for answer to her 
 question was a boyish sort of laugh. 
 
 There was an open manhole in the cellar 
 floor from which issued the rustle of run 
 ning water. Chance handed Cynthia his box 
 of matches, climbed down the two or three 
 rungs of an iron ladder that hung from the 
 rim of the hole, and dropped off into the 
 water with a splash. His head was a foot 
 or more below the level of the floor. The 
 action drew from her a little cry of surprise. 
 
 "It s the big pipe," Chance explained, "that 
 carries the water to make the cascade from the 
 top of the temple steps. We had to make it big 
 to allow for freshets, but it s not more than knee 
 deep now. " 
 
 Cynthia had been getting her skirts together, 
 preparatory to following him, but now she paused 
 with a short laugh. "Oh, you re not going to 
 
310 Comrade John 
 
 wade," said Chance. " You re going to be carried. 
 You shan t even draggle your skirts." 
 
 "I laughed," she said, "because it was the first 
 time I ever thought of Mr. Stein s feathery^ 
 miraculous cascade running through a pipe. 
 But I m not going to be carried and I am going 
 to wade." She began descending the ladder. 
 "I m not a helpless frightened silly " 
 
 She felt Chance s arms tighten around her. 
 "Let yourself go," he said. "I ve got you safe. 
 This is another time you re going to mind." 
 
 He spent a moment getting her settled in 
 the right position and showing her how to 
 support herself upon him. "You re only half 
 as heavy that way," he explained when it was 
 done and he went splashing off up the conduit 
 with her. He did not talk; as a matter of 
 fact he needed all his breath. For a little 
 way she held herself somewhat rigidly, but 
 presently, and all at once, she relaxed, settled 
 a little nearer him, somehow, with a barely 
 audible sigh of purely physical content. He 
 set his teeth hard at that, and tried to steady his 
 breathing. 
 
 "You re getting tired," she said. 
 
 "It s only a step farther. Here. There s 
 
The Man at the Door 311 
 
 a ledge along the side from here on, where you can 
 go dry-shod. " 
 
 And with that he set her on her feet again. 
 
 Presently they emerged from the conduit 
 altogether, and scrambled up the bank of the 
 brook. 
 
 "Up to the right here a little way is our old 
 construction road that we used when we built 
 the temple," Chance told her. "Once we find 
 that, we ll be out of Beechcroft in short order." 
 
 They did find it almost at once. The night was 
 moonless, but the stars seemed strangely luminous 
 after the black dark of the conduit. They passed 
 the old shack and the barracks of the deserted 
 construction camp, the road narrowed and began 
 to mount more steeply, and all the way they 
 went steadily on, in a silence that neither of them 
 wanted to break. But at last, where the road 
 notched deepest between great ascending walls 
 of pines, and began to dip again, Chance paused 
 and tapped a mile-stone with his foot. 
 
 "Here s the end of Beechcroft," he said. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 THE BEECHCROFT MIRACLE 
 
 THE key which Chance had left in the steel- 
 room door turned again softly, but Stein did not 
 move his head until the door had opened and the 
 newcomer stood in the room. He almost knew 
 who it was without looking. Cynthia would not 
 come back. Chance, Hobbema, were gone. 
 But Ellen it was her turn now. 
 
 It occurred to him that she did not look alto 
 gether natural, not as she had looked this last 
 twelvemonth, anyway; but he was not interested 
 to analyze the change. He turned back into his 
 former attitude after the merest glance, aware 
 only that if he had been but half the man he had 
 persuaded himself that he was, it might have been 
 Cynthia standing there. 
 
 The core of Ellen s soul, in its nest of ashes, 
 was glowing again; not with the destructive 
 312 
 
The Beechcroft Miracle 313 
 
 incandescence that once had tortured her, but 
 warmly, comfortingly. She knew now past any 
 doubt that she was no mere gray ghost. She 
 had taken life into her hands again and it had 
 bent, conformably to her will, as white hot iron 
 bends in the blacksmith s. The essential change 
 expressed itself subtly all over her; in her color, 
 her eyes, her gait, even in the way she dressed 
 her hair and wore her clothes. She looked 
 about the room, taking in the significant details 
 of its disorder, all of them proclaiming a struggle 
 and a defeat, and at last gazed thoughtfully at the 
 man himself. She was smiling a little satirically, 
 but with no more intense expression of scorn than 
 that, and when she spoke the tone of her voice 
 was almost friendly. 
 
 "So you know the taste of it, at last, yourself. 
 You, too. You put in your best and it was not 
 good enough. Mene, mene, tekel There s 
 nothing about that in your bible, Herman, but 
 it comes true, now and again." 
 
 At that he looked up at her, still from out the 
 sodden bewilderment into which his defeat had 
 plunged him, but with a redeeming spark, now, 
 of intelligent curiosity in his eyes. "Why do 
 you say that? Why did you come here at all?" 
 
314 Comrade John 
 
 "For more reasons than one," she told him. 
 "Partly to see whether Mr. Chance had been able 
 to keep the promise he made me last night. I 
 knew he would, really. He promised that you 
 should not do to her what you had done to me. 
 But that was not the chief reason why I came. 
 I wanted to see the result of my own work. I 
 wanted to see you looking as you look now and to 
 tell myself that I had brought it about." 
 
 "You!" he said, impatiently turning away 
 from her. "You! I can guess how much you 
 had to do with it." 
 
 "You shan t guess," she said with a quiet 
 authority that commanded his gaze again. " You 
 shan t guess. You shall know. Listen. Yes 
 terday Samuel Hobbema learned how the Beech- 
 croft miracle was worked, and who it was that 
 worked it. He came to me as he has been coming 
 for a year and more. He thought that between 
 what he knew of you and what I knew, we could 
 utterly ruin you. And he and I could 
 reign in your stead. I told him that if he wanted 
 your mantle, he would have to pull it from your 
 shoulders himself. John Chance also knew 
 what he had discovered. He destroyed the evi 
 dence and he frightened poor Comrade Samuel 
 
The Beechcroft Miracle 315 
 
 half to death into the bargain. I asked him why 
 he did it and he told me that since he had con 
 sented to the fraud his one way of keeping his 
 self-respect was to stay loyal to somebody 
 that being you to the end, and to put through 
 the job he was getting paid for. That was yes 
 terday. You were safe yesterday. But it was 
 yesterday that you laid hands on Cynthia; that 
 you made her the same lying promise that you 
 once made me." 
 
 "Before God," Stein cried, "I would have 
 kept it." 
 
 "Before God," she echoed, "you meant it 
 when you made it to me. Could you have won 
 me with it, do you think, if you had not? But 
 the end would have been the same with her that 
 it was with me. You are just a great leech with 
 women, and when you had drained her dry you 
 would have left her in the same limbo where you 
 left me. So I told my story to John Chance, and 
 I got his promise that he would take her away 
 from you before it should be too late. That 
 was last night. And to-day, to keep his promise, 
 he has pulled down the temple of your religion 
 as a strong man did once before a strong man 
 who was not afraid to pay the price. I didn t 
 
3i 6 Comrade John 
 
 do much. I couldn t have pulled down the pil 
 lars, but I led him in and put his hands on them. 
 And that s another story that you left out of 
 your bible." 
 
 She broke off there and stood watching him, 
 curiously. He was tugging at a drawer in his 
 desk, trying to get it open. It stuck a little, 
 but the exertion he was making over it was hardly 
 enough to account for the purple suffusion of his 
 face, the shine of sweat on his forehead, the ster 
 torous respiration. Ellen righted the chair that 
 Cynthia had upset, and seated herself in it at 
 the far end of the table. 
 
 "So you will understand now why I came," 
 she went on. "I wanted the evidence of my own 
 eyes that I had really effected something again." 
 She inflected the sentence rather vaguely, as if 
 it didn t much matter; the major part of her 
 attention was elsewhere. 
 
 He had got the drawer far enough open now so 
 that it moved easily. He satisfied himself that 
 this was so, then rose cumbrously from his chair 
 and walked over to the door. He did not go 
 quite straight, nor very steadily, but this was 
 clearly due to no uncertainty of purpose, but to 
 a mere lack of physical control. With some 
 
The Beechcrojt Miracle 317 
 
 fumbling he locked the door and put the key, the 
 second key, in his pocket ; then he went back to 
 his desk, seated himself, opened the drawer wide, 
 and took out a revolver. It was the one he had 
 vainly tried to get when he stood facing John 
 Chance. "The other one was not loaded," 
 he said thickly, "but there s no doubt about this." 
 
 She had been watching him minutely all the 
 while and with a look that dawned into full com 
 prehension before he took the revolver from the 
 drawer. But there was no horror in her face. 
 One would sooner have called it eager. His 
 own betrayed little beyond a desperate sort of 
 excitement, and he did not look at her, now or 
 the next moment when he spoke. 
 
 "It was not he, damn him, who defeated me, 
 nor was it you. I defeated myself. I want you 
 to understand that. It is the last thing you are 
 ever to have a chance to understand. A clever 
 little swindler like him, nor a jealous hag like 
 you, nor you two together, nor twenty like you, 
 could not have defeated me. I could defeat 
 myself, and I did. I did it for her. She was 
 more than all the rest of it. It was worth defeat 
 to get her, and I did get her. She came in here 
 of her own will. She had heard John Chance s 
 
318 Comrade John 
 
 whole story for what it was worth. He played 
 his biggest trump. And after all that, she came 
 here. She was mine, mine, but for a piece of 
 ill luck with that damned telephone, to do as I 
 pleased with, as absolutely as you ever were. 
 The accident that took her away doesn t matter. 
 That was not my defeat. I defeated myself the 
 day I let myself laugh at the pack of lies I had 
 been telling you credulous fools, and said that 
 if they weren t good enough to win her, I had 
 other means that would. They did win her, 
 those other means of mine. I defeated myself 
 to win her. Do you understand? 
 
 "Now, listen, for this is the last thing you ll 
 ever hear. I ve enjoyed a good deal in this life. 
 I ve enjoyed you, among others. I ve enjoyed 
 this religion of mine. I enjoyed winning her, 
 enjoyed the knowledge that she was mine. I 
 enjoyed throwing it all away for her. I ve made 
 my life as I chose. I defeated myself when I 
 chose. And I choose that this shall be the end 
 of it. I don t care, after these last days, to go 
 back to card tricks, and crystal balls and revival 
 meetings. I ll stop here. I shall sleep sound. 
 I ve no fear of dreams, afterwards. And you re 
 going to stop here, too. Not because of anything 
 
The Beechcrojt Miracle 319 
 
 you ve done to me. You ve effected nothing, 
 do you understand? Nothing. But I shall kill 
 you, just as I loved you, and lived with you, and 
 left you, because I choose. Do you want to pray, 
 or anything? You may not think you can sleep 
 as sound as I." 
 
 He did not once look at her until he had done 
 speaking. When he did, he found her gaze, 
 eager, intent, curious, fixed on his face. Her lips 
 were still smiling a little satirically and the color 
 had deepened in her cheeks. 
 
 "Are you really man enough for that, I 
 wonder!" she said. "I shall never know, I 
 suppose. Oh, yes, I expect to sleep soundly, too. 
 I ve an idea that you aren t quite so easy as you 
 say about the dreams afterwards. At any rate, 
 this pose of yours will carry you through with 
 killing me, and, on the whole, I m not sorry. 
 But to crook your finger with that thing pressed 
 to your own head will be a different matter. 
 You ll be all alone, then ; there will be no one to 
 pose before, no one to listen to your impressive 
 last words, no one to care whether you do it or 
 not. It will be the real man, then, who will do 
 it, if it s to be done. And if he isn t what you re 
 trying to pretend he is, you ll turn cold and afraid. 
 
320 Comrade John 
 
 You ll try to steal away, and they ll catch you 
 and hang you, Herman. Oh, you d best make 
 sure." 
 
 There was a moment after that of what would 
 have been silence but for his heavy breathing. 
 She had been speaking, from second to second, 
 from one word to the next, in extreme peril of 
 instant death. He was not holding the revolver; 
 it still lay on the desk where he had laid it, and, 
 indeed, his twitching muscles would almost have 
 precluded the effective use of it. But as he sat 
 there glaring at her out of his opaque, blood-shot 
 eyes, all that held him from flinging himself upon 
 her, choking the words in her throat, killing 
 her with his hands, was the hypnotic power of 
 her utter fearlessness and of the searching truth 
 she spoke. In the silence, however, this peril 
 visibly passed. His big body relaxed a little. 
 She thrust back her chair and stood facing him. 
 
 "But if you are sure, Herman; if you really 
 know in the bottom of your soul that you can do 
 it, then you re not defeated at all. At least not 
 yet." Her voice had an infectious thrill of excite 
 ment in it. "You can win them back, be their 
 prophet again. A victory would taste good, now ; 
 sweeter than ever it tasted before. And a defeat, 
 
The Beechcroft Miracle 321 
 
 if it came to that, couldn t be bitter. It s worth 
 trying if you re sure." 
 
 She broke off with a short laugh, at her own 
 excitement, it seemed, and dropped back into 
 her chair. "A fight like that would be worth 
 while for its own sake, I should think," she went 
 on, rather vaguely. "Not to want anything from 
 them, not caring what they did; just whipping 
 them back to heel, you all alone and they a thou 
 sand. And if you did win, the victory would 
 be worth while, too. Oh, yes, even without 
 Cynthia, though you did think an hour ago that 
 she was worth more than all the rest. You d 
 soon find a successor for her; one whom you 
 wouldn t take so seriously. I wonder why I m 
 saying these things to you. I suppose I shall 
 always wonder. I suppose it s because you are 
 something besides a fraud. You re a prophet, 
 too, partly. Toil and Triumph isn t all a lie. 
 I believed it, once. So even did you, I think. 
 And for these make-believe people who sit 
 around, coddling their own souls, it s as good a 
 gospel as any. If they turn away from it, it 
 will only be to turn to one of the others " 
 
 Stein was not listening; his own mind was 
 busy with a picture that left little room for any- 
 
 Y 
 
322 Comrade John 
 
 thing else. John Chance s analysis of him as 
 simply a fellow-showman was perfectly true as 
 far as it went; but Chance had never perceived 
 how completely Stein participated in the thrill 
 he was producing in his audience. Ellen went 
 to the root of the matter when she called him 
 a poseur. And if this was his weakness, it was 
 also his strength. At least, it accounted for his 
 resiliency. A man plunged half as deep in de 
 spair as he pretended he was would have shot him 
 self long before Ellen came to the steel-room door. 
 She had, indeed, stripped that pose away from 
 him without mercy, but almost in the same breath 
 she had supplied him with another. Her phrases 
 about whipping the disciples back to heel, him 
 self alone against the multitude, had a pictorial 
 quality which set his imagination all ablaze again. 
 He could see the whole picture. He would stand 
 at the head of the stairway to the temple, his 
 formidable figure in full canonicals, lighted by 
 the fitful glare of torches. The multitude would 
 be massed below. He saw himself winning them 
 from angry tumult back to silence; from silence 
 on to cheers, from cheers to the reverent acceptance 
 of his benediction. At that, he rose brusquely 
 from his chair and interrupted her. 
 
The Beechcrojt Miracle 323 
 
 "I can win them," he declared. "I have my 
 message again. My feet are plucked up out 
 of the pit " 
 
 His eye fell on the revolver and the sight of it 
 checked him for a moment. He took it up and 
 put it back in the drawer. When he turned to 
 her and went on speaking, it was with all his old, 
 impressive dignity. He had assumed the prophet 
 again. 
 
 "It is you who have done this," he said. "It 
 was through you that I was brought down in order 
 that I might again be raised up. I have been 
 through hell. And you, who came and found 
 me in the depths of it, who came to glory over me 
 and who showed me the way out, you cannot tell 
 me why. But I can tell. It is because you belong 
 to me, because we belong together. Is it not so ? " 
 
 The words did what neither his threats nor 
 his violence had been able to do made her shrink 
 suddenly away from him and brought a haggard, 
 frightened look into her eyes. 
 
 "You tell me you are going to win," she said 
 unsteadily. "If you do I make no promise. 
 But if you lose, and if you come back here to what 
 you were facing when I found you, then I ll go 
 with you, Herman, gladly." 
 
324 Comrade John 
 
 "I shall not lose," he answered. " And though 
 you make no promises, yet it shall be as I 
 say." 
 
 He unlocked the door then, and went out into 
 the robing-room. The next moment she heard 
 him calling for a guard. "Have the bells rung," 
 he commanded. "And do you and your fel 
 lows go out among the people and summon them 
 all, every man and woman, to the temple steps. 
 I have a message for them." 
 
 The guard made a reverence and withdrew 
 to do the prophet s bidding. Stein, left alone, 
 was about to return to Ellen when his eye fell 
 upon the open door at the head of the stairs into 
 the cellar. Ordinarily that door was locked. 
 He switched on an electric light and looked down 
 the stairway. The next moment he was back 
 at the steel-room door speaking to Ellen. 
 
 "I shall be back in a moment," he said. "Wait 
 for me here." He closed the door after him, 
 hesitated a moment whether to lock it or not, and 
 decided in the negative. Then, briskly but 
 softly for so large a man, he crossed the robing- 
 room again and descended the stairs. A line 
 of still damp tracks across the dusty floor led 
 him straight to the uncovered manhole. He 
 
The Beechcrojt Miracle 325 
 
 stood here for a moment looking down, then 
 stooped and examined the small iron ladder sus 
 pended from the rim of the hole. He had known 
 that the stream which made the cascade from 
 the threshold of the temple door ran under the 
 edifice through a pipe, but that this was large 
 enough to afford a practicable means of egress 
 from his temple had not occurred to him. His 
 face was still grave, impressive, inscrutable, 
 when he moved away. 
 
 It was one of the real men inside his skin who 
 had charge of his actions just now, one who may 
 best be described as a sort of man-servant to the 
 other higher-flown gentry who made up his total 
 sum. A very silent, prosaic valet this was, who 
 attended to practical and intimate details and 
 never intruded his humble offices upon the lofty 
 planes of solitude and revery where the prophet 
 walked. He explored the cellar a little further 
 and came upon a heap of litter, the position of 
 which, at the foot of a wooden air shaft, suggested 
 that some careless workman had used it as a 
 chute during the process of cleaning up. Not 
 far away was a sort of lumber-room containing 
 various odds and ends, tools, paint-brushes, and 
 a couple of oily looking barrels. 
 
326 Comrade John 
 
 The bells were already flinging an imperious 
 summons abroad into the night air when he 
 returned to the steel-room. Ellen was sitting 
 just as he had left her. It was the prophet, not 
 the man-servant, who spoke to her. "Listen," 
 he commanded, with uplifted hand. "They 
 are calling the people together to hear my mes 
 sage. I must not fail them. I must be alone for 
 a little. Wait for me in the temple. I shall 
 come soon." 
 
 It was entirely characteristic of him that when 
 she had gone, and while the prophet was con 
 templating his source of inspiration, whatever it 
 was, the man-servant was getting him dressed, 
 in full canonicals, indeed, so far as outward 
 appearances went, but underneath in a serviceable 
 and inconspicuous business suit. 
 
 It was long past midnight when Beechcroft 
 heard the bells, but their summons was answered 
 as speedily as if it had been noon. There was 
 no sleep in the valley. Excitement had mounted 
 steadily, ever since Stein s brief excursion from 
 the temple early in the evening. Rumor flew 
 everywhere, diverse, protean, now gross with 
 falsehood, and now again easily to be verified. 
 By now it was everywhere admitted that Chance 
 
The Beechcrojt Miracle 327 
 
 had escaped. He had not been seen by any 
 Beechcrofter since he had eluded his watchers 
 in front of Ellen s house, but one of the guards 
 had heard his voice in the temple in evident con 
 versation with Stein. He had mentioned the 
 circumstance to a comrade, and within an hour 
 every person in the colony knew of it. It hurt 
 the prophet more than many a wilder and ap 
 parently more damning circumstance could have 
 done. 
 
 Taken individually, the Beechcrofters were as 
 harmless souls as one might hope to find in a 
 long day s journey, but in the shadow of this 
 calamity, which enveloped all alike, they were 
 fast losing their individual characteristics. Their 
 collective temper grew steadily uglier and more 
 formidable as the hours wore away in irritating 
 and enforced inaction. Ellen had said that they 
 might be won back by a man who had already 
 plucked the sting from the bitterness of defeat, 
 who was fearless because past fear. She may 
 have been right. But such a victory was not 
 likely to fall to a man who still had his bridges 
 intact behind him, who was dressed, underneath 
 his picturesque canonicals, in an inconspicuous 
 business suit. 
 
328 Comrade John 
 
 So far as preliminaries went, Stein s picture was 
 carried out just as he had conceived it. The 
 Beechcrofters were prevented by a cordon of 
 guards and sheriff s deputies from ascending 
 the steps and they massed solidly at the foot of 
 them. A cluster of gasolene flares which had 
 been used during building operations served to 
 light the spot which Stein had chosen for his stage 
 and the impressive background afforded by the 
 temple doorway. 
 
 John Chance s temple had never looked lovelier, 
 more remote from prosaic, material fact, more 
 magical, more the clear substance of a dream, 
 than in the mystery of this June night. Its mere 
 beauty could have won Stein s battle for him 
 alone, had it not been the particular manifes 
 tation of his alleged power that was under suspi 
 cion. Even as it was, it imposed a solemn silence 
 upon the crowd that waited for the prophet s 
 appearance. 
 
 On the surface, then, everything was in his 
 favor. The night was windless, dead still; and 
 his great deep-toned voice a perfect instru 
 ment of which he was completely master 
 reached and enveloped the uttermost fringes 
 of the crowd. His dignified manner and his 
 
The Beechcrojt Miracle 329 
 
 rich, sumptuous diction fitted perfectly with all 
 the rest. For a while the mere impression of 
 it all was strong enough to hold them. 
 
 "Draw near and hearken. Through the hours 
 of this night, while you have run to and fro, 
 wondering, doubting, listening to rumors and 
 lies and whispered sayings, I have stood alone. 
 I would have comforted you, but I could not. 
 It was necessary that I await my message. Now, 
 in this hour, my message is given me. 
 
 " Listen, ye of little faith, ye who have already 
 denied me unheard, and declared my gospel a lie, 
 ye who have fled from the wall at the first cry 
 of the trumpet, who have turned your hands 
 against your comrades, who would stone me as 
 your forefathers have stoned the prophets from 
 the beginning of the world. Listen, for my mes 
 sage is to you. 
 
 "And listen, also, you who have been stead 
 fast, whose faces have been to the stars though 
 your feet have stumbled. My message shall 
 bring you comfort. 
 
 "As for you others, who neither believe nor 
 deny, pretenders and the dupes of your own pre 
 tence, I know your works. You are neither hot 
 nor cold. So, then, because you are lukewarm and 
 
33 Comrade John 
 
 neither cold nor hot, I will spue ye out of my 
 mouth. Buy gold that ye may be rich, and rai 
 ment that the shame of your nakedness may not 
 appear, and depart from among us. 
 
 "You to whom I speak, you want the truth, 
 whether it hurts or heals. It will heal at last 
 though it may hurt at first. Open your hearts 
 to it then, and answer. Was it my gospel that 
 has deceived you, or your own denial of it? I 
 have preached a gospel of toil. Have you toiled ? " 
 
 "Have you?" cried a voice from the crowd. 
 
 Really, it was a trap, though if any one 
 had set it, it was the prophet himself? He 
 was betrayed by the very impressiveness of 
 the scene, the very silence in which they had 
 begun listening to him. He had forgotten 
 that he must cow down a multitude; he 
 fancied he was preaching a sermon. And the 
 jeering, high-voiced question from the crowd 
 staggered him like a blow. "Have you? 
 How much toiling did you do on the temple?" 
 He had no answer ready. He could only try 
 to go on with his discourse. 
 
 "What is the beauty that I have bidden you 
 attain? Beauty in brick and stone, or beauty 
 in character?" 
 
The Beechcroft Miracle 331 
 
 At that they stopped him in earnest. A mur 
 mur, rising in intensity to a roar, and then in 
 pitch to a sort of yelp, swept his words away. 
 Then in the electrical silence that followed, a 
 dozen voices cried out to know what had become 
 of Comrade John. 
 
 "Every religion has its Judas Iscariot," Stein 
 shouted. "He has escaped." 
 
 A man shouldered his way through the cordon 
 of guards, sprang up two or three of the steps, 
 and shouted before he could be pulled back, 
 Escaped ! With your help, and with our money ! 
 
 Another voice came from the heart of the crowd. 
 "He hasn t escaped. They re hiding him in the 
 temple. Find him out!" 
 
 By that time Stein had lost them utterly, and 
 he knew it. They would rush him in another 
 minute. The guards might be able to hold them 
 for as long as that but hardly for longer. Half 
 involuntarily he turned for a glance back at the 
 temple doorway. 
 
 Deep in the shadow of it he saw a figure clad 
 in dusky yellow ; Ellen, who had heard, who was 
 waiting there, no doubt, to offer him the alterna 
 tive of victory which he had accepted. At the 
 sight of her he turned and again faced the crowd, 
 
332 Comrade John 
 
 but it was too late now. They had seen the 
 backward glance, had understood that it hinted 
 flight. The hint was enough. They swept 
 away the cordon of guards and came surging 
 up the steps. 
 
 It was in that moment, in the mere twinkling 
 of an eye, that the true miracle, the one true 
 miracle, was wrought at Beechcroft. Upon the 
 shabby, sham, voluptuous monster, Stein, there 
 descended suddenly, in this extreme instant, the 
 mantle and the possession of true prophecy. In 
 his lying, cowardly, plausible mouth, he tasted the 
 bitterness of truth and knew that he must utter it. 
 
 He rushed to the edge of the steps to meet the 
 crowd that was surging up. His face, dark with 
 excitement, looked fairly black in the shadow 
 of the torches, but his eyes shone like lamps. 
 
 "Stop where you are !" he bellowed. With all 
 the terrible raucous passion in his voice, there 
 was, mixed up in it, the sound of a gibing laugh. 
 Without a word more, he stood where he was, 
 waiting for them to be still, and while he waited 
 the tumult died away. 
 
 "You want the truth, do you? Well, you shall 
 have it now, more than you want. This religion 
 of mine is a lie from the first word to the last. 
 
The Beechcrojt Miracle 333 
 
 "Listen, you. There are only two true re 
 ligions, and they re both old. One of them has 
 got a cross in it, and it tells you that the way to 
 save your life is to give it away, deny it. It 
 isn t my religion, and I don t know much about 
 it. It never was to my taste. But it s a true 
 religion for such as care for its terms. And the 
 other religion, my religion, tells you to get what 
 pleasure you can out of what comes to you, and 
 be content to die and rot when your time comes. 
 And that s a true religion too. A real man can 
 take his choice, and live and die by either. He 
 can be good or he can be bad by either. 
 
 "But you, fools, haven t the self-denial for the 
 one nor the courage for the other. You want to be 
 told that you can play it both ways. So either 
 you get up fake religions for yourselves, or else we 
 professional fakirs get them up for you. There ll 
 be new ones as fast as the old ones are exploded 
 so long as there are enough of your sort of milk 
 sops in the world to make it pay. I didn t begin 
 with this one. I began at the bottom, telling for 
 tunes with a greasy deck of cards and casting 
 horoscopes. And I found out that all people 
 wanted the sort of people who came to me was 
 to be told that it was easy. After that I got on. 
 
334 Comrade John 
 
 I took up one fake after another, but I always 
 made them pay. And when I had got to know 
 you inside out I wrote my book, stole it, rather, 
 from another man and softened it up so that it 
 would be easier to swallow. I knew what to 
 tell you. God, didn t I know ! I told you that 
 you could be wise without studying, and that you 
 could make beautiful things without learning 
 a trade, and that you could get the fine noble 
 characters by doing whatever you liked. And 
 you made a prophet of me for it ! 
 
 "That s the truth, and you ve got it good, at last. 
 But can you swallow it? Not you. There are 
 plenty more religions as good for you as mine. 
 Go to the one that tells you that there is such a 
 thing as pleasure and no such thing as pain, that 
 believes in good dinners and doesn t, believe in the 
 gout. It tells you to dress warm and sleep soft, 
 and it comforts the naked and the homeless by 
 telling them that pain and cold and sorrow are 
 all a mistake. Go over there. That s the 
 place for you. Go where you can pat your 
 selves on the back and call it Christian Charity. 
 Say I am so happy, because you are so happy 
 because I am so happy, until you bring in 
 the millennium. 
 
The Beechcroft Miracle 335 
 
 "If there is a place for you to go when you are 
 dead, it ll be the Fools Paradise. You couldn t 
 understand heaven and you couldn t get into hell. 
 You haven t an able-bodied sin among you. 
 Kill me as I stand here; it might make men of 
 some of you. I m a man. I m a liar and a 
 swindler and a thief, but I m a man and you are 
 just lifelike imitations. Your souls are celluloid 
 and your passions are plaster of Paris. You 
 go against my stomach. I ve sickened of you. 
 I wash my hands of you." 
 
 He turned at that and strode slowly across the 
 broad flagged space at the head of the steps and 
 disappeared in the temple doorway, careless, it 
 seemed, whether they would come pouring up 
 after him and trample him to death or not. 
 
 The scene had a curious little anticlimax. 
 There was an indecisive movement in the crowd 
 which might have developed into a rush, but was 
 checked by the sheriff. He was a typical native 
 of those parts, a thin, cautious man, with a high- 
 pitched, nasal, matter-of-fact voice. 
 
 "There ain t any one escaped from the temple 
 yet," he said, "and there ain t a-going to. If 
 there s any man or any money in the temple now 
 it s a-going to be there in the morning. And 
 
336 Comrade John 
 
 there ain t any more of you going to get in. Clear 
 the steps." 
 
 He was obeyed a bit sheepishly on the part 
 of the leaders, and presently a section of the crowd 
 broke off and went around to watch the other 
 temple door. 
 
 The Beechcroft miracle bewildered none of the 
 disciples so much as it bewildered the prophet 
 himself. He walked into the temple like a man 
 drunken, and on encountering Ellen back in the 
 shadow, at first only snarled at her inarticulately. 
 Then, getting some possession of himself, he 
 ordered her, thickly, to be off. 
 
 "Go out to the others, where you belong," he 
 commanded. "You ve got no business here." 
 
 "I made you a promise," she said, and her 
 voice showed how profoundly his words from the 
 temple steps had shaken her. "I made it and 
 I mean to keep it. I m gladder to keep it than 
 I dreamed I could be when I made it. Don t 
 try to send me away." 
 
 The flame of prophecy had died out of him 
 utterly, and it left him spent indeed. He had 
 made four trials of strength since sundown; 
 with Cynthia, with Chance, with Ellen, and with 
 the disciples, and he had met four defeats. All 
 
The Beechcroft Miracle 337 
 
 that was left of him now was a nerveless, badly 
 frightened rascal whose one idea was flight. 
 Ellen was stupidly in the way. He would have 
 struck her senseless there on the temple floor, 
 but he lacked the courage to do it. 
 
 "Have you got that revolver with you?" he 
 asked suddenly. "Give it to me." 
 
 She obeyed him without demur, and the feeling 
 of it in his hands steadied him a little. "If 
 you will come, come, then," he added. "On 
 your head be it." 
 
 With no more words he crossed the temple 
 hurriedly, almost at a run, and led the way across 
 the robing-room and down the stairs into the 
 cellar. Once there, out of danger of immediate 
 pursuit, he stood quite still for a minute or two 
 listening, and, she guessed from his face, form 
 ing some sort of plan. 
 
 "We ought to have bolted the main door," he 
 said presently. "The other one is locked fast 
 enough." Then without answering her ques 
 tioning frown he commanded, "Go and bolt it. 
 The bottom bolts will do. That will give us all 
 the time we need." 
 
 Rather dubiously and very slowly she turned 
 to do his bidding, for craft of the meanest sort 
 
338 Comrade John 
 
 leered out through the mask of stolidity into which 
 he had composed his face. But, though doubt 
 ing, she still obeyed, his old power and her own 
 indifference working together. 
 
 The moment she disappeared he stripped off 
 his toga and his tunic and slipped the revolver 
 into one of the side pockets of the sack coat he 
 had on underneath. Then, with ever increasing 
 haste, he fetched a barrel of turpentine out of 
 the lumber-room, broached it with an axe, 
 emptied it over the heap of litter at the foot of 
 the air shaft, and set it off. The plan was perfect 
 if only there was time enough. The fire must 
 make headway enough before Ellen s return to 
 lead her at least to half believe that he had 
 perished in it. Whether she escaped or not 
 didn t matter. If she did she would tell the story, 
 which would be well. If she did not, and they 
 ever found her there, it would only lend color 
 to the theory that he had met his death in the 
 same way. 
 
 But it was hard to calculate the time just right. 
 He lingered by the blaze, throwing more fuel on 
 it, making doubly sure for just a little too long. 
 He was in the very act of preparing to climb down 
 into the conduit when she came silently upon him. 
 
The Beechcroft Miracle 339 
 
 His attitude told unmistakably what he meant 
 to do. 
 
 "Is this the way John Chance took Cynthia?" 
 she asked quietly. 
 
 "Damn you!" he shouted. "Why did you 
 come back? But you ll never go out again, to 
 prate of what you saw. I shall be dead to them. 
 It s on your own head now. Do you understand ?" 
 The malignity of his face would have made his 
 intent clear without the pointing revolver. 
 
 "I understand," she said. "I understand you 
 at last, completely and altogether." And she 
 faced him as still and unflinching as if she had 
 been cut in marble. 
 
 But the hand that held the revolver dropped at 
 his side. With the other he wiped his forehead. 
 He cried out with a sort of sob, "I can t do it 
 while you stand there looking at me." 
 
 "Kill me as I turn and walk away, then," she 
 said. 
 
 But all he did was to curse obscenely, and put 
 the revolver back into his pocket. Then he 
 scrambled down the iron ladder and went splash 
 ing away up the conduit. 
 
 Through the thickening clouds of dense black 
 smoke Ellen mounted the stairs. By the time 
 
34 Comrade John 
 
 she had half crossed the burning auditorium, 
 those outside had got the doors open, but no one 
 tried to enter, and the guards herded the crowd 
 back to the foot of the temple steps. 
 
 There was a great shout when Ellen appeared 
 in the doorway, as if out of the midst of the flames. 
 She descended the long stairway without once 
 looking back and she did not seem aware of the 
 crowd that pressed about her, full of excited 
 questions, when she reached the foot of them. 
 So they made a lane for her and she walked 
 through, and disappeared at last within the door 
 way of her own cottage. 
 
 For another hour, perhaps, the little colony 
 of men and women who, up to yesterday, had 
 fondly believed that by toiling without weariness 
 they were achieving beauty, stood and watched 
 the apotheosis of John Chance s dream miracle, 
 the great cluster of " cathedral candles" burn 
 ing at last. They watched until, in the early 
 dawn, they saw the cluster of candles guttered, 
 and thanked the heavy smudge that rose about 
 its base for veiling its pathetic nakedness. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 O MISTRESS MINE 
 
 IN the process of eluding the buzzing Beech- 
 crofters early in the evening, Chance had been 
 so unfortunate as to elude also his lieutenants, 
 Bill Hemenway and Henry Baumann. They had 
 finished packing at the shack before he arrived 
 from Ellen s back door, and had set out in search 
 of him. They went to his house and then to their 
 own, and after that they wandered rather aim 
 lessly among the shifting crowds in the lower 
 valley until the futility of this sort of search oc 
 curred, at about the same time, to both of them. 
 Then they hurried back to the shack. 
 
 Here they found a clew to him. Henry, climb 
 ing from force of habit to the high stool that stood 
 before his drafting table found six loaded revolver 
 cartridges, and the next minute Bill, looking in its 
 accustomed place for it, discovered the absence 
 of the revolver. 
 
 34i 
 
34 2 Comrade John 
 
 The two men looked at each other blankly 
 for a moment, and then Bill beat the drafting 
 board with his clenched fist and broke out in a 
 sort of wail. 
 
 "Oh, we re the prize fools of this whole fool 
 place. Don t you see what it means? He s 
 been here looking for us to help him and we 
 weren t here ! And now he s gone out to mix 
 it up with that big fat devil, Stein, with nothing 
 but my old empty thirty-eight to pull him through. 
 And we don t know where he is. What are we 
 going to do about it? That s what I want to 
 know. What are we going to do?" 
 
 Henry was hardly less perturbed than he, but 
 his Teutonic surface was much more placid. 
 "We are fools, yess," he said. "The wool has 
 gone to our wits. But we will not be fools again. 
 We shall stay here and wait, since we do not know 
 where to go. And, after all," he added, "it 
 cannot be so fery serious or he would not have 
 taken these useful little trifles out of your gun." 
 
 "Are you blind?" cried Bill. "Can t you 
 see that that s just what makes it serious? If 
 you re going up against a man you can shoot 
 and you ve got a gun with the stuff in it, why then 
 it isn t serious for you. It s serious for him. If 
 
O Mistress Mine 343 
 
 there was shells in that gun, I d let Stein do the 
 worrying. But Mr. Chance must be up against 
 a proposition where he can t shoot. That s 
 why he took the shells out. He knows that if 
 you can t do anything but bluff an empty gun s 
 a damned sight better weapon than a loaded one. 
 That s what he s up against," Bill went on, and 
 now his voice rose to a pitch of frenzied exas 
 peration. "That s what he s up against, and here 
 we sit like a pair of fools, talking. Can t you 
 think of nothing better to do than that ! Talk 
 talk talk! Will our talk hurt Stein any?" 
 
 "No, talking iss no good," said Henry simply. 
 "I do not wish to talk. But waiting iss all we 
 can do, and I will wait." 
 
 Bill acknowledged the justice of this rebuke 
 with a reluctant grunt of apology and they 
 settled to the task of waiting, Henry sitting quite 
 still upon his high stool, while Bill fumed and 
 sputtered all about the room. They managed 
 to preserve this state of inertia until they heard 
 the clamorous ringing of bells down at the temple, 
 Stein s summons to the disciples to gather to hear 
 his message. Both men hurried to the door at 
 the sound and stood there looking at each other. 
 It was Bill who spoke. 
 
344 Comrade John 
 
 "Well, that means that there s something going 
 on down there, anyway. And if Mr. Chance is 
 still in Beechcroft at all, it s where there s some 
 thing doing that we ll rind him." 
 
 It was by no means a water-tight sort of argu 
 ment and Henry shook his head over it, but when 
 Bill added, "Stay here, then, if you like," and 
 set off at a run down the road, Henry was only 
 a pace or two behind him. 
 
 They stayed in the outer fringe of the crowd 
 before the temple and from this point of vantage 
 heard both of Stein s speeches. Bill, indeed, 
 started forward angrily on hearing the prophet 
 say that Chance had made off with the money, 
 and, a moment later, would have joined in the 
 rush for the temple steps had not Henry, at the 
 imminent risk of a casual black eye, forcibly 
 restrained him. 
 
 "What will you do," the quiet draftsman 
 urged, "with your elbows clamped against your 
 ribs in the middle of that silly mob? If there 
 should be anything to do, could you do it then? 
 This rushing is foolishness, anyway." 
 
 Bill saw the point at once and promptly sub 
 sided. As it turned out, there was something 
 to do in a very few minutes. Stein finished his 
 

 O Mistress Mine 345 
 
 second speech and strode back into the temple, 
 and the sheriff announced from the steps that 
 both doors were guarded and that no one in the 
 temple would be allowed to escape. Bill whis 
 pered in Henry s ear, "The big pipe," and with 
 out further words the two men slipped through 
 the fringes of the crowd, scrambled up through 
 the shrubbery above the road, and made their 
 way around to the mouth of the conduit. They 
 had been right in their surmise that no one would 
 be on watch here and they felt pretty confident 
 that Stein had not yet had time to escape. They 
 stationed themselves just within the mouth of 
 the conduit, one on each of the ledges that ran 
 along above the level of the water. 
 
 The upshot of this manoeuvre was that as 
 Stein came splashing along, his arms were sud 
 denly pinioned fast and he was subjected to a 
 long stare from the single bright eye of an electric 
 pocket torch. His great strength might have 
 made him somewhere near a match for his two 
 captors if he had any fight left in him, but as he 
 stood he was perfectly nerveless and offered no 
 resistance whatever. Even taking his revolver 
 away from him was an unnecessary formality. 
 
 Bill examined the weapon and was a good deal 
 
346 Comrade John 
 
 relieved to find, in the first place, that it was not 
 the one Chance had borrowed, and in the second, 
 that it contained its full complement of loaded 
 shells and showed no traces of having been re 
 cently discharged. He pocketed the revolver 
 and then ran his hands lightly all over Stein in a 
 cursory search for another bulky package which 
 he expected to find there. Neither he nor Henry 
 doubted that a considerable portion of the cash 
 profits of the Beechcroft enterprise was concealed 
 upon Stein s person. So far not a word had been 
 spoken. Stein was making a queer sobbing 
 sort of noise, but that was all. 
 
 "We must take him to the shack," said Henry 
 presently. "Here we can do nothing." 
 
 They took an arm apiece accordingly, charged 
 up the steep bank with him and around the turn 
 ing of the road to the shack. They bundled 
 him into the model room and then, with no super 
 fluous ceremony and no words at all, they stripped 
 him naked and searched every article of clothing 
 upon him. The only valuables they found were 
 his watch and a sum of money amounting to 
 about seventy-five dollars. 
 
 It was a serious disappointment to them, for 
 they had been confident that they would be able 
 
O Mistress Mine 347 
 
 to present Stein before the disciples, either in per 
 son or otherwise, as they might determine, as the 
 real culprit, caught in the act of making off with 
 the spoils. They cared nothing either about him 
 or about his followers and would not have inter 
 fered in the matter at all had it not been the 
 simplest and shortest way of clearing their own 
 chief of the charge Stein had flung at him. 
 
 "Well," said Bill, gruffly, "put on your clothes. 
 Oh, yes, you can have your watch and your 
 money, too. We re not pickpockets. We ll let 
 you know in five minutes what we re going to 
 do with you. Come out here into the other room, 
 Henry." 
 
 So they turned the key on him and withdrew 
 to confer. The telephone bell rang before they 
 could exchange a word, however, and Henry, 
 being nearest, took up the receiver. His half of 
 the conversation was mostly monosyllables, and 
 Bill nearly perished with impatience waiting 
 to learn what it was all about. 
 
 "It s the man who keeps the hotel at the Junc 
 tion," Henry explained when he had hung up. 
 "Mr. Chance had Claude come up with the 
 Panhard and wait there till he should send for 
 him." 
 
348 Comrade John 
 
 "Well, well, I know that," Bill interrupted. 
 
 "Claude talked with Mr. Chance a couple of 
 hours ago and started out with the car in a great 
 hurry. He has just been brought in, unconscious, 
 with a broken head, and the car is five 
 miles out on the State Road, upside down in a 
 ditch." 
 
 "And Mr. Chance is" Bill began with 
 a roar, but at a nod from Henry reduced it 
 suddenly to a whisper "is waiting somewhere 
 for Claude to turn up, and he won t come. And 
 here we are again, about as much help to him as 
 a pair of Beechcrofters." 
 
 "We have one job on our hands," said Henry, 
 with another nod toward the model-room door. 
 "We have to make the fat man tell where he has 
 hidden the money that he says Mr. Chance stole. 
 If we can do that job quickly enough we shall 
 save Mr. Chance from being arrested, wherever 
 he is." 
 
 While he spoke, Bill suddenly began sniffing 
 the air, then sprang to the doorway, and, without 
 a word of explanation, rushed off down the road 
 toward the temple. Henry cast a reluctant 
 glance at the other door and decided that he had 
 better wait where he was. When Bill came back, 
 
O Mistress Mine 349 
 
 at the end of hardly more than five minutes, his 
 face was all lighted up with confidence. 
 
 "We ve got that fat prophet now where we 
 want him," he said. "He set the temple afire 
 before he started to make his get-away through 
 the big pipe, and the disciples are thinking by 
 now that he must have gone up in smoke with it." 
 
 Without a moment s pause he unlocked the 
 model-room door and went in, Henry following. 
 Stein sat in the farthest corner of the room, an 
 inert, sodden-looking mountain of flesh. 
 
 "Listen to me," Bill commanded sharply. 
 "You re going to tell us now where you ve hidden 
 the money you said Mr. Chance had run off 
 with." 
 
 Stein did not look up. "You know as well as 
 I do," he growled half articulately. 
 
 "No; wait a bit," said Bill. "I understand 
 your game. You re dead. After that last speech 
 of yours on the temple steps dead is about all you 
 could be. If you want to stay dead, you ll tell 
 us where you ve hidden that money you ll 
 show us where you ve hidden it. If you do that 
 and do it quick enough, we ll let you go and you 
 can be as dead as you please. If you don t, we ll 
 take your clothes off and put you into a tunic and 
 
350 Comrade John 
 
 throw you down into the lower valley for the dis 
 ciples to play with. And that, let me tell you, will 
 be a damned unpleasant sort of resurrection." 
 
 "Find Chance if you want to find the money," 
 said Stein, rather more earnestly than he had 
 spoken before. "It s wherever he is." 
 
 "Oh, well," said Bill, "if that s what you want, 
 you ll get it. Get it good." And he made as if 
 to suit the action to the word. 
 
 "It may be true, what he says," interposed 
 Henry. 
 
 "What!" roared Bill, wheeling upon him, all 
 ablaze in an instant. 
 
 "Oh, not so much red pepper!" Henry ex 
 claimed. Bill was getting on his nerves. "I 
 shall not begin to think that Mr. Chance is a 
 thief until long after you are convinced of it, and 
 that will be never. But he may have the money 
 without having stolen it. He may well have taken 
 it away from this gross rascal." 
 
 Bill grunted assent with obvious disrelish and 
 turned upon Stein again. " As Mr. Baumann says, 
 it may be true. But it s up to you to make us 
 believe that it s true. And if you don t succeed, 
 we ll throw you to the disciples first and go 
 hunting for Mr. Chance afterwards." 
 
O Mistress Mine 351 
 
 Thus prodded on, Stein told his story, truly 
 and circumstantially, though with many intervals 
 of obscene reviling against his captors and Chance 
 and the disciples. He related how he had enticed 
 Cynthia into the steel-room, hypnotized her, and 
 made her conceal the money on her person; 
 how Chance had rescued her and had uncon 
 sciously carried off the money with her. He 
 added that she could have no recollection what 
 ever of having hidden it. 
 
 "Did he get out of the temple by the pipe, 
 too?" Henry asked, and Stein nodded assent. 
 
 Both men were inclined to believe the story 
 true. " We ll just keep you with us, though, until 
 we find him," said Bill. "And we ll go through 
 the formality of tying up your hands before we 
 start out on the road with you. There s a strap 
 in the outer office, Henry, that will just do 
 the trick." 
 
 The nerveless way in which Stein had sub 
 mitted to capture in the conduit had misled them 
 both. There was no symptom now of any 
 change in him. He stood up and waited sub 
 missively while Henry searched for the strap, 
 and when he returned with it, meekly held out 
 his hands in front of him. 
 
352 Comrade John 
 
 And then in a flash he seized Bill by the collar 
 and flung him half across the room, butted Henry 
 out of the way, and was gone. When they had 
 got to their feet again and rushed to the door, 
 the night had swallowed him. 
 
 "If Mr. Chance ever dies," said Bill, reflec 
 tively, "it will be an asylum for the feeble-minded 
 that they ll have to find for us. While he s 
 around to tell us exactly what to do, we get to 
 thinking we re most too smart to live, and he 
 has to leave us to ourselves for about two moves 
 before we give ourselves away." 
 
 Henry lent no ear to this discourse; he was 
 studying a map of the valley that hung on the 
 wall. "If they got out of the temple through the 
 conduit, they took the road through the notch. 
 And if Mr. Chance was expecting Claude to come 
 by the State Road, they would go to the nearest 
 point of intersection. And that is Excelsior 
 Siding." 
 
 "Oh, well," said Bill, "we may as well miss 
 him there as anywhere else." And so they set 
 out together. 
 
 "Here s the end of Beechcroft," John Chance 
 had said, and tapped with his foot the mile-stone 
 
O Mistress Mine 353 
 
 that marked it. After that he and Cynthia went 
 on through the dark wood road in silence. But 
 at last the walls of pine and fir fell away from 
 the flanks of the trail and revealed to them the 
 expanse of the night. The last quarter of a 
 moon hung an hour high above the ridge of 
 Saddle Mountain, lighting the valley slantwise 
 and most mysteriously. The air was languorous, 
 perfumed, sensuous, and yet pervaded with 
 something of the cool innocence of early spring. 
 The valley, spread out beneath their feet, lay 
 drenched in dew, drenched in slumber. They 
 halted involuntarily and stood gazing at it; 
 without the conscious volition of either, they 
 drew close together and stood hand in hand. 
 
 It was Chance who broke the contact, abruptly 
 and with a sort of voiceless laugh that made her 
 wince. 
 
 "The mockery of it," he explained. "If cir 
 cumstances ever conspire to laugh, they re doing 
 it now. A night like this, and you here within 
 hand s reach and I, with what might have been, 
 for consolation. I was tricked, for a minute, 
 into forgetting." 
 
 She drew a step or two away from him. After 
 a moment, with a sudden air of purpose, she 
 
 2A 
 
354 Comrade John 
 
 crossed the road and seated herself on a fallen 
 log. Chance stood back and watched her; 
 the phrase, "her infinite variety," came unbidden 
 to his mind. She seemed a different creature 
 altogether, both from the girl on the Boulevard 
 in Paris, and from the goddess on the terrace at 
 Beechcroft. About her now, in defiance of the 
 wistful mystery of the night, there was something 
 clean-cut, alert, efficient. It was in the poise of 
 her head with its trim sailor hat and veil, in the 
 forward tilt of her flat back and erect shoulders. 
 She was a person who knew she had something 
 hard to do and felt fully competent to do it. 
 The change had come so suddenly, he felt it 
 almost incredible that it was only a moment since 
 her small gloved palm had lain against his, or 
 that she had ever done his bidding simply because 
 he had commanded her. 
 
 "I want you to tell me," she said, " tell me 
 quite simply and fully, as if I didn t understand 
 at all, about that day of ours on the terrace. 
 I mean after you had come back from talking 
 with the man on the hillside. Why didn t you 
 tell me then what a fraud Mr. Stein s religion was, 
 and the part you had in it?" 
 
 " Don t you understand?" 
 
O Mistress Mine 355 
 
 "I want you to tell me," she repeated. 
 
 "Why, I suppose " he began, slowly, " I 
 think it was because I saw in your face that you 
 would forgive me. I saw that if I told I should 
 be peaching that s the thieves word 
 peaching on Stein for a reward." 
 
 "The reward being me?" 
 
 " Yes. I hadn t given him away before, though 
 I d known for a long time how dangerous a thing 
 the fraud was. I d seen its effects on one person 
 a woman, too and I pitied her, but my 
 pity did not lead me to throw up my job. I kept 
 right ahead with it. I didn t think of exposing 
 Stein until I saw it was the way to win you." 
 
 "Was Ellen the woman? Was it true 
 what she told me one day?" 
 
 "Yes," he said shortly. She gave a little 
 shudder of disgust, and he went quickly on. 
 
 "I saw that the only thing that could give me 
 the right to expose Stein, would be to give you 
 up. I was too much of a coward to do that, 
 even with Ellen s tragedy right before my eyes. 
 I kept hoping that you d come to see through 
 him yourself and go away. If you did, I thought 
 I could give back my share of the loot and go to 
 work at an honest job, and ask you to forgive me. 
 
356 Comrade John 
 
 I I shirked paying the price ; I suppose that 
 is the way to put it in a word." 
 
 "I being the price," she commented. "But 
 at last you made up your mind to pay me for the 
 sake of saving me. That s the way you would 
 put it, I suppose?" 
 
 Anger spoke undisguised in her tone now, but 
 "Yes," was the only word he found to make her 
 an answer with. 
 
 "And now that I ve been paid," she pursued, 
 relentlessly, "what do you mean to do with me?" 
 
 "I telephoned for my motor before I went up 
 to the temple to-night," he said absently. "I 
 ordered it to come down here to Excelsior Siding. 
 It surely is there by now. It will take you where- 
 ever you wish to go." 
 
 "That is to say, you ve saved me from the 
 results of my folly, as you did before in Paris. 
 And now, once more, you re sending me off 
 to try again sending me back to Aunt " 
 She broke off short and then laughed. "Do 
 you realize that we went off and forgot all about 
 Aunt Augusta? That seems to be getting rather 
 a habit of mine. She must be having a bad night 
 about me, poor dear. But suppose that 
 Aunt Augusta stays by the new religion, becomes 
 
O Mistress Mine 357 
 
 a disciple of Comrade Samuel Hobbema? He ll 
 be the successor, I suppose. Shall I do that? 
 Or shall I go back to Ohio, where I belong? 
 And settle down, as they say, and marry 
 Oh, there s a man there. He s the banker s son 
 and he went to Harvard and he doesn t care for 
 business and thinks he s misunderstood. He d 
 ask me again, I think." 
 
 She sprang to her feet and stood facing him. 
 "Didn t you ever ever once think of me 
 as anything but a price that could be paid, or a 
 reward that could be had ? Didn t it ever occur 
 to you, for only a minute, that I was a human 
 person with life on my hands; a person who 
 could love and hate, and be hurt or be made 
 happy? Didn t you ever get even a glimpse 
 of my side of it?" 
 
 And to that he could make no proper answer 
 at all, just a long shudder which shook him from 
 head to heel, compounded partly of cold he 
 had been wet to the waist for hours partly 
 of complete exhaustion, partly of an overwhelm 
 ing bitterness of spirit. She stood looking at him 
 for a moment and it was given her then to see 
 him as he truly was. He looked small, some 
 how, and utterly tired, dejected, beaten. 
 
358 Comrade John 
 
 She turned suddenly away from him. "Oh, 
 what a savage sort of heathen brute I am! I 
 suppose it s because I m a woman. If we changed 
 places if I had been doing for you half of what 
 you have done for me if I d risked my repu 
 tation and my life for you, if I d had no thought 
 but of you for days, and no sleep because of you 
 for nights, and after it all you had seen me stand 
 ing before you, so tired and so discouraged, would 
 you have lashed me without mercy, just because 
 I had hurt your pride a little ? And your burned 
 hand I d even forgotten that." 
 
 She stripped off her gloves and pressed her 
 handkerchief down into the wet grass. "It 
 will feel cool, anyway," she said, taking the hand 
 in hers. The action was almost brusque, as a 
 trained nurse might have done it. 
 
 "I d forgotten the hand, myself," he said 
 dully. "It s not painful." 
 
 She bent down over it and brushed the palm 
 ever so gently with her lips. That galvanized 
 him again ; he almost snatched it away from her. 
 But as he looked at her even the faint moonlight 
 was enough to show him that there were tears in 
 her eyes. "I didn t mean to hurt you," he said 
 unsteadily. 
 
O Mistress Mine 359 
 
 At that she sobbed outright and for an instant 
 pressed her hands to her eyes. When he could 
 see her again, she was smiling. "It wasn t that 
 that made the tears come," she said. "Let s 
 go on to Excelsior Siding. Is it very far?" 
 
 "A mile or two; not more," he assured her. 
 "And I think the car is sure to be there waiting 
 for you." 
 
 "Automobiles have been known to break down, 
 haven t they?" 
 
 "Well, at the worst, a west bound milk 
 train makes a stop at the siding about 
 five o clock. It connects with civilization 
 about twenty miles away, over on the D. 
 & M." 
 
 "And that s in the general direction of Ohio, 
 isn t it?" she said. But there was a flavor of 
 kindly humor in her voice. 
 
 They walked all the way to the siding without 
 another word, and yet, on her part, the silence 
 somehow was of a friendly, unembarrassed sort. 
 Once he stumbled and she caught his arm quickly 
 and strongly enough to save him a fall ; when she 
 had steadied him she withdrew her hand so 
 deliberately that its lingering turned almost into 
 a little caress. 
 
360 Comrade John 
 
 At last they reached their journey s end, crossed 
 the meagre little pair of rails which marked the 
 path of the Kinderkill Valley railroad, and brought 
 up rather blankly at the little shed and the load 
 ing platform, piled high with the bales which pro 
 vided a name for the siding. There was no sign 
 of life about the place. 
 
 "Well, this is the time it happened," said 
 Chance. "The car is either lost or broken down 
 for it should have been here an hour ago." 
 
 "Is this all there is here?" she asked, com 
 prising Excelsior Siding in a small, trivial gesture. 
 
 "There s a power-house around the curve, 
 but the engineer " He lost the thread of the 
 sentence, then rallied his wits and recovered it. 
 "What I mean is, that in the circumstances it s 
 as well, perhaps, that they didn t know you re 
 here. The car will come before long, I hope, 
 and for that matter, the train, too. It s nearly 
 morning. And I can contrive to make you com 
 fortable while you re waiting." 
 
 He clambered up on the loading platform and 
 began pulling to pieces a bale of the shavings. 
 With this, a tarpaulin, and a piece of burlap sack 
 ing, he contrived a sort of nest soft enough for 
 anybody. "You creep in there," he said, "and 
 
O Mistress Mine 361 
 
 leave the rest to me. I ll keep an eye open for 
 the motor, or the train, whichever happens along 
 first. Go to sleep if you can." 
 
 She looked at him with smiling eyes. "Get 
 in yourself for a minute and see how comfortable 
 I shall be. I want to take off my shoe and shake a 
 teaspoonful of gravel out of it first." 
 
 She stood where she was until he had obeyed 
 her, then seated herself on one of the bales, drew 
 off her shoe, shook the gravel out of it and put 
 it on again. She remained sitting quite still 
 for a minute or two longer. Presently she slipped 
 quietly down from the bale and peered in under 
 the tarpaulin. The trick had worked to a nicety. 
 He was drugged with fatigue and lay, already, 
 a hundred fathoms deep asleep. She drew the 
 piece of sacking over him and covered him thick 
 with armfuls of the shavings. That done, she 
 ensconced herself in a comfortable angle of the 
 bales and looked out over the silvered tips of the 
 pines. The pallor of dawn was already in the 
 sky. 
 
 The broad July sun, shining straight down 
 into Chance s face, was what finally roused him. 
 He sat up, rubbed his eyes, pinched himself 
 tentatively once or twice, and began to try to ac- 
 
362 Comrade John 
 
 count for himself. It took him several minutes 
 even to make a beginning at it, but by and by he 
 got his mind focussed on his escape with Cynthia 
 from the temple. From that point of departure 
 he succeeded in reconstructing the night down 
 to their failure to find the car at the siding. He 
 could not pierce the mist beyond that moment, 
 however. There was something familiar about 
 this nest of shavings where he found himself. 
 He must have made it, he supposed, and crawled 
 in without knowing what he was about. But 
 where was Cynthia? A spasm of fear lest Stein 
 might have found her and stolen her away while 
 he was asleep brought him to his feet in a flash. 
 He looked about the platform, then into the shed, 
 without result. Then, when a really rational 
 disquiet was beginning to replace his first be 
 wildered alarm, he caught sight of her. 
 
 She was sitting on a grassy bank a little way 
 down the road, and looking, if he had been nearly 
 enough awake to notice it, very piquantly out 
 of keeping with her surroundings. From her 
 neat shoes and provoking ankles up to the wing 
 on her sailor hat, she might have been crossing 
 Twenty-third Street in a hansom cab except 
 that her gloves lay on the grass beside her, and 
 
O Mistress Mine 363 
 
 that she was very contentedly munching an apple. 
 The color in her cheeks had risen treacherously 
 high by the time he had come quite near, but her 
 smile, to a not too acute observer, was merely 
 friendly and a little mischievous. 
 
 "You had no trouble finding me, had you?" 
 she asked. 
 
 "I m having trouble finding myself. I guess 
 you ll have to help me. What s happened?" 
 
 "Nothing much," she told him, and smiled 
 again. 
 
 He stood for a moment gazing into her face, 
 spellbound again, just by the wonder of her. 
 She was as wonderful as ever she had been before, 
 and to double the wonder, in a quite new way. 
 She tried to support his gaze with some appearance 
 of nonchalance, tossed away her apple, wiped 
 her hands with a rather crumpled handkerchief, 
 and finally put back a lock of her hair that had 
 strayed a little. 
 
 "You ll have to excuse it," she said. "I had 
 to do what I could with a side-comb." 
 
 "Your hair!" he whispered, "your wonderful 
 hair!" 
 
 He rubbed his hands through his own tumbled 
 locks and the shavings he found there might have 
 
364 Comrade John 
 
 made him suspect that her excuses had been 
 derisive, but his mind was capable of no such 
 subtlety as that. He turned away from her and 
 looked off down the road. 
 
 "The motor" he said; "the motor hasn t 
 come at all?" 
 
 "No," she answered. 
 
 "And the train " He pulled out his watch, 
 frowned over it and shook his head. "I must 
 have forgotten to wind it, but by the height 
 of the sun, I should think the train was late, too." 
 
 "You re getting on famously if you can think 
 out a hard thing like that," she mocked, but no 
 mockery could disguise the growing unsteadiness 
 of her voice. There was a pause ; then she said : 
 
 "I don t think the train was so very late, 
 though." 
 
 He pondered that remark a moment before 
 he saw its import. "The train came and " 
 
 " and went," she corroborated. And I did 
 want some of the milk so much. But I didn t 
 dare come out of my hiding-place to ask for it. 
 These apples are good, though pretty good. 
 You d better have one. You must be starved, 
 too." 
 
 "You let the train go away without you?" 
 
O Mistress Mine 365 
 
 Her eyes widened as she looked at him; she 
 seemed to be searching for something in his face. 
 "I wanted to give you another chance to to 
 send me away. If you send me now, I ll go 
 I truly will wherever you say." 
 
 He only whispered her name once or twice by 
 way of answer, reached gropingly for her hands, 
 swayed forward a little, and dropped at her 
 knees. 
 
 All that she wanted, more almost than she had 
 hoped for, spoke in the act; it was a confession 
 of his need for her, which made her own need 
 for him doubly sweet. She gently released her 
 hands and in the embrace of her arms drew his 
 head up close against her breast. Her lips 
 brushed his temple and her warm tears spilled 
 down on his cheek. 
 
 "It wasn t true," she murmured. "I wouldn t 
 have gone, even if you had tried again to send me." 
 And a moment later she essayed a little laugh. 
 "What a lot of trouble I should have saved us 
 if I d refused to go that other time, in Paris; 
 if I had just stayed where I was and made you 
 marry me then and there. I wanted to." 
 
 He moved a little, nestled a little closer. "I 
 am still asleep, I think." 
 
366 Comrade John 
 
 "Sleep sound," she whispered. 
 
 But presently, up where the road came crawling 
 over the crown of the hill, she made out, in a 
 vignette of dust, a team of horses and a wagon. 
 "Oh, dear," she said. "I didn t think he d 
 be back so soon." 
 
 As Chance sat up and looked at her inquiringly, 
 she pointed it out to him. "It s our coach and 
 six and our fairy godmother coming to get us," 
 she said. 
 
 Then she sighed. "I suppose I ll have to ex 
 plain it all no, you mustn t interrupt. And 
 you mustn t expect to understand, because you 
 won t in the least. You had two callers about 
 an hour ago, Mr. Baumann and Mr. Hemenway. 
 They were very anxious to see you, but I told 
 them you were not at home and they could 
 tell me about it and I would tell them 
 what to do. They said they were afraid that 
 you were going to be arrested. Mr. Stein had 
 said that you had gone off with all the money, 
 and they wanted to take it back and say they 
 had found it before any of the sheriff s people 
 could find you and put you in jail. You see it 
 was true, what Mr. Stein said. At least, you 
 had gone off with me and I had gone off with 
 
O Mistress Mine 367 
 
 the money, so it came to that. So I gave the 
 money to Mr. Baumann " 
 
 She paused long enough to glance up at him, 
 and at his look of utter bewilderment, she re 
 lented. " Oh, you poor dear, of course you don t 
 understand, although it s all quite true. I ll tell 
 you the whole story, if you want me to. But 
 it s very long, and all about Mr. Stein, and the 
 coach and six is almost here." 
 
 His puzzled frown relaxed. "No, we ll let 
 it wait. It doesn t seem very important or very 
 interesting either, just now. The really inter 
 esting thing is the coach and six. How did you 
 happen to think of sending for it?" 
 
 She kissed his hand in token of approval. 
 "The car had an accident. Mr. Hemenway 
 says that the chauffeur will get well, though they 
 thought at first he wouldn t. We ll have to go 
 somewhere, and I didn t think we d want to 
 walk, so I sent the fairy godmother for the coach. 
 But I meant him to be longer finding it." 
 
 The coach proved to be a two-seated buck- 
 board drawn by two lean mountain horses and 
 driven by a much "slicked-up" farmer boy. 
 Bill Hemenway climbed out of the wagon, and 
 simultaneously out of the role of fairy godmother, 
 
368 Comrade John 
 
 with a deliberation which had to serve as a cloak 
 for a great deal of embarrassment. He had been 
 wondering all the past hour how it had come 
 about that he had obeyed without question or 
 remonstrance the bright-eyed usurper he had 
 found on Chance s throne of authority, and now 
 that he found himself in the presence of his chief 
 the question reached an acute stage. But the 
 voice reassured him. 
 
 "Well, Bill, we made something of a splash, 
 one way and another." 
 
 "Yes," said Bill. "Taken altogether, what I d 
 call a pretty general average. I remember once 
 you told me that this Beechcroft proposition was 
 a show, but I never knew what a holy show it 
 was until last night." 
 
 "You won t have to ask any questions about 
 the next one," Chance told him rather soberly; 
 "we re done with hybrids. The next one will 
 be the straight article." 
 
 By that time he and Cynthia were seated in 
 the buckboard. "If you see anything of Mr. 
 Stein roaming around these woods," said Bill, 
 "give him my best wishes that I catch a glimpse 
 of him myself." 
 
 "We shan t see him, and you won t, either," 
 
O Mistress Mine 369 
 
 Cynthia assured him. "Mr. Stein took the 
 milk train." 
 
 Their driver was slapping his horses backs 
 with the reins. "Where to?" he asked briskly. 
 
 Chance spoke in the manner of one who is 
 gently but decisively taking command of a sit 
 uation. "Drive," he commanded, "to the near 
 est place where I can find a marriage license and 
 a minister." 
 
 Cynthia chuckled. "You won t forget to give 
 Aunt Augusta my note, will you, Mr. Hemenway ? 
 Oh, but let Mr. Chance read it first." 
 
 "Don t worry about me," was the substance 
 of it. "I am off getting married to Mr. Chance." 
 
 He leaned back in his seat with an outright 
 laugh. "I m still an hour behind the schedule. 
 When are you going to let me catch up? Are 
 you going to get the license and the minister?" 
 
 "I don t see how you can," she told him. 
 "You don t know yet who it is you re going to 
 marry." Then she began counting on her 
 fingers. "You have run off with somebody s 
 money, and you don t know how you took it; 
 and you re going somewhere to get married, and 
 you don t know where; and you only know the 
 first name of the girl you re getting married 
 
 2B 
 
370 Comrade John 
 
 to. Am I even with you for Paris, Monsieur 
 Jean?" 
 
 They waved good-by to Bill who stood hurrah 
 ing in the road. Then Chance had an idea. 
 
 "Driver," he said, " where can we get break 
 fast?" 
 
 "Our house is just a piece up the road. I 
 guess mother d make you some." 
 
 "And will she let us begin with pie and pan 
 cakes?" 
 
 The boy giggled. "That s the way I like 
 to begin myself." 
 
 Trudging back to Beechcroft along the old 
 construction road, Bill indulged in soliloquy. 
 "He never told me where to ship our stuff, nor 
 where to go myself, nor what we was to tackle 
 next, nor whether it was to be to-morrow or next 
 year. He didn t even give me a telegraph ad 
 dress. And the funny thing is, I clean forgot 
 to ask him." 
 
 Indeed, it looked, now this new goddess had 
 climbed into the car, as if the levers would be 
 pulled more capriciously than ever. But for 
 all that, Bill wore a grin. 
 
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 ress, while its execution, the setting it forth in proper literary clothing, 
 could be successfully attempted only by one whose active literary ability 
 should be fully equalled by his power of assimilative knowledge both lit 
 erary and scientific, and no less by his courage and capacity for hard work. 
 The book will be found to have a fascination entirely new for the habitual 
 reader of novels. Indeed, Mr. Crawford has succeeded in taking his read 
 ers quite above the ordinary plane of novel interest." Boston Advertiser. 
 
 Children of the King (Calabria) 
 
 "One of the most artistic and exquisitely finished pieces of work that 
 Crawford has produced. The picturesque setting, Calabria and its sur 
 roundings, the beautiful Sorrento and the Gulf of Salerno, with the bewitch 
 ing accessories that climate, sea, and sky afford, give Mr. Crawford rich 
 opportunities to show his rare descriptive powers. As a whole the book is 
 strong and beautiful through its simplicity, and ranks among the choicest 
 of the author s many fine productions." Public Opinion. 
 
 A Cigarette Maker s Romance (Munich) 
 
 and Khaled t a Tale of Arabia 
 
 "Two gems of subtle analysis of human passion and motive." Times. 
 " The interest is unflagging throughout. Never has Mr. Crawford done 
 more brilliant realistic work than here. But his realism is only the case 
 and cover for those intense feelings which, placed under no matter what 
 humble conditions, produce the most dramatic and the most tragic situa 
 tions. . . . This is a secret of genius, to take the most coarse and common 
 material, the meanest surroundings, the most sordid material prospects, 
 and out of the vehement passions which sometimes dominate all human 
 beings to build up with these poor elements, scenes and passages the 
 dramatic and emotional power of which at once enforce attention and 
 awaken the profoundest interest." New York Tribune. 
 
 Fair Margaret. A Portrait 
 
 " An exhilarating romance . . . alluring in its naturalness and grace." 
 Boston Herald. 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 PUBLISHERS, 64-66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YOEK 
 4 
 
Mr. F. MARION CRAWFORD S NOVELS 
 
 WITH SCENES LAID IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 
 
 In the binding oj the Uniform Edition 
 
 A Tale of a Lonely Parish 
 
 " It is a pleasure to have anything so perfect of its kind as this brief and 
 vivid story. ... It is doubly a success, being full of human sympathy, as 
 well as thoroughly artistic in its nice balancing of the unusual with the 
 commonplace, the clever juxtaposition of innocence and guilt, comedy 
 and tragedy, simplicity and intrigue." Critic. 
 
 Dr. Claudius. A True Story 
 
 The scene changes from Heidelberg to New York, and much of the story 
 develops during the ocean voyage. 
 
 "There is a satisfying quality in Mr. Crawford s strong, vital, forceful 
 stories." Boston Herald. 
 
 An American Politician. The scenes are laid in Boston 
 
 " It need scarcely be said that the story is skilfully and picturesquely written, 
 portraying sharply individual characters in well-defined surroundings." 
 New York Commercial Advertiser. 
 
 The Three Fates 
 
 41 Mr. Crawford has manifestly brought his best qualities as a student of 
 human nature and his finest resources as a master of an original and 
 picturesque style to bear upon this story. Taken for all in all, it is one of 
 the most pleasing of all his productions in fiction, and it affords a view of 
 certain phases of American, or perhaps we should say of New York, life 
 that have not hitherto been treated with anything like the same adequacy 
 and felicity." Boston Beacon. 
 
 Marion Darche 
 
 * Full enough of incident to have furnished material for three or four 
 stories. ... A most interesting and engrossing book. Every page unfolds 
 new possibilities, and the incidents multiply rapidly." Detroit Free Press. 
 " We are disposed to rank Marion Darche as the best of Mr. Crawford s 
 American stories." The Literary World. 
 
 Katharine Lauderdale 
 
 The RalstonS. A Sequel to "Katharine Lauderdale" 
 
 " Mr. Crawford at his best is a great novelist, and in Katharine Lauderdale 
 we have him at his best." Boston Daily Advertiser. 
 
 " A most admirable novel, excellent in style, flashing with humor, and full 
 of the ripest and wisest reflections upon men and women." The West 
 minster Gazette. 
 
 " It is the first time, we think, in American fiction that any such breadth of 
 view has shown itself in the study of our social framework." Life. 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 PTJBLISHEES, 64-66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK 
 5 
 
Mr. WINSTON CHURCHILL S NOVELS 
 
 Each, cloth, gilt tops and titles, $1.50 
 
 The Celebrity. An Episode 
 
 " No such piece of inimitable comedy in a literary way has appeared for 
 years. ... It is the purest, keenest fun." Chicago Inter-Ocean. / 
 
 Richard Carvel illustrated 
 
 "... In breadth of canvas, massing of dramatic effect, depth of feeling, and 
 rare wholesomeness of spirit, it has seldom, if ever, been surpassed by an 
 American romance." Chicago Tribune. 
 
 The Crossing Illustrated 
 
 " The Crossing is a thoroughly interesting book, packed with exciting 
 adventure and sentimental incident, yet faithful to historical fact both in 
 detail and in spirit." The Dial. 
 
 The Crisis Illustrated 
 
 " It is a charming love story, and never loses its interest. . . . The intense 
 political bitterness, the intense patriotism of both parties, are shown under- 
 standingly." Evening Telegraph, Philadelphia. 
 
 Coniston Illustrated 
 
 " Coniston has a lighter, gayer spirit, and a deeper, tenderer touch than 
 Mr. Churchill has ever achieved before. ... It is one of the truest and finest 
 transcripts of modem American life thus far achieved in our fiction." 
 Chicago Record-Herald. 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 PUBLISHERS, 64-66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YOBK 
 6 
 
Mr. JAMES LANE ALLEN S NOVELS 
 
 Each, doth, I2mo, $1.50 
 
 The Choir Invisible 
 
 This can also be had in a special edition illustrated by Orson 
 
 Lowell, $2.50 
 
 " One reads the story for the story s sake, and then re-reads the book out 
 of pure delight in its beauty. The story is American to the very core. . . . 
 Mr. Allen stands to-day in the front rank of American novelists. The 
 Choir Invisible will solidify a reputation already established and bring into 
 clear light his rare gifts as an artist. For this latest story is as genuine a 
 work of art as has come from an American hand." HAMILTON MABIE 
 in The Outlook. 
 
 The Reign of Law* A Tale of the Kentucky Hempfields 
 
 " Mr. Allen has a style as original and almost as perfectly finished as Haw 
 thorne s, and he has also Hawthorne s fondness for spiritual suggestion that 
 makes all his stories rich in the qualities that are lacking in so many novels 
 of the period. ... If read in the right way, it cannot fail to add to one s 
 spiritual possessions." San. Francisco Chronicle. 
 
 Summer in Arcady* A Tale of Nature 
 
 " This story by James Lane Allen is one of the gems of the season. It is 
 artistic in its setting, realistic and true to nature and life in its descriptions, 
 dramatic, pathetic, tragic, in its incidents ; indeed, a veritable masterpiece 
 that must become classic. It is difficult to give an outline of the story ; 
 it is one of the stories which do not outline; it must be read." Boston 
 Daily Advertiser. 
 
 The Mettle of the Pasture 
 
 " It may be that The Mettle of the Pasture will live and become a part of 
 our literature ; it certainly will live far beyond the allotted term of present- 
 day fiction. Our principal concern is that it is a notable novel, that it ranks 
 high in the range of American and English fiction, and that it is worth the 
 reading, the re-reading, and the continuous appreciation of those who care 
 for modern literature at its best." By E. F. E. in the Boston Transcript. 
 
 Shorter Stories. Each, $1.50 
 The Blue Grass Region of Kentucky 
 Flute and Violin, and Other Kentucky Tales 
 
 Each, illustrated, $1.00 
 A Kentucky Cardinal 
 
 Aftermath* A Sequel to " A Kentucky Cardinal " 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 PUBLISHERS, 64-66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK 
 7 
 
Mr. OWEN WISTER S NOVELS 
 
 Each, in decorated cloth cover, $1.50 
 The Virginian 
 
 " The vanished West is made to live again by Owen Wister in a manner 
 which makes his book easily the best that deals with the cowboy and the 
 cattle country. ... It is picturesque, racy, and above all it is original." 
 The Philadelphia Press. 
 
 Lady Baltimore 
 
 " After cowboy stories innumerable, The Virginian came as the last and 
 definite word on that romantic subject in our fiction. Lady Baltimore 
 will serve in much the same way as the most subtly drawn picture of the 
 old-world dignity of the vanished South." The New York Evening Mail. 
 
 Mr. EDEN PHILPOTTS S NOVELS 
 
 Each, in decorated cloth, $1.50 
 
 The American Prisoner illustrated 
 
 " Intensely readable . . . perfectly admirable in its elemental humor and 
 racy turns of speech." The Spectator, London. 
 
 The Secret Woman 
 
 " There cannot be two opinions as to the interest and the power of The 
 Secret Woman. It is not only its author s masterpiece, but it is far in 
 advance of anything he has yet written and that is to give it higher praise 
 than almost any other comparison with contemporary fiction could afford." 
 Time s Saturday Review. 
 
 Knock at a Venture 
 
 Sketches of the rustic life of Devon, rich in racy, quaint, and humorous 
 touches. 
 
 The Portreeve 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 PUBLISHERS, 64-66 FIFTH AVENTJE, NEW YORK 
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Mr. ROBERT HERRICK S NOVELS 
 
 Cloth, extra, gilt tops, each, $1.50 
 
 The Gospel of Freedom 
 
 " A novel that may truly be called the greatest study of social life, in a 
 broad and very much up-to-date sense, that has ever been contributed to 
 American fiction." Chicago Inter- Ocean. 
 
 The Web of Life 
 
 " It is strong in that it faithfully depicts many phases of American life, and 
 uses them to strengthen a web of fiction, which is most artistically wrought 
 out." Bti/alo Express. 
 
 The Real World 
 
 " The title of the book has a subtle intention. It indicates, and is true to 
 the verities in doing so, the strange dreamlike quality of life to the man 
 who has not yet fought his own battles, or come into conscious possession 
 of his will only such battles bite into the consciousness." Chicago 
 Tribune. 
 
 The Common Lot 
 
 " It grips the reader tremendously. ... It is the drama of a human soul 
 the reader watches . . . the finest study of human motive that has appeared 
 for many a day." The World To-day. 
 
 The Memoirs of an American Citizen, illustrated 
 
 with about fifty drawings by F. B. Masters 
 
 " Mr. Herrick s book is a book among many, and he comes nearer to 
 reflecting a certain kind of recognizable, contemporaneous American spirit 
 than anybody has yet done." New York Times. 
 
 " Intensely absorbing as a story, it is also a crisp, vigorous document of 
 startling significance. More than any other writer to-day he is giving us 
 the American novel." New York Globe. 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 PUBLISHERS, 64-66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK 
 
Mr. JACK LONDON S NOVELS, etc. 
 
 Each, in decorated cloth binding, $1.30 
 
 The Call of the Wild Illustrated in colors 
 
 " A big story in sober English, and with thorough art in the construction ; 
 a wonderfully perfect bit of work ; a book that will be heard of long. The 
 dog s adventures are as exciting as any man s exploits could be, and Mr. 
 London s workmanship is wholly satisfying." The New York Sun. 
 
 The Sea- Wolf Illustrated in colors 
 
 "Jack London s The Sea-Wolf is marvellously truthful. . . . Reading 
 it through at a sitting, we have found it poignantly interesting ; . . . a 
 superb piece of craftsmanship." The New York Tribune. 
 
 White Fang Illustrated in colors 
 
 " A thrilling story of adventure . . . stirring indeed . . . and it touches a 
 chord of tenderness that is all too rare in Mr. London s work." Record- 
 Herald, Chicago. 
 
 Before Adam Illustrated in colors 
 
 "The story moves with a wonderful sequence of interesting and wholly 
 credible events. The marve< of it all is not in the story itself, but in the 
 audacity of the man who undertook such a task as the writing of it. ... 
 From an artistic standpoint the book is an undoubted success. And it is 
 no less a success from the standpoint of the reader who seeks to be enter 
 tained," The Plain Dealer, Cleveland. 
 
 Shorter Stories 
 
 Children of the Frost The Game 
 
 Faith of Men Moon Face 
 
 Tales of the Fish Patrol Love of Life 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 PTJBLISHEES, 64-66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK 
 10 
 
Mr. WILLIAM STEARNS DAVIS S NOVELS 
 
 Each, in decorated cloth cover, $1.50 
 
 A Friend of Caesar 
 
 " As a story . . . there can be no question of its success. . . . While the 
 beautiful love of Cornelia and Drusus lies at the sound sweet heart of the 
 story, to say so is to give a most meagre idea of the large sustained interest 
 of the whole. . . . There are many incidents so vivid, so brilliant, that 
 they fix themselves in the memory." NANCY HUSTON BANKS in The 
 Bookman. 
 
 44 God Wills It" A Tale of the First Crusade. Illustrated 
 by Louis Betts 
 
 " Not since Sir Walter Scott cast his spell over us with Ivanhoe, Count 
 Robert of Paris, and Quentin Durward have we been so completely 
 captivated by a story as by God Wills It It grips the attention of the 
 reader in the first chapter and holds it till the last." Christian Endeavor 
 World. 
 
 Falaise of the Blessed Voice* A Tale of the Youth of 
 
 St. Louis, King of France 
 
 " In this tale of the youth of Louis, King of France and afterward saint in 
 the calendar of the Catholic Church, Mr. Davis has fulfilled the promises 
 contained in A Friend of Casar and God Wills Jt. The novel is not only 
 interesting and written with skill in the scenes which are really dramatic, 
 but it is convincing in its character drawing and its analysis of motives." 
 Evening Post, New York. 
 
 A Victor of Salamis, A Tale of the Days of Xerxes, 
 Leonidas, and Themistocles 
 
 " An altogether admirable picture of Hellenic life and Hellenic ideals. It 
 is just such a book as will convey to the average reader what is the eternal 
 value of Greek Life to the world . . . carried breathlessly along by a style 
 which never poses, and yet is always strong and dignified. . . . This 
 remarkable book takes its place with the best of historical fiction. Those 
 who have made their acquaintance with the characters in the days of their 
 youth will find delight in the remembrance. Those who would fain learn 
 something of the golden days of Greece could not do better than use Mr. 
 Davis for guide." The Daily Post, Liverpool. 
 
 " It is seldom that the London critics admit that an American may wear 
 the mantle of Scott, but they are declaring that this book entitles Mr. Davis 
 to a place among novelists not far below the author of The Talisman." 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 PUBLISHERS, 64-66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK 
 ii 
 
MABEL OSGOOD WRIGHT S NOVELS, etc. 
 
 (Published originally as by " Barbara," the Commuter s wife) 
 
 Each, in decorated cloth binding, $1.50 
 
 The Garden of a Commuter s Wife* illustrated 
 
 from photographs 
 
 " Reading it is like having the entry into a home of the class that is the 
 proudest, product of our land, a home where love of books and love of 
 nature go hand in hand with hearty simple love of folks. ... It is a 
 charming book." The Interior. 
 
 People of the Whirlpool Illustrated 
 
 " The whole book is delicious, with its wise and kindly humor, its just per 
 spective of the true values of things, its clever pen pictures of people and 
 customs, and its healthy optimism for the great world in general." Phila 
 delphia Evening Telegraph. 
 
 The Woman Errant 
 
 " The book is worth reading. It will cause discussion. It is an interesting, 
 fictional presentation of an important modern question, treated with fasci 
 nating feminine adroitness." Miss JEANNETTE GlLDER in The Chicago 
 Tribune. 
 
 At the Sign of the Fox 
 
 " Her little pictures of country life are fragrant with a genuine love of 
 nature, and there is fun as genuine in her notes on rural character. A 
 travelling pieman is one of her most lovable personages ; another is Tatters, 
 a dog, who is humanly winsome and wise, and will not soon be forgotten 
 by the reader of this very entertaining book." New York Tribune. 
 
 The Garden, You and I 
 
 " This volume is simply the best she has yet put forth, and quite too deli- 
 ciously torturing to the reviewer, whose only garden is in Spain. . . . The 
 delightful humor which persuaded the earlier books, and without which 
 Barbara would not be Barbara, has lost nothing of its poignancy, and 
 would make The Garden, You and I pleasant reading even to the man 
 who doesn t know a pink from a phlox or a Daphne cneorum from a 
 Cherokee rose." Congregationalist. 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 PUBLISHERS, 64-66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK 
 
 12 
 
THE MERWIN-WEBSTER NOVELS 
 
 Each, in decorated cloth covers, $1.50 
 
 Calumet " K " Illustrated by Harry C. Edwards 
 
 " Calumet K is a novel that is exciting and absorbing, but not the 
 least bit sensational. It is the story of a rush. . . . The book is an un 
 usually good story ; one that shows the inner workings of the labor union, 
 and portrays men who are the bone and sinew of the earth." The Toledo 
 Blade. 
 
 The Short Line War 
 
 " A capital story of adventure in the field of railroading." Outlook. 
 
 Mr. MARK LEE LUTHER S NOVELS 
 
 Each, in cloth, decorated covers, $1.30 
 
 The Henchman 
 
 " It wins admiration on almost every page by the cleverness of its inven 
 tions." CHURCHILL WILLIAMS in The Bookman. 
 
 The Mastery 
 
 " A story of really notable power remarkable for its strength." Times. 
 
 Mr. and Mrs. CASTLE S NOVELS 
 
 Each, in decorated cloth binding, $1.50 
 The Pride of Jennico 
 
 " This lively story has a half-historic flavor which adds to its interest . . . 
 told with an intensity of style which almost takes away the breath of the 
 reader." Boston Transcript. 
 
 E Youth But Knew 
 
 " They should be the most delightful of comrades, for their writing is so 
 apt, so responsive, so joyous, so saturated with the promptings and the 
 glamour of spring. It is because If Youth But Knew has all these ador 
 able qualities that it is so fascinating." Cleveland Leader. 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 PTJBLISHEES, 64-66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK 
 13 
 
Mr. JOHN LUTHER LONG S NOVELS, etc. 
 
 Each, in decorated cloth covers, $1.50 
 
 The Way of the Gods 
 
 artistic quality of his story. It rings true 
 nd of woman s love, it rings true for all 
 be, ... and is told with an art worthy 
 
 " There can be no doubt as to the artistic quality of his story. It rings true 
 with the golden ring of chivalry and of woman s love, it rings true for all 
 lovers of romance, wherever they be, ... and is told with an art worthy 
 of the idea." New York Mail. 
 
 Heimweh and Other Stories 
 
 " As in Madam Butterfly his subtle appreciation of love s tender mystery 
 creates an exquisite thrill of the heavenly longing for the love the 
 loved ones the one thing that through poverty and age can keep the door 
 open to joy." New York Times. 
 
 Miss BEULAH MARIE DIX S NOVELS, etc. 
 
 Each, in decorated cloth covers, $1.50 
 
 The Making of Christopher Ferringham 
 
 " In brilliancy, exciting interest, and verisimilitude, The Making of Chris 
 topher Ferringham is one of the best of the semi-historical novels of the 
 day, and not unworthy of comparison with Maurice Hewlett s best." Bos 
 ton Advertiser. 
 
 The Life, Treason, and Death of James Blount 
 of Breckenhow 
 
 "A novel that may fairly challenge comparison with the very best, telling 
 the story of treason and a love, of many good fights, a few mistakes, and a 
 good death at the last." The Boston Iranscript. 
 
 The Fair Maid of Greystones 
 
 " The plot of The Fair Maid of Greystones is not unworthy of Weyman 
 at his best. This is strong praise, but it is deserved. From the moment 
 Jack Hetherington, the Cavalier volunteer, assumes the identity of his 
 blackguard cousin, and thus escapes certain death to face the responsibil 
 ity for his kinsman s dark deeds, until the end, which is sanely happy, the 
 adventure never flags. This is one of the few historical novels in whose 
 favor an exception may well be made by those who long since lost interest 
 in the school." New York Mail. 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 PUBLISHERS, 64-66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK 
 
Mr. CHARLES MAJOR S NOVELS 
 
 Each, in decorated cloth binding, $1.50 
 Dorothy Vcrnon of Haddon Hall, illustrated by 
 
 Howard Chandler Christy 
 
 " Dorothy is a splendid creation, a superb creature of brains, beauty, force, 
 capacity, and passion, a riot of energy, love, and red blood. She is the 
 fairest, fiercest, strongest, tenderest heroine that ever woke up a jaded 
 novel reader and made him realize that life will be worth living so long as 
 the writers of fiction create her like. . . . The story has brains, go, 
 virility, gumption, and originality." The Boston Herald. 
 
 A Forest Hearth* A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties. 
 Illustrated 
 
 "This work is a novel full of charm and action, picturing the life and love 
 of the fascinating indomitably adventurous men and women, boys and girls, 
 who developed Indiana. It is a vigorous, breezy, outdoor book, with the 
 especial intimate touch that is possible only when the subject is one which 
 has long lain close to its author s heart." Daily News. 
 
 Yolanda, Maid of Burgundy illustrated 
 
 " Charles Major has done the best work of his life in Yolanda. The 
 volume is a genuine romance . . . and after the reviewer has become sur 
 feited with problem novels, it is like coming out into the sunlight to read 
 the fresh, sweet story of her love for Max." The World To-day. 
 
 Mr. JOHN OXENHAM S NOVEL 
 
 The Long Road With frontispiece 
 
 Cloth, decorated cover, $1.50 
 
 " Not since Robert Louis Stevenson has there appeared a writer of English 
 who can so thoroughly serve his turn with simple Anglo-Saxon phrases 
 . . . invested with sympathetic interest, convincing sincerity, and indefin 
 able charm of romance." North American. 
 
 " It is original both in plot and in treatment, and its skilful mingling of 
 idyllic beauty and tragedy plays curious tricks with one s emotions . . . 
 and leaves an impression of happiness and spiritual uplift. It is a story 
 that any man or woman will be the better for reading." Record-Herald, 
 Chicago. 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 PTJBLISHEBS, 64-66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK 
 15 
 
Mr. MAURICE HEWLETT S NOVELS 
 
 Each, in decorated cloth covers, $1.50 
 
 The Forest Lovers 
 
 " The book is a joy to read and to remember, a source of clean and pure 
 delight to the spiritual sense, a triumph of romance reduced to the essen 
 tials, and interpreted with a mastery of expression that is well-nigh beyond 
 praise." The Dial. 
 
 The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay 
 
 " Mr. Hewlett has done one of the most notable things in recent literature, 
 a thing to talk about with bated breath, as a bit of master-craftsmanship 
 touched by the splendid dignity of real creation." The Interior. 
 
 The Queen s Quair 
 
 " The Queen s Quair is, from every point of view, a notable contribution to 
 historical portraiture in its subtlety, its vividness of color, its consistency, and 
 its fascination. . . . Above all, it is intensely interesting." The Outlook. 
 
 The Fool Errant 
 
 " It is full of excellent description, of amusing characters, and of picaresque 
 adventure brilliantly related . . . with infinite humor and vivacity." The 
 New York Herald. 
 
 Little Novels of Italy 
 
 " These singularly romantic stories are so true to their locality that they 
 read almost like translations." New York Times. 
 
 New Canterbury Tales 
 
 " In the key and style of the author s Little Novels of Italy, it shows again 
 the brilliant qualities of that remarkable book ; . . . daring but successful." 
 New York Tribune. 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 PUBLISHERS, 64-66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK 
 16 
 
14 DAY USE 
 
 RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED 
 
 LOAN DEPT. 
 
 This book is due on the last date stamped below, or 
 
 on the date to which renewed. 
 Renewed books are subject to immediate recall. 
 
 DEC 3- 
 
 K 
 
 SEP 2 4 1981 
 
 
 . 
 
 LD 21A-60m-3, 65 
 (F2336slO)476B 
 
 General Library 
 University of California 
 
 
 
YB 68066