PARABLES OF A PROVINCE…

PARABLES OF A PROVINCE

By Gilbert Parker

THE GOLDEN PIPES THE GUARDIAN OF THE FIRE BY THAT PLACE CALLED PERADVENTURE THE SINGING OF THE BEES THE WHITE OMEN THE SOJOURNERS THE TENT OF THE PURPLE MAT THERE WAS A LITTLE CITY THE FORGE IN THE VALLEY

THE GOLDEN PIPES

They hung all bronzed and shining, on the side of Margath Mountain--the tall and perfect pipes of the organ which was played by some son of God when the world was young. At least Hepnon the cripple said this was so, when he was but a child, and when he got older he said that even now a golden music came from the pipes at sunrise and sunset. And no one laughed at Hepnon, for you could not look into the dark warm eyes, dilating with his fancies, or see the transparent temper of his face, the look of the dreamer over all, without believing him, and reproving your own judgment. You felt that he had travelled ways you could never travel, that he had had dreams beyond you, that his fanciful spirit had had adventures you would give years of your dull life to know.

And yet he was not made only as women are made, fragile and trembling in his nerves. For he was strong of arm, and there was no place in the hills to be climbed by venturesome man, which he could not climb with crutch and shrivelled leg. Also, he was a gallant horseman, riding with his knees and one foot in stirrup, his crutch slung behind him. It may be that was why rough men listened to his fancies about the Golden Pipes. Indeed they would go out at sunrise and look across to where the pipes hung, taking the rosy glory of the morning, and steal away alone at sunset, and in some lonely spot lean out towards the flaming instrument to hear if any music rose from them. The legend that one of the Mighty Men of the Kimash Hills came here to play, with invisible hands, the music of the first years of the world, became a truth, though a truth that none could prove. And by-and-by, no man ever travelled the valley without taking off his hat as he passed the Golden Pipes--so had a cripple with his whimsies worked upon the land.

Then, too, perhaps his music had to do with it. As a child he had only a poor concertina, but by it he drew the traveller and the mountaineer and the worker in the valley to him like a magnet. Some touch of the mysterious, some sweet fantastical melody in all he played, charmed them, even when he gave them old familiar airs. From the concertina he passed to the violin, and his skill and mastery over his followers grew; and then there came a notable day when up over a thousand miles of country a melodeon was brought him. Then a wanderer, a minstrel outcast from a far country, taking refuge in those hills, taught him, and there was one long year of loving labour together, and merry whisperings between the two, and secret drawings, and worship of the Golden Pipes; and then the minstrel died, and left Hepnon alone.

And now they said that Hepnon tried to coax out of the old melodeon the music of the Golden Pipes. But a look of sorrow grew upon his face, and stayed for many months. Then there came a change, and he went into the woods, and began working there in the perfect summer weather; and the tale went abroad that he was building an organ, so that he might play for all who came, the music he heard on the Golden Pipes--for they had ravished his ear since childhood, and now he must know the wonderful melodies all by heart, they said.

With consummate patience Hepnon dried the wood and fashioned it into long tuneful tubes, beating out soft metal got from the forge in the valley to case the lips of them, tanning the leather for the bellows, stretching it, and exposing all his work to the sun of early morning, which gave every fibre and valve a rich sweetness, like a sound fruit of autumn. People also said that he set all the pieces out at sunrise and sunset that the tone of the Golden Pipes might pass into them, so that when the organ was built, each part should be saturated with such melody as it had drawn in, according to its temper and its fibre.

So the building of the organ went on, and a year passed, and then another, and it was summer again; and soon Hepnon began to build also-- while yet it was sweet weather--a home for his organ, a tall nest of cedar added to his father's house. And in it every piece of wood, and every board had been made ready by his own hands, and set in the sun and dried slowly to a healthy soundness; and he used no nails of metal, but wooden pins of the iron-wood or hickory tree, and it was all polished, and there was no paint or varnish anywhere; and when you spoke in this nest your voice sounded pure and strong.

At last the time came when, piece by piece, the organ was set up in its home; and as the days and weeks went by, and autumn drew to winter, and the music of the Golden Pipes stole down the flumes of snow to their ardent lover, and spring came with its sap, and small purple blossoms, and yellow apples of mandrake, and summer stole on luxurious and dry; the face of Hepnon became thinner and thinner, a strange deep light shone in his eyes, and all his person seemed to exhale a kind of glow. He ceased to ride, to climb, to lift weights with his strong arms, as he had--poor cripple--been once so proud to do. A delicacy came upon him, and more and more he withdrew himself to his organ, and to those lofty and lonely places where he could see--and hear--the Golden Pipes boom softly over the valley.

At last it all was done, even to the fine-carved stool of cedar whereon he should sit when he played his organ. Never yet had he done more than sound each note as he made it, trying it, softening it by tender devices with the wood; but now the hour was come when he should gather down the soul of the Golden Pipes to his fingers, and give to the ears of the world the song of the morning stars, the music of Jubal and his comrades, the affluent melody to which the sons of men, in the first days, paced the world in time with the thoughts of God. For days he lived alone in the cedar-house--and who may know what he was doing dreaming, listening, or praying? Then the word went through the valley and the hills, that one evening he would play for all who came; and that day was "Toussaint," or the Feast of All Souls.

So they came both old and young, and they did not enter the house, but waited outside, upon the mossy rocks, or sat among the trees, and watched the heavy sun roll down and the Golden Pipes flame in the light of evening. Far beneath in the valley the water ran lightly on, but there came no sound from it, none from anywhere; only a general pervasive murmur quieting to the heart.

Now they heard a note come from the organ--a soft low sound that seemed to rise out of the good earth and mingle with the vibrant air, the song of birds, the whisper of trees, and the murmuring water. Then came another, and another note, then chords, and chords upon these, and by- and-by, rolling tides of melody, until, as it seemed to the listeners, the air ached with the incomparable song; and men and women wept, and children hid their heads in the laps of their mothers, and young men and maidens dreamed dreams never to be forgotten. For one short hour the music went on, then twilight came. Presently the sounds grew fainter, and exquisitely painful, and now a low sob seemed to pass through all the heart of the organ, and then silence fell, and in the sacred pause, Hepnon came out among them all, pale and desolate. He looked at them a minute most sadly, and then lifting up his arms towards the Golden Pipes, now hidden in the dusk, he cried low and brokenly:

"O my God, give me back my dream!"

Then his crutch seemed to give way beneath him, and he sank upon the ground, faint and gasping.

They raised him up, and women and men whispered in his ear

"Ah, the beautiful, beautiful music, Hepnon!" But he only said: "O my God, O my God, give me back my dream!" When he had said it thrice, he turned his face to where his organ was in the cedar-house, and then his eyes closed, and he fell asleep: and they could not wake him. But at sunrise the next morning a shiver passed through him, and then a cold quiet stole over him, and Hepnon and the music of the Golden Pipes departed from the Voshti Hills, and came again no more.

THE GUARDIAN OF THE FIRE

"Height unto height answereth knowledge."

His was the first watch, the farthest fire, for Shaknon Hill towered above the great gulf, and looked back also over thirty leagues of country towards the great city. There came a time again when all the land was threatened. From sovereign lands far off, two fleets were sailing hard to reach the wide basin before the walled city, the one to save, the other to destroy. If Tinoir, the Guardian of the Fire, should sight the destroying fleet, he must light two fires on Shaknon Hill, and then, at the edge of the wide basin, in a treacherous channel, the people would send out fire-rafts to burn the ships of the foe. Five times in the past had Tinoir been the Guardian of the Fire, and five times had the people praised him; but praise and his scanty wage were all he got.

The hut in which he lived with his wife on another hill, ten miles from Shaknon, had but two rooms, and their little farm and the garden gave them only enough to live--no more. Elsewhere there was good land in abundance, but it had been said years ago to Tinoir by the great men, that he should live not far from Shaknon, so that in times of peril he might guard the fire and be sentinel for all the people. Perhaps Tinoir was too dull to see that he was giving all and getting naught; that while he waited and watched he was always poor, and also was getting old. There was no house or home within fifty miles of them, and only now and then some wandering Indians lifted the latch, and drew in beside their hearth, or a good priest with a soul of love for others, came and said Mass in the room where a little Calvary had been put up. Two children had come and gone, and Tinoir and Dalice had dug their graves and put them in a warm nest of maple leaves, and afterwards lived upon the memories of them. But after these two, children came no more; and Tinoir and Dalice grew closer and closer to each other, coming to look alike in face, as they had long been alike in mind and feeling. None ever lived nearer to nature than they, and wild things grew to be their friends; so that you might see Dalice at her door tossing crumbs with one hand to birds, and with the other bits of meat to foxes, martens, and wild dogs, which came and went unharmed by them. Tinoir shot no wild animals for profit--only for food and for skins and furs to wear. Because of this he was laughed at by all who knew, save the priest of St. Sulpice, who, on Easter Day, when the little man came yearly to Mass over two hundred miles of country, praised him to his people, and made much of him, though Tinoir was not vain enough to see it.

When word came down the river, and up over the hills to Tinoir, that war was come and that he must go to watch for the hostile fleet and for the friendly fleet as well, he made no murmur, though it was the time of harvest, and Dalice had had a sickness from which she was not yet recovered.

"Go, my Tinoir," said Dalice, with a little smile, "and I will reap the grain. If your eyes are sharp you shall see my bright sickle moving in the sun."

"There is the churning of the milk too, Dalice," answered Tinoir; "you are not strong, and sometimes the butter comes slow; and there's the milking also."

"Strength is coming to me fast, Tinoir," she said, and drew herself up; but her dress lay almost flat on her bosom. Tinoir took her arm and felt it above the elbow.

"It is like the muscle of a little child," he said.

"But I will drink those bottles of red wine the Governor sent the last time you watched the fire on Shaknon," she said, brightening up, and trying to cheer him. He nodded, for he saw what she was trying to do, and said: "Also a little of the gentian and orange root three times a day-eh, Dalice?"

After arranging for certain signs, by little fires, which they were to light upon the hills and so speak with each other, they said, "Good day, Dalice," and "Good day, Tinoir," drank a glass of the red wine, and added: "Thank the good God;" then Tinoir wiped his mouth with his sleeve, and went away, leaving Dalice with a broken glass at her feet, and a look in her eyes which it was well that Tinoir did not see.

But as he went he was thinking how, the night before, Dalice had lain with her arm round his neck hour after hour as she slept, as she did before they ever had a child; and that even in her sleep, she kissed him as she used to kiss him before he brought her away from the parish of Ste. Genevieve to be his wife. And the more he thought about it the happier he became, and more than once he stopped and shook his head in pleased retrospection. And Dalice thought of it too as she hung over the churn, her face drawn and tired and shining with sweat; and she shook her head, and tears came into her eyes, for she saw further into things than Tinoir. And once as she passed his coat on the wall, she rubbed it softly with her hand, as she might his curly head when he lay beside her.

From Shaknon Tinoir watched; but of course he could never see her bright sickle shining, and he could not know whether her dress still hung loose upon her breast, or whether the flesh of her arms was still like a child's. If all was well with Dalice a little fire should be lighted at the house door just at the going down of the sun, and it should be at once put out. If she was ill, a fire should be lit and then put out two hours after sundown. If she should be ill beyond any help, this fire should burn on till it went out.

Day after day Tinoir, as he watched for the coming fleet, saw the fire lit at sundown, and then put out. But one night the fire did not come till two hours after sundown, and it was put out at once. He fretted much, and he prayed that Dalice might be better, and he kept to his post, looking for the fleet of the foe. Evening after evening was this other fire lighted and then put out at once; and a great longing came to him to leave this guarding of the fire, and go to her--"For half a day," he said--"just for half a day!" But in that half day the fleet might pass, and then it would be said that Tinoir had betrayed his country. At last sleep left him, and he fought a demon night and day; and always he remembered Dalice's arm about his neck, and her kisses that last night they were together. Twice he started away from his post to go to her, but before he had gone a hundred paces he came back.

At last one afternoon he saw ships, not far off, rounding the great cape in the gulf, and after a time, at sunset, he knew by their shape it was the fleet of the foe; and so he lighted his great fires, and they were answered leagues away towards the city by another beacon.

Two hours after sunset of this day the fire in front of Tinoir's home was lighted, and was not put out, and Tinoir sat and watched it till it died away. So he lay in the light of his own great war-fire till morning, for he could not travel at night, and then, his duty over, he went back to his home. He found Dalice lying beside the ashes of her fire, past hearing all he said in her ear, unheeding the kiss he set upon her lips.

Two nights afterwards, coming back from laying her beside her children, he saw a great light in the sky towards the city, as of a huge fire. When the courier came to him bearing the Governor's message and the praise of the people, and told of the enemy's fleet destroyed by the fire-rafts, he stared at the man, then turned his head to a place where a pine cross showed against the green grass, and said:

"Dalice--my wife--is dead."

"You have saved your country, Tinoir," answered the courier kindly.

"I have lost Dalice!" he said, and fondled the rosary Dalice used to carry when she lived; and he would speak to the man no more.

BY THAT PLACE CALLED PERADVENTURE

By that place called Peradventure in the Voshti Hills dwelt Golgothar the strong man, who, it was said, could break an iron pot with a blow, or pull a tall sapling from the ground.

"If I had a hundred men so strong," said Golgothar, "I would go and conquer Nooni, the city of our foes."

Because he had not the hundred men he did not go; and Nooni still sent insults to the country of Golgothar, and none could travel safe between the capitals. And Golgothar was sorry.

"If I had a hundred men so strong," said Golgothar, "I would build a dyke to keep the floods back from the people crowded on the lowlands."

Because he had not the hundred men, now and again the floods came down, and swept the poor folk out to sea, or laid low their habitations. And Golgothar pitied them.

"If I had a hundred men so strong," said Golgothar, "I would clear the wild boar from the forests, that the children should not fear to play among the trees."

Because he had not the hundred men the graves of children multiplied, and countless mothers sat by empty beds and mourned. And Golgothar put his head between his knees in trouble for them.

"If I had a hundred men so strong," said Golgothar, "I would with great stones mend the broken pier, and the bridge between the islands should not fall." Because he had not the hundred men, at last the bridge gave way, and a legion of the king's army were carried to the whirlpool, where they fought in vain. And Golgothar made a feast of remembrance to them, and tears dripped on his beard when he said: "Hail and Farewell!"

"If I had a hundred men so strong," said Golgothar, "I would go against the walls of chains our rebels built, and break them one by one."

Because he had not the hundred men, the chain walls blocked the only pass between the hills, and so cut in two the kingdom: and they who pined for corn went wanting, and they who yearned for fish stayed hungry. And Golgothar, brooding, said his heart bled for his country.

"If I had a hundred men so strong," said Golgothar, "I would go among the thousand brigands of Mirnan, and bring again the beloved daughter of our city."

Because he had not the hundred men the beloved lady languished in her prison, for the brigands asked as ransom the city of Talgone which they hated. And Golgothar carried in his breast a stone image she had given him, and for very grief let no man speak her name before him.

"If I had a hundred men so strong--" said Golgothar, one day, standing on a great point of land and looking down the valley.

As he said it, he heard a laugh, and looking down he saw Sapphire, or Laugh of the Hills, as she was called. A long staff of iron-wood was in her hands, with which she jumped the dykes and streams and rocky fissures; in her breast were yellow roses, and there was a tuft of pretty feathers in her hair. She reached up and touched him on the breast with her staff, then she laughed again, and sang a snatch of song in mockery:

"I am a king, I have no crown, I have no throne to sit in--"

"Pull me up, boy," she said. She wound a leg about the staff, and, taking hold, he drew her up as if she had been a feather.

"If I had a hundred mouths I would kiss you for that," she said, still mocking; "but having only one, I'll give it to the cat, and weep for Golgothar."

"Silly jade," he said, and turned towards his tent.

As they passed a slippery and dangerous place, where was one strong solitary tree, she suddenly threw a noose over him, drew it fast and sprang far out over the precipice into the air. Even as she did so, he jumped behind the tree, and clasped it, else on the slippery place he would have gone over with her. The rope came taut, and presently he drew her up again to safety, and while she laughed at him and mocked him, he held her tight under his arm, and carried her to his lodge, where he let her go.

"Why did you do it, devil's madcap?" he asked.

"Why didn't you wait for the hundred men so strong?" she laughed.

"Why did you jump behind the tree?

"'If I had a hundred men, heigho, I would buy my corn for a penny a gill. If I had a hundred men or so, I would dig a grave for the maid of the hill, heigho!'"

He did not answer her, but stirred the soup in the pot and tasted it, and hung a great piece of meat over the fire. Then he sat down, and only once did he show anger as she mocked him, and that was when she thrust her hand into his breast, took out the little stone image, and said:

"If a little stone god had a hundred hearts, Would a little stone goddess trust in one?"

Then she made as if she would throw it into the fire, but he caught her hand and crushed it, so that she cried out for pain and anger, and said:

"Brute of iron, go break the posts in the brigands' prison-house, but leave a poor girl's wrist alone. If I had a hundred men--" she added, mocking wildly again, and then, springing at him, put her two thumbs at the corners of his eyes, and cried: "Stir a hand, and out they will come --your eyes for my bones!"

He did not stir till her fury was gone. Then he made her sit down and eat with him, and afterwards she said softly to him, and without a laugh: "Why should the people say, 'Golgothar is our shame, for he has great strength, and yet he does nothing but throw great stones for sport into the sea'?"

He had the simple mind of a child, and he listened to her patiently, and at last got up and began preparing for a journey, cleaning all his weapons, and gathering them together. She understood him, and she said, with a little laugh like music: "One strong man is better than a hundred --a little key will open a great door easier than a hundred hammers. What is the strength of a hundred bullocks without this?" she added, tapping him on the forehead.

Then they sat down and talked together quietly for a long time; and at sunset she saw him start away upon great errands.

Before two years had gone, Nooni, the city of their foes, was taken; the chain wall of the rebels opened to the fish and corn of the poor; the children wandered in the forest without fear of wild boars; the dyke was built to save the people in the lowlands; and Golgothar carried to the castle the King had given him the daughter of the city, freed from Mirnan.

"If Golgothar had a hundred wives--" said a voice to the strong man as he entered the castle gates. Looking up he saw Sapphire. He stretched out his hand to her in joy and friendship.

"--I would not be one of them," she added, with a mocking laugh, as she dropped from the wall, leaped the moat by the help of her staff, and danced away laughing. There are those who say, however that tears fell down her cheeks as she laughed.

THE SINGING OF THE BEES

"Mother, didst thou not say thy prayers last night?"

"Twice, my child."

"Once before the little shrine, and once beside my bed--is it not so?"

"It is so, my Fanchon. What hast thou in thy mind?"

"Thou didst pray that the storm die in the hills, and the flood cease, and that my father come before it was again the hour of prayer. It is now the hour. Canst thou not hear the storm and the wash of the flood? And my father does not come!"

"Dear Fanchon, God is good."

"When thou wast asleep I rose from my bed, and in the dark I kissed the feet of--Him--on the little Calvary; and I did not speak, but in my heart I called."

"What didst thou call, my child?"

"I called to my father: 'Come back-come back!'"

"Thou shouldst have called to God, my Fanchon."

"I loved my father, and I called to him."

"Thou shouldst love God."

"I knew my father first. If God loved thee, He would answer thy prayer. Dost thou not hear the cracking of the cedar trees and the cry of the wolves--they are afraid. All day and all night the rain and wind come down, and the birds and wild fowl have no peace. I kissed--His feet, and my throat was full of tears; but I called in my heart. Yet the storm and the dark stay, and my father does not come."

"Let us be patient, my Fanchon."

"He went to guide the priest across the hills. Why does not God guide him back?"

"My Fanchon, let us be patient."

"The priest was young, and my father has grey hair."

"Wilt thou not be patient, my child?"

"He filled the knapsack of the priest with food better than his own, and --thou didst not see it--put money in his hand."

"My own, the storm may pass."

"He told the priest to think upon our home as a little nest God set up here for such as he."

"There are places of shelter in the hills for thy father, my Fanchon."

"And when the priest prayed, 'That Thou mayst bring us safely to this place where we would go,' my father said so softly, 'We beseech Thee to hear us, good Lord!'"

"My Fanchon, thy father hath gone this trail many times."

"The prayer was for the out-trail, not the in-trail, my mother."

"Nay, I do not understand thee."

"A swarm of bees came singing through the room last night, my mother. It was dark and I could not see, but there was a sweet smell, and I heard the voices."

"My child, thou art tired with watching, and thy mind is full of fancies. Thou must sleep."

"I am tired of watching. Through the singing of the bees as they passed over my bed, I heard my father's voice. I could not hear the words, they seemed so far away, like the voices of the bees; and I did not cry out, for the tears were in my throat. After a moment the room was so still that it made my heart ache."

"Oh, my Fanchon, my child, thou dost break my heart! Dost thou not know the holy words?"

"'And their souls do pass like singing bees, where no man may follow. These are they whom God gathereth out of the whirlwind and the desert, and bringeth home in a goodly swarm.'"

Night drew close to the earth, and as suddenly as a sluice-gate drops and holds back a flood the storm ceased. Along the crest of the hills there slowly grew a line of light, and then the serene moon came up and on, persistent to give the earth love where it had had punishment. Divers flocks of clouds, camp-followers of the storm, could not abash her. But once she drew shrinking back behind a slow troop of them; for down at the bottom of a gorge lay a mountaineer, face upward and unmoving, as he had lain since a rock loosened beneath him, and the depths swallowed him. If he had had ears to hear, he would have answered the soft, bitter cries which rose from a but on the Voshti Hills above him:

"Michel, Michel, art thou gone?"

"Come back, oh, my father, come back!"

But perhaps it did avail that there were lighted candles before a little shrine, and that a mother, in her darkness, kissed the feet of One on a Calvary.

THE WHITE OMEN

"Ah, Monsieur, Monsieur, come quick!"

"My son, wilt thou not be patient?"

"But she--my Fanchon--and the child!"

"I knew thy Fanchon, and her father, when thou wast yet a child."

"But they may die before we come, Monsieur."

"These things are in God's hands, Gustave."

"You are not a father; you have never known what makes the world seem nothing."

"I knew thy Fanchon's father."

"Is that the same?"

"There are those who save and those who die for others. Of thy love thou wouldst save--the woman hath lain in thine arms, the child is of this. But to thy Fanchon's father I was merely a priest--we had not hunted together nor met often about the fire, and drew fast the curtains for the tales which bring men close. He took me safely on the out-trail, but on the home-trail he was cast away. Dost thou not think the love of him that stays as great as the love of him that goes?"

"Ah, thou wouldst go far to serve my wife and child!"

"Love knows not distance; it hath no continent; its eyes are for the stars, its feet for the swords; it continueth, though an army lay waste the pasture; it comforteth when there are no medicines; it hath the relish of manna; and by it do men live in the desert."

"But if it pass from a man, that which he loves, and he is left alone, Monsieur?"

"That which is loved may pass, but love hath no end."

"Thou didst love my Fanchon's father?"

"I prayed him not to go, for a storm was on, but there was the thought of wife and child on him--the good Michel--and he said: 'It is the home- trail, and I must get to my nest.' Poor soul, poor soul! I who carry my life as a leaf in autumn for the west wind was saved, and he--!"

"We are on the same trail now, Monsieur?"

"See: how soft a night, and how goodly is the moon!"

"It is the same trail now as then, Monsieur?"

"And how like velvet are the shadows in the gorge there below--like velvet-velvet."

"Like a pall. He travelled this trail, Monsieur?"

"I remember thy Fanchon that night--so small a child was she, with deep brown eyes, a cloud of hair that waved about her head, and a face that shone like spring. I have seen her but once since then, and yet thou sayest thy Fanchon has now her great hour, that she brings forth?"

"Yes. In the morning she cried out to me twice, for I am not easy of waking--shame to me--and said: 'Gustave, thou shalt go for the priest over the hills, for my time is at hand, and I have seen the White Omen on the wall.' The White Omen--you know, Monsieur?"

"What does such as she with the legend of the White Omen, Gustave?"

"Who can tell what is in the heart of a mother? Their eyes are not the eyes of such as we."

"Neither the eyes of man nor priest--thou sayest well. How did she see it?"

"She was lying in a soft sleep, when something like a pain struck through her eyes, and she waked. There upon the wall over the shrine was the white arrow with the tuft of fire. It came and went three times, and then she called me."

"What tale told the arrow to thy Fanchon, Gustave?"

"That for the child which cometh into the world a life must go from the world."

"The world is wide and souls are many, Gustave."

"Most true; but her heart was heavy, and it came upon her that the child might be spared and herself taken."

"Is not that the light of thy home--yonder against the bunch of firs?"

"Yes, yes, good father, they have put a light in the window. See, see, there are two lights. Ah, merci, merci, they both live! She hath had her hour! That was the sign our mother promised me."

"Michel's wife--ah, yes, Michel's wife! Blessed be God. A moment, Gustave; let us kneel here . . ."

. . . "Monsieur, did you not see a white arrow shoot down the sky as the prayer ended?"

"My son, it was a falling star."

"It seemed to have a tuft of fire."

"Hast thou also the mind of a woman, Gustave?"

"I cannot tell. If it was not a human soul it was a world, and death is death."

"Thou shalt think of life, Gustave. In thy nest there are two birds where was but one. Keep in thy heart the joy of life and the truth of love, and the White Omen shall be naught to thee."

"May I say 'thou' as I speak?"

"Thou shalt speak as I speak to thee."

"Thy face is pale-art thou ill, mon pere?"

"I have no beard, and the moon shines in my face."

"Thy look is as that of one without sight."

"Nay, nay, I can see the two lights in thy window, my son."

"Joy--joy, a little while, and I shall clasp my Fanchon in my arms!"

"Thy Fanchon, and the child--and the child."

The fire sent a trembling glow through the room of a hut on a Voshti hill, and the smell of burning fir and camphire wood filtered through the air with a sleepy sweetness. So delicate and faint between the quilts lay the young mother, the little Fanchon, a shining wonder still in her face, and the exquisite touch of birth on her--for when a child is born the mother also is born again. So still she lay until one who gave her into the world stooped, and drawing open the linen at her breast, nestled a little life there, which presently gave a tiny cry, the first since it came forth. Then Fanchon's arms drew up, and, with eyes all tenderly burning, she clasped the babe to her breast, and as silk breast touched silk cheek, there sprang up in her the delight and knowledge that the doom of the White Omen was not for herself. Then she called the child by its father's name, and said into the distance: "Gustave, Gustave, come back!"

And the mother of Fanchon, remembering one night so many years before, said, under her breath: "Michel, Michel, thou art gone so long!"

With their speaking, Gustave and the priest entered on them; and Fanchon crying out for joy, said:

"Kiss thy child--thy little Gustave, my husband." Then, to the priest:

"Last night I saw the White Omen, mon pere; and one could not die, nor let the child die, without a blessing. But we shall both live now."

The priest blessed all, and long time he talked with the wife of the lost Michel. When he rose to go to bed she said to him: "The journey has been too long, mon pere. Your face is pale and you tremble. Youth has no patience. Gustave hurried you."

"Gustave yearned for thy Fanchon and the child. The White Omen made him afraid."

"But the journey was too much. It is a hard, a bitter trail."

"I have come gladly as I went once with thy Michel. But, as thou sayest, I am tired--at my heart. I will get to my rest."

Near dawn Gustave started from the bed where he sat watching, for he saw the White Omen over against the shrine, and then a voice said, as it were out of a great distance:

"Even me also, O my father!"

With awed footsteps, going to see, he found that a man had passed out upon that trail by which no hunter from life can set a mark to guide a comrade; leaving behind the bones and flesh which God set up, too heavy to carry on so long a journey.

THE SOJOURNERS

"My father, shall we soon be there?"

The man stopped, and shading his eyes with his hand, looked long before him into the silver haze. They were on the southern bank of a wide valley, flanked by deep hills looking wise as grey-headed youth, a legion of close comrades, showing no gap in their ranks. They seemed to breathe; to sit, looking down into the valley, with heads dropped on their breasts, and deep overshadowed eyes, that never changed, in mist or snow, or sun, or any kind of weather: dark brooding lights that knew the secrets of the world, watchful yet kind. Races, ardent with longing, had come and gone through the valley, had passed the shining porches in the North on the way to the quiet country; and they had never come again, though shadows flitted back and forth when the mists came down: visiting spirits, hungering on the old trail for some that had dropped by the way. As the ages passed, fewer and fewer travelled through the valley-no longer a people or a race, but twos and threes, and sometimes a small company, like soldiers of a battered guard, and oftener still solitary pilgrims, broken with much travel and bowed with loneliness. But they always cried out with joy when they beheld far off in the North, at the end of the long trail, this range of grey and violet hills break into golden gaps with scarlet walls, and rivers of water ride through them pleasantly. Then they hurried on to the opal haze that hung at the end of the valley--and who heard ever of any that wished to leave the Scarlet Hills and the quiet country beyond!

The boy repeated his question: "My father, shall we soon be there?"

The man withdrew his hand from over his eyes, and a strange smile came to his lips.

"My son," he answered, "canst thou not see? Yonder, through the gentle mist, are the Scarlet Hills. Our journey is near done."

The boy lifted his head and looked. "I can see nothing but the mist, my father--not the Scarlet Hills. I am tired, I would sleep."

"Thou shalt sleep soon. The wise men told us of the Delightful Chateau at the gateway of the hills. Courage, my son! If I gave thee the golden balls to toss, would it cheer thee?"

"My father, I care not for the golden balls; but if I had horse and sword and a thousand men, I would take a city."

The man laid his hand upon the boy's shoulder.

"If I, my son," he said, "had a horse and sword and a thousand men, I would build a city."

"Why dost thou not fly thy falcon, or write thy thoughts upon the sand, as thou didst yesterday, my father?"

The man loosed the falcon from his wrist, and watched it fly away.

"My son, I care not for the falcon, nor any more for writing on the sands."

"My father, if thou didst build a city, I would not tear it down, but I would keep it with my thousand men.

"Thou hast well said, my son." And the man stooped and kissed the lad on the forehead.

And so they travelled on in silence for a long time, and slowly they came to the opal haze, which smelled sweet as floating flowers, and gave their hearts a halcyon restfulness. And glancing down at him many times, the father saw the lad's face look serenely wise, without becoming old, and his brown hair clustered on his forehead with all the life of youth in it. Yet in his eyes the lad seemed as old as himself.

"My father," said the lad again, "wouldst thou then build a city?"

And the father answered: "Nay, my son, I would sow seed, and gather it into harvest--enough for my needs, no more; and sit quiet in my doorway when my work was done, and be grateful to the gods."

The lad waited a moment, then answered: "When thou wast a governor in our own country, thou hadst serfs and retainers without number, and fifty men to beat upon the shields of brass to tell of thy coming through the gates of the King's house; now thou wouldst sow a field and sit quiet in thy doorway, like the blind seller of seed-cakes 'gainst the temple."

"Even so, my son." Then he stooped down, knelt upon his knees, and kissed the earth solemnly, and when he rose there was a smile upon his face.

Then the lad said: "When I was the son of a governor I loved to play with the golden balls, to shoot at the target for pearls, and to ride the flamingo down; now I would grind the corn which thou didst reap, and with oil make seed-cakes for our supper, and sit quiet with thee in thy doorway." Then he too stooped down and kissed the earth, and rose up again with a smile upon his face.

And as they went the earth seemed suddenly to blossom anew, the glory of the Scarlet Hills burst upon them, and they could hear bugles calling far off and see giant figures trooping along the hills, all scarlet too, with streaming hair. And presently, near to a lake, there was a great gateway, and perched upon a rock near it a chateau of divine proportions, on which was written above the perfect doorway:

"The Keeper of the House awaits thee. Enter into Quiet."

And they entered, and were possessed of an incomparable peace. And then came to them an old man of noble countenance, with eye neither dimmed nor sunken, and cheek dewy as a child's, and his voice was like an organ when it plays the soft thanksgiving of a mother.

"Why did ye kiss the earth as ye travelled?" he asked. Then they told him, each with his own tongue, and he smiled upon them and questioned them of all their speech by the way; and they answered him all honestly and with gladness, for the searching of their hearts was a joy and relief. But he looked most lovingly upon the lad.

"Wouldst thou, then, indeed enter the quiet country?" he asked.

And the lad answered: "I have lived so long in the noise!"

"Thou hast learned all, thou hast lived all," he answered the boy. "Beyond the Hills of Scarlet there is quiet, and thou shalt dwell there, thou and he. Ye have the perfect desire--Go in peace, and know that though ye are of different years, as men count time, God's clock strikes the same for both; for both are of equal knowledge, and have the same desire at last."

Then, lifting up his hands, he said: "O children of men! O noisy world! when will ye learn the delectable way?"

Slowly they all three came from the Chateau, and through the great gateway, and passed to the margin of a shining lake. There the two stepped into a boat that waited for them, of which the rowers were nobly fashioned, like the Keeper of the House, and as they bowed their heads to a melodious blessing, the boat drew away. Soon, in the sweet haze, they looked transfigured and enlarged, majestic figures moving through the Scarlet Hills to the quiet country. Now the valley through which they had passed was the Valley of Death, where the young become old, and the old young, and all become wise.

THE TENT OF THE PURPLE MAT

The Tent stands on the Mount of Lost Winters, in that bit of hospitable land called the Fair Valley, which is like no other in the North. Whence comes the soft wind that comforts it, who can tell? It swims through the great gap in the mountains, and passing down the valley, sinks upon the prairie of the Ten Stars, where it is lost. What man first placed the Tent on the Mount none knows, though legends are many. It has a clear outlook to the north, whence comes the gracious wind, and it is sheltered at the south by a stout wall of commendable trees; yet these are at some small distance, so that the Tent has a space all about it, and the figure of the general land is as that of an amphitheatre.

It is made of deerskin, dyed by a strange process which turned it white, and doctored by some cunning medicine. It is like a perfect parchment, and shows no decay. It has a centre-pole of excellent fir, and from its peak flies a strip of snake-skin, dyed a red which never fades. For the greater part of the year the plateau whereon the Tent stands is covered with a sweet grass, and when the grass dies there comes a fine white frost, ungoverned by the sun, in which the footstep sinks, as into an unfilled honeycomb.

The land has few clouds, and no storms, save of the lightest-rain which is as mist, and snow which is as frosty haze. The sun cherishes the place continually, and the moon rises on it with a large rejoicing.

Yet no man dwells in the valley. It is many scores of leagues from any habitation, from the lodges of the Indians or the posts of the Company's people. There are few tribes that know of it, and these go not to it as tribes, but as one man or one woman has need. Men say that beyond it, in another amphitheatre of the hills, is the White Valley, the Place of Peace, where the sleepers are, and the Scarlet Hunter is sentinel. Yet who knows--since any that have been there are constrained to be silent, or forget what they have seen?

But this valley where the Tent stands is for those who have broken the commandment, "Thou shalt not sell thy soul." Hither they come and wait and desire continually; and this delightful land is their punishment, for they have no relish for goodly things, the power to enjoy going from them when they bargained their souls away. The great peace, the noble pasturage, the equal joy of day and night wherein is neither heat nor cold, where life is like the haze on a harvest-field, are for chastisement, till that by great patience and striving, some one, having the gift of sacrifice, shall give his life to buy back that soul. For it is in the minds of this people of the North that for every life that comes into the world one passes out, and for every soul which is bartered away another must be set free ere it can be redeemed.

Men and women whom life and their own sins had battered came seeking the Tent; but they were few and they were chiefly old, for conscience cometh mostly when man can work and wanton no more. Yet one day, when the sight of the valley was most fair to their eyes, there came out of the southmost corner a girl, who, as soon as she set foot in the valley, laid aside her knapsack in the hollow of a tree, also her moccasins and a little cap of fur, and came on with bare head and feet towards the Mount of the Lost Winters.

She was of good stature, ripely made, not beautiful of face, but with a look which would make any man turn twice to see, a very glory of fine hair, and a hand which spoke oftener than the lips. She had come a month's travel, scarcely halting from sunrise to sunset, and she was as worn in body as in spirit. Now, as she passed up the valley she stood still several times, and looked round in a kind of dream, as well one might who had come out of an inclement south country to this sweet nourishment. Yet she stood not still for joy and content, but for pain. Once or twice she lifted up her hands above her head as though appealing, but these pauses were only for brief moments, for she kept moving on towards the mountain with a swift step. When she had climbed the plateau where the delicate grass yielded with a tender spring to the feet, she paused long and gazed round, as though to take a last glance at all; then, turning to the Tent, looked steadfastly at it, awe and wonder, and something more difficult of interpretation, in her face. At last she slowly came to the curtain of the Tent, and lifting it, without a pause stepped inside, the curtain falling behind her.

The Tent was empty save for the centre-pole, a wooden trough of dried fruit, a jar of water, and a mat of the most gentle purple colour, which was laid between the centre-pole and the tent-curtain. The mat was of exquisite make, as it seemed from the chosen fibres of some perfect wood, and the hue was as that of a Tyrian dye. A soft light pervaded the place, perhaps filtered through the parchment-like white skin of the Tent, for it seemed to have no other fountain. Upon the farther side a token was drawn in purple on the tentskin, and the girl, seeing it, turned quickly to the curtain through which she had passed. Upon the curtain were other signs. She read them slowly, and repeated them out loud in a low uncertain voice, like a bird's note blundering in a flute:

"Four hours shalt thou look northward, kneeling on the Mat of Purple, and thinking of the Camp of the Delightful Fires, around which is the Joyous City; four hours shalt thou lie prone, thy face upon the soothing earth, desiring sleep; and four hours shalt thou look within thine own breast, thinking of thy sin; four hours also shalt thou go through the valley, calling out that thou art lost, and praying the Scarlet Hunter to bring thee home. Afterwards thou shalt sleep, and thou shalt comfort thyself with food when thou wilt. If the Scarlet Hunter comes not, and thy life faileth for misery, and none comprehending thy state offereth his life, that thy soul may be free once more--then thou shalt gladly die, and, yielding thine own body, shall purchase back thy soul; but this is not possible until thou hast dwelt here a year and a day."

Having read, the girl threw herself face forward on the ground, her body shaking with grief, and she cried out a man's name many times with great bitterness "Ambroise! Ambroise! Ambroise!"

A long time she lay prone, crying so; but at last arose and, folding back the curtain with hot hands, began her vigil for the redemption of a soul.

And while her sorrow grew, a father mourned for his daughter and called his God to witness that he was guiltless of her loss, though he had said hard words to her by reason of a man called Ambroise. Then, too, the preacher had exhorted her late and early till her mind was in a maze--it is enough to have the pangs of youth and love, to be awakened by the pain of mere growth and knowledge, without the counsel of the overwise to go jolting through the soul.

The girl was only eighteen. She had never known her mother, she had lived as the flowers do, and when her hour of trial came she felt herself cast like a wandering bird out of the nest. In her childhood she had known no preachers, no teaching, save the wholesome catechism of a father's love and the sacred intimacy of Nature. Living so, learning by signs the language of law and wisdom, she had indrawn the significance of legend, the power of the awful natural. She had made her own commandments.

When Ambroise the courier came, she had looked into his eyes and seen her own--indeed, it was most wonderful, for those two pairs of eyes were as those of one person. And each, as each looked, smiled--that smile which is the coming laughter of a heart at itself. Yet they were different--he a man, she a woman; he versed in evil, she taught in good; he a vagrant of the snows, the fruit of whose life was like the contemptible stones of the desert; she the keeper of a goodly lodge, past which flowed a water that went softly, making rich the land, the fountain of her perfect deeds. He, looking into her eyes, saw himself when he had no sin on his soul; and she into his--as it seemed, her own always--saw herself as it were in a cobweb of evils which she could not understand. As his heart grew lighter, hers grew sick, even when she knew that these were the only eyes in which she could ever see happiness.

It grew upon her that Ambroise's sins were hers and not his; that she, not he, had bartered a soul for the wages of sin. When they said at the Fort that her eyes and Ambroise's, and her face and his, were as of one piece, the pain of the thought deepened, and other pains came likewise, for her father and the preacher urged that a man who had sold himself to the devil was no comrade for her in little or much. Yet she loved him as only they can who love for the first time, and with the deep primitive emotions which are out of the core of nature. But her heart had been cloven as by a wedge, and she would not, and could not, lie in his arms, nor rest her cheek to his, nor seek that haven where true love is fastened like a nail on the wall of that inn called home. He was herself, he must be brought back; and so, one night, while yet the winter was on, she stole away out of the Fort, pausing at his door a moment only, laying her hand upon it as one might tenderly lay it on the brow of a sick sleeper. Then she stepped away out on the plains, pointing her course by the moon, for the Mount of Lost Winters and the Tent of the Purple Mat.

When the people of the Fort waked, and it was found that she was gone, search parties sallied out, but returned as they went after many days. And at last, because Ambroise suffered as one ground between rolling stones, even the preacher and the father of the girl relented towards him. After some weeks there came word through a wandering tribe that the body of a girl had been found on the Child o' Sin River, and black pelts were hung as mourning on the lodges and houses and walls of the Fort, and the father shut himself in his room, admitting no one. Still, they mourned without great cause.

But, if the girl had taken the sins of Ambroise with her, she had left him beside that soft flowing river of her goodness; and the savour of the herbs on its banks was to him like the sun on a patch of pennyroyal, bringing medicine to the sick body through the nostrils. So one morning, after many months, having crept from the covert of remorse, he took a guide to start him in the right trail, and began his journey to the Valley, whither she had gone before him, though he knew it not. From the moment that his guide left him dangers beset him, and those spirits called the Mockers, which are the evil deeds of a man crying to Heaven, came crying about him from the dead white trees, breathing through the powdery air, whistling down the moonlight; so that to cheer him he called out again and again, like any heathen:

"Keeper, O Keeper of the Kimash Hills! I am as a dog in the North Sea, I am as a bat in a cave, As a lizard am I on a prison wall, As a tent with no pole, As a bird with one wing; I am as a seal in the desert, I am as a wild horse alone. O Scarlet Hunter of the Kimash Hills! Thou hast an arm like a shooting star, Thou hast an eye like the North Sky fires, Thou hast a pouch for the hungry, Thou hast a tent for the lost: Hear me, O Keeper of the Kimash Hills!"

And whether or not this availed him, who can tell? There be many names of the One Thing, and the human soul hath the same north and south, if there be any north and south and east and west, save in the words of men. But something availed; and one day a footworn traveller, entering the Valley at the southmost corner, laid his cap and bag, moccasins, bow and arrow, and an iron weapon away in a hollow log, seeing not that there were also another bag and cap, and a pair of moccasins there. Then, barefooted and bareheaded, he marched slowly up the Valley, and all its loveliness smote him as a red iron is buffeted at the forge; and an exquisite agony coursed through his veins, so that he cried out, hiding his face. And yet he needs must look and look, all his sight aching with this perfection, never overpowering him, but keeping him ever in the relish of his torture.

At last he came to the door of the Tent in the late evening, and, intent not only to buy back the soul he had marketed--for the sake of the memory of the woman, and believing that none would die for him and that he must die for himself--he lifted the curtain and entered. Then he gave a great cry, for there she lay asleep, face downward, her forehead on the Purple Mat.

"Sherah! Sherah!" he cried, dropping on his knees beside her and lifting up her head.

"Ambroise!" she called out faintly, her pale face drawing away from his breast.

"Sherah, why didst thou come here?" he said. "Thou! thou!"

"To buy back my soul, Ambroise. And this is the last day of the year that I have spent here. Oh, why, why didst thou come? To-morrow all should have been well!"

"To buy back thy soul--thou didst no wrong!" But at that moment their eyes drew close, and changed, and he understood.

"For me--for me!" he whispered.

"Nay, for me!" she replied.

Then they noticed that the Purple Mat on which they knelt was red under their knees, and a goodly light shone through the Tent, not of the day or night. And as they looked amazed, the curtain of the Tent drew open, and one entered, clothed in red from head to foot; and they knew him to be the Scarlet Hunter, the lover of the lost, the Keeper of the Kimash Hills.

Looking at them steadfastly he said to Sherah: "Thou has prevailed. To-night, at the setting of the sun, an old man died in Syria who uttered thy name as in a dream when he passed. The soul of Ambroise hath been bought back by thee."

Then he spoke to Ambroise. "Because thy spirit was willing, and for the woman's sake thou shalt have peace; but this year which she has spent for thee shall be taken from thy life, and added to hers. Come, and I will start ye on the swift trail to your own country, and ye shall come here no more."

As they rose, obeying him, they saw that the red of the Mat had gone a perfect white, and they knew not what to think, for they had acted after the manner of the heathen; but that night, as they travelled with joy towards that Inn called Home, down at the Fort, a preacher with rude noise cried to those who would hear him: "Though your sins be as scarlet they shall become whiter than snow."

THERE WAS A LITTLE CITY

It lay between the mountains and the sea, and a river ran down past it, carrying its good and ill news to a pacific shore, and out upon soft winds, travelling lazily to the scarlet east. All white and a tempered red, it nestled in a valley with other valleys on lower steppes, which seemed as if built by the gods, that they might travel easily from the white-topped mountains, Margath, Shaknon, and the rest, to wash their feet in the sea. In the summer a hot but gracious mistiness softened the green of the valleys, the varying colours of the hills, the blue of the river, the sharp outlines of the cliffs. Along the high shelf of the mountain, muletrains travelled like a procession seen in dreams--slow, hazy, graven yet moving, a part of the ancient hills themselves; upon the river great rafts, manned by scarlet-vested crews, swerved and swam, guided by the gigantic oars which needed five men to lift and swayargonauts they from the sweet-smelling forests to the salt-smelling main. In winter the little city lay still under a coverlet of pure white, with the mists from the river and the great falls above frozen upon the trees, clothing them as graciously as with white samite; so that far as eye could see there was a heavenly purity upon all, covering every mean and distorted thing. There were days when no wind stirred anywhere, and the gorgeous sun made the little city and all the land round about a pretty silver kingdom, where Oberon and his courtiers might have danced and been glad. Often, too, you could hear a distant wood-cutter's axe make a pleasant song in the air, and the wood-cutter himself, as the hickory and steel swung in a shining half-circle to the bole of balsam, was clad in the bright livery of frost, his breath issuing in grey smoke like life itself, mystic and peculiar, man, axe, tree, and breath one common being. And when, by-and-by, the woodcutter added a song of his own to the song his axe made, the illusion was not lost, but rather heightened; for it, too, was part of the unassuming pride of nature, childlike in its simplicity, primeval in its suggestion and expression. The song had a soft monotony, swinging backwards and forwards to the waving axe like the pendulum of a clock. It began with a low humming, as one could think man made before he heard the Voice which taught him how to speak. And then came the words:

"None shall stand in the way of the lord, The lord of the Earth--of the rivers and trees, Of the cattle and fields and vines! Hew! Here shall I build me my cedar home, A city with gates, a road to the sea For I am the lord of the Earth! Hew! Hew! Hew and hew, and the sap of the tree Shall be yours, and your bones shall be strong, Shall be yours, and your heart shall rejoice, Shall be yours, and the city be yours, And the key of its gates be the key Of the home where your little ones dwell. Hew and be strong! Hew and rejoice! For man is the lord of the Earth, And God is the Lord over all!"

And so long as the little city stands will this same wood-cutter's name and history stand also. He had camped where it stood now, when nothing was there save the wild duck in the reeds, the antelopes upon the hills, and all manner of furred and feathered things; and it all was his. He had seen the yellow flashes of gold in the stream called Pipi, and he had not gathered it, for his life was simple, and he was young enough to cherish in his heart the love of the open world, beyond the desire of cities and the stir of the market-place. In those days there was not a line in his face, not an angle in his body--all smoothly rounded and lithe and alert, like him that was called "the young lion of Dedan." Day by day he drank in the wisdom of the hills and the valleys, and he wrote upon the dried barks of trees the thoughts that came as he lay upon the bearskin in his tent, or cooled his hands and feet, of a hot summer day, in the moist sandy earth, and watched the master of the deer lead his cohorts down the passes of the hills.

But by-and-by mule-trains began to crawl along the ledges of Margath Mountain, and over Shaknon came adventurers, and after them, wandering men seeking a new home, women and children coming also. But when these came he had passed the spring-time of his years, and had grown fixed in the love of the valley, where his sole visitors had been passing tribes of Indians, who knew his moods and trespassed not at all on his domain. The adventurers hungered for the gold in the rivers, and they made it one long washing-trough, where the disease that afflicted them passed on from man to man like poison down a sewer. Then the little city grew, and with the search for gold came other seekings and findings and toilings, and men who came as one stops at an inn to feed, stayed to make their home, and women made the valley cheerful, and children were born, and the pride of the place was as great as that of some village of the crimson East, where every man has ancestors to Mahomet and beyond.

And he, Felion, who had been lord and master of the valley, worked with them, but did not seek for riches, and more often drew away into the hills to find some newer place unspoiled by man. But again and again he returned; for no fire is like the old fire, and no trail like the old trail. And at last it seemed as if he had driven his tent-peg in the Long Valley for ever; for, from among the women who came, he chose one comely and wise and kind, and for five years the world grew older, and Felion did not know it. When he danced his little daughter on his knee, he felt that he had found a new world.

But? a day came when trouble fell upon the little city, for of a sudden the reef of gold was lost, and the great crushing-mills stood idle, and the sound of the hammers was stayed. And they came to Felion, because in his youth he had been of the best of the schoolmen; and he got up from his misery--only the day before his wife had taken a great and lonely journey to that Country which welcomes, but never yields again--and leaving his little child behind, he went down to the mines. And in three days they found the reef once more; for it had curved like the hook of a sickle, and the first arc of the yellow circle had dropped down into the bowels of the earth.

And so he saved the little city from disaster, and the people blessed him at the moment; and the years went on.

Then there came a time when the little city was threatened with a woeful flood, because of a breaking flume; but by a simple and wise device Felion stayed the danger.

And again the people blessed him; and the years went on.

By-and-by an awful peril came, for two-score children had set a great raft loose upon the river, and they drifted down towards the rapids in the sight of the people; and mothers and helpless fathers wrung their hands, for on the swift tide no boat could reach them, and none could intercept the raft. But Felion, seeing, ran out upon the girders of a bridge that was being builded, and there, before them all, as the raft passed under, he let himself fall, breaking his leg as he dropped among the timbers of the fore-part of the raft; for the children were all gathered at the back, where the great oars lay motionless, one dragging in the water behind. Felion drew himself over to the huge oar, and with the strength of five men, while the people watched and prayed, he kept the raft straight for the great slide, else it had gone over the dam and been lost, and all that were thereon. A mile below, the raft was brought to shore, and again the people said that Felion had saved the little city from disaster.

And they blessed him for the moment; and the years went on.

Felion's daughter grew towards womanhood, and her beauty was great, and she was welcome everywhere in the valley, the people speaking well of her for her own sake. But at last a time came when of the men of the valley one called, and Felion's daughter came quickly to him, and with tears for her father and smiles for her husband, she left the valley and journeyed into the east, having sworn to love and cherish him while she lived. And her father, left solitary, mourned for her, and drew away into a hill above the valley in a cedar house that he built; and having little else to love, loved the earth, and sky, and animals, and the children from the little city when they came his way. But his heart was sore; for by-and- by no letters came from his daughter, and the little city, having prospered, concerned it self no more with him. When he came into its streets there were those who laughed, for he was very tall and rude, and his grey hair hung loose on his shoulders, and his dress was still a hunter's. They had not long remembered the time when a grievous disease, like a plague, fell upon the place, and people died by scores, as sheep fall in a murrain. And again they had turned to him, and he, because he knew of a miraculous medicine got from Indian sachems, whose people had suffered of this sickness, came into the little city, and by his medicines and fearless love and kindness stayed the plague.

And thus once more he saved the little city from disaster, and they blessed him for the moment; and the years went on.

In time they ceased to think of Felion at all, and he was left alone; even the children came no more to visit him; and he had pleasure only in hunting and shooting and in felling trees, with which he built a high stockade and a fine cedar house within it. And all the work of this he did with his own hands, even to the polishing of the floors and the carved work of the large fireplaces. Yet he never lived in the house, nor in any room of it, and the stockade gate was always shut; and when any people passed that way they stared and shrugged their shoulders, and thought Felion mad or a fool. But he was wise in his own way, which was not the way of those who had reason to bless him for ever, and who forgot him, though he had served them through so many years. Against the little city he had an exceeding bitterness; and this grew, and had it not been that his heart was kept young by the love of the earth, and the beasts about him in the hills, he must needs have cursed the place and died. But the sight of a bird in the nest with her young, and the smell of a lair, and the light of the dawn that came out of the east, and the winds that came up from the sea, and the hope that would not die kept him from being of those who love not life for life's sake, be it in ease or in sorrow. He was of those who find all worth the doing, even all worth the suffering; and so, though he frowned and his lips drew tight with anger when he looked down at the little city, he felt that elsewhere in the world there was that which made it worth the saving.

If his daughter had been with him he would have laughed at that which his own hands had founded, protected, and saved. But no word came from her, and laughter was never on his lips--only an occasional smile when, perhaps, he saw two sparrows fighting, or watched the fish chase each other in the river, or a toad, too lazy to jump, walk stupidly like a convict, dragging his long, green legs behind him. And when Felion looked up towards Shaknon and Margath, a light came in his eyes, for they were wise and quiet, and watched the world, and something of their grandeur drew about him like a cloak. As age cut deep lines in his face and gave angles to his figure, a strange, settled dignity grew upon him, whether he swung his axe by the balsams or dressed the skins of the animals he had killed, piling up the pelts in a long shed in the stockade, a goodly heritage for his daughter, if she ever came back. Every day at sunrise he walked to the door of his house and looked eastward steadily, and sometimes there broke from his lips the words: "My daughter-Carille!" Again, he would sit and brood with his chin in his hand, and smile, as though remembering pleasant things.

One day at last, in the full tide of summer, a man, haggard and troubled, came to Felion's house, and knocked, and, getting no reply, waited; and whenever he looked down at the little city he wrung his hands, and more than once he put them up to his face and shuddered, and again looked for Felion. Just when the dusk was rolling down, Felion came back, and, seeing the man, would have passed him without a word, but that the man stopped with an eager, sorrowful gesture and said: "The plague has come upon us again, and the people, remembering how you healed them long ago, beg you to come."

At that Felion leaned his fishing-rod against the door and answered:

"What people?"

The other then replied: "The people of the little city below, Felion."

"I do not know your name," was the reply; "I know naught of you or of your city."

"Are you mad?" cried the man. "Do you forget the little city down there? Have you no heart?"

A strange smile passed over Felion's face, and he answered: "When one forgets, why should the other remember?"

He turned and went into the house and shut the door, and though the man knocked, the door was no opened, and he went back angry and miserable; and the people could not believe that Felion would no come to help them, as he had done all his life. A dawn three others came, and they found Felion looking out towards the east, his lips moving as though he prayed. Yet it was no prayer, only a call, that was on his lips. They felt a sort of awe in his presence, for now he seemed as if he had lived more than a century, so wise and old was the look of his face, so white his hair, so set and distant his dignity. They begged him to come, and, bringing his medicines, save the people, for death was galloping through the town, knocking at many doors.

"One came to heal you," he answered--"the young man of the schools, who wrote mystic letters after his name; it swings on a brass by his door- where is he?"

"He is dead of the plague," they replied, "and the other also that came with him, who fled before the sickness, fell dead of it on the roadside, going to the sea."

"Why should I go?" he replied, and he turned threateningly to his weapon, as if in menace of their presence.

"You have no one to leave behind," they answered eagerly, "and you are old."

"Liars," he rejoined, "let the little city save itself!" and he wheeled and went into his house, and they saw that they had erred in not remembering his daughter, whose presence they had once prized. They saw that they had angered him beyond soothing; and they went back in grief, for two of them had lost dear relatives by the fell sickness. When they told what had happened, the people said: "We will send the women; he will listen to them--he had a daughter."

That afternoon, when all the hills lay still and dead, and nowhere did bird or breeze stir, the women came, and they found him seated with his back turned to the town. He was looking into the deep woods, into the hot shadows of the trees.

"We have come to bring you to the little city," they said to him; "the sick grow in numbers every hour."

"It is safe in the hills," he answered, not looking at them. "Why do the people stay in the valley?"

"Every man has a friend, or a wife, or a child, ill or dying, and every woman has a husband, or a child, or a friend, or a brother. Cowards have fled, and many of them have fallen by the way."

"Last summer I lay sick here many weeks and none came near me--why should I go to the little city?" he demanded austerely. "Four times I saved it, and of all that I saved none came to give me water to drink, or food to eat, and I lay burning with fever, and thirsty and hungry--God of heaven, how thirsty!"

"We did not know," they answered humbly; "you came to us so seldom, we had forgotten; we were fools."

"I came and went fifty years," he answered bitterly, "and I have forgotten how to rid the little city of the plague!"

At that one of the women, mad with anger, made as if to catch him by his beard, but she forbore, and said: "Liar--the men shall hang you to your own rooftree!"

His eyes had a wild light, but he waved his hand quietly, and answered: "Begone, and learn how great a sin is ingratitude."

He turned away from them gloomily, and would have entered his home, but one of the women, who was young, plucked his sleeve, and said sorrowfully: "I loved Carille, your daughter."

"And forgot her and her father. I am three-score and ten years, and she has been gone fifteen, and for the first time I see your face," was his scornful reply.

She was tempted to say: "I was ever bearing children and nursing them, and the hills were hard to climb, and my husband would not go;" but she saw how dark his look was, and she hid her face in her hands and turned away to follow after the others. She had five little children, and her heart was anxious for them and her eyes full of tears.

Anger and remorse seized on the little city, and there were those who would have killed Felion, but others saw that the old man had been sorely wronged in the past, and these said: "Wait until the morrow and we will devise something."

That night a mule-train crept slowly down the mountain side and entered the little city, for no one who came with them knew of the plague. The caravan had come from the east across the great plains, and not from the west, which was the travelled highway to the sea. Among them was a woman who already was ill of a fever, and knew naught of what passed round her. She had with her a beautiful child; and one of the women of the place devised a thing. "This woman," she said, "does not belong to the little city, and he can have nothing against her; she is a stranger. Let one of us take this beautiful lad to him, and he shall ask Felion to come and save his mother."

Every one approved the woman's wisdom, and in the early morning she herself, with another, took the child and went up the long hillside in the heavy heat; and when they came near Felion's house the women stayed behind, and the child went forward, having been taught what to say to the old man.

Felion sat just within his doorway, looking out into the sunlight which fell upon the red and white walls of the little city, flanked by young orchards, with great, oozy meadows beyond these, where cattle ate, knee- deep in the lush grass and cool reed-beds. Along the riverside, far up on the high banks, were the tall couches of dead Indians, set on poles, their useless weapons laid along the deerskin pall. Down the hurrying river there passed a raft, bearing a black flag on a pole, and on it were women and children who were being taken down to the sea from the doomed city. These were they who had lost fathers and brothers; and now were going out alone with the shadow of the plague over them, for there was none to say them nay. The tall oarsmen bent to their task, and Felion felt his blood beat faster when he saw the huge oars swing high, then drop and bend in the water, as the raft swung straight in its course and passed on safe through the narrow slide into the white rapids below, which licked the long timbers as with white tongues, and tossed spray upon the sad voyagers. Felion remembered the day when he left his own child behind and sprang from the bridge to the raft whereon were the children of the little city, and saved them.

And when he tried to be angry now, the thought of the children as they watched him, with his broken leg striving against their peril, softened his heart. He shook his head, for suddenly there came to him the memory of a time, three-score years before, when he and the foundryman's daughter had gone hunting flag-flowers by the little trout stream; of the songs they sang together at the festivals, she in her sweet Quaker garb and demure Quaker beauty, he lithe, alert, and full of the joy of life and loving. As he sat so, thinking, he wondered where she was, and why he should be thinking of her now, facing the dreary sorrow of this pestilence and his own anger and vengeance. He nodded softly to the waving trees far down in the valley, for his thoughts had drifted on to his wife as he first saw her. She was standing bare-armed among the grape-vines by a wall of rock, the dew of rich life on her lip and forehead, her grey eyes swimming with a soft light; and looking at her he had loved her at once, as he had loved, on the instant, the little child that came to him later; as he had loved the girl into which the child grew, till she left him and came back no more. Why had he never gone in search of her?

He got to his feet involuntarily and stepped towards the door, looking down into the valley. As his eyes rested on the little city his face grew dark, but his eyes were troubled and presently grew bewildered, for out of a green covert near there stepped a pretty boy, who came to him with frank, unabashed face and a half-shy smile.

Felion did not speak at first, but stood looking, and presently the child said: "I have come to fetch you."

"To fetch me where, little man?" asked Felion, a light coming into his face, his heart beating faster.

"To my mother. She is sick."

"Where is your mother?"

"She's in the village down there," answered the boy, pointing.

In spite of himself, Felion smiled in a sour sort of way, for the boy had called the place a village, and he relished the unconscious irony.

"What is the matter with her?" asked Felion, beckoning the lad inside.

The lad came and stood in the doorway, gazing round curiously, while the old man sat down and looked at him, moved, he knew not why.

The bright steel of Felion's axe, standing in the corner, caught the lad's eye and held it. Felion saw, and said: "What are you thinking of?"

The lad answered: "Of the axe. When I'm bigger I will cut down trees and build a house, a bridge, and a city. Aren't you coming quick to help my mother? She will die if you don't come."

Felion did not answer, and from the trees without two women watched him anxiously.

"Why should I come?" asked Felion curiously. "Because she's sick, and she's my mother."

"Why should I do it because she's your mother?"

"I don't know," the lad answered, and his brow knitted in the attempt to think it out, "but I like you." He came and stood beside the old man and looked into his face with a pleasant confidence. "If your mother was sick, and I could heal her, I would--I know I would--I wouldn't be afraid to go down into the village."

Here were rebuke, love, and impeachment, all in one, and the old man half started from his seat.

"Did you think I was afraid?" he asked of the boy, as simply as might a child of a child, so near are children and wise men in their thoughts.

"I knew if you didn't it'd be because you were angry or were afraid, and you didn't look angry."

"How does one look when one is angry?"

"Like my father."

"And how does your father look?"

"My father's dead."

"Did he die of the plague?" asked Felion, laying his hand on the lad's shoulder.

"No," said the lad quickly, and shut his lips tight.

"Won't you tell me?" asked Felion, with a strange inquisitiveness.

"No. Mother'll tell you, but I won't." The lad's eyes filled with tears.

"Poor boy--poor boy!" said Felion, and his hand tightened on the small shoulder.

"Don't be sorry for me; be sorry for mother, please," said the boy, and he laid a hand on the old man's knee, and that touch went to a heart long closed against the little city below; and Felion rose and said: "I will go with you to your mother."

Then he went into another room, and the boy came near the axe and ran his fingers along the bright steel, and fondled the handle, as does a hunter the tried weapon which has been his through many seasons. When the old man came back he said to the boy: "Why do you look at the axe?"

"I don't know," was the answer; "maybe because my mother used to sing a song about the wood-cutters." Without a word, and thinking much, he stepped out into the path leading to the little city, the lad holding one hand. Years afterwards men spoke with a sort of awe or reverence of seeing the beautiful stranger lad leading old Felion into the plague- stricken place, and how, as they passed, women threw themselves at Felion's feet, begging him to save their loved ones. And a drunkard cast his arm round the old man's shoulder and sputtered foolish pleadings in his ear; but Felion only waved them back gently, and said: "By-and-by, by-and-by--God help us all!"

Now a fevered hand snatched at him from a doorway, moanings came from everywhere, and more than once he almost stumbled over a dead body; others he saw being carried away to the graveyard for hasty burial. Few were the mourners that followed, and the faces of those who watched the processions go by were set and drawn. The sunlight and the green trees seemed an insult to the dead.

They passed into the house where the sick woman lay, and some met him at the door with faces of joy and meaning; for now they knew the woman and would have spoken to him of her; but he waved them off, and put his fingers upon his lips and went where a fire burned in a kitchen, and brewed his medicines. And the child entered the room where his mother lay, and presently he came to the kitchen and said: "She is asleep--my mother."

The old man looked down on him a moment steadily, and a look of bewilderment came into his face. But he turned away again to the simmering pots. The boy went to the window and, leaning upon the sill, began to hum softly a sort of chant, while he watched a lizard running hither and thither in the sun. As he hummed, the old man listened, and presently, with his medicines in his hands and a half- startled look, he came over to the lad.

"What are you humming?" he asked.

The lad answered: "A song of the wood-cutters."

"Sing it again," said Felion.

The lad began to sing:

"Here shall I build me my cedar house, A city with gates, a road to the sea-- For I am the lord of the Earth! Hew! Hew!"

The old man stopped him. "What is your name?" "My name is Felion," answered the lad; and he put his face close to the jug that held the steaming tinctures: but the old man caught the little chin in his huge hand and bent back the head, looking long into the lad's eyes. At last he caught little Felion's hand and hurried into the other room, where the woman lay in a stupor. The old man came quickly to her and looked into her face. Seeing, he gave a broken cry and said:

"Carille, my daughter! Carille!"

He drew her to his breast, and as he did so he groaned aloud, for he knew that inevitable Death was waiting for her at the door. He straightened himself up, clasped the child to his breast, and said: "I, too, am Felion, my little son."

And then he set about to defeat that dark, hovering Figure at the door.

For three long hours he sat beside her, giving her little by little his potent medicines; and now and again he stopped his mouth with his hand, lest he should cry out; and his eyes never wavered from her face, not even to the boy, who lay asleep in the corner.

At last his look relaxed its vigilance, for a dewy look passed over the woman's face, and she opened her eyes and saw him, and gave a little cry of "Father!" and was straightway lost in his arms.

"I have come home to die," she said.

"No, no, to live!" he answered firmly. "Why did you not send me word all these long years?"

"My husband was in shame, in prison, and I in sorrow," she answered sadly. "I could not."

"He did evil? He is--" he paused.

"He is dead," she said. "It is better so." Her eyes wandered round the room restlessly, and then fixed upon the sleeping child, and a smile passed over her face. She pointed to the lad.

The old man nodded. "He brought me here," he said gently. Then he got to his feet. "You must sleep now," he added, and he gave her a cordial. "I must go forth and save the sick."

"Is it a plague?" she asked.

He nodded. "They said you would not come to save them," she continued reproachfully. "You came to me because I was your Carille, only for that?"

"No, no," he answered; "I knew not who you were. I came to save a mother to her child."

"Thank God!" she said.

With a happy smile she hid her face in the pillow. At last, leaving her and the child asleep, old Felion went forth into the little city, and the people flocked to him, and for many days he came and went ceaselessly.

And once more he saved the city, and the people blessed him: and the years go on.

THE FORGE IN THE VALLEY

He lay where he could see her working at the forge. As she worked she sang:

"When God was making the world, (Swift is the wind and white is the fire) The feet of his people danced the stars; There was laughter and swinging bells,

And clanging iron and breaking breath, The hammers of heaven making the hills, The vales on the anvil of God. (Wild is the fire and low is the wind.)"

His eyes were shining, and his face had a pale radiance from the reflected light, though he lay in the shadow where he could watch her, while she could not see him. Now her hand was upon the bellows, and the low, white fire seethed hungrily up, and set its teeth upon the iron she held; now it turned the iron about upon the anvil, and the sparks showered about her very softly and strangely. There was a cheerful gravity in her motions, a high, fine look in her face.

They two lived alone in the solitudes of Megalon Valley.

It was night now, and the pleasant gloom of the valley was not broken by any sound save the hum of the stream near by, and the song, and the ringing anvil. But into the workshop came the moist, fragrant smell of the acacia and the maple, and a long brown lizard stretched its neck sleepily across the threshold of the door opening into the valley.

The song went on:

"When God had finished the world (Bright was the fire and sweet was the wind) Up from the valleys came song, To answer the morning stars, And the hand of man on the anvil rang; His breath was big in his breast, his life Beat strong on the walls of the world. (Glad is the wind and tall is the fire.)"

He put his hands to his eyes, and took them away again, as though to make sure that the song was not a dream. Wonder grew upon his thin, bearded face, he ran his fingers through his thick hair in a dazed way. Then he lay and looked, and a rich warm flush crept over his cheek, and stayed there.

There was a great gap in his memory.

The evening wore on. Once or twice the woman turned towards the room where the man lay, and listened--she could not see his face from where she stood. At such times he lay still, though his heart beat quickly, like that of an expectant child. His lips opened to speak, but still they remained silent. As yet he was like a returned traveller who does not quickly recognise old familiar things, and who is struggling with vague suggestions and forgotten events. As time went on, the woman turned towards the doorway oftener, and shifted her position so that she faced it, and the sparks, flying up, lighted her face with a wonderful irregular brightness.

"Samantha," he said at last, and his voice sounded so strange to him that the word quivered timidly towards her.

She paused upon a stroke, and some new note in his voice sent so sudden a thrill to her heart that she caught her breath with a painful kind of joy. The hammer dropped upon the anvil, and, in a moment, she stood in the doorway of his room.

"Francis, Francis," she responded in a low whisper. He started up from his couch of skins. "Samantha, my wife!" he cried, in a strong proud voice.

She dropped beside him and caught his head, like a mother, to her shoulder, and set her warm lips on his forehead and hair with a kind of hunger; and then he drew her face down and kissed her on the lips. Tears hung at her eyes, and presently dropped on her cheeks, a sob shook her, and then she was still, her hands grasping his shoulders.

"Have I been ill?" he asked.

"You have been very ill, Francis."

"Has it been long?"

Her fingers passed tenderly through his grizzled hair. "Too long, too long, my husband," she replied.

"Is it summer now?"

"Yes, Francis, it is summer."

"Was it in the spring, Samantha?--Yes, I think it was in the spring," he added, musing.

"It was in a spring."

"There was snow still on the mountain-top, the river was running high, and wild fowl were gathered on the island in the lake--yes, I remember, I think."

"And the men were working at the mine," she whispered, her voice shaking a little, and her eyes eagerly questioning his face.

"Ah, the mine--it was the mine, Samantha!" he said abruptly, his eyes flashing up. "I was working at the forge to make a great bolt for the machinery, and some one forgot and set the engine in motion. I ran out; but it was too late . . . and then . . ."

"And then you tried to save them, Francis, and you were hurt."

"What month is this, my wife?"

"It is December."

"And that was in October?"

"Yes, in October."

"I have been ill since? What happened?"

"Many were killed, Francis, and you and I came away."

"Where are we now? I do not know the place."

"This is Megalon Valley. You and I live alone here."

"Why did you bring me here?"

"I did not bring you, Francis; you wished me to come. One day you said to me: 'There is a place in Megalon Valley where, long ago, an old man lived, who had become a stranger among men--a place where the blackbird stays, and the wolf-dog troops and hides, and the damson grows as thick as blossoms on the acacia. We will go there.' And I came with you."

"I do not remember. What of the mine? Was I a coward and left the mine? There was no one understood the ways of the wheel, and rod, and steam, save me.

"The mine is closed, Francis," she answered gently. "You were no coward, but--but you had strange fancies.

"When did the mine close?" he said, with a kind of sorrow; "I put hard work and good years into it." At that moment, when her face drew close to his, the vision of her as she stood at the anvil came to him with a new impression, and he said again in a half-frightened way: "When did it close, Samantha?"

"The mine was closed--twelve years ago, my own dear husband."

He got to his feet and clasped her to his breast. A strength came to him which had eluded him twelve years, and she, womanlike, delighted in that strength, and, with a great gladness, changed eyes and hands with him; keeping her soul still her own, brooding and lofty, as is the soul of every true woman, though, like this one, she labours at a forge, and in a far, untenanted country is faithful friend, ceaseless apothecary to a comrade with a disordered mind; living on savage meats, clothing herself and the other in skins, and, with a divine persistence, keeping a cheerful heart, certain that the intelligence which was frightened from its home would come back one day. It should be hers to watch for the great moment, and give the wanderer loving welcome, lest it should hurry madly away again into the desert, never to return.

She had her reward, yet she wept. She had carried herself before him with the bright ways of an unvexed girl these twelve years past; she had earned the salt of her tears. He was dazed still, but, the doublet of his mind no longer unbraced, he understood what she had been to him, and how she had tended him in absolute loneliness, her companions the wild things of the valley--these and God.

He drew her into the workshop, and put his hand upon the bellows and churned them, so that the fire roared joyously up, and the place was red with the light. In this light he turned her to him and looked at her. The look was as that of one who had come back from the dead--that naked, profound, unconditional gaze which is as deep and honest as the primeval sense. His eyes fell upon her rich, firm, stately body; it lingered for a moment on the brown fulness of her hair; then her look was gathered to his, and they fell into each other's arms.

For long they sat in the solemn silence of their joy, and so awed were they by the thing which had come to them that they felt no surprise when a wolf-dog crawled over the lizard on the threshold, and stole along the wall with shining, bloody eyes to an inner room, and stayed there munching meat to surfeit and drowsiness, and at last crept out and lay beside the forge in a thick sleep. These two had lived so much with the untamed things of nature, the bellows and the fire had been so long there, and the clang of the anvil was so familiar, that there was a kinship among them, man and beast, with the woman as ruler.

"Tell me, Samantha," he said at last, "what has happened during these twelve years, all from the first. Keep nothing back. I am strong now." He looked around the workshop, then, suddenly, at her, with a strange pain, and they both turned their heads away for an instant, for the same thought was on them. Then, presently, she spoke, and answered his shy, sorrowful thought before all else. "The child is gone," she softly said.

He sat still, but a sob was in his throat. He looked at her with a kind of fear. He wondered if his madness had cost the life of the child. She understood. "Did I ever see the child?" he asked.

"Oh yes, I sometimes thought that through the babe you would be yourself again. When you were near her you never ceased to look at her and fondle her, as I thought very timidly; and you would start sometimes and gaze at me with the old wise look hovering at your eyes. But the look did not stay. The child was fond of you, but she faded and pined, and one day as you nursed her you came to me and said: 'See, beloved, the little one will not wake. She pulled at my beard and said, "Daddy," and fell asleep.' And I took her from your arms. . . . There is a chestnut tree near the door of our cottage at the mine. One night you and I buried her there; but you do not remember her, do you?"

"My child, my child!" he said, looking out into the night; and he lifted up his arms and looked at them. "I held her here, and still I never held her; I fondled her, and yet I never fondled her; I buried her, yet-- to me--she never was born."

"You have been far away, Francis; you have come back home. I waited, and prayed, and worked with you, and was patient. . . . It is very strange," she continued. "In all these twelve years you cannot remember our past, though you remembered about this place--the one thing, as if God had made it so--and now you cannot remember those twelve years."

"Tell me now of the twelve years," he urged.

"It was the same from day to day. When we came from the mountain, we brought with us the implements of the forge upon a horse. Now and again as we travelled we cut our way through the heavy woods. You were changed for the better then; a dreadful trouble seemed to have gone from your face. There was a strong kind of peace in the valley, and there were so many birds and animals, and the smell of the trees was so fine, that we were not lonely, neither you nor I."

She paused, thinking, her eyes looking out to where the Evening Star was sailing slowly out of the wooded horizon, his look on her. In the pause the wolf-dog raised its big, sleepy eyes at them, then plunged its head into its paws, its wildness undisturbed by their presence.

Presently the wife continued: "At last we reached here, and here we have lived, where no human being, save one, has ever been. We put up the forge, and in a little hill not far away we found coal for it. The days went on. It was always summer, though there came at times a sharp frost, and covered the ground with a coverlet of white. But the birds were always with us, and the beasts were our friends. I learned to love even the shrill cry of the reed hens, and the soft tap-tap of the wood-pecker is the sweetest music to my ear after the song of the anvil. How often have you and I stood here at the anvil, the fire heating the iron, and our hammers falling constantly! Oh, Francis, I knew that only here with God and His dumb creatures, and His wonderful healing world, all sun, and wind, and flowers, and blossoming trees, working as you used to work, as the first of men worked, would the sane wandering soul return to you. The thought was in you, too, for you led me here, and have been patient also in the awful exile of your mind."

"I have been as a child, and not as a man," he said gravely. "Shall I ever again be a man, as I once was, Samantha?"

"You cannot see yourself," she said. "A week ago you fell ill, and since then you have been pale and worn; but your body has been, and is, that of a great strong man. In the morning I will take you to a spring in the hills, and you shall see yourself, beloved."

He stood up, stretched himself, went to the door, and looked out into the valley flooded with moonlight. He drew in a great draught of air, and said: "The world--the great, wonderful world, where men live, and love work, and do strong things!"--he paused, and turned with a trouble in his face. "My wife," he said, "you have lived with a dead man twelve years, and I have lost twelve years in the world. I had a great thought once-- an invention--but now--" he hung his head bitterly. She came to him, and her hands slid up along his breast to his shoulders, and rested there; and she said, with a glad smile: "Francis, you have lost nothing. The thing--the invention--was all but finished when you fell ill a week ago. We have worked at it for these twelve years; through it, I think, you have been brought back to me. Come, there is a little work yet to, do upon it;" and she drew him to where a machine of iron lay in the corner. With a great cry he fell upon his knees beside it, and fondled it.

Then, presently, he rose, and caught his wife to his breast.

Together, a moment later, they stood beside the anvil. The wolf-dog fled out into the night from the shower of sparks, as, in the red light, the two sang to the clanging of the hammers:

"When God was making the world (Swift is the wind and white is the fire)"

THE RIGHT OF WAY

By Gilbert Parker

CONTENTS

Volume 1. I. THE WAY TO THE VERDICT II. WHAT CAME OF THE TRIAL III. AFTER FIVE YEARS IV. CHARLEY MAKES A DISCOVERY V. THE WOMAN IN HELIOTROPE VI. THE WIND AND THE SHORN LAMB VII. "PEACE, PEACE, AND THERE IS NO PEACE!" VIII. THE COST OF THE ORNAMENT

Volume 2. IX. OLD DEBTS FOR NEW X. THE WAY IN AND THE WAY OUT XI. THE RAISING OF THE CURTAIN XII. THE COMING OF ROSALIE XIII. HOW CHARLEY WENT ADVENTURING, AND WHAT HE FOUND XIV. ROSALIE, CHARLEY, AND THE MAN THE WIDOW PLOMONDON JILTED XV. THE MARK IN THE PAPER XVI. MADAME DAUPHIN HAS A MISSION XVII. THE TAILOR MAKES A MIDNIGHT FORAY XVIII. THE STEALING OF THE CROSS

Volume 3. XIX. THE SIGN FROM HEAVEN XX. THE RETURN OF THE TAILOR XXI. THE CURE HAS AN INSPIRATION XXII. THE WOMAN WHO SAW XXIII. THE WOMAN WHO DID NOT TELL XXIV. THE SEIGNEUR TAKES A HAND IN THE GAME XXV. THE COLONEL TELLS HIS STORY XXVI. A SONG, A BOTTLE, AND A GHOST XXVII. OUT ON THE OLD TRAIL XXVIII. THE SEIGNEUR GIVES A WARNING

Volume 4. XXIX. THE WILD RIDE XXX. ROSALIE WARNS CHARLEY XXXI. CHARLEY STANDS AT BAY XXXII. JO PORTUGAIS TELLS A STORY XXXIII. THE EDGE OF LIFE XXXIV. IN AMBUSH XXXV. THE COMING OF MAXIMILIAN COUR AND ANOTHER XXXVI. BARRIERS SWEPT AWAY XXXVII. THE CHALLENGE OF PAULETTE DUBOIS XXXVIII. THE CURE AND THE SEIGNEUR VISIT THE TAILOR XXXIX. THE SCARLET WOMAN XL. AS IT WAS IN THE BEGINNING

Volume 5. XLI. IT WAS MICHAELMAS DAY XLII. A TRIAL AND A VERDICT XLIII. JO PORTUGAIS TELLS A STORY XLIV. "WHO WAS KATHLEEN?" XLV. SIX MONTHS GO BY XLVI. THE FORGOTTEN MAN XLVII. ONE WAS TAKEN AND THE OTHER LEFT XLVIII. "WHERE THE TREE OF LIFE IS BLOOMING--" XLIX. THE OPEN GATE

Volume 6. L. THE PASSION PLAY AT CHAUDIERE LI. FACE TO FACE LII. THE COMING OF BILLY LIII. THE SEIGNEUR AND THE CURE HAVE A SUSPICION LIV. M. ROSSIGNOL SLIPS THE LEASH LV. ROSALIE PLAYS A PART LVI. MRS. FLYNN SPEAKS LVII. A BURNING FIERY FURNACE LVIII. WITH HIS BACK TO THE WALL LIX. IN WHICH CHARLEY MEETS A STRANGER LX. THE HAND AT THE DOOR LXI. THE CURE SPEAKS

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Introduction

In a book called 'The House of Harper', published in this year, 1912, there are two letters of mine, concerning 'The Right of Way', written to Henry M. Alden, editor of Harper's Magazine. To my mind those letters should never have been published. They were purely personal. They were intended for one man's eyes only, and he was not merely an editor but a beloved and admired personal friend. Only to him and to W. E. Henley, as editors, could I ever have emptied out my heart and brain; and, as may be seen by these two letters, one written from London and the other from a place near Southampton, I uncovered all my feelings, my hopes and my ambitions concerning The Right of Way. Had I been asked permission to publish them I should not have granted it. I may wear my heart upon my sleeve for my friend, but not for the universe.

The most scathing thing ever said in literature was said by Robert Buchanan on Dante Gabriel Rossetti's verses--"He has wheeled his nuptial bed into the street." Looking at these letters I have a great shrinking, for they were meant only for the eyes of an aged man for whom I cared enough to let him see behind the curtain. But since they have been printed, and without a "by your leave," I will use one or two passages in them to show in what mood, under what pressure of impulse, under what mental and, maybe, spiritual hypnotism it was written. I first planned it as a story of twenty-five thousand words, even as 'Valmond' was planned as a story of five thousand words, and 'A Ladder of Swords' as a story of twenty thousand words; but I had not written three chapters before I saw what the destiny of the tale was to be. I had gone to Quebec to start the thing in the atmosphere where Charley Steele belonged, and there it was borne in upon me that it must be a three- decker novel, not a novelette. I telegraphed to Harper & Brothers to ask them whether it would suit them just as well if I made it into a long novel. They telegraphed their assent at once; so I went on. At that time Mr. F. N. Doubleday was a sort of director of Harper's firm. To him I had told the tale in a railway train, and he had carried me off at once to Henry M. Alden, to whom I also told it, with the result that Harper's Magazine was wide open to it, and there in Quebec, soon after my interview with Mr. Alden and Mr. Doubleday, the book was begun.

The first of the letters published in The House of Harper, however, was apparently written immediately after my return to London when the novel was well on its way. Evidently the first paragraph of the letter was an apology for having suddenly announced the development of the book from a long short story to a long novel; for I used these words:

"Yet if you really take an interest in the working of the human mind in its relation to the vicissitudes of life, you will appreciate what I am going to tell you, and will recognise that there is only stability in evolution which the vulgar call chance. . . . Now, sir, perpend. Charley Steele is going to be a novel of one hundred thousand words or one hundred and twenty thousand--a real bang-up heartful of a novel."

Then there follows the confidence of a friend to a friend. As I look at the words I am not sorry that I wrote them. They were a part of me. They were the inveterate truth, but I would not willingly have uncovered my inner self to any except the man to whom the words were written. But here is what I wrote:

"I am a bit of a fool over this book. It catches me at every tender corner of my nature. It has aroused all the old ardent dreams of youth and springtime puissance. I cannot lay it down, and I cannot shorten it, for story, character, soul and reflection, imagination, observation are dragging me along after them. . . . This novel will make me or break me--prove me human and an artist, or an affected literary bore. If you want it you must take the risk. But, my dear Alden, you will be investing in a man's heart--which may be a fortune or a folly. Why, I ought to have seen--and far back in my brain I did see--that the character of Charley Steele was a type, an idiosyncrasy of modern life, a resultant of forces all round us, and that he would demand space in which to live and tell his story to the world. . . . And behold with what joy I follow him, not only lovingly but sternly and severely, noting him down as he really is, condoning naught, forgiving naught, but above all else, understanding him--his wilful mystification of the world, his shameless disdain of it, but the old law of interrogation, of sad yet eager inquiry and wonder and 'non possumus' with him to the end."

This letter was evidently written in December, 1899, and the other went to Mr. Alden on the 7th August, 1900; therefore, eight or nine months later. The work had gone well. Week after week, month after month it had unfolded itself with an almost unpardonable ease. Evidently, the very ease with which the book was written troubled me, because I find that in this letter of the 7th August, 1900, to Mr. Alden, I used these words:

"A kind of terror has seized me, and instead of sending a dozen more chapters to you as I proposed to do, I am setting to to break this love story anew under the stones of my most exacting criticism and troubled regard. I go to bury myself at a solitary little seaside place" (it was Mablethorpe in Lincolnshire), "there to live alone with Rosalie and Charley, and if I do not know them hereafter, never ask me to write for 'Harper's' again. . . . This book has been written out of something vital in me--I do not mean the religious part of it, I mean the humanity that becomes one's own and part of one's self, by observation, experience, and understanding got from dead years."

Anyhow that shows the spirit in which the book was written, and there must have been something in it that rang true, because not only did it have an enormous sale and therefore a multitude of readers, but I received hundreds of letters from people who in one way or another were deeply interested in the story.

The majority of them were inquisitive letters. A great many of them said that the writer had shared in controversy as to what the relations of Charley and Rosalie were, and asked me to set for ever queries and controversies at rest by declaring either that the relations of these two were what, in the way of life's stern conventions, they ought not to be, or that Rosalie passed unscathed through the fire. I had foreseen all this, though I could not have foreseen the passionately intense interest which my readers would take in the life-story of these unhappy yet happy people. I had, however, only one reply. It was that all I had meant to say concerning Charley and Rosalie had been said in the book, to the last word. All I had meant not to say would not be said after the book was written. I asked them to take exactly the same view of Charley and Rosalie as they would in real life regarding two human beings with whom they were acquainted, and concerning whom, to their minds, there was sufficient evidence, or not sufficient evidence, to come to a conclusion as to what their relations were. I added that, as in real life we used our judgment upon such things with a reasonable amount of accuracy, I asked them to apply that judgment to Charley Steele and Rosalie Evanturel. They and their story were there for eyes to see and read, and when I had ended my manuscript in the year 1900 I had said the last word I ever meant to say as to their history. The controversy therefore continues, for the book still makes its appeal to an ever increasing congregation of new readers.

But another kind of letter came to me--the letter of some man who had just such a struggle as Charley Steele, or whose father or brother or friend had had such a struggle. Letters came from clergymen who had preached concerning the book; from men who told me in brief their own life problems and tragedies. These letters I prize; most of them had the real thing in them, the human truth.

That the book drew wide attention to the Dominion of Canada, particularly to French Canada, and crystallised something of the life of that dear Province, was a deep pleasure to me; and I was glad that I had been able to culminate my efforts to portray the life of the French-Canadian as I saw it, by a book which arrested the attention of so comprehensive a public.

I have seen many statements as to the original of Charley Steele, but I have never seen a story which was true. Many people have told me that they had seen the original of Charley Steele in an American lawyer. They knew he was the original, because he himself had said so. The gentleman was mistaken; I have never seen him. As with the purple cow, I never hope to see him. Whoever he is or whatever he is, the original Charley was an abler and a more striking man. I knew him as a boy, and he died while I was yet a boy, taking with him, save in the memory of a few, a rare and wonderful, if not wholly lovable personality. For over twenty years I had carried him in my mind, wondering whether, and when, I should-make use of him. Again and again I was tempted, but was never convinced that his time had come; yet through all the years he was gaining strength, securing possession of my mind, and gathering to him, magnet-like, the thousand observations which my experience sent in his direction. In my mind his life-story ended with his death at the Cote Dorion. For years and years I saw his ending there. Yet it all seemed to me so futile, despite the wonder of his personality, that I could make nothing of him, and though always fascinated by his character I was held back from exploiting it, because of the hopelessness of it all. It led nowhere. It was the 'quid refert' of the philosopher, and I could not bring myself to get any further than an interrogation mark at the end of a life which was all scepticism, mind and matter, and nothing more.

There came a day, however, when that all ended, when the doors were flung wide to a new conception of the man, and of what he might have become. I was going to America, and I paid an angry and reluctant visit to my London tailor thirty-six hours before I was to start. A suit of clothes had been sent home which, after an effective trying-on, was a monstrosity. I went straight to my tailor, put on the clothes and bade him look at them. He was a great tailor-he saw exactly what I saw, and what I saw was bad; and when a tailor will do that, you may be quite sure he is a good and a great man. He said the clothes were as bad as they could be, but he added: "You shall have them before you sail, and they shall be exactly as you want them. I'll have the foreman down." He rang a bell. Presently the door swung open and in stepped a man with an eyeglass in his eye. There, with a look at once reflective and penetrating, with a figure at once slovenly and alert, was a caricature of Charley Steele as I had known him, and of all his characteristics. There was such a resemblance as an ugly child in a family may have to his handsome brother. It was Charley Steele with a twist--gone to seed. Looking at him in blank amazement, I burst out: "Good heavens, so you didn't die, Charley Steele! You became a tailor!"

All at once the whole new landscape of my story as it eventually became, spread out before me. I was justified in waiting all the years. My discontent with the futile end of the tale as I originally knew it and saw it was justified. Charley Steele, brilliant, enigmatic and epigrammatic, did not die at the Cote Dorion, but lived in that far valley by Dalgrothe Mountain, and became a tailor! So far as I am concerned he became much more. He was the beginning of a new epoch in my literary life. I had got into subtler methods, reached more intimate understandings, had come to a place where analysis of character had shaken itself free--but certainly not quite free--from a natural yet rather dangerous eloquence.

As a play The Right of Way, skilfully and sympathetically dramatised by Mr. Eugene Presbery, has had a career extending over several years, and still continues to make its appearance.

NOTE

It should not be assumed that the "Chaudiere" of this story is the real Chaudiere of Quebec province. The name is characteristic, and for this reason alone I have used it.

I must also apologise to my readers for appearing to disregard a statement made in 'The Lane that Had no Turning', that that tale was the last I should write about French Canada. In explanation I would say that 'The Lane that Had no Turning' was written after the present book was finished.

G. F.

THE RIGHT OF WAY

By Gilbert Parker

Volume 1.

I. THE WAY TO THE VERDICT II. WHAT CAME OF THE TRIAL III. AFTER FIVE YEARS IV. CHARLEY MAKES A DISCOVERY V. THE WOMAN IN HELIOTROPE VI. THE WIND AND THE SHORN LAMB VII. "PEACE, PEACE, AND THERE IS NO PEACE!" VIII. THE COST OF THE ORNAMENT

"They had lived and loved, and walked and worked in their own way, and the world went by them. Between them and it a great gulf was fixed: and they met its every catastrophe with the Quid Refert? of the philosophers."

"I want to talk with some old lover's ghost, Who lived before the god of love was born."

"There are, it may be, so many kinds of voices in the world, and none of them is without signification."

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I. THE WAY TO THE VERDICT

"Not guilty, your Honour!"

A hundred atmospheres had seemed pressing down on the fretted people in the crowded court-room. As the discordant treble of the huge foreman of the jury squeaked over the mass of gaping humanity, which had twitched at skirts, drawn purposeless hands across prickling faces, and kept nervous legs at a gallop, the smothering weights of elastic air lifted suddenly, a great suspiration of relief swept through the place like a breeze, and in a far corner of the gallery a woman laughed outright.

The judge looked up reprovingly at the gallery; the clerk of the court angrily called "Silence!" towards the offending corner, and seven or eight hundred eyes raced between three centres of interest--the judge, the prisoner, and the prisoner's counsel. Perhaps more people looked at the prisoner's counsel than at the prisoner, certainly far more than looked at the judge.

Never was a verdict more unexpected. If a poll had been taken of the judgment of the population twenty-four hours before, a great majority would have been found believing that there was no escape for the prisoner, who was accused of murdering a wealthy timber merchant. The minority would have based their belief that the prisoner had a chance of escape, not on his possible innocence, not on insufficient evidence, but on a curious faith in the prisoner's lawyer. This minority would not have been composed of the friends of the lawyer alone, but of outside spectators, who, because Charley Steele had never lost a criminal case, attached to him a certain incapacity for bad luck; and of very young men, who looked upon him as the perfect pattern of the person good to see and hard to understand.

During the first two days of the trial the case had gone wholly against the prisoner, who had given his name as Joseph Nadeau. Witnesses had heard him quarrelling with the murdered man, and the next day the body of the victim had been found by the roadside. The prisoner was a stranger in the lumber-camp where the deed was done, and while there had been morose and lived apart; no one knew him; and he refused to tell even his lawyer whence he came, or what his origin, or to bring witnesses from his home to speak for his character.

One by one the points had been made against him--with no perceptible effect upon Charley Steele, who seemed the one cool, undisturbed person in the courtroom.

Indifferent as he seemed, seldom speaking to the prisoner, often looking out of the windows to the cool green trees far over on the hill, absorbed and unbusinesslike, yet judge and jury came to see, before the second day was done, that he had let no essential thing pass, that the questions he asked had either a pregnant aptness, opened up new avenues of deliberation, or were touched with mystery--seemed to have a longer reach than the moment or the hour.

Before the end of this second day, however, more attention was upon him than upon the prisoner, and nine-tenths of the people in the court-room could have told how many fine linen handkerchiefs he used during the afternoon, how many times he adjusted his monocle to look at the judge meditatively. Probably no man, for eight hours a day, ever exasperated and tried a judge, jury, and public, as did this man of twenty-nine years of age, who had been known at college as Beauty Steele, and who was still so spoken of familiarly; or was called as familiarly, Charley Steele, by people who never had attempted to be familiar with him.

The second day of the trial had ended gloomily for the prisoner. The coil of evidence had drawn so close that extrication seemed impossible. That the evidence was circumstantial, that no sign of the crime was upon the prisoner, that he was found sleeping quietly in his bed when he was arrested, that he had not been seen to commit the deed, did not weigh in the minds of the general public. The man's guilt was freely believed; not even the few who clung to the opinion that Charley Steele would yet get him off thought that he was innocent. There seemed no flaw in the evidence, once granted its circumstantiality.

During the last two hours of the sitting the prisoner had looked at his counsel in despair, for he seemed perfunctorily conducting the case: was occupied in sketching upon the blotting-pad before him, looking out of the window, or turning his head occasionally towards a corner where sat a half-dozen well-dressed ladies, and more particularly towards one lady who watched him in a puzzled way--more than once with a look of disappointment. Only at the very close of the sitting did he appear to rouse himself. Then, for a brief ten minutes, he cross-examined a friend of the murdered merchant in a fashion which startled the court-room, for he suddenly brought out the fact that the dead man had once struck a woman in the face in the open street. This fact, sharply stated by the prisoner's counsel, with no explanation and no comment, seemed uselessly intrusive and malicious. His ironical smile merely irritated all concerned. The thin, clean-shaven face of the prisoner grew more pinched and downcast, and he turned almost pleadingly towards the judge. The judge pulled his long side-whiskers nervously, and looked over his glasses in severe annoyance, then hastily adjourned the sitting and left the bench, while the prisoner saw with dismay his lawyer leave the court- room with not even a glance towards him.

On the morning of the third day Charley Steele's face, for the first time, wore an expression which, by a stretch of imagination, might be called anxious. He also took out his monocle frequently, rubbed it with his handkerchief, and screwed it in again, staring straight before him much of the time. But twice he spoke to the prisoner in a low voice, and was hurriedly answered in French as crude as his own was perfect. When he spoke, which was at rare intervals, his voice was without feeling, concise, insistent, unappealing. It was as though the business before him was wholly alien to him, as though he were held there against his will, but would go on with his task bitterly to the bitter end.

The court adjourned for an hour at noon. During this time Charley refused to see any one, but sat alone in his office with a few biscuits and an ominous bottle before him, till the time came for him to go back to the court-house. Arrived there he entered by a side door, and was not seen until the court opened once more.

For two hours and a half the crown attorney mercilessly made out his case against the prisoner. When he sat down, people glanced meaningly at each other, as though the last word had been said, then looked at the prisoner, as at one already condemned.

Yet Charley Steele was to reply. He was not now the same man that had conducted the case during the past two days and a half. Some great change had passed over him. There was no longer abstraction, indifference, or apparent boredom, or disdain, or distant stare. He was human, intimate and eager, yet concentrated and impelling: he was quietly, unnoticeably drunk.

He assured the prisoner with a glance of the eye, with a word scarce above a whisper, as he slowly rose to make his speech for the defence.

His first words caused a new feeling in the courtroom. He was a new presence; the personality had a changed significance. At first the public, the jury, and the judge were curiously attracted, surprised into a fresh interest. The voice had an insinuating quality, but it also had a measured force, a subterranean insistence, a winning tactfulness. Withal, a logical simplicity governed his argument. The flaneur, the poseur--if such he was--no longer appeared. He came close to the jurymen, leaned his hands upon the back of a chair--as it were, shut out the public, even the judge, from his circle of interest--and talked in a conversational tone. An air of confidence passed from him to the amazed yet easily captivated jury; the distance between them, so gaping during the last two days, closed suddenly up. The tension of the past estrangement, relaxing all at once, surprised the jury into an almost eager friendliness, as on a long voyage a sensitive traveller finds in some exciting accident a natural introduction to an exclusive fellow- passenger, whom he discovers as human as he had thought him offensively distant.

Charley began by congratulating the crown attorney on his statement of the case. He called it masterly; he said that in its presentations it was irrefutable; as a precis of evidence purely circumstantial it was-- useful and interesting. But, speech-making aside, and ability--and rhetoric--aside, and even personal conviction aside, the case should stand or fall by its total, not its comparative, soundness. Since the evidence was purely circumstantial, there must be no flaw in its cable of assumption, it must be logically inviolate within itself. Starting with assumption only, there must be no straying possibilities, no loose ends of certainty, no invading alternatives. Was this so in the case of the man before them? They were faced by a curious situation. So far as the trial was concerned, the prisoner himself was the only person who could tell them who he was, what was his past, and, if he committed the crime, what was--the motive of it: out of what spirit--of revenge, or hatred-- the dead man had been sent to his account. Probably in the whole history of crime there never was a more peculiar case. Even himself the prisoner's counsel was dealing with one whose life was hid from him previous to the day the murdered man was discovered by the roadside. The prisoner had not sought to prove an alibi; he had done no more than formally plead not guilty. There was no material for defence save that offered by the prosecution. He had undertaken the defence of the prisoner because it was his duty as a lawyer to see that the law justified itself; that it satisfied every demand of proof to the last atom of certainty; that it met the final possibility of doubt with evidence perfect and inviolate if circumstantial, and uncontradictory if eye-witness, if tell-tale incident, were to furnish basis of proof.

Judge, jury, and public riveted their eyes upon Charley Steele. He had now drawn a little farther away from the jury-box; his eye took in the judge as well; once or twice he turned, as if appealingly and confidently, to the people in the room. It was terribly hot, the air was sickeningly close, every one seemed oppressed--every one save a lady sitting not a score of feet from where the counsel for the prisoner stood. This lady's face was not one that could flush easily; it belonged to a temperament as even as her person was symmetrically beautiful. As Charley talked, her eyes were fixed steadily, wonderingly upon him. There was a question in her gaze, which never in the course of the speech was quite absorbed by the admiration--the intense admiration--she was feeling for him. Once as he turned with a concentrated earnestness in her direction his eyes met hers. The message he flashed her was sub- conscious, for his mind never wavered an instant from the cause in hand, but it said to her:

"When this is over, Kathleen, I will come to you." For another quarter of an hour he exposed the fallacy of purely circumstantial evidence; he raised in the minds of his hearers the painful responsibility of the law, the awful tyranny of miscarriage of justice; he condemned prejudice against a prisoner because that prisoner demanded that the law should prove him guilty instead of his proving himself innocent. If a man chose to stand to that, to sternly assume this perilous position, the law had no right to take advantage of it. He turned towards the prisoner and traced his possible history: as the sensitive, intelligent son of godly Catholic parents from some remote parish in French Canada. He drew an imaginary picture of the home from which he might have come, and of the parents and brothers and sisters who would have lived weeks of torture knowing that their son and brother was being tried for his life. It might at first glance seem quixotic, eccentric, but was it unnatural that the prisoner should choose silence as to his origin and home, rather than have his family and friends face the undoubted peril lying before him? Besides, though his past life might have been wholly blameless, it would not be evidence in his favour. It might, indeed, if it had not been blameless, provide some element of unjust suspicion against him, furnish some fancied motive. The prisoner had chosen his path, and events had so far justified him. It must be clear to the minds of judge and jury that there were fatally weak places in the circumstantial evidence offered for the conviction of this man.

There was the fact that no sign of the crime, no drop of blood, no weapon, was found about him or near him, and that he was peacefully sleeping at the moment the constable arrested him.

There was also the fact that no motive for the crime had been shown. It was not enough that he and the dead man had been heard quarrelling. Was there any certainty that it was a quarrel, since no word or sentence of the conversation had been brought into court? Men with quick tempers might quarrel over trivial things, but exasperation did not always end in bodily injury and the taking of life; imprecations were not so uncommon that they could be taken as evidence of wilful murder. The prisoner refused to say what that troubled conversation was about, but who could question his right to take the risk of his silence being misunderstood?

The judge was alternately taking notes and looking fixedly at the prisoner; the jury were in various attitudes of strained attention; the public sat open mouthed; and up in the gallery a woman with white face and clinched hands listened moveless and staring. Charley Steele was holding captive the emotions and the judgments of his hearers. All antipathy had gone; there was a strange eager intimacy between the jurymen and himself. People no longer looked with distant dislike at the prisoner, but began to see innocence in his grim silence, disdain only in his surly defiance.

But Charley Steele had preserved his great stroke for the psychological moment. He suddenly launched upon them the fact, brought out in evidence, that the dead man had struck a woman in the face a year ago; also that he had kept a factory girl in affluence for two years. Here was motive for murder--if motive were to govern them--far greater than might be suggested by excited conversation which listeners who could not hear a word construed into a quarrel--listeners who bore the prisoner at the bar ill-will because he shunned them while in the lumber-camp. If the prisoner was to be hanged for motive untraceable, why should not these two women be hanged for motive traceable!

Here was his chance. He appeared to impeach subtly every intelligence in the room for having had any preconviction about the prisoner's guilt. He compelled the jury to feel that they, with him, had made the discovery of the unsound character of the evidence. The man might be guilty, but their personal guilt, the guilt of the law, would be far greater if they condemned the man on violable evidence. With a last simple appeal, his hands resting on the railing before the seat where the jury sat, his voice low and conversational again, his eyes running down the line of faces of the men who had his client's life in their hands, he said:

"It is not a life only that is at stake, it is not revenge for a life snatched from the busy world by a brutal hand that we should heed to-day, but the awful responsibility of that thing we call the State, which, having the power of life and death without gainsay or hindrance, should prove to the last inch of necessity its right to take a human life. And the right and the reason should bring conviction to every honest human mind. That is all I have to say."

The crown attorney made a perfunctory reply. The judge's charge was brief, and, if anything, a little in favour of the prisoner--very little, a casuist's little; and the jury filed out of the room. They were gone but ten minutes. When they returned, the verdict was given: "Not guilty, your Honour!"

Then it was that a woman laughed in the gallery. Then a whispering voice said across the railing which separated the public from the lawyers: "Charley! Charley!"

Though Charley turned and looked at the lady who spoke, he made no response.

A few minutes later, outside the court, as he walked quickly away, again inscrutable and debonair, the prisoner, Joseph Nadeau, touched him on the arm and said:

"M'sieu', M'sieu', you have saved my life--I thank you, M'sieu'!"

Charley Steele drew his arm away with disgust. "Get out of my sight! You're as guilty as hell!" he said.

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II. WHAT CAME OF THE TRIAL

"When this is over, Kathleen, I will come to you." So Charley Steele's eyes had said to a lady in the court room on that last day of the great trial. The lady had left the court-room dazed and exalted. She, with hundreds of others, had had a revelation of Charley Steele; had had also the great emotional experience of seeing a crowd make the 'volte face' with their convictions; looking at a prisoner one moment with eyes of loathing and anticipating his gruesome end, the next moment seeing him as the possible martyr to the machinery of the law. She whose heart was used to beat so evenly had felt it leap and swell with excitement, awaiting the moment when the jury filed back into the court-room. Then it stood still, as a wave might hang for an instant at its crest ere it swept down to beat upon the shore.

With her as with most present, the deepest feeling in the agitated suspense was not so much that the prisoner should go free, as that the prisoner's counsel should win his case. It was as if Charley Steele were on trial instead of the prisoner. He was the imminent figure; it was his fate that was in the balance--such was the antic irony of suggestion. And the truth was, that the fates of both prisoner and counsel had been weighed in the balance that sweltering August day.

The prisoner was forgotten almost as soon as he had left the court-room a free man, but wherever men and women met in Montreal that day, one name was on the lips of all-Charley Steele! In his speech he had done two things: he had thrown down every barrier of reserve--or so it seemed-- and had become human and intimate. "I could not have believed it of him," was the remark on every lip. Of his ability there never had been a moment's doubt, but it had ever been an uncomfortable ability, it had tortured foes and made friends anxious. No one had ever seen him show feeling. If it was a mask, he had worn it with a curious consistency: it had been with him as a child, at school, at college, and he had brought it back again to the town where he was born. It had effectually prevented his being popular, but it had made him--with his foppishness and his originality--an object of perpetual interest. Few men had ventured to cross swords with him. He left his fellow-citizens very much alone. He was uniformly if distantly courteous, and he was respected in his own profession for his uncommon powers and for an utter indifference as to whether he had cases in court or not.

Coming from the judge's chambers after the trial he went to his office, receiving as he passed congratulations more effusively offered than, as people presently found, his manner warranted.

For he was again the formal, masked Charley Steele, looking calmly through the interrogative eye-glass. By the time he reached his office, greetings became more subdued. His prestige had increased immensely in a few short hours, but he had no more friends than before. Old relations were soon re-established. The town was proud of his ability as it had always been, irritated by his manner as it had always been, more prophetic of his future than it had ever been, and unconsciously grateful for the fact that he had given them a sensation which would outlast the summer.

All these things concerned him little. Once the business of the court- room was over, a thought which had quietly lain in waiting behind the strenuous occupations of his brain leaped forward to exclude all others.

As he entered his office he was thinking of that girl's face in the court-room, with its flush of added beauty which he and his speech had brought there. "What a perfect loveliness!" he said to himself as he bathed his face and hands, and prepared to go into the street again. "She needed just such a flush to make her supreme Kathleen!" He stood, looking out into the square, out into the green of the trees where the birds twittered. "Faultless--faultless in form and feature. She was so as a child, she is so as a woman." He lighted a cigarette, and blew away little clouds of smoke. "I will do it. I will marry her. She will have me: I saw it in her eye. Fairing doesn't matter. Her uncle will never consent to that, and she doesn't care enough for him. She cares, but she doesn't care enough. . . . I will do it."

He turned towards a cupboard into which he had put a certain bottle before he went to the court-room two hours before. He put the key in the lock, then stopped. "No, I think not!" he said. "What I say to her shall not be said forensically. What a discovery I've made! I was dull, blank, all iron and ice; the judge, the jury, the public, even Kathleen, against me; and then that bottle in there--and I saw things like crystal! I had a glow in my brain, I had a tingle in my fingers; and I had success, and"--his face clouded--"He was as guilty as hell!" he added, almost bitterly, as he put the key of the cupboard into his pocket again.

There was a knock at the door, and a youth of about nineteen entered.

"Hello!" he said. "I say, sir, but that speech of yours struck us all where we couldn't say no. Even Kathleen got in a glow over it. Perhaps Captain Fairing didn't, for he's just left her in a huff, and she's looking--you remember those lines in the school-book:

"'A red spot burned upon her cheek, Streamed her rich tresses down--'"

He laughed gaily. "I've come to ask you up to tea," he added. "The Unclekins is there. When I told him that Kathleen had sent Fairing away with a flea in his ear, he nearly fell off his chair. He lent me twenty dollars on the spot. Are you coming our way?" he continued, suddenly trying to imitate Charley's manner. Charley nodded, and they left the office together and moved away under a long avenue of maples to where, in the shade of a high hill, was the house of the uncle of Kathleen Wantage, with whom she and her brother Billy lived. They walked in silence for some time, and at last Billy said, 'a propos' of nothing:

"Fairing hasn't a red cent."

"You have a perambulating mind, Billy," said Charley, and bowed to a young clergyman approaching them from the opposite direction.

"What does that mean?" remarked Billy, and said "Hello!" to the young clergyman, and did not wait for Charley's answer.

The Rev. John Brown was by no means a conventional parson. He was smoking a cigarette, and two dogs followed at his heels. He was certainly not a fogy. He had more than a little admiration for Charley Steele, but he found it difficult to preach when Charley was in the congregation. He was always aware of a subterranean and half-pitying criticism going on in the barrister's mind. John Brown knew that he could never match his intelligence against Charley's, in spite of the theological course at Durham, so he undertook to scotch the snake by kindness. He thought that he might be able to do this, because Charley, who was known to be frankly agnostical, came to his church more or less regularly.

The Rev. John Brown was not indifferent to what men thought of him. He had a reputation for being "independent," but his chief independence consisted in dressing a little like a layman, posing as the athletic parson of the new school, consorting with ministers of the dissenting denominations when it was sufficiently effective, and being a "good fellow" with men easily bored by church and churchmen. He preached theatrical sermons to societies and benevolent associations. He wanted to be thought well of on all hands, and he was shrewd enough to know that if he trimmed between ritualism on one hand and evangelicism on the other, he was on a safe road. He might perforate old dogmatical prejudices with a good deal of freedom so long as he did not begin bringing "millinery" into the service of the church. He invested his own personal habits with the millinery. He looked a picturesque figure with his blond moustache, a little silk-lined brown cloak thrown carelessly over his shoulder, a gold-headed cane, and a brisk jacket half ecclesiastical, half military.

He had interested Charley Steele, also he had amused him, and sometimes he had surprised him into a sort of admiration; for Brown had a temperament capable of little inspirations--such a literary inspiration as might come to a second-rate actor--and Charley never belittled any man's ability, but seized upon every sign of knowledge with the appreciation of the epicure.

John Brown raised his hat to Charley, then held out a hand. "Masterly- masterly!" he said. "Permit my congratulations. It was the one thing to do. You couldn't have saved him by making him an object of pity, by appealing to our sympathies."

"What do you take to be the secret, then?" asked Charley, with a look half abstracted, half quizzical. "Terror--sheer terror. You startled the conscience. You made defects in the circumstantial evidence, the imminent problems of our own salvation. You put us all on trial. We were under the lash of fear. If we parsons could only do that from the pulpit!"

"We will discuss that on our shooting-trip next week. Duck-shooting gives plenty of time for theological asides. You are coming, eh?"

John Brown scarcely noticed the sarcasm, he was so delighted at the suggestion that he was to be included in the annual duck-shoot of the Seven, as the little yearly party of Charley and his friends to Lake Aubergine was called. He had angled for this invitation for two years.

"I must not keep you," Charley said, and dismissed him with a bow. "The sheep will stray, and the shepherd must use his crook."

Brown smiled at the badinage, and went on his way rejoicing in the fact that he was to share the amusements of the Seven at Lake Aubergine--the Lake of the Mad Apple. To get hold of these seven men of repute and position, to be admitted into this good presence!--He had a pious exaltation, but whether it was because he might gather into the fold erratic and agnostical sheep like Charley Steele, or because it pleased his social ambitions, he had occasion to answer in the future. He gaily prepared to go to the Lake of the Mad Apple, where he was fated to eat of the tree of knowledge.

Charley Steele and Billy Wantage walked on slowly to the house under the hill.

"He's the right sort," said Billy. "He's a sport. I can stand that kind. Did you ever hear him sing? No? Well, he can sing a comic song fit to make you die. I can sing a bit myself, but to hear him sing 'The Man Who Couldn't Get Warm' is a show in itself. He can play the banjo too, and the guitar--but he's best on the banjo. It's worth a dollar to listen to his Epha-haam--that's Ephraim, you know--Ephahaam Come Home,' and 'I Found Y' in de Honeysuckle Paitch.'"

"He preaches, too!" said Charley drily.

They had reached the door of the house under the hill, and Billy had no time for further remark. He ran into the drawing-room, announcing Charley with the words: "I say, Kathleen, I've brought the man that made the judge sit up."

Billy suddenly stopped, however, for there sat the judge who had tried the case, calmly munching a piece of toast. The judge did not allow himself the luxury of embarrassment, but bowed to Charley with a smile, which he presently turned on Kathleen, who came as near being disconcerted as she had ever been in her life.

Kathleen had passed through a good deal to look so unflurried. She had been on trial in the court-room as well as the prisoner. Important things had been at stake with her. She and Charley Steele had known each other since they were children. To her, even in childhood, he had been a dominant figure. He had judicially and admiringly told her she was beautiful--when he was twelve and she five. But he had said it without any of those glances which usually accompanied the same sentiments in the mouths of other lads. He had never made boy-love to her, and she had thrilled at the praise of less splendid people than Charley Steele. He had always piqued her, he was so superior to the ordinary enchantments of youth, beauty, and fine linen.

As he came and went, growing older and more characteristic, more and more "Beauty Steele," accompanied by legends of wild deeds and days at college, by tales of his fopperies and the fashions he had set, she herself had grown, as he had termed it, more "decorative." He had told her so, not in the least patronisingly, but as a simple fact in which no sentiment lurked. He thought her the most beautiful thing he had ever seen, but he had never regarded her save as a creation for the perfect pleasure of the eye; he thought her the concrete glory of sensuous purity, no more capable of sentiment than himself. He had said again and again, as he grew older and left college and began the business of life after two years in Europe, that sentiment would spoil her, would scatter the charm of her perfect beauty; it would vitalise her too much, and her nature would lose its proportion; she would be decentralised! She had been piqued at his indifference to sentiment; she could not easily be content without worship, though she felt none. This pique had grown until Captain Tom Fairing crossed her path.

Fairing was the antithesis of Charley Steele. Handsome, poor, enthusiastic, and none too able, he was simple and straightforward, and might be depended on till the end of the chapter. And the end of it was, that in so far as she had ever felt real sentiment for anybody, she felt it for Tom Fairing of the Royal Fusileers. It was not love she felt in the old, in the big, in the noble sense, but it had behind it selection and instinct and natural gravitation.

Fairing declared his love. She would give him no answer. For as soon as she was presented with the issue, the destiny, she began to look round her anxiously. The first person to fill the perspective was Charley Steele. As her mind dwelt on him, her uncle gave forth his judgment, that she should never have a penny if she married Tom Fairing. This only irritated her, it did not influence her. But there was Charley. He was a figure, was already noted in his profession because of a few masterly successes in criminal cases, and if he was not popular, he was distinguished, and the world would talk about him to the end. He was handsome, and he was well-to-do-he had a big unoccupied house on the hill among the maples. How many people had said, What a couple they would make-Charley Steele and Kathleen Wantage!

So, as Fairing presented an issue to her, she concentrated her thoughts as she had never done before on the man whom the world set apart for her, in a way the world has.

As she looked and looked, Charley began to look also. He had not been enamoured of the sordid things of the world; he had been merely curious. He thought vice was ugly; he had imagination and a sense of form. Kathleen was beautiful. Sentiment had, so he thought, never seriously disturbed her; he did not think it ever would. It had not affected him. He did not understand it. He had been born non-intime. He had had acquaintances, but never friendships, and never loves or love. But he had a fine sense of the fitting and the proportionate, and he worshipped beauty in so far as he could worship anything. The homage was cerebral, intellectual, temperamental, not of the heart. As he looked out upon the world half pityingly, half ironically, he was struck with wonder at the disproportion which was engendered by "having heart," as it was called. He did not find it necessary.

Now that he had begun to think of marriage, who so suitable as Kathleen? He knew of Fairing's adoration, but he took it as a matter of course that she had nothing to give of the same sort in return. Her beauty was still serene and unimpaired. He would not spoil it by the tortures of emotion. He would try to make Kathleen's heart beat in harmony with his own; it should not thunder out of time. He had made up his mind that he would marry her.

For Kathleen, with the great trial, the beginning of the end had come. Charley's power over her was subtle, finely sensuous, and, in deciding, there were no mere heart-impulses working for Charley. Instinct and impulse were working in another direction. She had not committed her mind to either man, though her heart, to a point, was committed to Fairing.

On the day of the trial, however, she fell wholly under that influence which had swayed judge, jury, and public. To her the verdict of the jury was not in favour of the prisoner at the bar--she did not think of him. It was in favour of Charley Steele.

And so, indifferent as to who heard, over the heads of the people in front of her, to the accused's counsel inside the railings, she had called, softly: "Charley! Charley!"

Now, in the house under the hill, they were face to face, and the end was at hand: the end of something and the beginning of something.

There was a few moments of casual conversation, in which Billy talked as much as anybody, and then Kathleen said:

"What do you suppose was the man's motive for committing the murder?"

Charley looked at Kathleen steadily, curiously, through his monocle. It was a singular compliment she paid him. Her remark took no heed of the verdict of the jury. He turned inquiringly towards the judge, who, though slightly shocked by the question, recovered himself quickly.

"What do you think it was, sir?" Charley asked quietly.

"A woman--and revenge, perhaps," answered the judge, with a matter-of- course air.

A few moments afterwards the judge was carried off by Kathleen's uncle to see some rare old books; Billy, his work being done, vanished; and Kathleen and Charley were left alone.

"You did not answer me in the court-room," Kathleen said. "I called to you."

"I wanted to hear you say them here," he rejoined. "Say what?" she asked, a little puzzled by the tone of his voice.

"Your congratulations," he answered.

She held out a hand to him. "I offer them now. It was wonderful. You were inspired. I did not think you could ever let yourself go."

He held her hand firmly. "I promise not to do it again," he said whimsically.

"Why not?"

"Have I not your congratulations?" His hand drew her slightly towards him; she rose to her feet.

"That is no reason," she answered, confused, yet feeling that there was a double meaning in his words.

"I could not allow you to be so vain," he said. "We must be companionable. Henceforth I shall congratulate myself--Kathleen."

There was no mistaking now. "Oh, what is it you are going to say to me?" she asked, yet not disengaging her hand.

"I said it all in the court-room," he rejoined; "and you heard."

"You want me to marry you--Charley?" she asked frankly.

"If you think there is no just impediment," he answered, with a smile.

She drew her hand away, and for a moment there was a struggle in her mind--or heart. He knew of what she was thinking, and he did not consider it of serious consequence. Romance was a trivial thing, and women were prone to become absorbed in trivialities. When the woman had no brains, she might break her life upon a trifle. But Kathleen had an even mind, a serene temperament. Her nerves were daily cooled in a bath of nature's perfect health. She had never had an hour's illness in her life.

"There is no just or unjust impediment, Kathleen," he added presently, and took her hand again.

She looked him in the eyes clearly. "You really think so?" she asked.

"I know so," he answered. "We shall be two perfect panels in one picture of life."

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III. AFTER FIVE YEARS

"You have forgotten me?"

Charley Steele's glance was serenely non-committal as he answered drily:

"I cannot remember doing so."

The other man's eyelids drew down with a look of anger, then the humour of the impertinence worked upon him, and he gave a nervous little laugh and said: "I am John Brown."

"Then I'm sure my memory is not at fault," remarked Charley, with an outstretched hand. "My dear Brown! Still preaching little sermons?"

"Do I look it?" There was a curious glitter in John Brown's eyes. "I'm not preaching little sermons, and you know it well enough." He laughed, but it was a hard sort of mirth. "Perhaps you forgot to remember that, though," he sneeringly added. "It was the work of your hands."

"That's why I should remember to forget it--I am the child of modesty." Charley touched the corners of his mouth with his tongue, as though his lips were dry, and his eyes wandered to a saloon a little farther down the street.

"Modesty is your curse," rejoined Brown mockingly.

"Once when you preached at me you said that beauty was my curse." Charley laughed a curt, distant little laugh which was no more the spontaneous humour lying for ever behind his thoughts than his eye-glass was the real sight of his eyes, though since childhood this laugh and his eye-glass were as natural to all expression of himself as John Brown's outward and showy frankness did not come from the real John Brown.

John Brown looked him up and down quickly, then fastened his eyes on the ruddy cheeks of his old friend. "Do they call you Beauty now as they used to?" he asked, rather insolently.

"No. They only say, 'There goes Charley Steele!'" The tongue again touched the corners of the mouth, and the eyes wandered to the doorway down the street, over which was written in French: "Jean Jolicoeur, Licensed to sell wine, beer, and other spirituous and fermented liquors."

Just then an archdeacon of the cathedral passed them, bowed gravely to Charley, glanced at John Brown, turned colour slightly, and then with a cold stare passed on too quickly for dignity.

"I'm thinking of Bunyan," said the aforetime friend of Charley Steele. "I'll paraphrase him and say: 'There, but for beauty and a monocle, walks John Brown.'"

Under the bitter sarcasm of the man, who, five years ago, had gone down at last beneath his agnostic raillery, Charley's blue eye did not waver, not a nerve stirred in his face, as he replied: "Who knows!"

"That was what you always said--who knows! That did for John Brown."

Charley seemed not to hear the remark. "What are you doing now?" he asked, looking steadily at the face whence had gone all the warmth of manhood, all that courage of life which keeps men young. The lean parchment visage had the hunted look of the incorrigible failure, had written on it self-indulgence, cunning, and uncertainty.

"Nothing much," John Brown replied.

"What last?"

"Floated an arsenic-mine on Lake Superior."

"Failed?"

"More or less. There are hopes yet. I've kept the wolf from the door."

"What are you going to do?"

"Don't know--nothing, perhaps; I've not the courage I had."

"I'd have thought you might find arsenic a good thing," said Charley, holding out a silver cigarette-case, his eyes turning slowly from the startled, gloomy face of the man before him, to the cool darkness beyond the open doorway of that saloon on the other side of the street.

John Brown shivered--there was something so cold-blooded in the suggestion that he might have found arsenic a good thing. The metallic glare of Charley's eye-glass seemed to give an added cruelty to the words. Charley's monocle was the token of what was behind his blue eye- one ceaseless interrogation. It was that everlasting questioning, the ceaseless who knows! which had in the end unsettled John Brown's mind, and driven him at last from the church and the possible gaiters of a dean into the rough business of life, where he had been a failure. Yet as Brown looked at Charley the old fascination came on him with a rush. His hand suddenly caught Charley's as he took a cigarette, and he said: "Perhaps I'll find arsenic a good thing yet."

For reply Charley laid a hand on his arm-turned him towards the shade of the houses opposite. Without a word they crossed the street, entered the saloon, and passed to a little back room, Charley giving an unsympathetic stare to some men at the bar who seemed inclined to speak to him.

As the two passed into the small back room with the frosted door, one of the strangers said to the other: "What does he come here for, if he's too proud to speak! What's a saloon for! I'd like to smash that eye-glass for him!"

"He's going down-hill fast," said the other. "He drinks steady--steady."

"Tiens--tiens!" interposed Jean Jolicoeur, the landlord. "It is not harm to him. He drink all day, an' he walk a crack like a bee-line."

"He's got the handsomest wife in this city. If I was him, I'd think more of myself," answered the Englishman.

"How you think more--hein? You not come down more to my saloon?"

"No, I wouldn't come to your saloon, and I wouldn't go to Theophile Charlemagne's shebang at the Cote Dorion."

"You not like Charlemagne's hotel?" said a huge black-bearded pilot, standing beside the landlord. "Oh, I like Charlemagne's hotel, and I like to talk to Suzon Charlemagne, but I'm not married, Rouge Gosselin--"

"If he go to Charlemagne's hotel, and talk some more too mooch to dat Suzon Charlemagne, he will lose dat glass out of his eye," interrupted Rouge Gosselin.

"Who say he been at dat place?" said Jean Jolicoeur. "He bin dere four times las' month, and dat Suzon Charlemagne talk'bout him ever since. When dat Narcisse Bovin and Jacques Gravel come down de river, he better keep away from dat Cote Dorion," sputtered Rouge Gosselin. "Dat's a long story short, all de same for you--bagosh!"

Rouge Gosselin flung off his glass of white whiskey, and threw after it a glass of cold water.

"Tiens! you know not M'sieu' Charley Steele," said Jean Jolicoeur, and turned on his heel, nodding his head sagely.

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IV. CHARLEY MAKES A DISCOVERY

A hot day a month later Charley Steele sat in his office staring before him into space, and negligently smoking a cigarette. Outside there was a slow clacking of wheels, and a newsboy was crying "La Patrie! La Patrie! All about the War in France! All about the massacree!" Bells--wedding- bells--were ringing also, and the jubilant sounds, like the call of the newsboy, were out of accord with the slumberous feeling of the afternoon. Charley Steele turned his head slowly towards the window. The branches of a maple-tree half crossed it, and the leaves moved softly in the shadow they made. His eye went past the tree and swam into the tremulous white heat of the square, and beyond to where in the church-tower the bells were ringing-to the church doors, from which gaily dressed folk were issuing to the carriages, or thronged the pavement, waiting for the bride and groom to come forth into a new-created world--for them.

Charley looked through his monocle at the crowd reflectively, his head held a little to one side in a questioning sort of way, on his lips the ghost of a smile--not a reassuring smile. Presently he leaned forward slightly and the monocle dropped from his eye. He fumbled for it, raised it, blew on it, rubbed it with his handkerchief, and screwed it carefully into his eye again, his rather bushy brow gathering over it strongly, his look sharpened to more active thought. He stared straight across the square at a figure in heliotrope, whose face was turned to a man in scarlet uniform taller than herself two glowing figures towards whom many other eyes than his own were directed, some curiously, some disdain fully, some sadly. But Charley did not see the faces of those who looked on; he only saw two people--one in heliotrope, one in scarlet.

Presently his white firm hand went up and ran through his hair nervously, his comely figure settled down in the chair, his tongue touched the corners of his red lips, and his eyes withdrew from the woman in heliotrope and the man in scarlet, and loitered among the leaves of the tree at the window. The softness of the green, the cool health of the foliage, changed the look of his eye from something cold and curious to something companionable, and scarcely above a whisper two words came from his lips:

"Kathleen! Kathleen!"

By the mere sound of the voice it would have been hard to tell what the words meant, for it had an inquiring cadence and yet a kind of distant doubt, a vague anxiety. The face conveyed nothing--it was smooth, fresh, and immobile. The only point where the mind and meaning of the man worked according to the law of his life was at the eye, where the monocle was caught now as in a vise. Behind this glass there was a troubled depth which belied the self-indulgent mouth, the egotism speaking loudly in the red tie, the jewelled finger, the ostentatiously simple yet sumptuous clothes.

At last he drew in a sharp, sibilant breath, clicked his tongue--a sound of devil-may-care and hopelessness at once--and turned to a little cupboard behind him. The chair squeaked on the floor as he turned, and he frowned, shivered a little, and kicked it irritably with his heel.

From the cupboard he took a bottle of liqueur, and, pouring out a small glassful, drank it off eagerly. As he put the bottle away, he said again, in an abstracted fashion, "Kathleen!"

Then, seating himself at the table, as if with an effort towards energy, he rang a bell. A clerk entered. "Ask Mr. Wantage to come for a moment," he said. "Mr. Wantage has gone to the church--to the wedding," was the reply.

"Oh, very well. He will be in again this afternoon?"

"Sure to, sir."

"Just so. That will do."

The clerk retired, and Charley, rising, unlocked a drawer, and taking out some books and papers, laid them on the table. Intently, carefully, he began to examine them, referring at the same time to a letter which had lain open at his hand while he had been sitting there. For a quarter of an hour he studied the books and papers, then, all at once, his fingers fastened on a point and stayed. Again he read the letter lying beside him. A flush crimsoned his face to his hair--a singular flush of shame, of embarrassment, of guilt--a guilt not his own. His breath caught in his throat.

"Billy!" he gasped. "Billy, by God!"

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V. THE WOMAN IN HELIOTROPE

The flush was still on Charley's face when the door opened slowly, and a lady dressed in heliotrope silk entered, and came forward. Without a word Charley rose, and, taking a step towards her, offered a chair; at the same time noticing her heightened colour, and a certain rigid carriage not in keeping with her lithe and graceful figure. There was no mistaking the quiver of her upper lip--a short lip which did not hide a wonderfully pretty set of teeth.

With a wave of the hand she declined the seat. Glancing at the books and papers lying on the table, she flashed an inquiry at his flushed face, and, misreading the cause, with slow, quiet point, in which bitterness or contempt showed, she said meaningly:

"What a slave you are!"

"Behold the white man work!" he said good-naturedly, the flush passing slowly from his face. With apparent negligence he pushed the letter and the books and papers a little to one side, but really to place them beyond the range of her angry eyes. She shrugged her shoulders at his action.

"For 'the fatherless children and widows, and all that are desolate and oppressed?'" she said, not concealing her malice, for at the wedding she had just left all her married life had rushed before her in a swift panorama, and the man in scarlet had fixed the shooting pictures in her mind.

Again a flush swept up Charley's face and seemed to blur his sight. His monocle dropped the length of its silken tether, and he caught it and slowly adjusted it again as he replied evenly:

"You always hit the nail on the head, Kathleen." There was a kind of appeal in his voice, a sort of deprecation in his eye, as though he would be friends with her, as though, indeed, there was in his mind some secret pity for her.

Her look at his face was critical and cold. It was plain that she was not prepared for any extra friendliness on his part--there seemed no reason why he should add to his usual courtesy a note of sympathy to the sound of her name on his lips. He had not fastened the door of the cupboard from which he had taken the liqueur, and it had swung open a little, disclosing the bottle and the glass. She saw. Her face took on a look of quiet hardness.

"Why did you not come to the wedding? She was your cousin. People asked where you were. You knew I was going."

"Did you need me?" he asked quietly, and his eyes involuntarily swept to the place where he had seen the heliotrope and scarlet make a glow of colour on the other side of the square. "You were not alone."

She misunderstood him. Her mind had been overwrought, and she caught insinuation in his voice. "You mean Tom Fairing!" Her eyes blazed. "You are quite right--I did not need you. Tom Fairing is a man that all the world trusts save you."

"Kathleen!" The words were almost a cry. "For God's sake! I have never thought of 'trusting' men where you are concerned. I believe in no man" --his voice had a sharp bitterness, though his face was smooth and unemotional--"but I trust you, and believe in you. Yes, upon my soul and honour, Kathleen."

As he spoke she turned quickly and stepped towards the window, an involuntary movement of agitation. He had touched a chord. But even as she reached the window and glanced down to the hot, dusty street, she heard a loud voice below, a reckless, ribald sort of voice, calling to some one to, "Come and have a drink."

"Billy!" she said involuntarily, and looked down, then shrank back quickly. She turned swiftly on her husband. "Your soul and honour, Charley!" she said slowly. "Look at what you've made of Billy! Look at the company he keeps--John Brown, who hasn't even decency enough to keep away from the place he disgraced. Billy is always with him. You ruined John Brown, with your dissipation and your sneers at religion and your- 'I-wonder-nows!' Of what use have you been, Charley? Of what use to anyone in the world? You think of nothing but eating, and drinking, and playing the fop."

He glanced down involuntarily, and carefully flicked some cigarette-ash from his waistcoat. The action arrested her speech for a moment, and then, with a little shudder, she continued: "The best they can say of you is, 'There goes Charley Steele!'"

"And the worst?" he asked. He was almost smiling now, for he admired her anger, her scorn. He knew it was deserved, and he had no idea of making any defence. He had said all in that instant's cry, "Kathleen!" --that one awakening feeling of his life so far. She had congealed the word on his lips by her scorn, and now he was his old debonair, dissipated self, with the impertinent monocle in his eye and a jest upon his tongue.

"Do you want to know the worst they say?" she asked, growing pale to the lips. "Go and stand behind the door of Jolicoeur's saloon. Go to any street corner, and listen. Do you think I don't know what they say? Do you think the world doesn't talk about the company you keep? Haven't I seen you going into Jolicoeur's saloon when I was walking on the other side of the street? Do you think that all the world, and I among the rest, are blind? Oh, you fop, you fool, you have ruined my brother, you have ruined my life, and I hate and despise you for a cold-blooded, selfish coward!"

He made a deprecating gesture and stared--a look of most curious inquiry. They had been married for five years, and during that time they had never been anything but persistently courteous to each other. He had never on any occasion seen her face change colour, or her manner show chagrin or emotion. Stately and cold and polite, she had fairly met his ceaseless foppery and preciseness of manner. But people had said of her, "Poor Kathleen Steele!" for her spotless name stood sharply off from his negligence and dissipation. They called her "Poor Kathleen Steele!" in sympathy, though they knew that she had not resisted marriage with the well-to-do Charley Steele, while loving a poor captain in the Royal Fusileers. She preserved social sympathy by a perfect outward decorum, though the man of the scarlet coat remained in the town and haunted the places where she appeared, and though the eyes of the censorious world were watching expectantly. No voice was raised against her. Her cold beauty held the admiration of all women, for she was not eager for men's company, and she kept her poise even with the man in scarlet near her, glacially complacent, beautifully still, disconcertingly emotionless. They did not know that the poise with her was to an extent as much a pose as Charley's manner was to him.

"I hate you and despise you for a cold-blooded, selfish coward!" So that was the way Kathleen felt! Charley's tongue touched his lips quickly, for they were arid, and he slowly said:

"I assure you I have not tried to influence Billy. I have no remembrance of his imitating me in anything. Won't you sit down? It is very fatiguing, this heat."

Charley was entirely himself again. His words concerning Billy Wantage might have been either an impeachment of Billy's character and, by deduction, praise of his own, or it may have been the insufferable egoism of the fop, well used to imitators. The veil between the two, which for one sacred moment had seemed about to lift, was fallen now, leaded and weighted at the bottom.

"I suppose you would say the same about John Brown! It is disconcerting at least to think that we used to sit and listen to Mr. Brown as he waved his arms gracefully in his surplice and preached sentimental sermons. I suppose you will say, what we have heard you say before, that you only asked questions. Was that how you ruined the Rev. John Brown-- and Billy?"

Charley was very thirsty, and because of that perhaps, his voice had an unusually dry tone as he replied: "I asked questions of John Brown; I answer them to Billy. It is I that am ruined!"

There was that in his voice she did not understand, for though long used to his paradoxical phrases and his everlasting pose--as it seemed to her and all the world--there now rang through his words a note she had never heard before. For a fleeting instant she was inclined to catch at some hidden meaning, but her grasp of things was uncertain. She had been thrown off her balance, or poise, as Charley had, for an unwonted second, been thrown off his pose, and her thought could not pierce beneath the surface.

"I suppose you will be flippant at Judgment Day," she said with a bitter laugh, for it seemed to her a monstrous thing that they should be such an infinite distance apart.

"Why should one be serious then? There will be no question of an alibi, or evidence for the defence--no cross-examination. A cut-and-dried verdict!"

She ignored his words. "Shall you be at home to dinner?" she rejoined coldly, and her eyes wandered out of the window again to that spot across the square where heliotrope and scarlet had met.

"I fancy not," he answered, his eyes turned away also--towards the cupboard containing the liqueur. "Better ask Billy; and keep him in, and talk to him--I really would like you to talk to him. He admires you so much. I wish--in fact I hope you will ask Billy to come and live with us," he added half abstractedly. He was trying to see his way through a sudden confusion of ideas. Confusion was rare to him, and his senses, feeling the fog, embarrassed by a sudden air of mystery and a cloud of futurity, were creeping to a mind-path of understanding.

"Don't be absurd," she said coldly. "You know I won't ask him, and you don't want him."

"I have always said that decision is the greatest of all qualities--even when the decision is bad. It saves so much worry, and tends to health." Suddenly he turned to the desk and opened a tin box. "Here is further practice for your admirable gift." He opened a paper. "I want you to sign off for this building--leaving it to my absolute disposal." He spread the paper out before her.

She turned pale and her lips tightened. She looked at him squarely in the eyes. "My wedding-gift!" she said. Then she shrugged her shoulders. A moment she hesitated, and in that moment seemed to congeal. "You need it?" she asked distantly.

He inclined his head, his eye never leaving hers. With a swift angry motion she caught the glove from her left hand, and, doubling it back, dragged it off. A smooth round ring came off with it and rolled upon the floor.

Stooping, he picked up the ring, and handed it back to her, saying: "Permit me." It was her wedding-ring. She took it with a curious contracted look and put it on the finger again, then pulled off the other glove quietly. "Of course one uses the pen with the right hand," she said calmly.

"Involuntary act of memory," he rejoined slowly, as she took the pen in her hand. "You had spoken of a wedding, this was a wedding-gift, and-- that's right, sign there!"

There was a brief pause, in which she appeared to hesitate, and then she wrote her name in a large firm hand, and, throwing down the pen, caught up her gloves, and began to pull them on viciously.

"Thanks. It is very kind of you," he said. He put the document in the tin box, and took out another, as without a word, but with a grave face in which scorn and trouble were mingled, she now turned towards the door.

"Can you spare a minute longer?" he said, and advanced towards her, holding the new document in his hand. "Fair exchange is no robbery. Please take this. No, not with the right hand; the left is better luck --the better the hand, the better the deed," he added with a whimsical squint and a low laugh, and he placed the paper in her left hand. "Item No. 2 to take the place of item No. 1."

She scrutinised the paper. Wonder filled her face. "Why, this is a deed of the homestead property--worth three times as much!" she said. "Why--why do you do this?"

"Remember that questions ruin people sometimes," he answered, and stepped to the door and turned the handle, as though to show her out. She was agitated and embarrassed now. She felt she had been unjust, and yet she felt that she could not say what ought to be said, if all the rules were right.

"Thank you," she said simply. "Did you think of this when--when you handed me back the ring?"

"I never had an inspiration in my life. I was born with a plan of campaign."

"I suppose I ought to--kiss you!" she said in some little confusion.

"It might be too expensive," he answered, with a curious laugh. Then he added lightly: "This was a fair exchange"--he touched the papers--"but I should like you to bear witness, madam, that I am no robber!" He opened the door. Again there was that curious penetrating note in his voice, and that veiled look. She half hesitated, but in the pause there was a loud voice below and a quick foot on the stairs.

"It's Billy!" she said sharply, and passed out.

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VI. THE WIND AND THE SHORN LAMB

A half-hour later Charley Steele sat in his office alone with Billy Wantage, his brother-in-law, a tall, shapely fellow of twenty-four. Billy had been drinking, his face was flushed, and his whole manner was indolently careless and irresponsible. In spite of this, however, his grey eyes were nervously fixed on Charley, and his voice was shaky as he said, in reply to a question as to his finances: "That's my own business, Charley."

Charley took a long swallow from the tumbler of whiskey and soda beside him, and, as he drew some papers towards him, answered quietly: "I must make it mine, Billy, without a doubt."

The tall youth shifted in his chair and essayed to laugh.

"You've never been particular about your own business. Pshaw, what's the use of preaching to me!"

Charley pushed his chair back, and his look had just a touch of surprise, a hint of embarrassment. This youth, then, thought him something of a fool: read him by virtue of his ornamentations, his outer idiosyncrasy! This boy, whose iniquity was under his finger on that table, despised him for his follies, and believed in him less than his wife--two people who had lived closer to him than any others in the world. Before he answered he lifted the glass beside him and drank to the last drop, then slowly set it down and said, with a dangerous smile:

"I have always been particular about other people's finances, and the statement that you haven't isn't preaching, it's an indictment--so it is, Billy."

"An indictment!" Billy bit his finger-nails now, and his voice shook.

"That's what the jury would say, and the judge would do the preaching. You have stolen twenty-five thousand dollars of trust-moneys!"

For a moment there was absolute silence in the room. From outside in the square came the Marche-t'en! of a driver, and the loud cackling laugh of some loafer at the corner. Charley's look imprisoned his brother-in-law, and Billy's eyes were fixed in a helpless stare on Charley's finger, which held like a nail the record of his infamy.

Billy drew himself back with a jerk of recovery, and said with bravado, but with fear in look and motion: "Don't stare like that. The thing's done, and you can't undo it, and that's all there is about it." Charley had been staring at the youth-staring and not seeing him really, but seeing his wife and watching her lips say again: "You are ruining Billy!" He was not sober, but his mind was alert, his eccentric soul was getting kaleidoscopic glances at strange facts of life as they rushed past his mind into a painful red obscurity.

"Oh yes, it can be undone, and it's not all there is about it!" he answered quietly.

He got up suddenly, went to the door, locked it, put the key in his pocket, and, coming back, sat down again beside the table.

Billy watched him with shrewd, hunted eyes. What did Charley mean to do? To give him in charge? To send him to jail? To shut him out from the world where he had enjoyed himself so much for years and years? Never to go forth free among his fellows! Never to play the gallant with all the pretty girls he knew! Never to have any sports, or games, or tobacco, or good meals, or canoeing in summer, or tobogganing in winter, or moose- hunting, or any sort of philandering!

The thoughts that filled his mind now were not those of regret for his crime, but the fears of the materialist and sentimentalist, who revolted at punishment and all the shame and deprivation it would involve.

"What did you do with the money?" said Charley, after a minute's silence, in which two minds had travelled far.

"I put it into mines."

"What mines?"

"Out on Lake Superior."

"What sort of mines?"

"Arsenic."

Charley's eye-glass dropped, and rattled against the gold button of his white waistcoat.

"In arsenic-mines!" He put the monocle to his eye again. "On whose advice?"

"John Brown's."

"John Brown's!" Charley Steele's ideas were suddenly shaken and scattered by a man's name, as a bolting horse will crumple into confusion a crowd of people. So this was the way his John Brown had come home to roost. He lifted the empty whiskey-glass to his lips and drained air. He was terribly thirsty; he needed something to pull himself together. Five years of dissipation had not robbed him of his splendid native ability, but it had, as it were, broken the continuity of his will and the sequence of his intellect.

"It was not investment?" he asked, his tongue thick and hot in his mouth.

"No. What would have been the good?"

"Of course. Speculation--you bought heavily to sell on an expected rise?"

"Yes."

There was something so even in Charley's manner and tone that Billy misinterpreted it. It seemed hopeful that Charley was going to make the best of a bad job.

"You see," Billy said eagerly, "it seemed dead certain. He showed me the way the thing was being done, the way the company was being floated, how the market in New York was catching hold. It looked splendid. I thought I could use the money for a week or so, then put it back, and have a nice little scoop, at no one's cost. I thought it was a dead-sure thing--and I was hard up, and Kathleen wouldn't lend me any more. If Kathleen had only done the decent thing--"

A sudden flush of anger swept over Charley's face--never before in his life had that face been so sensitive, never even as a child. Something had waked in the odd soul of Beauty Steele.

"Don't be a sweep--leave Kathleen out of it!" he said, in a sharp, querulous voice--a voice unnatural to himself, suggestive of little use, as though he were learning to speak, using strange words stumblingly through a melee of the emotions. It was not the voice of Charley Steele the fop, the poseur, the idlest man in the world.

"What part of the twenty-five thousand went into the arsenic?" he said, after a pause. There was no feeling in the voice now; it was again even and inquiring.

"Nearly all."

"Don't lie. You've been living freely. Tell the truth, or--or I'll know the reason why, Billy."

"About two-thirds-that's the truth. I had debts, and I paid them."

"And you bet on the races?"

"Yes."

"And lost?"

"Yes. See here, Charley; it was the most awful luck--"

"Yes, for the fatherless children and widows, and all that are oppressed!"

Charley's look again went through and beyond the culprit, and he recalled his wife's words and his own reply. A quick contempt and a sort of meditative sarcasm were in the tone. It was curious, too, that he could smile, but the smile did not encourage Billy Wantage now.

"It's all gone, I suppose?" he added.

"All but about a hundred dollars."

"Well, you have had your game; now you must pay for it."

Billy had imagination, and he was melodramatic. He felt danger ahead.

"I'll go and shoot myself!" he said, banging the table with his fist so that the whiskey-tumbler shook.

He was hardly prepared for what followed. Charley's nerves had been irritated; his teeth were on edge. This threat, made in such a cheap, insincere way, was the last thing in the world he could bear to hear. He knew that Billy lied; that if there was one thing Billy would not do, shooting himself was that one thing. His own life was very sweet to Billy Wantage. Charley hated him the more at that moment because he was Kathleen's brother. For if there was one thing he knew of Kathleen, it was that she could not do a mean thing. Cold, unsympathetic she might be, cruel at a pinch perhaps, but dishonourable--never! This weak, cowardly youth was her brother! No one had ever seen such a look on Charley Steele's face as came upon it now--malicious, vindictive. He stooped over Billy in a fury.

"You think I'm a fool and an ass--you ignorant, brainless, lying cub! You make me a thief before all the world by forging my name, and stealing the money for which I am responsible, and then you rate me so low that you think you'll bamboozle me by threats of suicide. You haven't the courage to shoot yourself--drunk or sober. And what do you think would be gained by it? Eh, what do you think would be gained? You can't see that you'd insult your sister as well as--as rob me."

Billy Wantage cowered. This was not the Charley Steele he had known, not like the man he had seen since a child. There was something almost uncouth in this harsh high voice, these gauche words, this raw accent; but it was powerful and vengeful, and it was full of purpose. Billy quivered, yet his adroit senses caught at a straw in the words, "as rob me!" Charley was counting it a robbery of himself, not of the widows and orphans! That gave him a ray of hope. In a paroxysm of fear, joined to emotional excitement, he fell upon his knees, and pleaded for mercy--for the sake of one chance in life, for the family name, for Kathleen's sake, for the sake of everything he had ruthlessly dishonoured. Tears came readily to his eyes, real tears--of excitement; but he could measure, too, the strength of his appeal.

"If you'll stand by me in this, I'll pay you back every cent, Charley," he cried. "I will, upon my soul and honour! You shan't lose a penny, if you'll only see me through. I'll work my fingers off to pay it back till the last hour of my life. I'll be straight till the day I die--so help me God!"

Charley's eyes wandered to the cupboard where the liqueurs were. If he could only decently take a drink! But how could he with this boy kneeling before him? His breath scorched his throat.

"Get up!" he said shortly. "I'll see what I can do--to-morrow. Go away home. Don't go out again to-night. And come here at ten o'clock in the morning."

Billy took up his hat, straightened his tie, carefully brushed the dust from his knees, and, seizing Charley's hand, said: "You're the best fellow in the world, Charley." He went towards the door, dusting his face of emotion as he had dusted his knees. The old selfish, shrewd look was again in his eyes. Charley's gaze followed him gloomily. Billy turned the handle of the door. It was locked.

Charley came forward and unlocked it. As Billy passed through, Charley, looking sharply in his face, said hoarsely: "By Heaven, I believe you're not worth it!" Then he shut the door again and locked it.

He almost ran back and opened the cupboard. Taking out the bottle of liqueur, he filled a glass and drank it off. Three times he did this, then seated himself at the table with a sigh of relief and no emotion in his face.

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Chapter VII

"PEACE, PEACE, AND THERE IS NO PEACE"'

The sun was setting by the time Charley was ready to leave his office. Never in his life had he stayed so late in "the halls of industry," as he flippantly called his place of business. The few cases he had won so brilliantly since the beginning of his career, he had studied at night in his luxurious bedroom in the white brick house among the maples on the hill. In every case, as at the trial of Joseph Nadeau, the man who murdered the timber-merchant, the first prejudice of judge and jury had given way slowly before the deep-seeing mind, which had as rare a power of analysis as for generalisation, and reduced masses of evidence to phrases; and verdicts had been given against all personal prejudice--to be followed outside the court by the old prejudice, the old look askance at the man called Beauty Steele.

To him it had made no difference at any time. He cared for neither praise nor blame. In his actions a materialist, in his mind he was a watcher of life, a baffled inquirer whose refuge was irony, and whose singular habits had in five years become a personal insult to the standards polite society and Puritan morality had set up. Perhaps the insult had been intended, for irregularities were committed with an insolent disdain for appearances. He did nothing secretly; his page of life was for him who cared to read. He played cards, he talked agnosticism, he went on shooting expeditions which became orgies, he drank openly in saloons, he whose forefathers had been gentlemen of King George, and who sacrificed all in the great American revolution for honour and loyalty--statesmen, writers, politicians, from whom he had direct inheritance, through stirring, strengthening forces, in the building up of laws and civilisation in a new land. Why he chose to be what he was--if he did choose--he alone could answer. His personality had impressed itself upon his world, first by its idiosyncrasies and afterwards by its enigmatical excesses.

What was he thinking of as he laid the papers away in the tin box in a drawer, locked it, and put the key in his pocket? He had found to the smallest detail Billy's iniquity, and he was now ready to shoulder the responsibility, to save the man, who, he knew, was scarce worth the saving. But Kathleen--there was what gave him pause. As he turned to the window and looked out over the square he shuddered. He thought of the exchange of documents he had made with her that day, and he had a sense of satisfaction. This defalcation of Billy's would cripple him, for money had flown these last few years. He had had heavy losses, and he had dug deep into his capital. Down past the square ran a cool avenue of beeches to the water, and he could see his yacht at anchor. On the other side of the water, far down the shore, was a house which had been begun as a summer cottage, and had ended in being a mansion. A few Moorish pillars, brought from Algiers for the decoration of the entrance, had necessitated the raising of the roof, and then all had to be in proportion, and the cottage became like an appanage to a palace. So it had gone, and he had cared so little about it all, and for the consequences. He had this day secured Kathleen from absolute poverty, no matter what happened, and that had its comfort. His eyes wandered among the trees. He could see the yellow feathers of the oriole and catch the note of the whippoorwill, and from the great church near the voices of the choir came over. He could hear the words "Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word."

Depart in peace--how much peace was there in the world? Who had it? The remembrance of what Kathleen said to him at the door--"I suppose I ought to kiss you"--came to him, was like a refrain in his ears.

"Peace is the penalty of silence and inaction," he said to himself meditatively. "Where there is action there is no peace. If the brain and body fatten, then there is peace. Kathleen and I have lived at peace, I suppose. I never said a word to her that mightn't be put down in large type and pasted on my tombstone, and she never said a word to me--till to-day--that wasn't like a water-colour picture. Not till to-day, in a moment's strife and trouble, did I ever get near her. And we've lived in peace. Peace? Where is the right kind of peace? Over there is old Sainton. He married a rich woman, he has had the platter of plenty before him always, he wears ribbons and such like baubles given by the Queen, but his son had to flee the country. There's Herring. He doesn't sleep because his daughter is going to marry an Italian count. There's Latouche. His place in the cabinet is begotten in corruption, in the hotbed of faction war. There's Kenealy. His wife has led him a dance of deep damnation. There's the lot of them--every one, not an ounce of peace among them, except with old Casson, who weighs eighteen stone, lives like a pig, grows stuffier in mind and body every day, and drinks half a bottle of whiskey every night. There's no one else--yes, there is!"

He was looking at a small black-robed figure with clean-shaven face, white hair, and shovel-hat, who passed slowly along the wooden walk beneath, with meditative content in his face.

"There's peace," he said with a laugh. "I've known Father Hallon for twenty-five years, and no man ever worked so hard, ever saw more trouble, ever shared other people's bad luck mere than he; ever took the bit in his teeth, when it was a matter of duty, stronger than he; and yet there's peace; he has it; a peace that passes all understanding--mine anyhow. I've never had a minute's real peace. The World, or Nature, or God, or It, whatever the name is, owes me peace. And how is It to give it? Why, by answering my questions. Now it's a curious thing that the only person I ever met who could answer any questions of mine--answer them in the way that satisfies--is Suzon. She works things down to phrases. She has wisdom in the raw, and a real grip on life, and yet all the men she has known have been river-drivers and farmers, and a few men from town who mistook the sort of Suzon she is. Virtuous and straight, she's a born child of Aphrodite too--by nature. She was made for love. A thousand years ago she would have had a thousand loves! And she thinks the world is a magnificent place, and she loves it, and wallows--fairly wallows--in content. Now which is right: Suzon or Father Hallon-- Aphrodite or the Nazarene? Which is peace--as the bird and the beast of the field get it--the fallow futile content, or--"

He suddenly stopped, hiccoughed, then hurriedly drawing paper before him, he sat down. For an hour he wrote. It grew darker. He pushed the table nearer the window, and the singing of the choir in the church came in upon him as his pen seemed to etch words into the paper, firm, eccentric, meaning. What he wrote that evening has been preserved, and the yellow sheets lie loosely in a black despatch-box which contains the few records Charley Steele left behind him. What he wrote that night was the note of his mind, the key to all those strange events through which he began to move two hours after the lines were written:

Over thy face is a veil of white sea-mist, Only thine eyes shine like stars; bless or blight me, I will hold close to the leash at thy wrist, O Aphrodite!

Thou in the East and I here in the West, Under our newer skies purple and pleasant: Who shall decide which is better--attest, Saga or peasant?

Thou with Serapis, Osiris, and Isis, I with Jehovah, in vapours and shadows; Thou with the gods' joy-enhancing devices, Sweet-smelling meadows!

What is there given us?--Food and some raiment, Toiling to reach to some Patmian haven, Giving up all for uncertain repayment, Feeding the raven!

Striving to peer through the infinite azure, Alternate turning to earthward and falling, Measuring life with Damastian measure, Finite, appalling.

What does it matter! They passed who with Homer Poured out the wine at the feet of their idols: Passing, what found they? To-come a misnomer, It and their idols?

Sacristan, acolyte, player, or preacher, Each to his office, but who holds the key? Death, only Death--thou, the ultimate teacher Wilt show it to me.

And when the forts and the barriers fall, Shall we then find One the true, the almighty, Wisely to speak with the worst of us all-- Ah, Aphrodite!

Waiting, I turn from the futile, the human, Gone is the life of me, laughing with youth Steals to learn all in the face of a woman, Mendicant Truth!

Rising with a bitter laugh, and murmuring the last lines, he thrust the papers into a drawer, locked it, and going quickly from the room, he went down-stairs. His horse and cart were waiting for him, and he got in.

The groom looked at him inquiringly. "The Cote Dorion!" he said, and they sped away through the night.

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