TABLE of CONTENTS

CHAPTER I—THE DARKEST HOUR OF NIGHT

CHAPTER II—I AM VARGE

CHAPTER III—IN WHICH THE WEB IS WOVEN

CHAPTER IV—LOOSE THREADS

CHAPTER V—VARGE, IS IT TRUE?”

CHAPTER VI—COUNSEL FOR THE DEFENCE

CHAPTER VII—THE SENTENCE OF THE COURT

CHAPTER VIII—THE GREY PLACE

CHAPTER IX—THE WHEEL

CHAPTER X—A COWARD SOUL

CHAPTER XI—TRAINING A VIRGINIA CREEPER

CHAPTER XII—THE FIGHT

CHAPTER XIII—AFTER THE FIGHT

CHAPTER XIV—THE GUARDS ARE CHANGED

CHAPTER XV—VARGE MAKES A DISCOVERY

CHAPTER XVI—A STRANGE MONITOR

CHAPTER XVII—THE FIRE

CHAPTER XVIII—THE ESCAPE

CHAPTER XIX—THE ESCAPE (CONTINUED)

CHAPTER XX—DOCTOR KREELMAR’s “DREAM”

CHAPTER XXI—THE OLD “BANKER

CHAPTER XXII—THE MAN WHO THOUGHT SLOW

CHAPTER XXIII—MY NAME IS PETERS

CHAPTER XXIV—ON THE BRINK

CHAPTER XXV—THE ALLIES

CHAPTER XXVI—THE GREATEST THING

CHAPTER XXVII—A GAME THAT WAS NEVER PLAYED

CHAPTER XXVIII—MRS. MERTON’S REQUEST

CHAPTER XXIX—THE HOUSE OF DEATH

CHAPTER XXX—THE BARRIERS DOWN

CHAPTER I

THE DARKEST HOUR OF NIGHT

A faint, indeterminate, far-away sound. The sleep er’s eyes opened, and, as calmly, as naturally as he had lain asleep, he lay now alert. There was neither alarm nor shock in the transition. There had been a sound foreign to the serene silence of the peaceful, sleeping household; a sound too low to rouse a slumberer from repose by its mere volume, too low almost to be heard; a sound so low as to obtrude itself only upon the most super-sensitive sub-consciousness—Varge lay awake.

And now it came again. Then a long pause—then again—and again. It came from the east end of the house, at the rear—from the back stairs. Some one was mounting them with extreme caution —a prolonged wait between each step, one foot following the other only after the body’s weight had been gradually, very gradually, thrown upon the first, lest the bare wood stair should creak —creak out the secret confided to them in this small, silent hour of morning.

It was black—dense black. Once the step stumbled slightly and there was a soft rubbing sound, barely audible, as of a hand thrown out to feel the way against the wall.

The minutes passed, perhaps three of them. The footsteps now had reached the landing and had begun to come along the hall—nearer and nearer, with the same ominous stealth, to the door of the room in which Varge lay.

Still relaxed, still in repose, not a muscle of Varge’s body had flexed by so much as a ripple as he listened; the beat of his pulse was the same calm, strong, even beat as in sleep. And yet every faculty was atune, stimulated to its highest efficiency. What brought Harold Merton, the son of the house, at two o’clock in the morning to the little chamber over the kitchen, that was apart, shut off, from the rest of the dwelling; and brought him stealing there, where none could hear or mark his movements, like some guilty, evil prowler with cautious, frightened tread?

A hand fumbled for the doorknob outside with a curious sound, as though the knuckles were beating a tremulous, involuntary tattoo upon the door as they came into contact with it. The knob turned, the door was pushed slowly inwards, slowly closed again, there was a faint click from the released catch—and against the door, without form or outline in the darkness, was an added opaqueness.

“I am awake”—there was an almost imperceptible pause between Varge’s words as he spoke, comparable somewhat to one building the phrase of a strange language one word upon the other, but comparable only in that regard—the pronunciation held no trace of foreign accent. “I am awake ”—his tones were quiet, composed. “Why have you come to me in my room in this way, Harold? ”

A low gasp, the sharp-drawn intake of a breath, came from the door.

“You—you know that it is I,”—the words were a hoarse, shaken whisper.

“I heard your first step on the stairs,” Varge answered simply. “I heard you come up each stair. I heard you stumble once and feel along the wall. I heard you come down the hall on tiptoe. I know your step. I heard your hand shake like a frightened man’s against the door.”

“Sometimes”—the other seemed to shiver as he spoke—“you seem more than human ”

“Why have you come to me in my room at this hour?” asked Varge again, rising now to a sitting posture in the bed. “What has happened? I will light a candle and you will tell me.”

“No! In God’s name no light” —Merton’s words, low-breathed, came with frenzied quickness, quavering, dominant with terror. “No light; and, for mercy’s sake, speak low. Speak very low. Wait! I am coming close to you where I can whisper.”

Varge made no answer. His eyes were on that darker spot that, once by the door, now was moving across the room toward him. And then a hand, thrust out, groping, touched his shoulder—it was wet with cold moisture and shook as with the ague.

“Varge, you must help me,” Merton burst out hysterically. “I am in danger, Varge—in awful danger, do you hear? You can save me. You are the only man, the only man, who can. For God’s sake say you will! It can’t mean anything to you—there’s nothing you can lose—you don’t even know who you are—you haven’t even so much as a name, except what we’ve always called you — Varge. You’ll help me, Varge—say you will! We’ve brought you up all these years and treated you like—like one of us, and all you’ve had and all you’ve got you owe to us. .You’ll—you’ll repay it now, Varge, won’t you?”

The blackness of the room was gone, transformed into quick, shifting scenes and pictures that staged themselves in the little chamber before Varge’s mind—colourful, vivid, real—pictures of childhood, memory-dimmed; pictures of boyhood, standing out more sharply, in clearer focus; pictures of later years; pictures of yesterday. The years passed in lightning sequence before him. A foundling, nameless, a child of five, adopted from an orphan asylum, here he had been given a home; here he and this man beside him had been brought up together in the little country town, until the other had gone out to college and he, his own common school education finished, had begun to work for Doctor Merton, his benefactor; here he had grown to manhood, he was twenty-five now; here he had spent his life, knowing almost a father’s consideration, almost a mother’s care, which in turn had kindled a love and gratitude in his own heart that had grown almost to worship with the years, a gratitude and loyalty that had caused him to crush back longings for a wider sphere—contenting himself meanwhile by constant study, acquiring in a hard school the knowledge of medicine that one day, when these two should be gone, he meant to make his profession—for Harold Merton, ten years his senior, was little at home now, and they, growing old, had come to lean intimately upon him, to depend on him, to need him. And so he had lived on there—as Varge, the doctor’s man.

“It is true,” he said slowly. “You had no need to tell me so. It is true. I owe everything to your father to your mother, and through them to you. I will do anything for your sakes.”

“Yes, yes; I told myself you would/’ Merton babbled wildly. “I knew you would.. You promise, Varge? Give me your promise. You’ve never broken one.”

“I will do anything for your sakes,” Varge repeated quietly. “I could not do anything else.”

“Then, get up,” urged Merton feverishly. “Get up quickly and dress. I have brought money enough to take you anywhere—you can get away where they will never find you. Hurry, Varge, hurry! Why don’t you hurry? You have promised, Varge.”

Varge’s hands went out and rested in reassuring pressure on Merton’s two shoulders.

“I have promised, Harold,” he said gravely; “and I will do this thing whatever it may be, I will go anywhere if it is necessary—but you are talking wildly, you are not calm. You imagine something that is worse than the thing is. What is this danger that my going will save you from, and how could my leaving here save you from anything?”

“I have been seen,” Merton muttered hoarsely. “I have been seen” he repeated, with a shudder. “They will know that I did it unless suspicion is directed somewhere else. Don’t you see? Are you blind? If you fly in the night, if you disappear, they will think it was you. But they’ll never catch you, you are too clever, and you’ve nothing to lose, no family, no name even —you see, I thought of that. I’ll give you plenty of money. Hurry, Varge Get up and get your clothes on! Don’t make a noise, not a sound!”

“What is this thing that you have done that I must take upon myself?” Varge’s hands tightened imperatively on the other’s shoulders. “What is this thing that you are afraid of?”

“Father,” Merton mumbled. “Father. Father—and he is dead.”

“Your father—dead!” Varge pulled the shaking form toward him, as though to search and read the other’s features even in the darkness. “When did he die?”

“A—a few minutes—great God, a year ago the words were a chattering, fearsome whisper. “In the library. We had a quarrel . I—I struck him with the fender bar. I have killed my father”

CHAPTER II

I AM VARGE

CLOSE, Varge had drawn the other to him, and the breath of one was upon the other’s cheek. For a moment, that seemed to span eternity in that little chamber, the two forms on the bed held rigid, motionless—and again there had fallen an utter stillness, a silence as of death, a silence in grim harmony now with the black shadow, blacker than the shadow of the night, that lay upon the house.

As a sudden knife gash shocks veins and arteries into inertia for a brief moment before the blood spurts madly from the wound; so, for that moment, Varge’s faculties were shocked to numbness at the other’s words. Then his fingers on Merton’s shoulders shut vise-like. Horror, loathing of the awful deed revolted him; the inhuman selfishness that had tricked and played upon his gratitude, demanding that he should take this hideous crime upon himself, swept him with seething passion—and only the mighty will power, the self-centred grip of the man upon himself, kept back his fingers from flying at the other’s throat to wring the breath from the shaking thing that shivered now in his grasp.

No words passed his lips—tighter his fingers closed. Straight out before him he held Merton —and the blackness between them, cloaking their faces, grew tenser charged as the seconds passed, until it seemed 7 to live, to palpitate, to move and throb and breathe out dread, soundless words.

“Varge! Varge!”—the words gurgled in choking terror from Merton’s lips. “Why are you holding me like this? Let me go; let me go, I tell you!”

“I said I would do this thing”—Varge spoke in a: low, deadly monotone. “But I will not do it. For your father’s sake and your mother’s sake, I said X would do anything —”

Merton was battling now wildly, striking out frenzied, aimless blows; mad with a new fear, a physical fear, of Varge; struggling, squirming to free himself. Varge’s body swayed not by so much as the fraction of an inch. His arms, like great steel rods, were motionless. It was as though he held, without thought of effort or exertion, some inanimate, paltry object in his grasp.

“—I will not do this thing”—Varge still spoke on, still in the same dull monotone. “What right have you to ask it, you blood-guilty son? What right have you to life that you ask my life for your life? I have no name, you say, to make a curse of—I have nothing to lose, you say, because I do not know who I am. I? 7 am Varge. You think that I have no soul, no conscience, that the foulest crime in God’s sight means nothing to me—because I am a nobody!”

A faint, purling sound came from Merton. He had ceased to struggle. No hurt nor blow had Varge given him; but the cold fury of the man who held him, the fearful power of the grip upon him, that all his own strength would not avail to shake by one iota, seemed to have sunk into his soul and left him swaying sick;with terror.

“Save youlThey’re all alike—you’d only waste your breath.” He banged with his cane on the grating, the door behind Varge opened, he nodded to the guard who entered—and the next minute Varge had passed out of sight.

Hysterically, Merton wanted to laugh when they got out into the corridor; his spirits seemed as light as air; he was safe, safe; he could hardly control himself; the steel doors, the convict still scrubbing at the floor affected him now with no sense of chill; Varge would never speak. He was cordial to Willett—apologetic for Varge.

“Yes, sir,” said the guard affably, pocketing Merton’s dollar; “they’re a hard lot — sympathy’s lost on ’em.”

Willett left him at the warden’s door.

“Well,” said the warden, with a smile, “your visit didn’t last very long, but it seems to have done you good.”

“Yes”—Merton glanced at the grey eyes, saw the frank smile, and smiled in return. “Yes; I think it has. I can’t say that it has been quite as I had intended and hoped—Varge seemed to resent my coming—but I feel, at least, that I have done my duty.”

Warden Rand nodded his head.

“Yes,” he said, with unaffected sincerity; “and you have a right to feel so. Few would have acted as you have done.” He rose from the desk. “And now,” he laughed pleasantly, dismissing the subject, “duty done, if you are ready, we’ll go over to the house and have dinner.”

The hour that followed for Merton over the warden’s table was an hour that seemed strangely genuine compared with the hours of the month and more just past. He laughed and talked through it all—-mostly with Janet Rand. And after dinner he stayed on, while the warden returned to his office.

He was a good talker, pleasant-mannered, and now with the uplift upon him and the presence of this girl who attracted him, he exerted himself to the utmost to be entertaining and agreeable — or perhaps, better, gave way unrestrainedly to a sense of easy spontaneity in an effort to please and impress her favourably.

Janet Rand was pretty and good fun. He decided mentally that he would see more of her. In the meantime, the day that he had dreaded to face, in anticipation of which he had lain sleepless the night before—and more than one night before that—had turned out to be a red-letter day. He was safe; Varge would never speak—Varge had said so; he had heard it from Varge’s lips. And the afternoon had been a windfall of luck; he had not expected to meet any one like Janet Rand—she was a mighty good-looking girl, trim-figured and dainty; a picture of gold hair, and laughing eyes and lips, and charmingly rounded arms exposed by the half-sleeved dress she wore. Yes; he would see more of Janet Rand.

It was quite late in the afternoon, and the warden had come back to the house with a guard and two convicts to have some work started which he wanted done, when Merton left for his drive back to Berley Falls.

Janet, from the front window, watched him drive awaj^; then she turned with a perplexed little frown to her father.

“I can’t make up my mind whether I like him or not, dad,” she said. “Somehow, he doesn’t seem quite natural, but perhaps that may be no more than nervous mannerisms. What I did like about him, though, was his coming here to see that man—that was perfectly splendid of him.”

“So it was,” agreed the warden. “Yes; so it was. It’s a curious case. I’ve never had anything to do with a man like that before, and 7 must confess I’m puzzled.”

“Why, what are you talking about, dad? Had anything to do with whom—Mr. Merton? I didn’t se anything so very extraordinary about him.”

“No; not Mr. Merton”—Warden Rand pinched his daughter’s cheeks playfully. “Varge, the man who murdered Mr. Merton’s father—the man that Sheriff Marston brought in last month when you were in the office.”

“I remember,” said Janet slowly. “I remember I was very sorry for him—after he went out. What has happened, dad? What has he done?”

“He hasn’t done anything,” replied the warden soberly, taking a turn or two up and down the room. “I can’t explain it—he’s different, that’s all. I thought I had seen all kinds and all types and had had years enough of experience to see through any veneer any criminal ever thought of coating himself with—but this man is different. I’ve gone midnight rounds with the guards and listened in front of his cell—he sleeps as sweetly and easily as a babe. I’ve spoken to him suddenly in the shop, come up behind him when he was off his guard—never a start or tremor. He’s clean, cleanskinned, clean-eyed and —” Warden Rand paused and looked at his daughter thoughtfully.

“And therefore he ought to be clean inside,” completed Janet. “You nearly said it, dad. I actually think you believe he’s innocent.”

Warden Rand’s fine, ruddy face relaxed and a whimsical smile crept into his eyes and flickered on his lips.

“My dear,” said he, “I’ve got seven hundred and ninety-three prisoners in there, and this man is the only guilty one amongst them.”

“Why, dad!” exclaimed Janet. “What a thing to say—you don’t mean that.”

“Well,” said the warden, “I’m only taking his own say-so for it—the other seven hundred and ninety-two are ready to swear they’re innocent until they’re black in the face.”

Janet laughed; then she slipped her arm through her father’s.

“What else is there, dad? You know I’m chief confidant. The man is worrying you.”

“No; not worrying me, dear—he’s puzzling me,” said the warden. “There’s nothing else, except, curiously enough, while he’s a model prisoner in every other respect, he seems to be taking up with the worst element in the shop, according to Wenger’s report.”

“Wenger!” Janet burst out. “I—I think I hate that man.”

“Tut, tut,” chided Warden Rand. “I know you dislike him, but—”

“He’s brutal and overbearing,” insisted Janet. “You needn’t shake your head, dad. I wish he wasn’t here. Some day there’ll be trouble. I believe he nags and picks at the prisoners and that’s probably what he’s doing now—he’s taken a grudge against this man, and that’s at the bottom of it.”

“I’ve never found anything wrong with Wenger,” said Warden Rand gravely.

“No,” said Janet, “and for a very good reason—Wenger is a sublime hypocrite.”

CHAPTER XI

TRAINING A VIRGINIA CREEPER

HAROLD MERTON’S first visit to the warden’s house was but the prelude to many more. He drove often during the following two months from Berley Falls to the little penitentiary town; but on these occasions, while he never failed to ask Warden Rand about Varge, he did not ask again to see the other.

Acute enough where his own interests were involved, he realised that not only was nothing further to be gained by seeing Varge, but indeed much might be lost, or at least risked, in so doing. He had shown Varge that he did not mean to desert him, that he was not ungrateful, and now the less he obtruded himself upon the other’s thoughts the better—it made it easier for Varge to keep his promise. Constant irritation produces a sore, and from the sore a poison might spread through the system that would undermine the strongest constitution. He understood that very well —Varge, too, had shown him that very clearly. It was best now to let Varge alone—Varge had given him the promise that he wanted—it was best now to let Varge alone.

His interest in Janet Rand had grown to passion; and he fostered that passion feverishly, as a man drinks whisky sometimes for two reasons—for the glass itself, and for the open door it offers through which he may pass and—forget. Janet Rand became to him literally an intoxication in which he sought to steep and lose himself.

As for her feelings toward him, with his complacent, all-possessing selfishness, he was well content. He had no reason to feel otherwise. They had grown to be great friends. His welcome was always cordial and unaffected—and Janet was always the same—laughing, happy, care-free. Shallow himself, incapable of depth, he saw her only through his own perspective, as one sees a picture which, though captivating the fancy by the scene or subject it depicts, loses its true beauty through' the observer’s inability to appreciate the art and breadth behind it which makes it live. Janet was dainty, trim, a divine little figure, merry, contagiously gay. He told himself he loved her—he promised himself that he would have her.

At times, at first, in her presence, the shadow of the grey walls about him would loom up suddenly with sickening mockery, and the sense of a ghastly irony at their nearness and his surroundings would sweep momentarily over him. But that had grown less and less; and the sight of a convict on the road, either a trusty or one under guard, no longer startled him. Familiarity, allayed fear, a blunted conscience, gave him of their common offspring—callousness.

It was the first breath of spring—in the hollows and the shady places snow still lingered; but the roads were drying, green was tingeing the faded colouring of the fields, and a fresh, sweet, vernal scent was in the air.

They were out on the wide veranda of the warden’s House, and Merton was making pretence at helping Janet to arrange some runners on which was to be trained the Virginia creeper she had planted the year before.

He had been watching her with covert admiration; and more than once, as she stood on tiptoe, reaching up to fasten a piece of cord, their hands had met, as, deliberately seizing upon the excuse, he had taken the string from her. More graceful, more adorable, more to be possessed than ever she seemed. And why should he not possess her?—why should he still have to come to her here where these bald, ugly prison walls, even if they affected him less now, were nevertheless forever thrusting themselves sardonically before his eyes?—why should he wait any longer? The passion, the desire that was in him for her seemed this afternoon to be climaxing, to be greater, more uncontrollable than it had ever been before. The touch of her hand seemed to fire him'with a mad impulse to grasp it fiercely, to draw and crush her to him. And she had felt it too, he told himself with elation. He had never seen her so sober, so quiet, so subdued, less inclined for conversation, less of gaiety about her.

She stopped suddenly in the midst of a plaintive little air she was humming.

“Does the spring ever affect you like that?” she asked abruptly.

Merton started as she spoke.

“Like what?” he inquired mechanically.

“I don’t know just how to explain it,” she said, smiling a little wistfully. “It should be the happiest time in the year, shouldn’t it? Everything is so fresh and new and clean; it’s like the beginning of life all over again—old life making a fresh start with the scars and smirches all wiped out, and new life budding into being. It should be the gladdest time of all the year, but somehow, sometimes, like to-day, it—it isn’t for me.”

“Shall I tell you why?” said Merton quickly, snatching at a lead that seemed opportunely opened for him. “It’s that”—he pointed to the high, grey prison wall across the lawn.

She turned slowly and looked. A guard at the corner by the little turret stood motionless, carbine in hand; the dome of the main building, with the topmost row of barred windows just showing over the wall, loomed in the background; on the road, a mounted patrol was riding by.

“Perhaps,” she said thoughtfully, facing him again. “Perhaps you are right. I had never thought of that. There is no spring for them, poor heavy-laden souls, no fresh start, no beginning all over again, is there?” “Miss Rand—Janet,” Merton burst out, stepping toward her, “this is no place for you —”

“No place for me?”—her eyes widened as she caught up his words. “Why, what can you mean by that? I’ve always lived here; I was born here. My mother came here when she was married, and — and died here. Dad has been warden here for twenty-five years.”

“Yes”—Merton’s voice was eager, passionate ‘—» “that is just it. You have been here too long. Your whole horizon has been those four walls; there’s been nothing but prison atmosphere around you all your life. Janet, I want to take you away from here, out into the world, anywhere, where you will see new things and people and a different life—anywhere, so that we will be together. I love you, Janet—you know I love you. I loved you from the first day.”

She had drawn back from him; the colour had gone a little from her cheeks, but her blue eyes, wider now, while troubled, were steady, full of calm self-possession.

“Oh, I am sorry for—for this, Mr. Merton,” she said in a low voice.

Merton stared at her a moment a numbed, almost surprised look on his face. Tastefully dressed, of tall, good figure, his dark face not unhandsome, there was something almost appealing in him as he stood there.

“You mean,” he said hoarsely, “you mean you do not love me?”

She shook her head.

“No,” she said; “I do not love you. I do not want to hurt you. I am very, very sorry this has happened I did not know that you—that you felt that way toward me; I—”

“But these months, two months, that I have been coming here,” Merton interrupted quickly. “ Surely you knew that—”

Again she shook her head.

“I did not think of it in that way,” she answered. “We were friends, and dad and I were glad to have you come. I liked you for what brought you here first, and we were very sorry for the — for what had come into your life. We thought you liked us, that you found some relief in coming here and—and that wa? all. I do not love you, Mr. Merton; indeed, I do not even know you.”

“Know me?” repeated Merton, a tinge of affront creeping into his voice.

“As a woman should know a man before she gives him her heart,” she explained quietly. “I have seen you here only as our guest and —”

“Isn’t that your own fault?” he broke in. “You have not tried to know me.”

“No,” she admitted, “I have not tried to know you—in that way.”

“But you will,” he said eagerly, “and love will come. Once away from here, together, in a new life, with wide interests, I will make you love me. I will work for you, slave for you, I will give you everything your heart can wish. I love you, Janet.”

“I don’t think you quite know what you are saying,” she said gently. “Even if I wanted to go, if it were the dearest wish I had, I would be afraid to barter my love for the opportunity; it—it would not be a very sacred thing then, would it? But I have no wish to go away. My place is here. I have always been hippy and contented here, and this is my life.”

“Yes,” said Merton, with sudden, impulsive bitterness—the calmness with which she spoke gave a finality to her words which maddened him. “Yes; and that is the trouble. It is your life and it has warped you. You are satisfied and contented with it because you cannot comprehend anything apart from that grey, grinning, hideous place. Your whole life, your thoughts, everything, are bound up with prison this and prison that. You won’t marry me, because you say you don’t know me. No!—you only know those striped-animals in there. So, at that rate, if you only marry whom you know, your love will have to find its object within those four walls, amongst—”

“Mr. Merton! Let me go!”—he had caught her hand, and now she wrenched herself free. Her face was crimson with angry amazement. “Are you mad to speak to me like that! I—I think, please, you had better go.”

For a moment they stood facing each other without speaking. Then Merton, as though awakening from a dream, brushed his hand across his eyes.

“Yes; I am mad,” he said penitently. “I did not know what I was saying. But I cannot bear to lose you. I love you and I cannot give you up. I will not give you up. You do not love me now, but some day I can win your love. And I am right about this, Janet—Miss Rand, if you would only go away, even for a little while, you would see.”

Janet’s eyes were on the ground.

“It is quite useless to say anything more,” she said monotonously. “I shall never love you.”

“But you must!”—he was leaning toward her again earnestly. “I cannot give you up. I love you; you are everything to me. I cannot take that answer.”

“You must take it,” she answered dully, “because it is the only answer I can ever give you.”

“You think so now,” he said softly, “but ever ’ is so long a time. Perhaps you are right; perhaps you may never love me, and if that prove so, then I must accept it, but surely I am. not to lose your friendship too”—Merton was pleading now. He had gone too far, been too sure of himself, had foolishly given vent to temper; contrition, an appeal to her sympathy was his only hope of reinstating himself in her eyes. “You are angry with me now. But see! I am sincerely, bitterly sorry for what I said. I was carried away. I was beside myself for the moment, but now I am sorry with all my heart. Won’t you forgive me and forget it; and, at least, if we can be nothing more, let us still be the friends we were before this afternoon just as if nothing had happened?”

The pucker, in hesitant, tiny furrows, held for an instant on her forehead; then it cleared, and she looked up at him frankly, a tremulous little smile quivering on the sweet lips, as she held out to him the piece of string she had been twisting in her hands, one end of which was fastened near the roots of the Virginia creeper.

“Will you please tie this, Mr. Merton?—on that nail up there, the highest one—I can’t reach it”

CHAPTER XII

THE FIGHT

IT was not so many hours, so many days, so many weeks, so many months—it was a numberless succession of periods so loosely defined one from the other that they merged without perceptible demarcation into a single whole that, in itself intangible, held no concrete idea of time.

To Varge, it was as though he were in the midst of a space, drear and dead, that had no boundary, that above and below and on either hand was limitless, through which he had journeyed and must journey without hope of coming to the end. What was behind him was not a consciousness of distance travelled, spurring weariness to new life with the cheering knowledge that part of the road was traversed; it was, instead, only a dull consciousness that he had walked for an aeon of time as upon a path which was but the circumference of a circle, where with each step taken the distance before him was remorselessly identical with what it had been before.

The earlier mornings, the later evenings, the disappearing snow as he marched to and fro across the penitentiary yard marked a change of season—but that was all. It was a change, purely impersonal, utterly extraneous, that held nothing of interest, nothing, in common with him or those within the four grey walls. There had been breaks in the monotony—not pleasant breaks, breaks to which the monotony was a boon. Harold Merton’s visit—bad days and nights had followed that. And then the horror of that forty-eight hours of solitary confinement in the blackness, that had been—.Varge raised his head and looked around him—it was afternoon and he was amidst the now all too-familiar surroundings of the carpenter shop. A sense of strange unrest was upon him, premonitory, pregnant of something he could not define. It had been with him that morning, yesterday in a lesser degree and vaguely, know now. He had thought of it through those hours of horrible, dead, silent blackness, and no answer had come. He had escaped what few, if any, had ever escaped before for the same act.

It had not been so bad at first in that cell. It was afternoon when he went in, and the six little round ventilating holes in the bottom of the door threw tiny shafts of light across the floor. In the beginning he had not given them any thought; then they had absorbed his whole attention, and he had watched them with strained eyes, as though to rivet the yellow flickering threads and hold them in their places on the floor. They had grown shorter and shorter, receded to dull grey circles on the door that were like three pairs of glazed eyes mocking at him as the light gradually died in their depths. Then there was blackness in which he could not see his hand before his face, and the sense of a heavy, crushing weight, growing more and more intolerable, that settled upon him and seemed to rob his brain of its normal functions, filling it instead with wild, fantastic, terrifying thoughts; then a mental suffocation, as one buried alive — forgotten. That had taken a strangling hold upon him—he was shut off, lost—if he should be forgotten there! He had slept, and waked to watch for those yellow threads; and had slept again and waked once more still to find they had not come, then —

His train of thought was rudely interrupted, and with a shock he was brought back to his immediate surroundings. A convict, with face like chalk, his eyes staring, came racing madly from the stock-room—and then the words poured from him in a high-pitched, jumbled torrent.

“Wenger’s seen him!” he yelled. “It’s all up. Four months diggin’ down to the brick, a handful at a time, my Gawd, an’ it’s all up! He’s seen Scotty cornin’ out from beneath the lumber pile. It’s all up, Twisty—an’ us down to the sewer with only a few bricks to kick loose!”

In Twisty was no misplaced leadership.

“Den beat it now!” he screamed. “It’s our only chance. Youse guys knows what to do. Croak Wenger first, an’ beat it! Spud, you an’ de Mouser get de rest uv dem bricks loose an’—”

The words were drowned in wild confusion—Varge was already racing toward the stock-room door —over his shoulder he saw the instructor crumple up and wriggle to the floor from a blow over the head from a billet of wood in the Butcher’s hands. Twisty, Spud, the Mouser, a dozen more, were close at his heels. The heavy face of Wenger, his hand locked in the collar of a convict he was shoving before him, loomed up in the doorway.

“Croak ’im! Croak ’im! I tho’t youse were all right!” shrilled Twisty, in the belief that Varge was but leading the rush. “T’ree-sevens gets the foist crack at ’im!”

Mad with the lust for blood, mad with the lust for freedom they were. There was no thought now of personal wrongs in Varge’s mind—hound and cur though \ Wenger was, he was at least a human being—they would tear him in pieces like wild beasts. And freedom —they were guilty men — criminals—a prey on society—what right had they to freedom!

Wenger’s face had gone from red to grey, fear was in it, then came a brutish look of animal courage. He wrenched at his pocket for his revolver, but the convict in his grasp—Scotty — turned suddenly and flung his arms around him.

A bull-like roar and an oath came from Wenger as Varge neared him.

“I’ll get you anyway!” he bellowed.

“Fight, Wenger! Get free from that man! Fight for it if you want to live!” Varge flashed at him—and turned to face the on-coming rush.

It was upon him like an avalanche. A little crouched, he met it. It seemed to shiver and part and break and go scattering backward as a tempest’s wave breaks in futile fury against the rocky cliff.

Execrations, a torrent of blasphemy, curses and yells, was its echo; two forms were stretched upon the floor.

And then they came on again, a sea of them, the stamp of hell in the starved, white faces and glittering eyes—and leading them now, not Twisty, not the Butcher, was the poor, bent, disease-racked form of old Blackie Lunn.

“I got sand!” the old man shrieked. “I got —”

The words died in a gurgle, and he pitched forward on his face. Blackie Lunn had won his freedom. Wenger, freed from Scotty for an instant, had fired.

Varge was shoulder to shoulder with Wenger now, and the guard’s revolver was spurting in a steady stream —but it never checked them—as savage beasts the convicts swarmed upon them, leaping to close quarters to bear the two men down before the very weight of their charge, to kill and gain the door that was only a yard away.

From him, tearing them from Wenger’s neck and shoulders, Varge with his mighty strength hurled away now one, now two, of the murderous wolf-pack. Again and again, he freed the guard and himself, and swept dear the space before the door. Again and again, his massive shoulders heaved and threw them back, and as his arms worked in and out, in and out, like smooth well-oiled steel piston-rods, men went down before the fearful blows; but again and again, like striped human tigers, lashed to frenzy as much now by fear behind if they should not escape as the hope of freedom ahead, they still came on. The minutes passed. Twisty Connors, with a quick dart forward, wrapped himself around Varge’s knees. The towering form of the Butcher, a chisel in his uplifted hand, sprang for Wenger. Varge stumbled—then, a wriggling thing, he swung the form of Twisty high above his shoulders and flung him, a human catapult, at the Butcher. The Butcher dropped like a log—and Twisty’s body lay quivering atop the other’s.

Something was blinding Varge—he dashed his hand across his eyes—the blood was pouring over his forehead. They were armed now with chisels, adzes, hatchets, gouges, and they stabbed and struck in desperate fury. His jacket, slashed and cut, hung half-tom from one shoulder.

Wenger with clubbed revolver, long since emptied, was labouring heavily, reeling unsteadily upon his feet; and now, with a groan, he crashed forward on the floor. They snatched at him like ravenous beasts at their prey.

Varge felt his own strength going. There was a wound in his side somewhere that was numbing him; and the gash in his head was making his brain swim in a sickly fashion, filling it with a queer singing noise. They had dragged Wenger toward them along the floor—he sprang and dashed them back, and planted himself over the guard’s body.

He was weakening. Turmoil, chaos, flashing lights were before his eyes. He fought mechanically now—they were too heavy for him—five on his shoulders and arms, he could not hold them up — what was that group of striped, timid things that cringed back in the far 6nd of the room against the wall? Why were the big iron doors open?—the bell had not rung. What were those black forms that were rushing through the door toward him?—those hoarse, strident commands? He was free, they were no longer clinging to him, hacking at him—his strength must have come back—they had given it up—and not one had reached the tunnel. Varge raised his hand again to brush the blood away from his eyes—it was growing very dark—he was tottering, falling, and his hands, to save himself, groped out —into blackness.

CHAPTER XIII

AFTER THE FIGHT

FROM across the yards out of the various shops came the convicts tramping into the main building, into the wings and corridors through the steel-barred gates; and throughout the great prison echoed the ring of clanging doors, the clash of the massive bar-locks, the shuffling tread of lock-stepped files, the hoarse, gruff, curt commands of the guards.

Ever the man of prompt and decisive action, Warden Rand had thrown himself into the breach. Too well he was aware that'the news would spread like wild-fire to every last prisoner in his charge; and upon its heels, spreading infection with the excitement, he feared an outbreak of insubordination that, as well as not, might develop into a general uprising. Within twenty minutes following what had been the most desperate attempt at wholesale delivery in the history of the institution, every man of the eight hundred convicts within the penitentiary walls was under lock and key.

And then in his office, man after man of those who, though taking no part in the fray, had been present in the carpenter shop was brought before him, subjected to a stern, searching interrogation and led away again. Over an hour this had taken him, and now as he finished with the last one and settled back in his chair, his usually genial face hard and troubled, a heavy frown on his brow, a white-jacketed form came through the doorway and stepped up to the desk—it was Doctor Kreelmar, the prison physician. Warden Rand glanced sharply at the other’s face before he spoke.

“I was just going to send for you, doctor,” he said. “Well?”

Doctor Kreelmar, a short, nervous, little black-haired man of fifty, shook his head.

“It’s not well at all,” he returned bluntly. “It’s—hum!—infernally bad. Wenger shot two dead besides Blackie Lunn and —”

“I know that,” interposed the warden tersely. “What about the rest?”

“Scotty can’t live, not a ghost of a chance, Wenger’s bullet touched his left lung — Wenger’ll go out too. As for the others, I never saw anything like it in all my experience—some of them are battered as though they had been literally struck with a trip-hammer, and two of them have their ribs broken, simply crushed in from that chap’s hug.”

“You mean?” inquired the warden.

“Yes, of course—Varge—Number Seven-seventy-seven,” said the doctor. “Rand, that man is wonderful”— Doctor Kreelmar drew in his breath. “Wonderful!” he repeated. “I wouldn’t have believed it if any one had told me and I hadn’t seen him professionally myself.”

“Will he live?” Warden Rand demanded.

“Live!” exclaimed Doctor Kreelmar. “Yes; he’ll live—but no other man would with the wounds he’s got. He’s been stabbed in a dozen places with all sorts of tools, and his head’s laid open for three inches to the skull. Of course, he’s in bad shape and will need care, but he’s conscious again and doing well. I want you to come into the hospital, Rand, next time I do his dressings—I give you my professional word you’ll see something that you don’t need any special knowledge of anatomy to be amazed at. He’s the most marvellous specimen of the human animal I ever heard of. I don’t know how to express it any other way than to tell you to imagine the normal development of a man twice the ordinary size, and then imagine that development with all its strength and power compressed with the utmost harmony and delicate adjustment into this man’s body. He’s an absolutely perfect man—his skin is as smooth as satin, not a spot or blemish on it, and the muscles under it play like steel knobs in well-oiled grooves. It’s no surprise to me he bent that bar that convicted him—his strength, fully exerted, would be something terrific.”

Warden Rand nodded his head and looked at the doctor a little whimsically.

“It would seem as though he had given us some evidence of it this afternoon from your report,” he said grimly.

“So he did, so he did,” jerked out the little doctor. “ And do you know, Rand, that’s what gets me. How do you account for him doing what he did?—not only in keeping Twisty and his pals from making their escape, but trying to save Wenger’s life as well? He surely hadn’t any love for Wenger. Wasn’t it Wenger who got him the black hole last week?—and wanted to get him the lash?”

“Yes,” said the warden quietly; “it was Wenger.”

“Well then,” urged the doctor, “what do you make of him?”

“Frankly/’ admitted Warden Rand, “I don’t know. I’ll confess he has puzzled me ever since he has been here and —”

“And you thought enough of him to save him from the lash,” supplied the doctor impulsively. “ Well, I’ll tell you what I think. I think a man who has done what he did to-day isn’t the kind of man ever to have killed Doctor Merton over there in Berley Falls in cold blood, or hot blood, either, for that matter—evidence or no evidence, and whatever he says himself to the contrary.”

Warden Rand drummed for an instant with his fingers on the desk.

“I am afraid that is not for us to say,” he said gravely. “We can only deal with conditions as we find them. He is here for life—we cannot alter that. However, this afternoon makes a pretty big score to his credit and we’ll see what we can do for him. Wenger, you say, can’t live ?”

“No,” the doctor answered. “There is absolutely no chance for him—he is sinking fast now. I’m sorry for him, for he put up a game fight. I’d give him twelve hours at the outside and — ”

Doctor Kreelmar broke off and turned suddenly at the sound of a step in the corridor without — then frowned, as the dark, handsome face of Harold Merton appeared in the doorway. As impulsive and irascible as he was big of heart, it was Doctor Kreelmar’s boast that he wore his heart upon his sleeve. He had taken a dislike to this man who of late had been so frequent a visitor at the warden’s house—and he made no attempt to conceal it now.

“May I come in?” Merton asked.

“Certainly,” responded Warden Rand cordially. “You’ve met Doctor Kreelmar, I think.”

“Several times,” said the doctor stiffly.

Merton bowed politely, apparently oblivious of the other’s brusqueness—and addressed himself to Warden Rand.

“I met one of the mounted patrol—Kingman—as I was driving in,” he said. “Kingman told me that Varge had been in a desperate fight and that he was badly hurt. I was going over to the house, but I hurried in here instead”—Merton sensed a thrill of exultation creeping into his voice and lowered it to a tone of more consistent concern. “I just caught the doctor’s last words as I came in. I sincerely hope that it is not as bad as that.” He turned to Doctor Kreelmar. “Is there no chance whatever, doctor?”

“None at all,” said Doctor Kreelmar curtly, quite well aware of the mistake Merton was labouring under, and deliberately refusing to enlighten him.

“Too bad,” murmured Merton in a low voice. “Too bad. I —”

“Doctor Kreelmar was speaking of Wenger, one of the guards,” explained Warden Rand quickly, with a slight frown of disapproval directed at the doctor.

“Oh!” said Merton. “Not—not Varge. I—I am very glad. And Varge, then?”

“Will live,” said the warden. “And I am sure you will be glad to know that as soon as he is able to be about again, we are going to make things easier for him—thanks to what he has done this afternoon.”

“I am indeed,” said Merton instantly, with well-simulated sincerity. “Anything that can be done for him, as I have told you before, will be appreciated by both my mother and myself. What do you intend to do for him?”

“Well,” Warden Rand said genially, “I suppose the doctor here would prescribe plenty of fresh air, sunshine and light work—eh, doctor?”

“I would,” agreed Doctor Kreelmar with emphasis. “That’s just what he’ll need—and he’s earned it.”

“Just so,” smiled Warden Rand. “Well then, we’li make a trusty of him, and let him look after my garden this summer—that’ll keep him outdoors all day and won’t be very arduous.”

“A trusty—over there in the garden!” echoed Merton blankly. “Do—do you think that would be wise?”

Warden Rand’s eyebrows went up a little in surprise. Doctor Kreelmar looked sharply at Merton.

“Wise?” repeated Warden Rand questioningly.

“Perhaps I should have said safe,” said Merton hastily. “That is what I really meant. Of course, I’m interested, deeply interested, in Varge’s welfare; but, equally, I—I cannot forget what he has done—what he is. I was thinking of Miss Rand. Do you think it would be safe for her to have a man around there day after day without any guard to watch him who—who has—who is a murderer?”

“I don’t think Miss Rand has anything to fear from a man who will offer his life to save another toward whom he has little cause to bear any goodwill,” remarked Doctor Kreelmar caustically.

With a quick, startled glance, Merton swept the doctor’s face.

“I—I don’t know what you mean,” he said, his yoice faltering a little in spite of himself as the unintentional shot went home.

“Wenger, the guard Varge fought for, and Varge, it seems, weren’t on very good terms,” explained the warden quietly interposing. “As for the rest, I must say I agree with the doctor. I should have no uneasiness on Janet’s account through sending Varge over there, though I appreciate your thoughtfulness. Take it all around in fact, I believe it’s the best thing to do, and we might as well call it settled—you can tell him, doctor, when you go back, if you like.”

Doctor Kreelmar nodded; and Merton, not daring to take the risk of pressing the matter further at that time, took pains to change the subject of conversation, and presently left the office to go over to the warden’s house.

“What’s the matter between you two?” demanded Warden Rand abruptly, when he and the doctor were alone again.

“Nothing. Don’t like him, that’s all,” Doctor Kreelmar answered crisply.

“That’s very apparent,” smiled the warden dryly. “You’ve got a bigger heart than a woman’s on occasions, Kreelmar; but you’re the worst man for violent likes and dislikes that I’ve ever met—and you take no pains to hide them.”

“Why should I?” snapped the irascible little doctor aggressively. “I get along better by being honest about it. It gives me less to do with those I dislike; and as for the ones I like, I’d rather tell them now that they’re good fellows and that I think so than wait till they’re dead and tell somebody else what I have thought of them—does ’em a hanged-sight more good, what?”

Warden Rand laughed good-naturedly.

“Well,” he said, “I am not going to argue it. It’s a brand of philosophy that Number Seven-seventy-seven, at least, ought to appreciate for the next few days, seeing that he’s on the right side of your mental ledger.” Warden Rand paused, and his eyes, grown serious, held Doctor Kreelmar’s for a moment. “I’ve official strings! on my tongue that you haven’t on yours, Kreelmar,” he said significantly; “but I’m as much interested in the man as you are, understand? I leave it to you to pull him around in the best shape you can.”

“Hum!” said Doctor Kreelmar eloquently, as he turned toward the door. “That’s all right as far as it goes—but it isn’t medicine that man needs.”

“Perhaps not,” admitted the warden. “But what else can you do for him?”

“What else!” repeated the little doctor with a grunt, as he walked out. “I don’t know, do I? If I did, he’d be a free man.”

Doctor Kreelmar passed down the hall into the penitentiary proper through the steel gates opened for him by a guard, turned to his left and kept on along a corridor to where, at the extreme end, it opened into the prison infirmary. As he walked, his small, round face was fiercely puckered, and he plucked continuously at a diminutive black goatee with the knuckle of his thumb and the end of his forefinger.

“Marvellous physique!” he muttered. “Marvellous! Fine fellow. Seen lots of ’em, lots of ’em —know ’em when I see ’em. Murderer—poppycock! Something queer about it—something underneath. I wonder—» hum! Good mind to try it. End justifies the means—always believed in that. Good mind to try it.”

He reached the hospital door, stepped inside, and halted for an instant to sweep each individual form in the six cots, that were lined up together by the doorway, with a swift, critical glance; then he strode oni down the ward, motioned the two guards who had been placed on duty imperiously to the lower end of the room, and stopped before the two beds in the upper corner that had been drawn close beside each other and apart from the rest. In the one nearer the door, unconscious and scarcely breathing, the heavy, brutish features strangely softened and refined by the pallor of approaching death, lay Wenger, the guard; in the other, Varge turned his head, swathed in bandages, and fastened his eyes on Doctor Kreelmar.

A moment the doctor bent over Wenger, then he came around to the far side of Varge’s bed, nodded to Varge, whipped his clinical thermometer from his pocket, shook the mercury down, and thrust it under Varge’s tongue. His fingers closed on Varge’s wrist, held there an instant—and a startled look came over his face. He took out his watch hurriedly, recounted the pulse, and finally, reaching for the little thermometer, took it from Varge’s lips. He read it quickly, and as quickly held it to the light as though to assure himself that he had made no mistake. A suppressed exclamation escaped him as he glanced back at Varge, his brows knitted; then he turned suddenly, beckoning to one of the guards.

“What’s been going on here?” he demanded sternly.

“Nothing, sir,” replied the guard.

“Nothing! Nothing!” echoed the little man sharply. “How nothing! Any of that scum down there”—he pointed to the six cots—“been making a disturbance, threatening this man that you’re here to protect, doing anything to excite him, or anything like that, eh?”

“Why, no, sir,” replied the guard. “It’s been as quiet here since you left as it is now.”

“Hum!” said Doctor Kreelmar fiercely. “Well that’s all”—he waved the man away—“go back where you were.”

He drew a chair to the bedside, sat down, and for £ long while studied Varge’s face with troubled intentness.

Varge, who had been watching the doctor from under half-closed lids, was the first to speak.

“What is it, doctor?” he asked, the kindly, habitual smile—that in the months had grown to know a tinge of wistfulness—hovering on his lips, in spite of the pain he was suffering.

The doctor did not answer for a moment, and Varge searched the sober, serious countenance of the other; curiously. There had been a fight, an attempted escape—he remembered every detail of it until he had lost consciousness. He had been wounded, seriously wounded—his own medical knowledge had told him that. He had come to himself in this room and the doctor had dressed his wounds. He remembered the strange gentleness of the other’s touch; the friendly, sympathetic voice, gruff and blunt with chopped-off words, though it had been. Then he had slept a little and awakened again at Doctor Kreelmar’s entry into the room. What was it now? Why was the doctor bending over him so anxiously, so soberly now? If it were over Wenger there might be reason—his practised eye had told him that it was already the twilight of life for the man whose form lay within arm’s reach of him upon the next bed.

“You are a brave man,” said Doctor Kreelmar finally in low, grave tones, as though forcing himself to speak; “and big enough to want to know the truth. An hour ago I thought there was every chance in the world for you, and now”—he hesitated.

“And now?” Varge prompted steadily, his eyes fixed speculatively on the physician’s face.

Doctor Kreelmar shook his head.

“You have taken a serious turn for the worse—I do not want to buoy you up with false hopes.”

“You mean,” said Varge quietly, “that I am going to die?”

“I mean,” said the little doctor gently, nodding his head slowly, “that if there is anything you might want to say, any confession you might want to make, anything in connection with the crime that brought you here, you should speak while your mind is still clear and while you have the strength.”

The look of speculation in Varge’s eyes vanished— his brain, keen, quick and active, had read the other now.

“There is nothing I can say—there is nothing to isay,” he answered. “Everything is known—I have confessed to it. What more can I say?”

“Varge,” said the doctor, and, reaching out, took iVarge’s hand, “I want you to believe me when I say that I am your friend. You can trust me. I do not believe that you are guilty and I want you to tell me the truth. You are growing weaker—you are going to die—who killed Doctor Merton?”

“ I did,” Varge replied, meeting calmly the challenge in the other’s eyes.

Doctor Kreelmar bent closer.

“Don’t you believe that I am your friend?” he asked, with gruff tenderness.

Slowly Varge’s hand tightened over the doctor’s—tighter and tighter—increasing the pressure with his mighty strength. Doctor Kreelmar tried to look unconcerned, then bit his lip, then grasped with his other hand at the seat of his chair, and then v/ith the pain was literally forced dancing to his feet.

“Confound you!” he burst out suddenly, unable to bear it any longer. “Let go, will you! ”

With a smile, Varge released his hold.

“It was useless for you to attempt a ruse like that,” he said simply; “for even if you had made me believe you, there was only one answer I could make.” Then, with a catch in his voice, unconsciously repeating the warden’s words: “You’ve got a big heart, doctor; I understand, and — and God bless you!”

“And you’ve got a fool head!” growled the little man, puckering up his face to its fiercest aspect in an effort to distract attention from the suspicious moisture that had suddenly dimmed his eyes. “A stubborn, muleheaded fool!” He turned away, but halted at the foot of the bed and turned again. “You’re a strong man, Varge,” he flung out, “a strong man—both ways. And seeing that you’re not going to die, the warden told me to tell you he was going to make a trusty of you and put you out in his garden where you’d get a bit of sunshine and fresh air this summer.”

A flush of pleasure crept to Varge’s cheeks, and the fine dark eyes lightened up and brightened—God alone knew the weariness of the days behind; the brave patience with which he had set himself to face the same drear, endless weariness of the days to come. He reached out his hand to the doctor.

“Hum!” said Doctor Kreelmar. “No; I guess not—I’ll wait till you get weaker”—and abruptly walked away.

Evening fell, and the hours crept on. At times, Varge dozed fitfully; at others, wakeful, he watched the guards dreamily as they sat together near the cots of Twisty and his pals, or listened to the heavy, stertorous breathing of the convicts that now and then was mingled with a mumbled curse and groan, or, again, his eyes would rest on the grey, almost lifeless face of Wenger beside him—then he would drowse off once more.

Midnight came and went. There was a sudden stir, the quick movement of some one near him, and Varge, instantly aroused, raised himself to his elbow. Doctor Kreelmar was bending over Wenger’s bed. A single swift glance Varge shot at the doctor; and then, as his gaze fell upon the white, drawn face turned sideways toward him on the pillow, suddenly Wenger’s dull, glazed eyes lighted up with recognition as they met his, and a smile struggled for expression on the lips of the dying guard. Feebly, Wenger’s hand stretched out and groped across the space between them—and gently, while his eyes grew wet, Varge caught and pressed it in both his own.

“Good-night,” Wenger whispered. “Good —” There was a fluttering sigh, the hand relaxed — and Wenger had passed out into the long night.

CHAPTER XIV

THE GUARDS ARE CHANGED

ANEW life had opened for Varge. There was the vast, limitless blue overhead; the warm sunshine, tanning his face to a ruddy brown and chasing the pallor of prison and of illness from his cheeks; the balmy air of springtime to drink in full, deep draughts, like precious nectar spiced with the smell of fresh, new earth and growing things—and it was her garden.

He remembered the first morning, a week ago now, when Doctor Kreelmar had discharged him from the infirmary and they had sent him to the warden’s house—and he had found her on the lawn. She had seemed like a being from another world, a gift of God of sweetness, purity and innocence, one to worship as above and apart; and his soul, the better, the finer things that were in him had gone out to her in homage and allegiance, as one might reverently lay upon an altar a glad, spontaneous tribute to one of loftier mould, who, diffusing about her intangibly an air of fine contagion, bred the gentler, dearer things of life.

As he had stood before her then, the black-and-grey striped felon suit he wore had seemed a desecration of her presence; and that she should think him what he appeared to be had sent the hot blood flushing to his face. And then with what gentle tact she had put him at his ease! — talking to him of her garden, the work there was to do, her plans for some new flower-beds, the trimming of the honeysuckle hedge that fronted on the roadway, investing him so ingenuously with the counterpart of her own personal interest in it all.

“I have always had such a pretty garden,” she had said before she left him; “and I love it so. And this year, you know, I am more ambitious about it than ever. I am so glad you are going to take care of it for me.”

“I am afraid,” he had answered her honestly, and he remembered the fear that had been his lest she should take him at his word, “that I do not know very much about gardening, and that — ”

“You love flowers, too,” she had interrupted, shaking her head. “I can see that; so you will love your work, and then—and then, well, it can’t help but be well done, can it?”—and she had smiled at him, and nodded brightly—and he had begun to work—in her garden.

That night in his cell, and the nights thereafter, there came to cheer and brighten him not one face only, but two—Mrs. Merton’s and Janet Rand’s; and when thereafter, with each dawn, the first threads of morning sunlight stole across the corridor from the high windows and, eluding the steel bars of his cell door, awakened him to the rounds of another day, it was to a day different from those he had known before—a day whose prospect no longer tortured him, but one which now he welcomed with almost eager gladness.

The fearful sense of isolation was gone. During the day, the warden would sometimes stop and speak to him; or perhaps Doctor Kreelmar would halt at his elbow to fling a good-natured, jesting warning at him not to plant the bulbs upside down—'but mostly it was Janet Rand, his new guard as the warden laughingly called her, who had brought the change to pass. Much through' the day they were together, and her clear, ringing laugh, her rich, full voice seemed like strains of some divine melody that stirred a joyous echo in his own soul. At first, it had been as though he listened to it as one who had no right to listen, as one for whom it was not meant, as a thief who steals, or an interloper who intrudes—a strange barrier that his own, fine supersensitiveness raised. But gradually her frank, open, unaffected attitude toward him had quietly, almost unconsciously swept this aside, and in its place had come a friendly intimacy, a certain comradeship that he cherished and treasured in his heart as a priceless possession.

And so a week had passed, the happiest week he had known in weary months; and now in the fresh, cool, early morning he was beginning another day's work. From the conservatory at the rear of the house and behind the barn he wheeled his barrow, loaded with potted plants, to the lower end of the lawn where a bed had been prepared for their transplanting. He set the wheelbarrow down and for a moment, his back deliberately turned to the grey prison walls, he stood erect and motionless, gazing about him into the cloudless blue overhead, at the fields and farms that flanked the village road, at the village itself—a straggling, double row of cottages that terminated at the bridge over the little creek a quarter of a mile away, where the sawmill, the blacksmith shop and the general store were grouped together. Freedom, blessed freedom, manhood’s inheritance! This much at least was his—to look and feast h‘s eyes and, yes, if he would—to dream.

He stooped to the wheelbarrow and carefully began to set the plants upon the ground, a smile half-tender, half-whimsical playing upon his lips. These were very special treasures. She had given him particular injunctions concerning them the afternoon before.

The notes of a song floated across the lawn from the house—clear and true they rang, like a morning hymn of praise, pulsing with happiness and the joy of living, an offering of thankfulness for the beauty of the morning, the coming of another day. Then the song died away, the front door opened and he heard her step upon the veranda.

On his knees over the potted-plants, Varge watched her come. The green sward, the leafing trees, the bloom of the honeysuckle hedge framed her well. Dear God, how wonderful she was! Straight and true, the gold-crowned head erect, the laughing eyes blue as the sky above, the rich, red, smiling lips, the full white throat. God’s gift of love, of innocence and purity, a shrine of His own building to His own praise—she could be naught else but that. How rare and sweet and fresh she looked in the simple print dress of dark navy blue with its wide, white collar open at the neck, its short sleeves to the elbows with their deep, white cuffs—how full of radiant health and young strength the lithe, graceful swing of her step!

It seemed as though he should stay upon his knees to greet her reverently so—and it was almost reluctantly that he rose to his feet and cap in hand stood waiting for her.

“Good-morning, Varge,” she cried cheerily, as she came up and—something she had never done before —-held out her hand.

Impulsively, Varge stretched out his own, then dropped it to his side—and flushed.

“I have been working,” he said, and lifted his hand for her inspection. “It is not clean enough for you to take.”

For a moment she did not speak ahd her eyes, suddenly grown serious, searched his face.

“I understand,” she said, her voice low. “But if I choose to believe that it—that it is clean?”

“I think it would be very like you,” Varge said slowly. “You are very kind and good and—and I am very grateful, but —”

“We were talking about you last night, Varge,” she said simply, her eyes on the toe of her shoe as she patted down a little mound of earth. “Doctor Kreelmar and I, Doctor Kreelmar believes in you, and I—I think in the last week I have come to know you better than he does—I believe in you, too.” She raised her eyes quickly to his. “Varge, won’t you give me your hand and tell me we are right, and let us help you to clear yourself, and take us as true, staunch friends?”

Something in Varge’s throat seemed to choke him, and he averted his head. Suddenly, dearer than life or freedom, the one thing in all the world that could matter now, it seemed, would be her belief in him. Just her belief—that was all. Temptation as it had never come before, as the horror of the prison life had never tempted him, surged upon him, almost unmanning him for the moment, seeking literally to wrench the secret from his lips. When he looked at her again, the agony had gone from his eyes and his face was composed.

“I cannot do it,” he said steadily.

“Then I will take it on my own appraisement,” she said, putting her hand frankly into his, the cheery ring back in her voice again. “You see, my faith is not to be shaken.”

The cool, firm pressure of her hand thrilled him and seemed to tear down his self-restraint; the quick, spontaneous act of trust brought a mist to his eyes.

“Thank God for such as you!” he whispered.

He turned from her abruptly, and, with his cap, dusted out the wheelbarrow—it was a favourite seat of hers.

She thanked him now and took it, resting her elbows on the handles, cupping her chin in her hands.

Varge, on his knees again, began to take the plants from their pots.

For a long time, silence lay between them. He looked up finally to meet her eyes and read a puzzled something in their depths—and in the fair, sweet face a gentle, tender, troubled look of sympathy.

She started slightly, and the pink dyed the white throat and crept to her cheeks.

“How wonderfully you have done with the garden,” she said with a little laugh to cover her embarrassment; “and how quickly, for one who said he knew nothing about it, you have learned in the last week. I came to superintend the transplanting this morning and I find there is no need for supervision, so”—gently—“will you talk to me as you work—about yourself? I think it helps sometimes, doesn’t it—to talk?. And I should be so glad to listen. About your life and your friends back in the—in the happier days.”

“I am afraid there is not much to talk about—that you would care to hear,” he said gravely.

The white forehead puckered daintily in pretended severity and rebuke.

“Oh, yes; there is,” she said. “Your name—it is such a curious name. How did they come to call you Varge, and what does it mean?”

“I do not know what it means,” Varge answered, his quick, sensitive smile upon his lips. “I am afraid it does not really mean anything—a word of babyhood coinage for something perhaps. They said it was the only word in my vocabulary when they found me, and so they called me — Varge. I was left at the door of a foundling home, you —”

“Yes,” she said softly; “I knew that. But was there nothing, no mark on your clothes, no message, no little trinket—nothing that would —”

Varge shook his head.

“There was nothing.”

“And nothing has come with the years? No clue to your identity? Surely you have tried to find out who you were.”

The trowel in Varge’s hand grated against the rim of the pot as he loosened the earth, and the massive, splendid head bent forward for an instant suddenly—then he straightened and looked up at her, the calm brown eyes, the whole strong, rugged beauty of his face mellowed with a wistful tenderness.

“Once,” he said, in low tones, “the dearest wish I had was to know—my mother.”

Quick tears dimmed the great blue eyes, as her hand reached out and rested upon his arm. Her lips quivered.

“I have hurt you,” she said, turning away her head. “Oh, I didn’t mean to do that!”

Hurt from her! He could have lifted the white hand reverently to his lips. Hurt from that crown of womanhood, that glory of womanhood—the tender heart of sympathy! Hurt—ah, no! Like the balm of some bright, radiant, ministering angel seemed her presence there to him.

“No,” he said. “No; you have not hurt me—and you must not feel that you have.” Then quickly, as though picking up the thread of a story: “You see, I had little opportunity to search. I dreamed of it as a boy; and as a boy, before I came really to understand, I dreamed of it in fairyland—do you know what I mean? I was very much, and I think a little importantly, concerned in my own mystery, and my imagination was constantly at play. I pictured myself awaking some day to find that I was the long lost, stolen heir of great people, and there would be castles and estates and trains of servants and yachts and—and so many things—everything that my boyish fancy could depict. And I was so very sure of it all, you see, that in my childish conceit I resented it very bitterly when people called me Varge Merton. And so”—he paused and the wistful smile deepened on his lips—“and so I remained—just Varge.”

“I see”—the gold head nodded thoughtfully. “And then?” .

“Another woman taught me the greatness of a mother’s love,” he said with simple earnestness — “Mrs. Merton—and, as I grew older and understood, filled me with the hope to be worthy, of my own mother when I should find her. So then, I had two ambitions—that and”—Varge had risen suddenly and was speaking almost eagerly now, looking into the sweet face that seemed so winningly to bid him open his heart—“that, and to procure the means that would enable me to search. The thought of who I was, my identity, was rarely out of my mind. I began to study medicine, not only because no other opportunity seemed to offer, but because, too, I loved the work. I did not think then to stay so long in Berley Falls. I meant to make a beginning there, and then perhaps work through college. But the years passed on and in those years the doctor and Mrs. Merton were as father and mother to me, and there came conditions that I could not —”

Varge stopped suddenly. What glaring incongruity was he leading to! The clear, fathomless blue eyes seemed to be reading his very soul. With a quick, out-flung gesture of his hands, he turned from her to his Work.

“Yes?”—the single word came to him low-breathed, a world of sympathy in the voice.

Varge shook his head, but did not look at her.

“Won’t you go on?” she pleaded gently. “I would like to know the rest.”

He was on his knees once more over the plants.

“There is no more,” he said hoarsely, still keeping his face averted. “The rest is—ruin, wreckage and disaster.”

He worked on, but his movements were mechanical—black and grey, black and grey, he could see nothing else, on his sleeves, on his jacket, around his knees, black and grey—that, and the number on his breast. Madly he was fighting with himself to keep his self-control, to crush and hurl back the wild impulse that called upon him to stand before her, as was his right, a clean-handed, clean-souled man. What mattered anything else than that — at any cost—at any hazard! It stood out paramount, above all else—that she should know. Every pound of his heart, the strange new thrill that swept through his veins with every pulse-beat struggled and battered at him for mastery—that she should know.

A long, long time it seemed, and then she rose from her seat. He heard her step behind him and felt her hand laid with lightest touch' upon his shoulder—it rested there a moment, just a moment—and then she was gone—walking slowly across the lawn toward the house.

CHAPTER XV

VARGE MAKES A DISCOVERY

ALREADY late afternoon, Varge came through the penitentiary gates, and with quick, eager steps traversed the few hundred yards of roadway to the warden’s house. Four days had passed since he had been there; four days that had seemed interminably long and restless days; four days, too, that had been miserable, unpleasant ones for him.

Old and familiar faces had crowded the little courtroom in Berley Falls again, and he had shared the sordid honour with Twisty Connors and the Butcher of being the centre of attraction, the sensation of the moment. The eyes that had gazed on him there had lost no whit of the interest with which they had gazed;when, once before, he had stood in that same room, then on trial for his own life—they had lost only their friendliness. And in the faces of those who crowded the benches to capacity was—strange phase of human nature!—that smug, morbid content that springs from the sometime personal intimacy with one who, having gained celebrity, whether from unenviable notoriety or exalted fame, will presently afford them the exquisite conceit of airing that intimacy to less favoured mortals from the vantage ground of lofty condescension!

It had not escaped Varge in any measure—the nodding, wagging heads, the gaping mouths, the whispered conversations into one another’s ears. It was impossible to have been insensible to it, and he was glad that it was over; though, too, there had been compensation —a firm clasp of John Randall’s hand, and another from Sheriff Marston.

Each day of the four, he, with a dozen others under guard, had been taken from the penitentiary in the mom% ing and driven to Berley Falls to act as witnesses in the trials of Twisty and the Butcher, as ringleaders, together with their accomplices for the murder of Wenger. Contrary to expectation, but to his own relief, the proceedings had been concluded shortly before noon that day—Twisty and the Butcher receiving the full sentence of fhe law; and the rest, found guilty of manslaughter, being given an additional twenty years to the terms they were then serving.

And now, as he turned in at the driveway and swept the lawn and shrubbery with a rapid glance, a sense of disappointment came over him, slowing for the moment his step. He had hoped that she might be there; and he had half-promised himself the gladness that would come from the sound of her voice in cheery greeting, and the added sunshine from the smile of her lips and eyes—but she was nowhere in sight.

He kept on up the driveway, his eyes falling here and there, on this bed and that, on evidences of her work during his enforced absence. How dearly she loved her. garden, the plants and flowers and trees and vines—and how like them, too, she was in her freshness and her purity, in her sweet, faultless beauty, in the delicate fragrance of innocence that she breathed about her!

Gradually his step quickened again. She was somewhere in the house, probably; and sometime before the afternoon was over, when she discovered that he was back again at work, she would come out to tell him of a score of little things that she wanted done. Meanwhile, there were the morning glories to be planted that were to cover the trellis of the back porch; and there were the side borders by the hedges between the house and the bam to be made ready—there was plenty to do—the four days of absence had played serious havoc with plans that he knew were very near and vital to her.

In the barn that served as tool-house—for the warden did not keep a horse—Varge collected the various implements he required, and, coming out again, set vigorously to work upon one of the borders.

A half-hour saw this task completed, and then he crossed slowly to the opposite hedge to begin upon the other.

The previous sense of disappointment was upon him again. He had been wrong; she was evidently not in the house, but away somewhere—he had seen Martha, the Rand’s servant, at the window, and Martha would surely Have told her that he was there had she been .within. But still he clung to hope—it seemed as though more than ever that afternoon he needed the uplift of her presence, the sound of her voice in his ears to soothe the heaviness of spirit that was creeping over him — perhaps even yet she would return before it was time for him to go back to his cell and the years of hours before the sunlight came again.

What was it that was weighing him down now so strangely, so insistently? He had been happier during the two weeks that had just gone than he had believed it possible he could be in his hopeless convict life, and the summer at least held out to him—who of all men had no right to live but in the present — the promise of that same gladness, the same warm, bright glints of sunlight through the rifts of leaden clouds that had been his now for these two weeks. What was it? It could not be just the disappointment that her absence this afternoon had brought him. It seemed more an intuition, a presentiment hanging over him, that in a curious, ironic way strove to warn him against something, while, too, it seemed to mock at him.

The beat of horse’s hoofs sounded from the road, the crunch of wheels on the driveway—and suddenly Varge’s face lighted up, and the grave troubled look was gone. Her laugh, mellow, silvery, full of genuineness as it always was, came to him from the front of the house, and he leaned an instant on his spade to listen.

Then slowly the light faded from his face and into it crept a white rigidness, and his hands clenched upon the spade handle until it seemed the tight-drawn skin must crack and part over the knuckles—another laugh, another voice he knew as well as hers had reached him.

Motionless he stood there—like a statue in the act of driving a spade home into the ground—one foot uplifted with its heavy prison boot resting on the top of the blade, the grey-and-black striped form bent a little forward as though to bring the body-weight and shoulder muscles into play.

Her step was on the front veranda now. There was a confused murmur of laughter and voices; and then hers, merrily:

“Well, put the horse in the barn first, and then we’ll see about it—I don’t know whether there’ll be time before tea or not.”

A moment more, Varge stood without movement, then he laid down the spade, crossed quickly to the barn, and withdrew out of sight behind one of the stalls. He! had barely a minute to wait. The carriage wheels rattled on the gravel drive coming toward him past the side of the house, a shadow fell across the barn doors —» and as the stamp of hoofs rang loudly on the wooden flooring, he stepped suddenly from the stall to the horse’s head. With a little, neigh and whinny that was-almost human in its recognition and greeting, the animal rubbed its nose against his shoulder.

“Lady Mine,” he answered softly—but his eyes played coldly upon Harold Merton on the buggy seat.

Merton’s face on the instant had gone grey-white, and the reins had fallen from nerveless hands across the dashboard.

Varge’s eyes still held upon the other, not a flicker in their steady gaze, a question in their depths that needed no words to amplify it.

Merton wet his lips with the tip of his tongue.

“You —- you here?” he stammered. “I—I thought you were at Berley Falls this afternoon.”

“You thought I was at Berley Falls!”—the words came with quick significance from Varge’s lips. “Well?”

“At—at the trial, you know,” stumbled Merton, realising that his remark had been unfortunate and clumsily trying to gloss it over. “Everybody knew, of course, that you were there, and everybody thought it would last for several days yet. I—I thought you were there, and so naturally I was surprised to find you here, and—and—” he stammered again, paused, shifted uneasily in his seat, tried to meet Varge’s eyes, and then flung out nervously: “Curse it, why do you look at me like that! Don’t look at me like that, I tell you!”

No muscle of Varge’s face moved, save a slight contraction around the corners of his lips that gave an added sternness to the grim, set expression already there, .When he spoke it was without raising his voice, and the quiet evenness of his tones might almost have been mistaken for nonchalance.

“You knew that after I left the hospital I was made a trusty and since then have been working here?”

“Yes,” said Merton sullenly; “I knew it. Why?”

“You were here yesterday?”

“No.”

“The day before?”

“Yes.”

“The day before that?”

Merton hesitated—met Varge’s eyes an instant—and the denial on his lips became an affirmative snarl.

“You have been coming then in the daytime when you thought I was away -—otherwise, since I have been a trusty, your visits have been in the evenings—is that it?”

Merton made no answer.

“Get down from that seat and come here into the stall!” Varge ordered abruptly.

“What for?” demurred Merton.

“Because,” said Varge curtly, “it will be just as well for you if we are not seen from the house—and because I have something to say to you. Get down!”

For a moment Merton seemed to debate with himself; then, with a show of braggadocio, he swung out of the buggy and swaggered into the stall.

“Well?” he inquired, a hint of defiance in his tones, as Varge followed him.

Varge stepped close to him.

“How long have you been visiting Miss Rand?” he demanded bluntly.

“I don’t see that it is any of your business,” Merton responded surlily.

“Shall I help you to answer?” said Varge sternly. “Since that day when you came to see me in the penitentiary yonder—is that right?”

“Well,” snarled Merton; “supposing it is? What is it to you?” He broke into a sharp, nervous laugh. “You’re not jealous, are you? One would think you were in love with her yourself the way you —”

The sentence was never finished. The next instant Merton had crouched back against the side of the stall, his hands flung out as wards in front of him.

“No, no, Varge; I didn’t mean that,” he cried out. “I—I was only joking. Can’t you see I was only joking?”

Without a trace of colour in his face, white to the lips, his eyes blazing, Varge had closed the single step between them.

“You have dared to come here,” he said hoarsely. “You have dared to touch that pure life with yours, black to the soul with the guilt of hell! Answer me! How far has this thing gone?” His hand closed suddenly down with a crushing, vise-like grip on Merton’s shoulder.

“Keep away/’ Merton grovelled. “Keep away >—keep your hands off me with that ghastly strength of yours.”

“Answer me!”—Varge’s voice was ominously, deadly low. “How far has this thing gone?”

“I—I love her,” mumbled Merton. “I—I told her so.”

“And she?”—Varge’s lips scarcely moved, as the words came tensely.

“She said she didn’t love me”—the snarl was creeping back into Merton’s voice, and an ugly look into his face.

Varge’s hand dropped from the other’s shoulder, and he stepped back.

“Thank God,” he said, “she has been saved that hurt!”

“Is there anything else you want to know?” Merton burst out violently. “Anything else you can bully out of me because you hold something over my head? If there isn’t, I’ll go.”

Varge looked at him for a long minute—and in that minute the months of prison horror rose before him, came again the scene of a murdered father, then the picture of Janet Rand in all her sweetness, her trust, her innocence, her fair young life—and a red mist swam before his eyes in which Merton’s face seemed to assume ghoulish, distorted features, filling him with insensate fury, prompting him to crush out the treacherous, inhuman life as he would that of some foul, creeping thing. \He turned suddenly away—he dared not trust himself to look longer for the moment—he dared not trust himself to speak.

Merton edged out of the stall toward the buggy and started for the door.

Then Varge turned—sure of himself again.

“Wait! " he commanded curtly. “There is nothing else I want to ask you—but there is something that I have to say. When you leave here to-night, you leave here for the last time — do you understand?” He paused for an instant, holding Merton with his eyes. “You can write Miss Rand from Berley Falls that you are going away, or make any other excuse that you like to account for your visits ceasing abruptly—but they are to cease. That is all.”

“And supposing I refuse?”—Merton’s tones were ugly.

“Some one will be coming here to look for you in a minute,” said Varge calmly. “I will put the horse up.”

Stronger than any threat was the quiet assurance of Varge’s irrelevant response, and for a moment, with working face, his hands opening and shutting at his sides, Merton stood there; then, with cowed, sullen, whispered words upon his lips, he turned and went out of the door.

CHAPTER XVI

A STRANGE MONITOR

IT was mid-June. A grateful breeze, tempering the hot afternoon, stirred the leaves and branches caressingly, eliciting from them in response, as though they voiced a friendly welcome, a low, whispering, musical rustle. Through the trees the sun played in flecked, shifting paths upon the lawn, weaving dotted patterns upon the soft, smooth, velvet sward. The vines, in full leaf now, covered the front of the house, the veranda, the porch, with a luxuriant mass of cool, inviting green; the flowers in their long beds, in bloom, blended their colours restfully against the darker background of the hedges. Like the glade of a little park it was, the warden’s lawn, studded here and there with trees; while the quaint, old-fashioned house itself peeked shyly, with a charming, demure air of modesty, through the foliage of the giant willow at one comer of the veranda and a monarch elm at the other whose branches almost interlaced.

From the direction of the hedge that bordered the village street came the steady whir of a lawn-mower. And, in the hammock, swung under the shade of the elm, Janet iRand laid down her book, open at her place, across her lap, and, lying back, clasped her hands behind her head.

Reading that afternoon, somehow, did not seem to hold her attention—her mind kept wandering from the text. A little pucker gathered on her forehead and she half-closed her eyes. That letter of Harold Merton’s, more than a week old now though it was, kept obtruding itself insistently. It had come a few days after his last visit—a long letter begging her again, as he had done that day when they had trained the Virginia creeper together, and as he had done once more on that last evening after the drive, to go away for a little while at least, urging her to seek a change, new surroundings, new life, which he was sure would be of so much benefit to her. And he ended the letter by stating that business, a matter of importance, possibly entailing a long trip, forced him unexpectedly to leave Berley Falls that day—that he could not, therefore, give her any address then, but that a letter sent to Berley Falls would be forwarded.

She had not written. In a great measure it was a relief to her that he had gone. The frank, open friendship she had given him had never been the same since the day when he told her that he cared for her. He had kept his promise, it was true, and had not spoken again; but the knowledge of his feelings toward her, which she could never reciprocate, had brought a strained, unnatural note, on her side at least, into their subsequent companionship, imposing a restraint upon her lest she should unwittingly give him reason to believe that in time she might change toward him.

That last evening he had reverted again to the subject of her going away with what had seemed to her almost a strange eagerness and persistency. He had brought the warden into the discussion, converted him, and had almost persuaded him to pack her off instanter in spite of herself—and now her father had been urging it ever since.

The little pucker deepened into a quite serious frown. How nonsensical it all was! She was perfectly happy and contented where she was, and she had never felt the “ narrowing influence of prison environment,” as he had called it. Of course, that was all subterfuge—no; that was hardly fair. It was not subterfuge, for he evidently believed—though why she could not understand—that a change in her surroundings would effect a change in her feelings toward him. He was certainly sincere at least, and she could hardly be angry with him —for sincerity!

Her thoughts ran on.

How strange the circumstances of Harold Merton’s coming had been—and how strange the after events and the present! The frown was gone, the pucker back again. Unconsciously her eyes had been following the grey-and-black striped convict form pushing the lawn-mower to and fro across the grass—Varge. She opened her eyes wider now to watch him thoughtfully.

How tragically these two men—Harold Merton and Varge—were associated! One, the son of the murdered doctor; the other, convicted of that murder, serving out a life sentence for the crime. It seemed unnatural, unreal, imaginative, that both should have come almost into her daily life. Often she had been tempted to speak to Harold Merton about Varge; but, from a sense of delicacy that forbade the awakening of thoughts and scenes that must be painful to him, she had refrained. Once or twice he had spoken voluntarily of Varge—his attitude always the same—one of pity for the other’s lot, forgiveness for the deed, and without bitterness. This had puzzled her in a curious way that she could not quite define. It was magnanimous, splendid of Harold Merton, but it did not seem to harmonise perfectly with his character—it was the attitude of a big man, big in every way—and Harold Merton could not be said to be that. In just what particular he failed, she could not tell—perhaps she was unjust; but her woman’s sense told her that she was right, and that was a guide and mentor that had never failed her.

Her woman’s sense! She smiled a little wistfully. Her woman’s sense had told her another thing —that this great, strong figure she was watching now was innocent. But here there was something really tangible to support her intuition—and something, too, apart from Doctor Kreelmar’s blunt, arbitrary, oft-repeated asseverations, and her father’s concordance tacitly, rather than definitely, expressed. It was the man himself, his every look, his every act—the grave, fearless eyes that impelled faith and trust, the strong, brave face so full of power, the expression so indicative of clean, unsullied thought; his unfailing courtesy, his innate tact, his unobtrusive gratitude—he had shown her that so often, always seeming to understand and anticipate her wishes in so many different, simple, little ways about the garden.

What a pitiful tragedy it was! What was the mystery that lay behind it all, wrecking, ruining his life, condemning him to an existence, whose horror she was so well able to appreciate, that he bore so patiently and bravely? Oh, if he could only be made to speak, be shaken in that steadfast assertion of his guilt, she might do something! He had been so much in her mind and thoughts of late and she wanted so much to help him —-and she could do nothing.

Her eyes still followed him. It was a homely task upon which he was engaged, but it riveted her attention and her interest. There was something fascinating in the grace of movement, in the upright, virile figure, in the firm, steady, athletic stride, in the swing of the shoulders, the poise of the head—the face, the splendid, well-proportioned frame that seemed to stand out dominant, to rise above and be apart from the stigma of the black-and-grey striped suit that clothed him, to give almost a dignity to the hideous prison dress itself.

Oh, if she could only help him—in spite of himself! In the hours she had spent with him over the shrubs and trees and flowers, talking to him while he worked, she had come to know and understand him so well —« in all but this one thing. How strong, how wonderfully strong he was — and yet his touch upon the tenderest shoot or most delicate flower was all care and gentleness. What was to be the end of it all? Would he go on, and the years go on; would young manhood pass and middle age come—and still find him there? Would the silver creep into the close-cropped hair—and still find him there—a convict? It was too bad, too wrong, too pitiful—the blue eyes filled suddenly—oh, if she could only do something, if he would only speak!

She watched him, troubled, a little longer, and then mechanically picked up her book — Stevenson’s “St. Ives”—and, finding her place, began to read again.

Overhead, a gregarious community of sparrows angrily disputed the invasion of a blackbird into the branches of the elm, and flew hither and thither with great commotion, making a fine pretence of threat and attack. Janet raised her eyes, looked at the petulant tribe for a moment,'smiled, and went on with her reading, swinging her white sun-bonnet, which she held by the strings, gently to and fro over the side of the hammock.

Suddenly she sat quite still. A flush of colour tinged the white throat and mounted slowly to her cheeks. “Place them in a hospital, put them in jail in yellow overalls, do what you will, young Jessamy -finds young Jenny^33—she had come without warning upon the passage, and it startled her, frightened her as an abrupt, suggestive corollary to her own thoughts of a few moments before. And then came, quick, instantaneous, as though to complete her confusion, to put her to utter rout before she could recover her composure, those words of Harold Merton’s that had angered her so that day in his wild pleading: “Your whole life, your thoughts, everything, are bound up with prison this and prison that . . . your love will have to find its .place within those four walls.”

Her face was crimson now, and she struggled impulsively from the hammock to her feet. Of course, it was not true—it was impossible. But why, oh, why, why should this thought have been thrust upon her to ring a jarring, disturbing note into her sympathy and interest for this man? It was not true—it was not true. Her eyes were on the ground—she wanted to raise them, to look across the lawn to where the whir of the lawn mower went steadily on—to look there calmly, unemotionally, as an answer, a sort of defiant, incontrovertible denial to this mental indictment that was not hers, that was forced upon her, as it were, by another self—and somehow her eyes refused to obey her will.

It disconcerted her the more, and, as the colour came and went from her cheeks, she stood there for a long time fighting for control of herself. Then, at last, the fair, gold-crowned head lifted slowly, and slowly the great, deep blue eyes were raised—only to find Varge’s fixed upon her. But an instant their glances held; then, naturally, quietly, his was lowered to his work again—but in that instant it seemed to her as though, conscious of her thoughts, he had impelled her look, and, even at that distance, had read with those grave, serious eyes of his what was passing in her mind. Flushed, confused again, she turned abruptly, and mechanically picked up her sun-bonnet from where she had dropped it on the ground.

Her mind rushed into quick, impetuous, eager analysis, seeking a solution that would quiet the strange throbbing of her heart. Yes; Harold Merton had been right in saying that her life was too centred, too much bound up with prison atmosphere, that all her interests, all her thoughts were here. This had brought it home to her—she understood a iittle better, a little more clearly now what he meant. She had been so used to seeing men in convict garb around her, they had been so intimately a part of her environment since ever she could remember, that she had perhaps come unconsciously to accept them as she would accept the presence of any other men without the instant differentiation that one unaccustomed to such surroundings would have sensed and felt. And so it had doubtless been—it must have been—-with Varge. She had accepted him solely as his personality presented him, as—as any other man; and her belief in his innocence, her pity and sympathy had led her to think too often, too frequently of him—to dwell too much upon his case.

Her forehead pursed into honest little wrinkles. She had thought a great deal about him—that was why this—this thing had startled her so. Perhaps Harold Merton had been right, too, about her going away for a little while. A change for a time amongst other scenes and peoples, where prison life was known only in the abstract, and she would come back with her mind and .views better adjusted to the relative values in the conditions existing around her here. Yes; that, perhaps, was the best thing to do—go away for a little while. Her father was anxious that she should; and her mother’s people had written her so often to come. Yes —she decided, nodding her head—yes; she would go. She would write her aunt at once and —

Her eyes opened wide, full of sudden, quick attention. The whir of the lawn-mower had ceased abruptly. For an instant the stalwart form beside it seemed to stand perfectly motionless, rigid, strained, intent; then the handle dropped from his grasp; he turned, facing the corner of the grey prison wall, where through the trees she could just see the figure of the guard pacing back and forth upon its top—and his shout rang like a clarion through the quiet of the peaceful afternoon.

“Fire!”

CHAPTER XVII

THE FIRE

THE flash and roar of the carbine from the wall, a wild shout from the guard answered Varge’s cry; like echoes the alarm flashed around the circuit of the turrets, and the big bell in the central dome of the prison burst into tongue in clamouring, booming, guttural notes.

Varge was already halfway across the lawn. The graceful little figure—all in dainty, spotless white that afternoon—to whom his eyes had strayed so often from his work, still stood by the hammock, the trailing sun-bonnet in one hand, a book in the other, which now she clasped closely to her side in an attitude of startled bewilderment. The blue eyes, full of anxious wonder, were fixed on him as he approached.

“It’s in the kitchen, I think,” he said hurriedly, but in quiet tones, as he paused beside her. “I am afraid the fire must have got a good deal of headway before it showed itself. See!” A thin, yellow flame-tongue appeared for an instant over the peak of the roof, dissolved into a puff of blackish-grey smoke which, caught by the breeze, came curling toward them down the slanting roof between the dormer windows. “Martha?” he asked quickly. “Where is Martha?”

“She went to the village an hour ago,” Janet answered. Her face had gone suddenly white, belying the bfave steadiness of her voice. “Do you think that —' “ Please stay here till your father comes, Miss Rand,”

Varge interrupted, with a reassuring smile. “It will be only a moment. I will see if there is anything I can do.”

He turned as he'spoke, dashed around the corner of the house and raced on along the driveway to the rear. The sharp, biting, vicious crackle of flame came now with a low, ominous roar. It was the kitchen, low-roofed, one-story high, built out as a sort of adjunct to the house, as he had supposed, and the flames and smoke were bursting now from its windows. The fire must have been gaining grim headway for a long time within before it had flung out its challenge, and, with Martha away and that portion of the house hidden from the penitentiary walls by the barn and shade maples on the driveway, it was not strange that it had not attracted notice.

A rush of smoke drove him back from the kitchen door as he opened it—and mingled with the acrid odour of burning wood came the sharper, more pungent odour of burning oil. The breeze, sweeping through the door, whirled back the smoke and fanned a dancing layer of shimmering white upon the floor, that lapped greedily over and ran up the walls, into whiter, angrier fury. He shut the door again instantly to keep out the air current.

His resources were a bucket and the cistern—the latter twenty yards away at the side of the bam. He smiled grimly—as well a thimble to dip in a hand basin! The kitchen, at least, was already long past the hope that lay in buckets, though if there were only men enough it might —

A horse’s hoofs thundered up the driveway and a rider flashed into sight around the corner. It was Kingman, the mounted patrol.

“Good Lord!” he yelled. “The whole place ’ll go, it’s—”

Varge leaped toward the other through a roll of black smoke that surged suddenly—coincident with the roar of an explosion, a can of superheated kerosene probably —across the space between them.

“Is there any fire apparatus in town?” he asked crisply.

“Yes,” said Kingman. “There’s a hand-tub in the—”

“Then get it—quick!”

It was not convict and guard—it was man to man —the one dominant, contained, self-possessed; the other flurried and excited—and without hesitation or question Kingman obeyed. He reared his horse to its hind legs, spun around like a top, and, low in the saddle, tore down the driveway toward the road.

Another glance Varge gave around him—the fire was showing through the kitchen roof and spreading across the shingles of the house itself in an ever widening path —then he ran back along the driveway.

A group of guards, the warden at their head, were just turning in from the road. He saw Janet Rand speed across the lawn to meet her father, and then all came on toward him, running at top speed. At the corner of the house Varge halted and waited for them to join him.

“I think, sir,” he said quietly, as the warden came up, “that it would be a wise thing to get the furniture out of the house onto the lawn.”

“Nonsense,” panted the warden; “it can’t be as bad as that; it hasn’t had a long enough start to —”

“There is smoke in the front rooms now,” Janet interposed. “I saw it just a minute ago—it is coming along the hallway from the back.”

“Guard Kingman has gone for the fire-tub, sir” —Varge spoke again, in quick, firm tones. “ I do not know how long it will take to get it here, but if we had plenty of men we could form a bucket brigade and keep the roof wet down until we got a stream on it.”

Warden Rand’s eyes swept the roof for an instant; and then, as though to dispossess his mind of any idea of exaggeration on Varge’s part, a swirl of smoke came down the driveway, a shower of sparks spurted upward, scattered, and settled, glowing, in a dozen spots on the shingles. He swung sharply upon one of the guards.

“Bring the good-conduct men over here with buckets, Laidley,” he ordered tersely. “And bring them on the double! I’ll have a closer look at this—the rest of you can start getting the things out of the house; it’s as well to be on the safe side. And a ladder, Laidley”—he called after the guard. “Bring a ladder!”

“There is one in che bam that is long enough, sir,’ said Varge. “I’ll have it up by the time the men are back.”

Distant shouts and cries, growing ever nearer, sounded from the direction of the little village; the great prison bell still clamoured its alarm; along the road came scurrying women, some dragging children by the hand, some carrying a babe in arms, others talking, gesticulating, crying excitedly to one another; while, leading them, passing them, the younger element, boys and girls, came scrambling through the hedges and poured onto the lawn—and high now in air, ominously high, shot a wicked, lurid fang of flame.

From the barn Varge dragged out a ladder; and, aS the warden helped him to place it, a burst of cheers and yells went up from the front of the house.

, Into the driveway they came, two long parallel files of them, like fast travelling snakes, their striped bodies wriggling this way and that, the right-angled turn from the road like a fold in the monster’s tails. On they came, the convicts, thirty to the file, their white faces flushed now with their run from the prison gates, their eyes bright with eagerness and excitement; on they came, the tramp of their feet, the clatter of the swinging buckets sounding dominantly over the cries that hailed them.

Varge sprang upon the ladder and began to climb. They had placed it in the driveway, its top resting against the eaves at the peak of the roof. A clattering file swung by below him, heading for the cistern at the warden’s direction. As Varge reached the top, others were already on the ladder behind him, following him up.

He pulled himself to the roof, and, straddling the peak, edged his way along past the chimney to a position near the centre. A dry, blighting breath swept his face; a cloud of smoke, full of eddying sparks, closed down upon him and left him for an instant choked and gasping—then it cleared away, leaving only the blazing patches of shingles around him and the airless, furnace heat of the solid flame from the kitchen roof and the rear side of the house itself, now in fierce conflagration.

A striped form took its place behind him on the roof, another and another, back to where the head and shoulders of a man standing on the ladder protruded over the eaves—then he lost the line until it appeared again close by the cistern’s edge beside the conservatory. Below, on the other side, on the lawn, was a sea of upturned, star-mg faces, women’s and girls’ and boys’, that were constantly being augmented by others who were racing along the road to the fire—the men were still in the village; he could see a black knot of them down by the creek gathered around the little firehall.

Varge’s eyes came back to the lawn. A detail of convicts had evidently been told off to do the work that the guards, who had arrived with the warden, had begun. Back and forth they went, some singly, carrying chairs and lighter articles, others in groups of two and three staggering under heavier pieces of furniture—all piling their loads well down the lawn out of reach of even the most ambitious sparks. And now, amongst them, directing them, he caught a glimpse of golden hair, a little form in fluttering white—she turned suddenly, looking upward, her face raised toward him—and then a 'heavy, curling wave of smoke engulfed him again and settled between them.

A cheer, more a stifled gurgle, echoed along the line behind him—a dripping bucket was thrust into his hand.'

He raised himself to his feet now, bracing himself as best he could on the precarious footing, and shot the contents of the bucket over a glowing patch of shingle. The one chance was to keep the fire from creeping any further up the roof of the house than it had already come —and that chance looked slim enough—even with a stream from the fire-tub when it came, it seemed as though everything would go, for the fire, fed by the blazing kitchen, must already have worked its way into the lower rooms at the rear.

They came fast now, at barely half-minute intervals, the buckets—a full one pushed into his hand almost as rapidly as he could place its contents most effectively without wasting one of the precious drops, and swing it back again empty to the man behind.

The minutes passed, five of them, but with each one the position on the roof had grown more and more untenable—they were choking, gasping for breath—the heat was blistering, scorching them, though they kept their faces turned away—the smoke, a continuous cloud now, settled upon them, dense, suffocating.

Faintly to Varge’s ears came a roar of voices, then the beat of hoofs, a clatter and clang in the driveway below—the fire-tub had come. A minute more and he heard the sound of many running steps, the bump and rattle of a light vehicle—it was the two-wheeled hose cart, men straining at the long draw-ropes, flanking the two men at the end of the guiding-tongue. He could not see it, but he could picture it well enough—many a “muster” and “play-out” of Veteran Firemen he had seen in Berley Falls. Presently they would man the long brakes on either side of the fire-tub, twelve men to a side—it would have a name, of course, the fire-tub, like 'Excelsior or Eureka—and then clang-clang-clank, clang-clang-clank would go the brakes, up on one side, down on the other, then—he swept his hand quickly across his smarting eyes; he was dizzy and his mind seemed to be wavering. Strange that the other men did not feel —

A full bucket dropped from the nerveless hand of the man behind him, rolled splashing, ricochetting down the roof and plumped into the fire below.

In a flash, concentrating, gathering mental and physical faculties alike, Varge whirled around, his hand shot out and locked in the other’s collar just as the mao pitched forward, head down, upon the slant of the roof. Varge dragged him back, supporting the limp figure with one hand while he reached for the next oncoming bucket with the other.

“Quick!” he shouted. “Water!”

It was three men behind, and it came with painful slowness—the man he held was but little further gone than those who still fought gamely on.

At last the bucket reached him, and he dashed the contents over the man’s head and shoulders and into his face.

A shout came ringing up from below. It was the warden’s voice, and he had evidently drawn his own conclusions from the tumbling bucket, or perhaps had seen what was happening through a lifting layer of smoke.

“Come down from the roof!” he ordered peremptorily. “Come down at once!”

“Clang-clang-clank—spit!”—a stream of water lashed the roof, broke and spattered like great tumbling drops of rain. The tub was at work.

The man, revived a little by the douche, moaned; but still hung inert on Varge’s arm. The men close to the ladder began to back off the roof and descend; the one next to Varge and his charge edged a little nearer to help—he was shaky and weak, and Varge motioned him away.

“Get down yourself; it’s all you’ll be able to do,” he said quickly. “I’ll manage all right —send some fresh men to the top of the ladder to get this chap.”

With a hoarse gasp of assent, the other moved away.

A moment Varge supported the semi-unconscious maa against his knee while he rapidly unlaced his boots, removed them, tied the strings together and slung them around his neck—his stockinged feet would cling where his boots would give him no chance at all. Then, as though it were a baby, he raised the other in his arms and began carefully to make his way along the peak of the roof.

Once, twice and again he slipped, recovered himself and went on. The smoke blew clear for an instant and left him outlined against space, a grim, gaunt figure, moving slowly on his perilous footing, his burden in his arms—'and from below in a mad roar, bursting from the full hearts of men, came cheer on cheer. Varge heard it, attributed it to the fire-tub at last in play—and kept steadily, doggedly on. Like a fly crawling around a wall, his burden shifted to one arm and shoulder, leaving the other hand free to cling to the brick, he passed the chimney. A moment more, and the too of the ladder was gained. Here, others took the man from him; and then, putting on his boots again, Varge swung himself onto the rungs.

As he reached the ground, a hand fell upon his shoulder. He turned—and his eyes met Doctor Kreelmar’s.

“Hum!” grunted the little doctor. “Come out here in front where you can get some fresh air into your lungs.”

“I’m all right,” said Varge, with a glance toward the bam where they were ‘changing gangs on the fire-tub. “I —”

“You do what you’re told,” snapped the doctor, “or I’ll see that you get a day of solitary — what? Now, march!”

With a smile at the gruff, big-hearted little man, Varge obeyed. The doctor led him along the driveway and onto the lawn to where the convict who had been overcome with the smoke was stretched out on the grass, and there made him sit down.

For a few minutes Varge lay back, his hands behind his head, inhaling deep breaths. Two convicts reeled out from the front door with a piece of furniture. They carried it to a spot near him, and he heard a guard order them to go back to the rear and help the men at the fire-tub—it was evidently too bad in the house now to continue further the work of salvage, even if there were any more to do—flame and smoke were bursting from one of the upper windows, the one by the big elm.

He sat up, and his eyes travelled slowly over the crowd upon the lawn—and back again over the little knots and groups, still slowly. Then, suddenly, he jumped to his feet, and his glance now was quick, searching, critical.

Close by him stood Martha, a heavy, stupid creature, to whose carelessness probably the fire owed its origin. She was alternately twisting her apron into a knot and unfolding it again, as she stared, wild-faced, at the house. Varge stepped toward her.

“Where is Miss Rand?” he demanded quickly.

Martha started—and the apron dropped from her hands. Then she shook her head.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I heard her say a little while ago there was something of her mother’s in her room that she had forgotten, and that she was going to get it. I haven’t seen her since and —”

“What’s that?” interposed a voice sharply—and the little doctor was between them. “She’s gone in there? iYou let her go in there—h’m?—h’m?—h’m?” he jerked out. “My God, my God” —he turned and began to run for the veranda.

Varge’s face was set and white as chiselled marble.

“Which is her room?”—Martha, terrified, was whimpering now, and he spoke quietly, laying a hand on her arm.

She pointed to the blazing dormer window by the elm—and burst into tears.

It was a hundred yards to the house from where Varge stood, and the doctor was already two-thirds of the way there—Varge’s hands closed down on the other’s shoulders, halting him, as he sprang up the steps onto the veranda.

“I will go,” he said, with quiet finality.

“You will do nothing of the sort!” snorted the little man, stamping and wriggling to free himself. “You’re not fit to go into that again and —”

“I will go,” repeated Varge evenly.

For the fraction of a second their eyes met—then he pushed the doctor gently away from him, and sprang through the open door.

Smoke, a thin, hazy, wavering, light-grey veil of it, shut down around him and stabbed at his eyes. A sin^ gle glance he gave into the dismantled rooms on either side of the hallway—then dashed for the stairs. Heavier, denser here, as though accepting his challenge, a gust of strangling fumes rushed down to meet him, and for an instant checked him, stopped him, drove him back a step.

He tore his jacket from his back, held it over his nose and mouth—and leaped grimly forward. Above, angry red, a sheet of flame spurted across the head of the stairway—the upper rear of the house was a seething furnace—and somewhere, somewhere above him she—he moaned like a man in delirium, his head and lungs seemed to be bursting. He had not thought that the fire had gained such headway within—was he to be forced back, unable to gain the hall above that ran to the front of the house where she must be? Would he, after all, be forced back to make the attempt all over again by a ladder through the window on the side still untouched by the fire? He had thought of that in the first place, but where every second counted he had not dared to risk the time it would have taken to bring a ladder around from the rear. Where every second counted—as the thought seared again into his brain, his heart seemed to stop its beat.

“Janet!”—her name burst from his lips spontaneously in a fierce, anguished cry; and, as though it were the magic word that rent asunder the flood-gates of his soul, there surged upon him a mighty wave of passion >—all that was primal, elemental in him rose in liberation as to some wild, stupendous revelry, full of exquisite torture, of infinite joy, and all of happiness, all of sorrow that a world of life could ever know.

The head of the stairs was impassable—across it, in a very wall now, was that fiery barrier. But there was another way. He was far enough up now, and he measured the distance to the top of the hall bannister with a quick glance, dropped his jacket—and sprang. There was a split, a crack of rending woodwork as his hands closed around and gripped the railing—eaten into, weakened by the fire at the stairway head, it could not stand the strain—'he felt it giving away, and with all his strength he flung his weight forward. For an instant he hung there in the balance; and then, with the bannister crashing down around him, he landed on hands and knees on the hall floor. He was on his feet in a second—something white through the smoke caught his eye ahead of him down the passage at the front of the house.

In another moment he had reached her and was on his knees beside her. Half across the threshold of a door she lay, motionless, unconscious, her face bloodless white, one hand out-flung, and tightly clasped in it a tiny ivory miniature—her mother’s picture. She had rushed from her own room across the hall, probably, just as the fire burst through from the rear, had tried to make for the window of this other room where it was almost free from smoke, and had been overcome upon its threshold.

“Janet! Janet!”—his words were a strong man’s sobs now, as he snatched her from the floor and lifted her in his arms.

The golden hair brushed his cheek. It thrilled him, whipped his veins into fiery streams, dominated him, overpowered him, mastered him. He knew now, knew for all time to come, forever more he knew—he loved her. He swept her closer, tighter to him; and then, with reverently lowered head, as he rushed forward toward the window, his lips pressed the fair, white brow in a long, lingering kiss—the hungry, hopeless, silent cry of his heart, his soul, his being. No; she was not dead. Presently he would give her back to her own world in which he had no part, no place, in which he was an outcast, where between them would lie a gulf in length and breadth and depth unutterable, where no crossing was—but this one instant, snatched from all eternity, was his. That kiss, a symbol of the holiest, purest thing he had ever known, could never wrong her. never do her hurt.

He reached the window and held her where the air would strike her face. They saw him from below-—he heard them shout. Her gold-spun hair, loosened, lay in waving masses across his shoulder and his arm. He buried his face in it, touching it with his lips, as he stood there waiting. It was the one moment he was to have in all his life. Gently, tenderly he held her, his head bowed—it was this he was to look back upon, to dwell upon through all the years to come — his moment, that he should remember when he came to die.

They were coming now. He heard a ladder thump against the window sill. He raised his head — and upon the parched lips, the scorched face, came the old, brave, quiet smile, as he reached out and laid her in her father’s arms.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE ESCAPE

HERE was no other way. Through the long blackness of that night, while the guards’ steps, on their rounds, rang along the steel platforms, and the faint, low, indefinable medley of sounds from the sleeping prison seemed to whisper and murmur in stealth together, Varge lay upon his cot fighting out this new problem that had come to him. As a mathematician evolves some strange and abstruse calculation, checking and rechecking his steps to verify his solution and finding ever the same result, so to Varge, over and over, again came inevitably the same conclusion. There was„ no other way—he must escape.

To stay there, to see her day by day, to touch her perhaps, to hear her voice, to have the awful, ironic hopelessness of it all thrust upon him with each look into that dear face that stirred his soul to the depths in an agony of yearning, was beyond his strength to bear. To be with her so and never to speak, to smother beneath a calm exterior a passion that rocked and swayed and dominated every faculty, every thought that was in him, was the path that led irrevocably to the day of madness, which, sooner than have come, he might better take his own life. She must never know—this hurt, to shock and frighten her, that would live in her life and bring sorrow to the tender, sensitive heart so full of human sympathy and love for others, must never come to her. There was no other way. For his own sake, from torment that would sweep from him his, reason; for her sake, that no blight might come upon the fresh, young, happy life—he must go.

And for that other thing, the crime upon his shoulders, Mrs. Merton’s belief in his innocence —his going changed nothing—in her eyes, in the eyes of the law all remained the same. Strange that he should do what he had risked his life to prevent others from accomplishing? They were guilty men—he was innocent.

He would have liked to see her, just to have a single glimpse of her again before he went — his heart cried out for that. But he put the thought from him, he dared not yield to the temptation. He must go at once while his resolution was unshaken. It would be days, three or four of them Doctor Kreelmar had told him in an evening visit to his cell, before Janet would be out again. They had taken her to a neighbour’s house where she would have every care. No; he must go at once—with the coming day—snatch at the first opportunity that he could make.

And so the night passed and morning came, and once more Varge walked from the prison gates to the warden’s home and turned into the maple-shaded driveway by the lawn. A scene far different from that of the days before presented itself. The hedges, tom by the excited villagers, gaped with holes; the flower beds had been ruthlessly trampled upon; in the centre of the lawn were piles of furniture, tarpaulin covered, like strange biers—and everywhere the smell of charred timber vitiated the air. The house itself from the front, however, appeared little changed; within and at the back the damage had been great—though not so great, he found as he walked around and viewed it, but that it could easily be rebuilt before the summer was at an end.

Disorder was everywhere about—the warden had told him to do what he could to “tidy ” up.

Varge smiled a little grimly to himself as he set to work—keeping always where he could command a view of the road. This was to be his last day, or, rather, his last morning there, for he would wait until late on in the afternoon, as near to night-fall as he could. If he made the attempt now, he would be missed at noon, if not sooner, and there wTould be all the afternoon in which to scour the country for him; if he waited until it was nearly time to go back to the penitentiary for the night, he would be missed then almost immediately it was true, but over-weighing this was the fact that only a few hours then would intervene before darkness set in.

The morning hours dragged by. .Villagers came and stared at the house; a gang of convicts, accompanied by guards and wagons, removed the furniture from the lawn to the cover of one of the prison sheds within the walls.

At noon, a little disturbed, Varge went back to the penitentiary and fell into lock-stepped file for the march to the dining-hall—Kingman, patrolling the road, had for the most part passed at fairly consistent intervals; but there had been two occasions, exceptions that caused Varge uneasiness now, when those intervals had been cut almost in half.

From the great stacked slices of bread—of which each man was allowed to help himself without restriction as he filed by the sort of narrow pantryway where the bread was piled and the tins of food were laid out—iVarge quietly took several pieces more than he was in the habit of doing; and by the time the meal was finished these were tucked inside his jacket.

Once outside the prison gates again, he hurried back to the warden’s house, anxious to get there while the villagers were still at their noonday meals and before they would come around to gaze and over-run the place again as they had during the morning. To his satisfaction no one was in sight. He walked straight to the barn, stopped to glance with apparent unconcern about him, made sure that he was alone, then stepped inside and drew the sliding door shut behind him.

Janet had sent him one day to look for a pruning knife that had been mislaid somewhere, and in his search he had gone to the hay-loft, which now was used as a storage room for the house, and filled with old trunks, broken furniture and the usual garret accumulation. He had seen an old pair of trousers and a discarded coat of the warden’s lying there.

He secured these now, undressed quickly, put on the trousers and drew the striped prison pair on over the others. Placing his store of bread in the pockets of the coat, he folded the garment, wrapped it around his body bandage-fashion and tied it there with a piece of thin rope, which he took from a small chest, or box, around which it had been corded; then he donned his prison jacket, and began to search hastily around the loft. A very dirty and ragged soft-felt hat rewarded his search. This he slipped inside his jacket, went out of the bam, and calmly proceeded with his work from where he had left off in the morning.

It was as nearly five o’clock as he was able to judge the time by the sun, when he took his wheelbarrow, placed a spade, trowel, rake and hoe in it, went down the driveway to the road and stopped halfway along the outside edge of the hedge. Here, he unloaded his tools and began to busy himself with one of the holes that the children had made in the hedge the previous afternoon. Kingman was just coming up the road from the direction of the creek.

Varge, to all appearances oblivious of the other’s approach, worked steadily on, his back turned to the road. Kingman rode slowly by. Varge turned a little now to watch him. Kingman passed the prison, kept on up the road, and presently disappeared from sight behind the rise of a little hill. The average time before he would reappear again coming back and be able to command a view of the road clear to the creek was ten minutes—but twice that morning it had not been ten minutes—well, that was the risk he had to take, it would only mean a dash for it at the end, and instant pursuit instead of an hour’s start before he was missed.

Varge dropped the rake from his hand to the ground, deliberately wheeled the ’barrow onto the road and started with it toward the village. He swung along quickly, but without show of haste. It was the very audacity and simplicity of his plan that he counted on for success. They could not see him from the walls; true, it was unusual for a convict to walk down the road, but after the fire of yesterday a little of the un« usual might be expected by those he met; everybody knew him as the man who worked at the warden’s place—and what more natural supposition, deduced from the bumping wheelbarrow, than that he had been sent, perhaps to the village store, for something too heavy, too unwieldy to carry by hand! There was Kingman—only Kingman—to fear.

If he could reach the creek, he would ask no more. The momentary view he had had from the roof of the house yesterday had furnished him with a mental map of the surrounding country—the bank of the creek from the left of the bridge ran flat and bare for a few hundred yards, then grew bush-lined, the bushes gradually blending into a large, heavily-wooded tract, where, lie was almost sure, there was a sharp bend in the stream itself. To have attempted to reach the woods by cutting across the fields was to risk being seen, he could have no possible business there and the alarm would be given instantly—it was a very different thing to invite observation!

He was well down the road now. The houses were closer together on either hand—the homes of the guards, mostly. He went on unconcernedly—the few people he passed, as he had expected, paid little attention to him—he was too obvious. The large building on the bank of the creek at the left of the road—he was within a hundred yards of it now—he could see was the general store.

Suddenly he strained his ears to listen. Behind him, over the thump, thump, thump of the wheelbarrow, sounded horse’s hoofs coming on at a sharp trot. He did not turn his head—there was no sound of wheels—it was Kingman. The average ten minutes that he had hoped for was not to be his—Kingman, this time, could have ridden but a short distance over the rise of the hill before turning back.

Not a muscle of Varge’s face moved; the slight lengthening of his stride was imperceptible. To run was certain capture—Kingman had seen him, of course, but Kingman was not yet suspicious, only curious; if he ran, it would be the signal for Kingman to break into a gallop, yell out a warning, and from the houses on either side would rush out the night guards, off duty now at their homes and probably up, and they would have him in a trap. Neither was there any turning back to make another attempt at a more favourable moment. Once the start had been made, it was inevitably a start to the finish—he had realised and accepted that from the beginning. Kingman evidently believed, so far, that some one, possibly the warden himself, had sent him to the village—the only excuse for his presence there that would avail—an excuse that, if he attempted it, would fall like dead leaves at the first investigation, with the result that he would be taken back, punished for attempted escape, and be kept thereafter strictly confined behind the prison walls.

With his ear he measured the distance of Kingman behind him, and with his eye the distance — fifty yards now—to the bridge. One thing in his favour he had noted ever since he started—the bed of the creek could not be seen by any one coming along the road.

Closer, louder, sharper pounded the hoofs. Twenty yards to go! Varge’s eyes fixed on what was evidently a little path used by the children, and possibly their elders as well, to scramble up and down on from the road to the edge of the stream. Ten yards! It was just at the comer of the store, too narrow for a horse, the store seemed built almost on the water’s edge and the bridge railing came close—now!

He turned the wheelbarrow into the path, sacrificed a half second to give an air of leisurely nonchalance to his movements—and then, as the side of the building hid him from the road, he shot the wheelbarrow forward from his hands, leaped down the little declivity and ran like a deer along the bank for the bushes ahead, Kingman’s natural course would be to ride onto the bridge to look over to discover what he could possibly be doing with a wheelbarrow on the bank of the creek —perhaps expecting to see him after a load of sand. By that time, when Kingman would catch sight of him and for the first time realise that it was an escape, he should be close to the bushes.

Once in the woods, and he would have a start again; it would take them time to organise a posse. With that start he should be able to elude them until dark. When the advantage would be his and —

Hoofs rattled on the wooden bridge. Varge was running with all his strength, sure, light-footed, speeding like the wind—the bushes, the trees, were growing nearer and nearer, almost at hand.

" Halt!”>—- hoarse-flung rang the command from the bridge.

Just a yard, half a yard, a foot still to make—the roar of a carbine echoed and reverberated up and down the little valley—a bullet drummed the air with a low, venomous whir close to his head, and clipped a shower of leaves from the branches—and the next instant Varge had plunged into the bushes and was hidden from sight.

CHAPTER XIX

THE ESCAPE (CONTINUED)

VARGE swerved instantly to the right, flung himself flat on the ground and began to crawl.

“Cr-rang! Cr-rang! Cr-rang!”—the shots followed each other in quick succession from the bridge. Kingman was aiming at the spot where Varge had disappeared—and he was aiming low. The bullets hummed angrily, swishing a path through the leaves at the height of the small of a man’s back, ending with a vicious “spat” as they found lodgment in the stouter limbs Still Varge crawled—every second, every instant counted; but, though now out of the line of fire, the foliage was still too thin—to rise and run was to mark his passage by a trail of swaying bushes, and offer himself for an almost sure and certain shot. A little further, just a little further on the bushes grew thicker—and then the woods.

Would Kingman follow him alone—or wait to gather a posse? The alarm, in the lower part of the village at least, was already given. Like a low, sullen murmur came the sound of many, many voices—then it welled, bursting into shouts and cries—and he could distinguish amongst them the high-pitched, falsetto notes of excited women.

Would Kingman follow him alone—and if he did? Just a few yards further on now and he would be deep enough in to run again without fear of indicating his position to any one on the bridge or the village street.

What was that! Along the bank of the creek some one was running—a man — heavy-treaded. Varge rose to his feet, and, crouching low, bent almost double, began to run cautiously. A crash—the pursuer had plunged into the bushes where, not more than two minutes before, he himself had dashed for cover—there was the thrashing of branches—coming closer.

A sudden whiteness spread itself over Varge’s grim, set face. He must get away, he must get away, he must get away—the words rang over and over again in his brain. There was more than life, more than years of grey-walled prison existence at stake—he must get away—at any cost. If Kingman—yes, that was Kingman coming now—if Kingman reached him! Whiter still grew Varge’s face. Was he to chose between that—and Kingman!

He dared not straighten to his full height and trust to speed—Kingman could not be twenty yards from him — far too close a shot to risk. Kingman! A man stood between him and what was far more now than freedom. And Kingman was only doing his duty.

He could only run slowly—Kingman was coming at top speed, charging like a bull through the leaves and branches. He could hear the man’s panting breath now—and by some grim trick of fate Kingman was heading directly toward him! Presently, others would coipe, a score of guards, but now it was only—Kingman. Another minute, half a minute, and Kingman would be upon him—a waving mass of tumbled hair seemed again to bathe his face in its rare fragrance, the gold-crowned head to lay upon his shoulder, his lips to touch the pure, cold brow—he stopped suddenly, edged noiselessly a foot to one side—and waited.

An instant, barely that, and heaving, floundering, redfaced, carbine in hand, Kingman burst into sight not a yard away. There was a cry from Kingman, the carbine was half-lifted—and, in his prison clothes like some striped, hunted tiger at bay, Varge leaped. In a flash his hand had closed on the carbine and wrenched it from the other’s grasp.

“Kingman,” he said, in a low, deadly voice, “you know my strength. I have no wish to hurt you —but 7 am going to get away. Take your chance—go back.”

A moment, Kingman’s eyes met Varge’s, faltered an eloquent appreciation of the desperate odds against him;with his carbine gone, and the red ebbed from his face —then his jaw set hard.

“I can't go back,” he said hoarsely. “You know that. I’ve got to get you —like this”—he hurled himself forward as he spoke.

It was a brave man’s act, a brave man’s words, fully sensed by Varge—but there was no choice —no choice. He sidestepped with a lightninglike movement, his left fist shot out and swung crashing upon the point of Kingman’s jaw—and Kingman dropped like a felled ox. There had been no malice in the blow that had stunned the man and stopped the headlong rush—but it was a blow that had meant no other one should need to follow it—there was no time—no time.

The carbine was still clasped in Varge’s right hand. He turned, and, resuming his doubled posture, ran on. It seemed like years since he had swerved into that little path by the bridge and had begun his race for liberty—in reality, he knew that as a maximum it could not have been more than five minutes—probably much less.

The woods! He was in them now—at last. A gasp of relief, and he straightened up and swung again into his stride. The sounds from the village were a little fainter now—but now there was another sound, harsh, imperious, far-carrying, that on the still evening air would reach for miles around, a sound that none would misinterpret—-the great bell in the central dome of the prison was sending out its warning in quick, furious clamour, each heavy, wavering note ending with a clash as another boomed out impatiently upon the echoes of the first.

He was on the edge of the creek again—it showed through the fringe of trees at his right. He had not been mistaken then—it made a sharp turn here. The carbine he was carrying was useless weight—under no circumstances could he have any need of it—not even as a last resort. It had already served its purpose. They would find Kingman, find the carbine gone, know that he, Varge, was armed and believe him desperate enough to use the weapon—they would, consequently, be a little more cautious, perhaps a little less enthusiastic in their chase. A whimsical smile flickered across the compressed lips. He must not destroy any such illusion by allowing them to find the weapon discarded. He stooped at the water’s edge, and without splash or noise slid the carbine beneath the muddy current.

For an instant he debated with himself whether to cross here or not—and, deciding against it, ran on again. The other bank was not so heavily wooded at this point, and it might still be visible from the bridge —women and children would have flocked there to the bridge—it would be crowded with them now—they would be watching, eagerly, intently, the place where first he and then Kingman had disappeared from sight. Hebron was having enough excitement to enable it to lay by a store for the coming winter that would supply an inexhaustible fund of gossip—in two days, a fire and a man hunt!

Again the whimsical smile touched his lips, and crept now to the clear, steady eyes. The rigid tenseness of his features relaxed and gave place to a quiet, composed, yet alert expression. He was comparatively safe now. For miles around the country was wooded and hilly—it would take a small army to scour it effectually. The search of the twenty or thirty men, that would be as large a force as could be mustered, must be haphazard at best—unless they caught sight of him. Even now, probably, they had little hope of getting him—that way. They would search undoubtedly until dark—and then go back to wait and let the telegraph do the rest. Penniless, in prison garb, the odds were very greatly against the man who made a dash for freedom. Hunger would drive him to beg for food, his clothes would instantly betray him—and the scent would be picked up again. Where the telegraph reached, there was his description —and there, too, were men eager to pounce upon him.

On Varge ran, tirelessly, swiftly, dodging the lower branches, circling the trunks, keeping his path as nearly parallel as possible with the creek. Against the telegraph and his description—he had three slices of bread and a change of clothing, and the night should mean twenty miles to him at least. After that—well, after that would be to-morrow, and to-morrow’s problems were its own.

A half-hour passed. He stopped, leaning against a tree trunk to listen, wiping the trickling drops of perspiration from his face with his jacket sleeve. Softened, mellowed, the boom of the bell still came to him; that, and the evening breeze whispering through the tree-tops, the gurgle of water from the creek upon whose bank he stood—there was no other sound.

He unbuttoned his jacket—the warden’s coat was hot and cumbrous around his body. He started to untie the cord that held the garment in place, with the idea of changing his clothes—and knotted it back into place again. Not yet, not while he was still within the zone of immediate pursuit where, if he were seen, he would be recognised—until dark he must trust wholly to speed. They must believe that he had no other clothing than his prison stripes; otherwise, the change would lose almost all the value it possessed. In time they would know that he must have got rid of his tell-tale garb—but it was to-morrow, the next day, the first few days that counted so vitally—and for that length of time the)” might well believe him to be hiding in the woods, even if far away from the penitentiary walls.

And now he listened attentively again, then parted the branches and looked up and down the narrow creek. Here the opposite bank was densely bush-lined, and, beyond, the land rose in undulating, hilly sweeps, covered with woods as far as the eye could reach. He must have made a good three miles from the village—he remembered the dark, tree-topped stretch of country in this direction that he had glimpsed from the roof of the house the day before.

A moment more he stood silent, every faculty alert, looking, listening; then he whipped off his boots, rolled his two pairs of trousers to the knees and waded quickly across the shallow stream—to run for hours in wet boots, all too heavy as they were already, that would chafe and blister his feet, was a handicap compared to which the loss of time required to make the change counted little. He reached the other side, put on his boots, and, taking a course directly away from the creek now, went on again. ~

The wondrous strength seemed never to flag. On Varge ran, every muscle of his body co-ordinating with its fellows, every movement eloquent of tremendous power in reserve upon which as yet he had had no need to call; always the same splendid stride, light, elastic, sure; always the same easy, perfect breathing.

Twilight began to fall and the shadows in the woods to deepen and strengthen; and then, gradually, his pace slackened as he became obliged to pick his way more carefully. All about him was silence—long ago the clamour of the bell had ceased to reach his ears. He had come now perhaps a matter of four miles from where he had crossed the creek and taken a course at right angles to the one he had pursued when paralleling the stream, in all he must have covered some seven or eight miles; but he could hardly be much more than five miles in a direct line from the penitentiary. Well that, to all intents and purposes, was as good as ten, for in another half-hour now it would be dark and wherever else the pursuit might have led it had failed to follow the direction he had taken. At least until daylight came he was safe.

He stopped suddenly. The woods seemed to open out ahead of him as into a clearing of some sort. He listened a moment, and then went cautiously forward! again—to find that it was a road. He halted at the edge of the woods, assured himself that the road was deserted, prepared to start across it—and abruptly drew back a few feet into the shadow of the trees. To his right, the road ran straight through the woods and he could see along it for quite a distance; but just at his left it was hidden by a turn, and from this latter direction there came the sound of horse’s hoofs and the rattle of wheels.

There might be time to cross the road before the approaching team came around the bend, but it was foolhardy to take even a chance of being seen. Varge sat down on the ground, leaned his back against a tree and waited for the team to pass. Quite close to the edge of the road, he could see out with little difficulty and he kept his eyes fastened on the turn.

The clatter of hoofs, the crunch of wheels drew nearer, a horse came into view—and then Varge was on his feet. Through a tangle of wild raspberry bushes at the side of the road a dog rushed at him, yelping and barking madly. The team stopped instantly, and a man, leaping from the buggy, came running forward.

“Down, Briggs! You confounded imp of Satan, down!” shouted a voice.

A foot from Varge, fore paws wide apart, his head straight out on a level with his back, quivering with excitement to the tip of his shaggy tail, the Irish setter obeyed so far as to drop into a low and prolonged growl —but now Varge leaned coolly back against the tree.

—he had recognised the man.

Another instant and Doctor Kreelmar, puffing and blowing from his short run, had reached the spot.

“Ha!” exclaimed the little doctor fiercely. “So I’ve got you, have I! I had a suspicion that was what .Briggs was after, so I lost no time in following him. Now then, sir, march to that buggy and get in! Quick’ now! No shillyshallying about it—back you go to the penitentiary! ”

Varge’s only movement was to shake his head.

“I think not,” he said calmly.

“What!” snapped the little man ferociously. “.You refuse—you resist!”

Varge smiled at him quietly.

“Yes,” he said.

“Hum!” said Doctor Kreelmar. He pulled out his handkerchief and mopped his face unnecessarily. “Hum!” he repeated. “Refuse, eh?—consamed fool if you didn’t! You could make a mouthful of me—I’ve done all I could—a great load off my conscience —hum! Briggs, keep a civil tongue in your head—we’re in the hands of the host of the Midianites and you’re no Gideon! Well, sir, you’ve caused a pretty uproar over yonder, a pretty uproar! About the only person who hasn’t something to say is Kingman—and he can’t because I’ve got his jaw in a sling.”

“Kingman, yes,” said Varge quickly. “I hope —” “I looked for a compound fracture at least, when I heard you’d hit him,” said Doctor Kreelmar, in a ludicrously injured tone. “But, pshaw, I could tap a man as hard as that myself! Heart wasn’t in it, eh? That’s it, eh—what?”

Briggs, with a glance at his master as though to confirm his own conclusions, was sniffing now at Varge in more friendly fashion, and suddenly put up his paw. Varge, stooping to pat the glossy brown head, made no answer to the doctor.

“Hum!” said Doctor Kreelmar. “So you made a break for it at last. I’ve been kind of expecting you to do it. I’ve an idea it’s what I would be tempted to do myself if I were an innocent man shut up in there.”

Varge pulled at the silky ears and rubbed the dog’s muzzle.

“I said if I were an innocent man!” rapped out the choleric little fellow, promptly irascible at failing to draw Varge out.

“I heard you,” said Varge, without lifting his head. “I haven’t that justification—I am not an innocent man.”

“Then I hope they catch you!” announced Doctor Kreelmar, with sudden calmness and equanimity. “If you’re guilty, I hope to . the Lord they catch you, ’pori my soul I do! And they will,” he continued complacently. “They always do. There’s been four breaks since I’ve been at the prison and they nabbed every one of the four. All four of ’em headed north for the Canadian line, trying to make Canucks out of themselves. Fool thing to do, damned fool thing to do — that’s the first place they’re looked for. If a man is looking for a ghost of a chance to make his escape, why doefen’t he hit south, keep away from the big places and, most dangerous of all, the small towns where one man is the chief of police and the whole force rolled into one—blamed officious and inquisitive that man is generally; then keep under cover by day, travel by night, and never go near anything bigger than a hamlet or a farm-house till the worst of the hue and cry has died down? He could strike the coast, work around, say to Gloucester where there are all kinds of chances of shipping on a fishing smack that would keep him out of the world on the Grand Banks for a few months, and when he got back no one would know him. But do any of ’em do that? Not much! They head for Canada—and they get caught.” Doctor Kreelmar resorted to his handkerchief quite as unnecessarily as before, and quite as unnecessarily mopped his face.

Varge raised his head and for a long minute the eyes of the two men held each other’s. It was Doctor Kreelmar who broke the silence.

“Well, I’ve got to be jogging along,” he said. “Patient sent for me out this way more’n an hour ago. A! man breaking out of penitentiary has got pretty considerable hard digging ahead of him, and even if he goes south he doesn’t stand much more show than a hen in a tornado unless he’s got some money.” Doctor Kreelmar puckered up his face into a wry grimace, dove his hand into his pocket and brought out a roll of bills. “ I’m a prison official,” said he, “and I guess I’m breaking my oath and suborning duty and acting generally like a blame fool, but then most of us act according to the lights we’re supplied with—hum! I guess I wouldn’t have much of any hesitation in turning this over to an innocent man—what?”

A lump rose suddenly in Varge’s throat—the doctor seemed to waver before him through the mist in his eyes. He could only shake his head.

“Well, it doesn’t matter,” said the doctor, a little wistfully, “only I’d like to have heard you say it; as it is, I reckon I’ll have to keep on trusting to those lights of mine. Take the money, Varge, and—and—oh, well—confound it!—take it!”—he thrust the bills suddenly between the buttons of Varge’s jacket “I don’t know what I can say to you,” said Varge huskily, “except what I said once before — God bless you. I’ll keep the money for I shall need it badly enough—when I can, I’ll send it back to you.” He held out his hand. “Good-bye.”

Doctor Kreelmar eyed the outstretched hand dubiously.

“I shook hands with you once before,” he snapped gruffly, “and I haven’t forgotten it.”

“That was when I was dying,” said Varge, smiling through wet eyes.

“Hum!” said the little man. “So it was. Well, I’ll risk it.”

He caught Varge’s hand, wrung it hard in both his own—then turned and walked quickly to the road.

Varge watched him clamber into the buggy and pick .up the reins.

“Gidap!” clucked the little doctor to his horse.

CHAPTER XX

DOCTOR KREELMAR’s “DREAM”

IT was late evening, in one of the small frame cottages, the home of one of the guard’s, where Janet had been taken after the fire. A tall glass lamp, with a paper shade of many colours, stood on the red plush cloth of the parlour table. In one corner of the room was the organ; rockers and stiff wooden arm-chairs, each with its spotless white tidy, were ranged with military precision at strategic points upon the blue-and-white wool carpet; on the walls hung the crayon family portraits, interspersed with framed, coloured prints of Washington and the battles of Lexington and Bunker Hill.

On the horse-hair sofa, with its back of severe and uncompromising design, Janet Rand was busy with some needlework. She raised her head suddenly as the doorbell rang.

“You had better go, dad,” she said. “Mrs. Woods has gone to bed, and it is probably for us anyway at this hour.”

Warden Rand glanced at his watch.

“Why, it’s already after ten!” he said in surprise. “I had no idea it was so late. It’s time you were in bed, too.” He laid his paper on the table, got up, and went out into the little hallway.

Listening, Janet heard the door opened, and as she caught the sound of a voice, rose quickly to her feet. ioo “Come in, doctor,” she called brightly. “Come in.” “Cornin’I Cornin’, young lady!” grunted the little man, appearing in the doorway. “Hum!”—he halted before her. “Going to leave us in the morning, eh? I came in to say good-bye. All the fol-de-rols and fiddle-de-dees and frill-de-rums packed up, eh?”

“What’s left of them, doctor,” she laughed. “But they all smell so frightfully of smoke that I don’t expect any one to come near me for the rest of the summer. Yes; I am going in the morning.”

“And there goes the sunlight out of Hebron,” sighed the doctor dolorously, puckering up his face. “Same old story—lose your heart to some young scoundrel down there in Maine, that’s what’ll happen. Lord, if I were only thirty—hum-m—say, twenty years younger now!”

“Well,” said Janet merrily, “you’ve some responsibility yourself to shoulder. You advised my going.” “Professionally, professionally,” qualified the doctor; “and that’s a very different thing, mind you.” He plumped himself into a chair, as Janet resumed her place on the sofa and the warden, laughing, went back to his seat by the table. “How. long are you going to let her stay, Rand?” he demanded.

“Well, I don’t know,” the warden smiled. “Long enough to miss her, though I intend to run down there myself for a few days later on if I can get away. I suppose she will stay until I can get the house habitable. I wouldn’t want to impose on Mrs. Woods again—we’ve about turned her out of house and home as it is.”

“Mrs. Woods is a fine woman, a fine woman—heart of gold—splendid wife—Woods is a lucky man,” jerked out the doctor, a quaint mingling of despotic assertion and lingering resignation in his tones.

“I am sure there must be other women with—with hearts of gold,” prodded Janet naively.

“So there are, so there are,” retorted the little doctor quickly; “but they’re all too young —or else they’re married, and their husbands are confoundedly healthy!” He shook his finger at Janet, chuckled, and then edged his elbows interestedly forward on the arms of his chair. “By the way,” he asked suddenly, “what’s become of that chap Merton? I haven’t seen him for quite a while. I should have thought he’d have been around after the fire, he must have heard of it — everybody’s heard of it this side of Jordan, as near as I can make it out.”

“Why,” said Janet, “I thought I had told you. He has gone away and—”

“By Jove!” interposed the warden. “That reminds me. He was back to-day.”

“Back?” inquired Janet, turning quickly to her father.

“Not here—over in Berley Falls,” said the warden. “He telephoned me this afternoon. I forgot to speak of it. He asked after you and about the fire, and said he was exceedingly sorry he wouldn’t have time to run over, but that he was only in Berley Falls for the afternoon. He has given up law, it seems, and is travelling for some business house—he said there was more money in it. His mother is very poorly, he said, and that is what brought him up here.”

“Oh, I am so sorry!” said Janet, with quick sympathy. “What is the matter with Mrs. Merton ? Did he say?”

“No; not exactly,” replied the warden. “But I judged it was more a general breakdown than anything else. He appeared to be quite concerned about her.”

“Hum!” remarked Doctor Kreelmar uncompromisingly. “Did he ask after Varge?”

“No; not that I remember,” the warden answered. “No; I don’t think he did.”

“Knows he’s got away, of course?” snapped the little doctor.

“I’m sure I don’t know,” said the warden. “Probably—if he reads the papers. Why?”

“Why, why?” echoed the tempestuous little man sharply. “God bless my soul, Rand, things have come to a pretty pass if a man has to have a reason for everything he says! I don’t know why. Varge has been gone five days now, and perhaps I was wondering if we could count on Merton’s prayers along with ours to make it fifty—years.”

“Ours?”—the warden repeated the word mechanically. He had glanced down, and his fingers were beating a nervous, rustling little tattoo on the newspaper.

“Yes—oars!” said Doctor Kreelmar; biting off the word belligerently. “Janet’s and mine, and most of all—yours. Duty’s a high-flown, ennobling sort of word, but it’s got the dangdest set of prickles hanging around it—worse’n a bunch of thistles. What’s the punishment for a lifer that breaks prison? Can’t keep him on a few extra years after he’s dead, can you? But he has to be punished, doesn’t he—in some other way.!And what’s he get, eh, what’s he get?—'you ought to know. Nice kettle of fish it would be, you putting the screws onto the man we’ve got to thank for this young lady’s life here. I guess you’ve been holding your own end up on the prayers, Rand.”

“Dad—what is it?”—Janet, watching her father intently, had risen suddenly from the sofa and come to the table.

A grave, serious, troubled look had spread over the genial, hearty features, as Warden Rand had raised his eyes and fixed them on the doctor. He turned now and patted the hand that Janet laid on his shoulder.

“Nothing, dear—nothing,” he said. “I was thinking that Doctor Kreelmar was—right.”

She shook her head reprovingly.

“You mustn’t try to equivocate with me, dad,” she said quietly. “I understand you too well for that, you know. Something has happened in reference to Varge. I can see it in your face. What is it?”

Doctor Kreelmar hitched forward a little in his chair, and squinted at the warden.

“State superintendent getting a trifle ahead of the 'Fourth with his fireworks? Kind of riled up over the escape, eh?”

“No,” said the warden, shaking his head. “He’s not making any fuss about it.”

“Dad,” insisted Janet, “you know it is perfectly useless to try and hide anything—I shall only keep on coaxing until I get it out of you. So now—what is it?”

Warden Rand regarded her soberly for a moment.

“Yes; I suppose you will,” he said, with a grave, tolerant smile. “I hadn’t meant you to know until after you came back. Kreelmar, here, has kind of stirred up something that I’ve been trying not to think about.” He looked down at the paper again, and with a sudden, impulsive movement pushed it away from him “Varge has been caught,” he said abruptly.

“Oh, dad!”—it was a quick, hurt little cry from Janet, as she stared at her father.

“Eh? What? Caught!” gasped the little doctor helplessly. He fumbled for his handkerchief, and after two vain efforts to get it out of his pocket finally jerked it forth savagely and began to mop at his face. “Caught, caught, caught!” he snapped out. “Now, how in he—hum’m’m—how in thunder did that happen?”

“As it generally happens sooner or later,” said the warden monotonously. He got up from his chair and began to pace the room. “They think they’re safe once they’re out of sight of the walls and a guard’s uniform. I’ll admit that personally, not officially, it would have been a relief to me if Varge, once he had started, had shown more sense. They caught him this morning across the border. I sent Willets up to identify him and bring him back.”

“Caught him—where?” inquired the little doctor, and the operations with the handkerchief ceased abruptly.

“Across the Canadian line,” said the warden.

“Hum!” said the little man, settling comfortably back in his chair again.

Janet crossed the room impulsively to her father’s side.

“Oh, dad,” she burst out, her voice quivering, “I wish with all my heart he had got away. He shouldn’t be here anyway—I’m sure of that. And it’s true, as Doctor Kreelmar says, that he saved my life. What will you do? Will you have to—to punish him as other men have been punished when they were brought back? Dad, dear”—pleadingly, as the warden with a set face turned suddenly away —“I know I am making it harder for you, and that you have your duty to do, but—but isn’t there—can’t what he has done be made to count in his favour?”

“I don’t know—yes, dear; we’ll see,” said the warden, with a worried look.

“Fuss and feathers!” announced the little doctor, suddenly screwing around in his chair to eye them both. “Fuss and feathers!” he sniffed.

Janet stared at him, surprised and hurt. The warden frowned, and took a step toward him.

“What do you mean by that, Kreelmar?” he questioned irritably. “A moment ago you took pains to explain what you called the nice kettle of fish I would be in if Varge were caught, and now—”

“So I did, so I did!” asserted the doctor tartly. “And I do yet—but you’d better wait till you get Varge, what?”

“Didn’t I just tell you that we’ve got him?” said the warden querulously.

“How do you know you have?” inquired Doctor Kreelmar, crossing his legs with exasperating deliberation.

“How do I know!” ejaculated the warden. “Why, they wired that they had him and the description tallied with Varge’s.”

“Never heard of a police description that wouldn’t fit at least a hundred men,” asserted Doctor Kreelmar composedly. “A dozen stray hoboes all around the country get free board and lodging every time there’s one sent out. I’ll bet you a cookie—-I’ll bet you two cookies they haven’t got Varge.”

Warden Rand eyed the doctor for a moment impatiently.

“You veer around like a weather-cock,” he said gruffly. “There is no doubt in my mind but that it is Varge.”

.. “Oh, well,” said the doctor airily, “of course, if you’ve made up your mind, why—”

“I have,” said the warden crisply.

“Yes,” said the little doctor thoughtfully; “seems as if you had—and you don’t like the prospect. Makes me think of a man I knew once just after I’d graduated and was on the hospital staff. He was scared stiff he was going to have cancer. All his people had had it on both sides of the house. He used to come around to the hospital regular as clockwork every week for an examination to see if it had developed, and meantimes he must have gone through a ton of drugs as a preventative. He died while I was house surgeon there.” “Well?” inquired the warden tersely.

“He was run over by a railroad train,” said the little man complacently.

For an instant the warden scowled, then he laughed; but, as he sat down at the table again and leaned across it toward Doctor Kreelmar, a puzzled frown crept back to his forehead.

“Look here, Kreelmar,” he insisted brusquely, “what makes vou so sure this isn’t Varge all of a sudden?” “Nothin’; nothin' in the world,” said Doctor Kreel-mar, clipping off his words. “But I’d hate like Sam Hill to think it was, and there’s been enough mistakes made in similar cases, when you come to think of them, to stir up the perky feeling I’m hankering for, so I’m indulging it—guess that’s about all there is to it.”

With a grunt, that embodied both tolerant contempt and a sense of disappointment, Warden Rand picked up his pipe from the table and began to pack the dottle down into the bowl with agitated jabs of his forefinger.

Doctor Kreelmar watched the process for a moment with quizzical contentment; then he looked over at Janet, and his face puckered suddenly. He began to hum under his breath, beating time with his fingers on the arm of his chair. She had gone back to the sofa, picked up her work and was toying with it listlessly, distrait and thoughtful.

“Hum!” said the little man abruptly. “ Convalescents who have to get up very early in the morning with a journey ahead of them should be in bed.” He turned to the warden, who since the fire had been sleeping in the penitentiary office. “I’ve got to see that typhoid case at the prison, Rand; and I’ll walk up with you, if you’re ready to go.”

Warden Rand got up from his chair. “Yes,” he said. “All right. Yes; I suppose you should be in bed, Janet.” He crossed to her and kissed her. “Goodnight, dear”—he pinched her cheek tenderly. “This mustn’t spoil my little girl’s sleep, you know.”

“I’ll try not to let it,” she answered. “Good-night, dad.” Then, holding out her hand to Doctor Kreelmar: “Good-night and good-bye, doctor. You’ll look after dad while I’m away, won’t you?” she smiled.

“Hum!” said Doctor Kreelmar, in his most medical tones. “I’ve just a few words of advice for you, professional of course, before you go.” He looked toward the warden. “ Start along, Rand; I’ll catch up with you in a minute. Now, young lady, you are going away for a complete change and rest to build yourself up and”—he glanced over his shoulder—Warden Rand was disappearing through the door into the hallway —“and”—the professional tones vanished like magic, and his voice bubbled up like an excited boy’s—“don’t you worry that little head of yours one minute over what we’ve been talking about. The man they’ve caught isn’t Varge.”

She looked at him startled, gave a little gasp and caught his arm.

“How do you know?” she asked breathlessly.

“Tut, tut,” said he. “Can a woman keep a secret?”

“Yes; oh, yes!” she cried eagerly.

“Hum!” he commented dubiously, cocking his head comically to one side.

“Doctor—what is it?”—she shook his arm feverishly.

“Well,” he said, “I had a dream.”

“A dream?”—her face fell.

“Yes,” he said. “I dreamed that Varge—had gone the other way” His eyes held hers for an instant, then, with a little chuckle, he bade her good-bye and started quickly toward the door.

“Doctor!” she called peremptorily. “Doctor —”

But the front door had already closed behind him.

For a moment Janet stood staring at the doorway, then mechanically she walked to the chair her father had occupied, sat down and rested her elbows on the table, her chin in her hands.

“The man they’ve caught isn’t Varge, the man they’ve caught isn’t Varge”—the phrase repeated itself over and over in her mind. There was no mistaking that last look of Doctor Kreelmar’s — Doctor Kreelmar knew. How? Had he seen Varge? Where? When? What did it mean?

A flush of colour mounted to her cheeks—relief, gladness, almost incredible in its intensity, possessed her —“the man they’ve caught isn’t Varge, the man they’ve caught isn’t Varge”—the phrase seemed to cling as a priceless thought. The splendid figure in all its wondrous strength, its vigour of fine, young manhood, in all its simple, unaffected heroism, the same heroism that intuitively she knew had led him to accept the hideous prison stripes, the living death, rose before her, sharp-outlined in every detail as she had seen him through the lifting layers of smoke, making his perilous way along the peak of the burning house, carrying another to life and safety—as afterward, at far greater risk to himself, he had won his way to her, and carried her to life and safety.

It seemed so long ago since that afternoon when she had decided to go away—she was still going away, it was true, but for another reason—her health, because the house was burnt and there was really no place in the village for her to stay—there was no need to go for anything else now—Varge had gone himself. It was only a few days back to that afternoon, but it seemed a long, long time since that passage in the book had come so suddenly to startle and frighten her, and when in panic she had tried to drive it, and the thoughts it conjured up, from her. The flush upon her cheek grew deeper—why was it. that these thoughts, though they had come again unbidden, did not terrify her now? Was it because Varge was gone, because their lives were as utterly apart now as though one or both were dead, because she would never see him again; or was it that these last few days in which so much had happened, in which even her life was owed to his courage, his bravery, his strength, had wrought a change in her that was to be for all the years to come—a change that brought this strange new gladness, and this pain that was full of yearning, full of sadness? Was it—thatf Had she come—to care?

She lifted her head from her hands, the red sweeping in waves over her neck and cheeks, a wild beating of her heart that would not still—the room seemed to swim before her eyes. For a long time she sat there rigidly; then her chin fell slowly to her hands again.

It was very late that night when the light in Mrs. Woods’ little parlour went out.

CHAPTER XXI

THE OLD “BANKER

VARGE had headed steadily south—always south.

What better plan could he have adopted than that so naively suggested by the doctor—to make Gloucester and ship on a fishing smack for the Grand Banks? He would be away for months, out of touch with the world and safe from pursuit; he would be earning something the while, and on his return—well, the time to think of that had not yet come.

Might after night he had left the miles behind him. The prison suit had long since disappeared —well hidden in the hollow trunk of a fallen tree close to the spot where Doctor Kreelmar had met him. Little by little, in the general stores of the small hamlets, an article at a time, he had supplied himself with the necessities that he lacked. The tell-tale underclothing, with its “ 777 ” stamped glaringly, indelibly upon it, was discarded; his coat was no longer buttoned tightly around a bare throat, for he now had collar, shirt and tie; the heavy prison boots were replaced by those of less ostentatious manufacture; the warden’s battered soft-felt hat by one of like design but of more respectability. He would have bought new clothes as well, but, though his money was sufficient for the purpose, he had not dared to drain too heavily upon his slender capital—and after all, if old, the clothes had not yet reached that stage of shabbiness or indecency that would provoke suspicion or distrust,.

The same general stores too, but more often the farm houses, had supplied him with food. Few questions had been asked him—the money in his pocket had proved a passport that had made his way one of almost ridiculous ease. Yet still he had preserved always the utmost caution, hiding by day, travelling never but by night, making wide detours to avoid the larger towns and more thickly settled districts.

And so the journey had been made—and now, very early one morning, two weeks since his escape, he came out upon a road close to the .beach on the outskirts of Gloucester. He stood for a while gazing at the blue sweep of sea; then his eyes fell contemplatively upon his more immediate surroundings.

Near him was a small shack built almost on the sand itself; a dory was pulled up beyond the tide line; and spread out on the beach was a black, tarred net, over which a twisted little old man was assiduously engaged. The man’s back was turned, and Varge watched him for a moment speculatively. He had little idea where the fishing fleet was to be found; nor, indeed, in an intimate way, anything about it. In common with every one, he had heard of the Gloucester fishermen—but that was the extent of his knowledge. Inquiries he would have to make, and this appealed to him as a favourable opportunity—he had no wish to be in evidence in the city itself any more than was absolutely necessary.

His mind made up to accost the old fisherman, Varge stepped quickly across the sand.

“Good-morning,” he said pleasantly, halting a yard from the other.

The back of the black jersey, darned here and there in spots with brown yarn, remained presented imperturbable to Varge.

“Good-morning,” Varge repeated, raising his voice, and stepping nearer.

The old fisherman turned his head slowly and squinted at Varge.

“Haow?” He jabbed a gnarled forefinger at his ear. “I be a mite deef.”

Varge promptly sat down on the sand, drew up his legs, clasped his hands around his knees — and smiled into the crimped surface of bronzed wrinkles that made the other’s face. He liked the puckered little nest of lines at the comers of the old fellow’s eyes, and the lurking twinkle in the blue depths of the eyes themselves under the shaggy grey brows.

Varge’s smile was contagious.

“Fine momin’! Fine mornin’!” said the old man, in a high, piping voice; then in cautious amendment: “But I dunno but what we’ll have wind. Kind o’ looks to me as though we would. ’Baout due naou—alius got the rheumatiz in my knee ’fore a down-easter.”

Varge nodded gravely in agreement. The sky and sea; were a glorious blue; the sun just creeping over the world’s edge kissed the tops of the long, smooth rollers, transforming them into undulating, gleaming streaks of burnished gold. Not a speck, not a cloud showed clear to the horizon rim. 'Again Varge nodded gravely; then:

“I saw you working down here on the beach,” he said. “I’m a stranger here, and I thought perhaps you wouldn’t mind telling me a few things I want to know.”

“Lord!” said the old fellow simply. “I don’t mind.. What might it be you want to know? ”

“Well, principally, where the fishing fleet is,” replied Varge.

The old fellow wriggled his hand into his trousers’ pocket, brought out a plug of tobacco, eyed the horizon meditatively, bit generously into the plug, wrestled with it till his teeth met, restored it to his pocket, gazed contemplatively again at the horizon, and finally spat profoundly.

“That’s a purty tall question,” he drawled. “Takin’ everything into consideration, weather we’ve had an’ usual .conditions, I’d say mabbe they was on the Ban-quereau, or I dunno but what as mabbe the Saint Pierre.”

“Where’s that?” asked Varge.

The old fisherman waved his arm with an expansive gesture oceanwards.

“Guess you’re kind o’ new ’raound these parts, ain’t you?” he remarked, his eyes twinkling at Varge. “Them two is two o’ the fishin’ banks. There’s a hull string of ’em—West’rn, Banquereau, Saint Pierre, Green an’ the Grand, an’ they gen’rally fishes the hull lot on the v’yage, less they get all their salt wet ’fore they strike the Virgin, which don’t happen more’n once in a hundred years—takes a hull heap o’ fish to wet all the salt, quintals an’ quintals of ’em—old Banker I be myself.”

Varge was kicking in the sand with the toe of his boot—the other’s words had come to him with a shock.

“You mean,” he said slowly, “that they’ve left here?”

“Why, tee-hee,” tittered the old fellow, “you didn’t expect to find ’em here, did you? But then I dunno as you didn’t, kind o’ looks as though you did. Weeks ago they left — ’twon’t be more’n another three months naow ’fore they’ll be cornin’ back. What might be your interest in ’em?”

“Well,” said Varge frankly, “I wanted to make a trip on one of the boats.”

“Did you naow!” ejaculated the old fellow, screwing up his eyes and regarding Varge critically. “Well, they sometimes takes ’em for a consideration, but you don’t look nohow run down. What would it be naow—lungs?”

“Oh, no,” said Varge smiling. “I believe my lungs are sound enough—sound enough so that I counted on working my way.”

The mender of nets shook his head judicially.

“Mostly,” said he, “they starts in as boys, ’baout ten or there’baouts, an’ by ’baout the time they’re thinkin’ o’ gettin’ married they get to be some handy aboard.”

Varge’s eyes shifted from the old fisherman and fixed on a sail where, the sun striking full upon it, it lay glistening white far out over the water. A keen sense of disappointment was upon him. He had never questioned the feasibility of the plan—he had imagined that the coming and going of the schooners was a matter of almost daily occurrence.

The old fisherman put an added damper upon his hopes.

“Know anything ’baout slittin’ or packin’ or, most of all, doryin’?” he inquired, his jaws wagging busily upon his tobacco.

“No,” admitted Varge, a little dully; “I’m afraid I don’t.”

There was a long silence. Varge, still gazing seaward, could feel the other studying him intently.

“Kind o’ real sot on it, weren’t you?” volunteered the old fisherman, nodding his head sympathetically.

Varge turned now and faced the other again.

“Yes,” he said; “I was. I was very anxious to go. Are you sure there aren’t any schooners that haven’t gone yet?”

“No,” said the other, scratching thoughtfully behind his ear, “no; I dunno of any as ain’t gone, ’cept mabbe—tee-hee,”—he tittered suddenly and very softly—“’cept mabbe Jonah Sully, though I wouldn’t advise you on no accounts to go along with him, though I reckon he’d take you, alius purvided you didn’t rile him up at first sight.”

“Who is Jonah Sully?” asked Varge quickly.

“Jonah Sully o’ the Mary K. Jones!”—the old fisherman’s jaws forgot to work for a moment; then he slapped his thigh a resounding whack. “Lord bless us!” he ejaculated. “Didn’t know as there was any one hadn’t heerd o’ Jonah! Sailed out o’ here, man an’ boy, these forty year—never knew such a man for everlastin’ hard luck. Took ’em a long time ’fore they got ’raound to callin’ him Jonah regular—a matter o’ twenty-five year—wanted to give him a chance to lose it overboard ’fore they branded him with it solemn; but ’twarn’t no use, so fin’lly it come to it an’ Jonah says himself there ain’t no use callin’ things other’n they be. Never see such gol-dinged luck cling to any man. Broke .his leg failin’ down the hatch first time he went to sea. That started it, an’ it’s kept up ever since with one thing or another. Schooner he had ’fore the Mary

K. Jones was cut clean in two on the Banks by a liner in a fog. Never’ve known him to make a v’yage something didn’t happen—either he’d come back with his flag half-mast, showin’ one or more o’ the crew had gone, or else he’d had a plaguey poor catch, or else something had gone wrong with the schooner an’ he’d come limpin’ in under jury rig.”

“That’s strange,” said Varge, leaning forward interestedly. “I mean it’s strange that luck like that would stick to a man so consistently.”

“Well, ’tis an’ ’tisn’t,” submitted the old salt reflectively. “I’ve an idee a hull lot of it lays to the fact that he thinks slow. Jonah’s a powerful slow thinker. By the time he gets ’raound to makin’ up his mind, there’s a mite less call to make it up ’cause things have kind o’ taken their own course without any interference from him—tee-hee.”

Varge laughed outright—the old fellow’s chuckle was genuine; it seemed to start from the soles of the heavy sea-boots and work its way along upward till it set the ocean of furrows in the bronzed face to rippling and tumbling over one another.

“And how is it he didn’t sail this time when the others did?” Varge questioned.

“Pendyceetus,” said the old fellow. “Went down to Boston more’n six weeks ago to have it cut out. Bein’ Jonah, they had to do it twice, an’ it kept him there longer’n it would most folks. I heerd he calc’lated to get off with the ebb tide this mornin’ to pick up what he could get, rather’n lose the hull season.”

“And you think he would take me?” queried Varge quietly.

“Lord, I dunno! I should think he would. Luck’s an awful big thing in the eyes o’ the Bankers. Jonah, heThe last time?” he repeated numbly. He raised his eyes to the cliff again—the figure far above them was still silhouetted against the skyline.

“Yes; for the last time,” she said after him. “I must go in a moment, and—and to-night you must leave here to—”

“It is true,” said Varge—the figure on the skyline was moving back now, disappearing from view. The distance had made the recognition doubtful, would have made it impossible, in fact, if he had not been forewarned; but there was no doubt now, there was something too strikingly familiar in the stride and action of the short, broad-built form—it was Warden Rand. “ It is true,” he said again; “it is for the last time. I did not think when I sailed on the schooner from Gloucester for the Grand Banks that my voyage would end here —with you. I thought then that I had seen you for the last time—it, a thing like that, could never happen again.”

“Then you will speak”—she was very close to him, her breath was on his cheek, her lips were trembling, her eyes, tear-dimmed, were raised to his.

Speak! Yes! Why not—and grasp at his chance for happiness! To stand a free man, his future before him, to work for her, to win her in the days to come! He had only to speak and let the coward soul he was shielding—no, it was not that—strange that for the moment he should have forgotten! It came to him now bringing peace, strengthening him, calming him—the gentle, patient face of Mrs. Merton, the silvery hair so smoothly parted beneath the old-lace cap, and the eyes of trust looked into his again now as they had looked through all his boyhood—and the dear lips smiled at him. He turned his head from Janet—and shook it silently.

Her voice broke. “It—it must always be—like this?”

It was a long time before he spoke.

“Always,” he said—it was but a single word, low spoken, but it was his doom, his sentence self-pronounced.

She drew back from him, a smile struggling bravely for supremacy on the quivering lips.

“You will go—you must go to-night, at once—be-fore father comes.”

“I will go at once,” he said.

“Good-bye,” she whispered—and held out her hand.

For a moment he held it in his own; then he bent his head and touched it with his lips.

“God guard and keep you and bring you happiness,” he said, “through all your life.”

He watched her go—watched long after the last flutter of her cloak was lost to view around a little headland of projecting rock far down the beach.

The last rays of the setting sun flung themselves athwart the heaving waters, making emerald valleys of wondrous hue betwixt the waves, tingeing the white, foaming, pearly crests with a crimson radiance. Then the light was gone, and it grew dark—chill, it seemed, and the boom of the surf was as a sullen dirge.

Slowly then Varge walked to the foot of the pathway leading to the cliff above, and slowly began to mount it.

He would go first to the coast-guard station and say good-bye—it would not do to risk suspicion by a sudden and unaccountable disappearance. The warden could not possibly have recognised him from the cliff—had not even seen, in all probability, that there was any one on the beach, for they had been almost entirely concealed from above behind the rock where they had been standing. Nor was the warden’s presence on the cliff alarming—finding Janet out on his arrival, it was natural enough that he should stroll along the cliffs and watch the storm.

Almost at the top of the cliff the path swerved sharply to the left. Varge made the turn—and stopped dead in his tracks. Two men leaped from behind the rocks that had hidden them—and blocked the path behind, him. Warden Rand rose from a stone on which he had been seated and came forward; four other men, men of the coast-guard, their captain amongst them, appeared as if by magic from behind other rocks and clustered about him. Seven to one! A grim smile in which was blended a strange apathy settled on Varge’s lips as he faced the warden.

“I am sorry for this, Varge,” Warden Rand said gravely. “I had rather it had been any other man than I to trap you. As it is, I have force enough here to make resistance, even from you, but an act of folly.”

“I saw you from the beach,” said Varge calmly; “but I did not think it was possible that you could recognise me at that distance.”

“Nor would I,” said the warden, “if I had not known that it was you. The man who drove me over from the station told me of the wreck of a schooner from Gloucester; his description of you aroused my suspicions; I went to the coast-guard station and talked with Captain Sully, and after that I was sure—he said that “Peters” was a stranger to him, but was a very strong man who had lifted unaided a cask weighing five or six hundred pounds from the wharf to the schooner’s deck.”

“It has grown heavier since yesterday morning,” said Varge with a whimsical smile; then quietly: “They told you I had gone to the beach—I see. And now?” Warden Rand motioned the men a little away.

“This will hurt my little girl,” he said in a low, sober voice. “It hurts me—but it is my duty. She was with you below there—to warn you of my coming. I understand. I would not have had her do anything else; and I do not want her to know that I am aware she was trying to shield you, or aware that she even knew you were here. I want to keep the news of your capture from her for to-night at least if I can.”

“Yes,” said Varge—he swept his hand across his forehead quickly. “Yes; I understand.”

“There is no train out to-night and I want you to go quietly with these men—and without me,” said the warden. “They will put you in the town lock-up—tomorrow, of course, you will go back to Hebron.”

“Very well,” said Varge steadily, “I will go with, them.”

For another moment the warden stood there—and each looked into the other’s eyes—then the warden, with an abrupt, hasty motion, beckoned to the men, and walked hurriedly away up the path.

“Tough luck, matey,” said the captain of the coastguard. “Blimy, if it ain’t! Come on.”

CHAPTER XXV

THE ALLIES

“CAPTAIN! Captain Sully!”

Out a little from the village on the cliff road leading to the coast-guard station Captain Jonah Sully halted, turned around, and peered through the darkness at a figure that was hurrying after him.

“Be you callin’ me?” he inquired; then, in recognition : “Oh, it’s you, miss, be it? Evenin’ to you—evenin’!”

Janet answered him in little gasps, out of breath from her run.

“Good evening, captain,” she said. “I was afraid I was never going to catch you. I want to talk to you for a few minutes.”

“Why surely—sure-lee,” invited the late skipper of the Mary K. Jones affably.

“Alone,” went on Janet. “Where we won’t be overheard.”

“Why sure—”

“We can go over here a little way,” she continued hurriedly, taking his arm and leading him from the road toward the cliff.

Captain Jonah Sully submitted in some wonder, but without hesitation.

“Reckon my luck’s turned,” observed he. with a chuckle. “Ain’t had any young ladies runnin’ after me 239 for I dunno how long. Yes; reckon it have—full insurance on the Mary K. too! An’ naou what might it all be ’baout, miss?”

They had halted halfway to the cliff, far enough from the road to be unobserved in the darkness—back along the road behind a score of tiny lights scintillated from cottage windows, but that was all, there was no other light; if moon there was, it was hidden in the black scudding clouds—they could scarcely see each other’s faces.

“It’s about Varge,” she said quickly.

“Varge?”—Jonah Sully shook his head perplexedly, “Dunno as I ever heerd tell of it,” said he doubtfully.

“Varge—the man you know as Peters—the man my father arrested to-night,” she said hastily.

“Oh—him!” exclaimed Jonah Sully. “Sakes naow! You know ’baout that, do you? Naow that’s too bad! I reckon some of the men must have been talkin’ to their wives after promisin’ solemn to keep their mouths shet, an’ the wives has gone an’ blabbed it ’raound.” Then, in profound disgust: “Never could count on the women folks to hold their tongues ever since the world began!”

“I am afraid you are doing even your own sex an injustice this time,” said Janet, and a little laugh seemed trying to struggle through the anxiety in her voice. “I have not heard a word from any one. My father has no suspicion that I know. He does not even know that I am out of the house—lam supposed to be in my room with a bad headache. I saw you passing, at least I was almost sure it was you, and I stole out of the house after you.”

“What for?” demanded Jonah Sully, frankly puzzled.

“An' haow did you come to know of it if no one told you?”

“I had walked a long way along the beach toward the headland,” Janet replied. “When I returned, I came up the cliff at the other end of the village near the lock-up, and I saw them go in there with him—and come away without him.”

“Well,” admitted Captain Sully, patting thoughtfully at the bandage on his head, “I dunno but that’s tol’rable fair evidence. An’ naow ’baout seein’ me goin’ by the house an’ you purtendin’ to go to your room an’ runnin’ out after me instead—I don’t just seem to get my bear-in’s somehaow ’baout that.”

“I want your help”—Janet leaned forward and caught his arm.

“Help?” said Captain Jonah Sully bewilderedly.

“To get Varge out of there,” she said, in a low, strained tone.

“Landsakes!” ejaculated the little skipper, stepping hastily back. “Be you mad? Why—why, it’s agin the law!”

“I have come to you because I must have help”—Janet had caught his arm again, and was speaking tensely. “I am not mad. He saved my life once at the risk of his own.”

“Jerooshey!” gasped Jonah Sully. “You don’t tell! Saved your life, did he? Well, I dunno as I blame you any for wantin’ to get him out then, an’—” Captain Jonah Sully stopped suddenly, and his jaw sagged a little —“why, say,” said he excitedly, “come to think of it, I reckon he saved mine too—last night—I’d have gone pverboard sure or been drowned washin’ ’raound on the deck when I was stunned if it hadn’t been for hiin.”

“Yes,” agreed Janet evenly. “That is why I came to you.”

“Never thought of it,” said Jonah Sully, with heavy wonder. “Strange, ain’t it? ’Pears to kind of put a different complexion on it too. What they goin’ to do with him?”

“Send him back to the penitentiary to-morrow for—for life,” said Janet numbly.

“Be, eh?” said the skipper, with a sudden and defiant little grunt. “Well now, come to think of it, I dunno as they will. It’s a pesky risky business inter-f err in’ with the law, but there ain’t no one ever said Barnabas Sully—Jonah ain’t my real name, miss—ever turned his back on any one that ever did him a good turn, an’—an’ gol-ding the law, anyhow! Kind of took to him too, come to think of it, dinged if I didn’t!”

“I—I knew you would help me”—there was a little catch in her voice, and she pressed his arm gratefully. “I have been thinking and thinking about it ever since it happened, and I am sure it can be done easily—if I were only stronger I would have tried it alone, but I am afraid it would have taken me too long, and besides I couldn’t get any tools.”

“Well,” said Jonah Sully, nodding his head seriously, “that sounds feasible so fur.”

“The cell is in the rear part of the townhall, in the basement,” Janet explained, “and it has a separate door at the side. I passed there two or three times last week and I noticed that it was fastened with a heavy padlock. It ought not to take a man very long to file away the staples and get the outside door open. I do not know what kind of a cell it is, but I do not imagine it is very modern or formidable; and, anyway, once inside, Vargc will help us. Besides the file, we’ll need a good strong bar and a lantern.”

“I’ll get ’em—up to the coast-guard station,” said Jonah Sully cheerfully. “You leave that to me. I’ll get ’em. Reckon though it’s a mite early to begin operations, ain’t it? There might be someone snoopin’ ’baout.”

“I intended to wait until after midnight,” said Janet quietly. “We will be sure then of no interference—and that will give Varge four or five hours before daylight. And now I must get back. Will you meet me then at the other end of the village in front of the church?”

A dry chuckle came from Captain Jonah Sully.

“Lord!” said he, “I never thought of that.”

“Of what?” asked Janet.

“Why, the hullabaloo there’ll be in the mornin’ when they find the young feller’s gone. The hull community ’ll be dancin’ ’raound like hot fat on a griddle,” said the erstwhile skipper of the Mary K. Jones, with another chuckle. “Reckon though,” he added more cautiously, “ we’ll have to step right keerful after tweakin’ the nose of the law audacious-like—we hadn’t ought to forget it’s a pesky serious business.”

“I haven’t forgotten it,” said Janet, a pathetic grimness in her voice. “At the church then, at midnight, and you—you won’t fail, will you?”

“Great snakes!” said Captain Jonah Sully earnestly. “Don’t you worry none ’baout that, Miss Rand. I’ll be there—sure-lee.”

Ten minutes later, Janet regained her room unobserved, and drawing a chair to the window sat staring out into the night. Below, she could hear the murmur of voices, as her father and aunt talked in the sitting-room. By and by—it seemed a long, interminable time —she heard them coming up the stairs; then a light knock sounded at her door.

“Asleep, little girl?” her father called softly.

“No; not yet,” she answered.

“How’s the head?”

“Better,” she said. “It will be all right in the morning, dad, I’m sure.”

“That’s good,” he said. “Good-night, dear.”

“Good-night, dad,” she responded.

His steps passed on along the hall, and a wistful little smile crept to Janet’s lips. It was not often that she and her father played at cross purposes—and it was he who had so solicitously urged her to go to her room and lie down when, early in the evening, she had complained of her headache!

Midnight came at last—how many times had she consulted her watch by the aid of a match! — how terribly, how anxiously the time had dragged by! She put on her cloak, moved toward the door —and stopped. Money —Varge would need money! He would not take it from her—but he would not surely refuse it as a loan from Captain Sully. She went to her dresser, found her purse, took out the bills that were in it, and placed them in the pocket of her cloak—then she crossed to the door, opened it, and stood on the threshold listening.

All was silence—only her heart was beating wildly; it seemed almost as though she could hear it. She, pressed her hand to her side and held it there a moment; then, closing the bedroom door noiselessly, she gathered up the skirts of her cloak and dress, crept down the stairs, made her way to the front door and out into the street.

It was intensely dark—a hurried glance about her showed her that not a light was burning in the village—only the boom of the surf seemed to fill the night.

She went quickly down the street. Five minutes brought her to the rendezvous, and she stopped before the church.

“Here I be,” announced Jonah Sully, stepping out from the porch. “Ain’t no one seen you up to the house, have they?”

“No,” said Janet. “No—it’s all right.”

“An’ I got it,” declared Jonah Sully gleefully. “Yes; I reckon my luck’s turned. Hooked it, by crickey!”

“You mean the file and bar and lantern?”—Janet nodded her head.

“More’n that,” chuckled Captain Sully. “Got the key for the padlock—hooked it from the cap’n of the ‘ coast-guard —'’pears he’s kind of chief magistrate an’ head of the fire department an’ I dunno but some other things. Anyway, he had the keys an’ I borrowed it outer his clothes on the way out. Might as well move along, hadn’t we?”

“Just a minute”—Janet took the money from her cloak and held it toward him. “Here is a little money that I want you to make Varge take—as a loan from you, you understand?”

“Got my hands full,” said the skipper; “lantern an’ bars antools an’ things we’ll need once we get inside. Jest slip it into my pocket, an’ I’ll see he gets it.”

“There it is, then,” said Janet, putting the money into the side pocket of his coat. “Let me help you carry something.”

“No,” said he. “’Tain’t but a step—we’ll be there in a jiffy.”

“Come then,” said Janet quickly.

It was hardly a hundred yards away, a wooden building next to the church, and the last one on the road within the village proper. It took them scarcely a minute to reach it, and, passing along the side of the wall, Jonah Sully laid the things he was carrying upon the ground before the door and reached into his pocket for the key.

“Ain’t no fear of us bein’ heerd, ’count of the surf,” he observed. “An’ I dunno but that’s just as well, ’cause mabbe we’ll have to make some noise when we get inside.”

“Yes, yes,” breathed Janet—she was trembling a little, excitement and emotion growing upon her. “But hurry, hurry!”

There was a faint metallic click, the rubbing of metal against metal—and then the creak of the door swinging open.

“There you be!” exclaimed Captain Jonah Sully triumphantly.

Janet stepped quickly forward.

“Varge!” she called in a low voice.

There was no answer.

“Varge!” she called again.

Still no answer.

“Varge!”—she was terrified now. Her heart seemed to sink and grow cold, as though an icy hand were clutching at it—had they come too late—was he already on his way back to Hebron? She turned frantically to Jonah Sully. “The lantern—a light—quick!” she cried.

On his knees, Jonah Sully lighted the lantern, stood up, flashed it around—and, jaw dropped, stared into Janet’s white face. Then he leaned back against the wall and patted weakly at the top of his head.

“’Pears—’pears as if he’d—he’d gone,” he gasped. “Jee-rooshey! Never see anything like that in all my born days. ’Tain’t possible—not without dynamite.” Captain Jonah Sully’s voice trailed off into an awestruck whisper, “/^-rooshey!” he said.

A tense, rigid little figure, motionless, Janet stood staring silently about her. It was a small, narrow place, cement-floored room. Across one end, the one opposite the entrance, had been a cell of brick and cement, with a heavy door, iron-sheeted halfway up, iron-barred the rest of the way. This hung now in utter ruin, sagging out at an angle, held only by a half-broken hinge at the bottom. The centre and upper hinges had been torn from the walls, and the bars of the door were forced outward as from an explosion. Brick and plaster, strewing the floor, adding to the effect of ruin and wreckage, completed the scene.

“There!” muttered the skipper helplessly, pointing to the single window just above his head, whose bars had been bent apart like pieces of wire. “There’s where he went! Well, I swan! Couldn’t have been dynamite ’cause he’d have blown himself to pieces.” Captain Sully pulled earnestly at his whiskers. " Well, I swan!” he said.

“Let us go,” said Janet, trying to keep her voice steady.

“Yes,” said Captain Jonah Sully mechanically, starting toward the door. “Let’s go.”

“The light!” she said sharply. “Put out the light!”

“Yes,” he said. “The light”—and blew it out.

It was Janet who replaced the padlock on the door and locked it; and then together they made their way to the road and started back along it.

Suddenly the little skipper stopped short and grasped Janet’s arm.

She turned toward him, startled.

“What is. it?” she asked anxiously.

“Why,” said Captain Jonah Sully complacently, “come to think of it, I ain’t surprised a bit at what I seen in there. Come to think of it, he’s pesky strong, he is. Yesterday he lifted a cask over onto the Mary K. that weighed seven hundred pounds, or I dunno but mabbe jest a mite under eight hundred, dinged if he didn’t!”

“Oh!” said Janet dully—and went on again.

Jonah Sully was still talking, but she did not hear him. Varge was gone—where?

CHAPTER XXVI

THE GREATEST THING

IT was unconquerable. The very greatness, the bigness of the man nourished it and fostered it until, beating down his defences, routing him, it dominated and owned him. A strange paradox? No —rather the inevitable.

A foreshadowing of it had come to Varge on that night of wild turmoil when he had faced death, had momentarily expected it, on the storm-swept schooner’s deck—but only a foreshadowing—he had not realised it all then. Perhaps, if he had never seen her again, in time he might have come to hold his love as a cherished, hallowed memory, a shrine at which he might kneel, a secret source of strength inspiring him, by thought of her, to keep ever sacred and inviolate the finest and best ideals of manhood—but it was more than that now. It had been more than that since that evening on the beach when, for an instant, the mad thought had come to him that she, in all her glorious, fresh young innocence and beauty, in all her tender purity and sweetness, cared for him—a nameless man, an escaped convict, a branded felon. Yes; he had put it from him—then. Not easily—for then in all its meaning, in all its depth, as it had not come to him before, had come the knowledge of the fulness, the completeness of his own love. After that, as a man outwardly himself but mentally almost oblivious and indifferent to events and happenings around 249 him, they had caught him, the warden had caught him, and put him in the lock-up of the little town. Darkness had come, the numbed apathy had passed, his soul had seemed as a seething vortex and like a wild man he had torn his way to freedom.

Since then, that was two months ago now, the days and weeks had passed as in a dream. He had gone from place to place, working, a little here, a little there, at whatever offered—then on again. Never but a few days at most in the same place—not so much from fear of capture, he felt strangely free and safe from that, but because of the restlessness of spirit that he could not quell, that grew ever stronger, more insistent, more constantly with him as the days went by.

In the hours of night when wakeful or asleep, in the day at whatever task he might be engaged upon the craving of his soul never left him—to hear the sound of her voice again, to see her face, her smile. It was worth any price, any risk—what else could matter? It was his life — the one thing his soul asked for. A hopeless thing—illogical? Perhaps—but it was unconquerable. Logic, philosophy and reason—what part had they in this? What was logic, what philosophy, what reason to the yearning prompted by a love that made all else but naught! Unwise, unsafe?'—his was the risk, his the added pang, if pang it would cause him; upon him and him alone the consequences-—she would never know!

Just to hear her voice, to see her face, her smile once more, to feel her presence near him — because he loved her.

Well, he had come! He had left the train at a station ten miles from Hebron, and since afternoon he had walked the rest of the distance. And now? If, after all, the pitiful chance and hope he clung to should be vain! It was so little that he asked—to steal a glimpse of her through the window of the sitting-room perhaps, to hear her laugh, her song float out to him through the night—that was all—just that—and then to go away again. It was so little to ask for, to hope for, the striving for so desperately hard that surely, surely that much would be his.

The night was calm and quiet. Across the fields in front of him the great walls of the penitentiary stood out in black irregular lines in the v/hite moonlight; twinkling lights from the houses dotted the village road; just before him he could distinguish in a dark blur the warden’s lawn, the avenue of maples that fringed the driveway. He wondered, a little curiously, a little wistfully, what the house looked like now—the front, of course, would be the same for there the fire had hardly touched it; but the rear—had it been rebuilt just exactly as it was before, or was it changed?—not that it could matter, only it all seemed so intimately a part of her—and this was her home.

He reached the roadside, looked up and down it, listened—then suddenly lay down full length upon the grass. A step crunched on the gravel across the way, and a man turned into the road—it was Warden Rand—and started briskly off in the direction of the village away from the penitentiary. Varge waited until the warden was out of sight and hearing, then he crossed the road quickly, gained the shadows of the maples and, keeping on the edge of the lawn to deaden the sound of his steps, passed cautiously from tree to tree, making hia way toward the house.

How familiar, how full of memory was every object around him—the trees themselves, the flower beds, the sweep of lawn, so delicate a shade of light green now with the moon’s softening rays upon it—those blacker shadows ahead, dense, impenetrable, were the great elm and the giant willow, one at each corner of the veranda, whose branches, all but meeting, almost entirely hid the house from view.

How silent, how still, how peaceful it was! There was no sound, not even the stir of leaves in the trees—he stopped abruptly, dazed, as though some blow had fallen upon him and in its sudden hurt had left him dis~ mayed and faint. Yes; it was silent, still—and dark. He had come to the elm; the house, barely five yards away, was before him—dark. No light in any window—no sound—and he had not asked for much—only for very little.

For a moment he stood silently behind the elm trying in a fogged way to think this out. All that afternoon the picture in his mind had been so distinct, so real, so vivid, so actual—he was standing just where he was standing now, and the window was open and she was sitting there by the table, the lamplight falling, oh, so softly, on the golden head and—his hand brushed swiftly across his eyes—and instead it was all dark and nothingness. He had tried to tell himself that it might be like this, but he had needed her so much, and love and hope and yearning had risen in arms against the practical and the matter of fact—and only the picture had lived.

Calmer presently after the first shock of bitter disap-pointment, hope came again. It was very early yet — he had only to wait. Perhaps she was down in the village at some house and the warden had gone to join her there and, later, to bring her home. Wait! If that were all—just to wait for a little while longer! But he could not wait there behind the elm—it was too close to the driveway, she would pass it when she came back and he would be seen—at the other end of the veranda, behind the willow, he could see equally well and without risk of his presence becoming known.

He stepped quietly out from the shadow of the elm onto the moonlit lawn; he would go there at once while the opportunity was his, and before —

"Vargel”

It came in a cry—not a startled cry; but soft, broken, like a sudden sob, full of wonder, full of pathos, a naked cry robed in no studied dress, the cry of a soul, that halted him, chained him to the spot and robbed him of his strength.

“Varge!”

Something white showed behind the dark network of the Virginia creeper that trailed over the end of the veranda, a chair scraped and toppled over—and she was coming toward him down the veranda steps.

What had he done! In that moment all the joy of 'Heaven above, the tortures and the sorrows of the lost seemed his. He had never dreamed of this—that she should know—that she should see him. There could be but one reason, only one, for his presence there; and she, so sensitive, so sure in intuition—it could not pass her by. And he, who months ago had fought his way to freedom from this very place that she might not have the hurt, the pain of this, had brought it back, God knew how innocently, how unintentionally, upon her now—grim, mocking irony blending an agony of bliss!

His hand rose slowly to his hat.and he stood bareheaded as she came.

Softly, wondrously the moonlight played upon her, seeming to hold her in its embrace, lingering on the little white-shod feet, creeping so reverently around the graceful form, flooding the full throat, the sweet face, the golden hair with its mellow radiance—glorying in its right to its caress.

She stood before him now, so small, so delicate in her beauty, like some pure, God-given angel, and a fragrance as of some rare perfume was about her. The long lashes fell suddenly, hiding the great blue eyes, and her head was lowered, bowed a little.

“You have come here, Varge”—the words came very slowly in an unsteady voice—“here where — where your danger is very terrible, and you have taken this frightful risk because, because — will you tell me why?”

Lie to her? Yes! Yes, a thousand times now—if there were but one lie to tell! The knotted cords at his temples, throbbing, throbbing, seemed that they must burst their bounds; the brown hair falling over his forehead cloaked beads of moisture that sprang out upon his brow—and no word would come to his lips, his brain seemed blunted, dulled, in chaos, in turmoil.

A long, long time the silence held, and then she spoke again, her head a little lower.

“You—you are making it very hard for me,” she whispered. “You will not answer and—and I know. I—I knew on the beach that day—did you think I did rot know? It is so long ago, and — and I have prayed your prayer, the prayer you asked for me, since then — that God would guard and keep you, and—and I prayed that He would bring you back, but not like this—in peril for — for me.”

“Janet!”—all of life and death seemed in the word; rapt wonder, a wild questioning that would not let him yet believe, was in his eyes, his face.

Slowly, hesitatingly,” he put out his hands and touched her—her arms, her shoulders—and gently lifted her face and looked into the swimming eyes that for a breathless moment were raised to his—and then he swept her to him, kissing the blue-veined eyelids, the trembling lips, the golden head of hair, the pure white brow.

“I love you, I love you—Janet—Janet”—the words came over and over again from his lips — words he had never thought to say—came voicing a song of wondrous melody in his soul—all else was blotted from him—and only that glad paeon of supernal joy rang .out entrancing him.

“Varge—dear Varge,” she answered him tremulously—and like a tired child lay passively in his arms.

He held her close to him in a silence that had no need of words, her head upon his breast, his face buried in the golden hair again—and then her hand stole into his, and she led him toward the willow.

“ I do not think we could be seen from the road,” she said, a little laughter, a little sob mingling their notes in her voice, “but it will be safer here.”

Beneath the limbs of the great tree it was shadow and the light was gone—and to Varge, suddenly, it seemed as though a vast pall, cold and chill, had fallen. It was madness—a black, yawning gulf of utter madness—and to its bottomless depths he had hurled himself—and her. A taste of joy, divine beyond all telling, a glimpse into a world of rapture, of enchantment, through gates of dazzling glory, had been his—but now—God pity him—the price.

"He faced her, pale, haggard, his eyes full of the misery that was upon him.

“Janet! Janet!”—grief, self-condemnation, hopelessness, all were in his voice; and wrung from him in a hoarse cry came the words that had flashed upon him when he had stepped out from the elm upon the lawn and she had seen him: “Janet—what have I done!”

Her hands felt up and rested upon his face.

“I know,” she said softly. “Eut we could not undo that now if we would. I know—so well. You never meant that I should see you—but, oh, I am so glad, so glad I did. I have wanted you so and—and now you have come and—and I will never let you go again.”

His fingers brushed back the hair from her forehead and smoothed it tenderly.

“I would to God,” he said in a choked voice, “that it were so—that I should never leave, you.”

“I can never let you go,” she said, and her hands pressed tightly on his cheeks. “I can never let you go —alone—for it would be—forever.”

He drew her to him, drew her head to his shoulder again, holding her tightly, thinking to soothe her.

She held quite still for an instant; then she raised her head, and her eyes as they met his were blinded with' tears, but there was brave control and quiet resolve in her voice.

“I do not think you understand,” she said steadily. “You must go soon—now—but not alone”

He looked at her startled, reading her eyes, searching her face.

“Janet!” he cried. “You mean—you mean that you will marry me, that when I go you—”

“Will go too,” she said resolutely.

With a strange, slow movement Varge shook his head.

“You do not know what you are saying,” he said numbly. “I, who am convicted of a crime of which I cannot even tell you I am innocent; I, who —”

“My heart told me that long ago,” she interrupted him. “I have thought of it since that morning in the garden here, since that afternoon on the beach—you could not tell me then, and I do not ask it now—I shall never ask it. If it is a sacrifice that involves other lives, as I know it must be, if it seals your lips so that you can never speak, at least it shall not take from us all happiness—the love that God has given us.”

“My name”—his head was bowed, his voice dull. “Have you forgotten that I do not even know who I am—that I have no name but Varge—that I can never hope to find another?”

“Would it be a prouder one?” she said, a quiver in the full throat as she lifted her head. “A prouder name than Varge—just Varge—because you have made it what it is.”

“You love me so?” he murmured brokenly.

“Is my love greater than yours that risked more than life to-night that for a few minutes you might be neat me?” she asked, with a little sob. “Yes; I love you so. I do not know how great my love is, I only know that it is the greatest thing in my life—that you shall not go and face the terrible future that you are thinking of alone.” She had drawn closer to him, and now her arms had crept around his neck and tightened there.

“No, no!” he burst out desperately. “I cannot—I must not!”

“Yes,” she said passionately. “You must—there is no other way. You could not live alone through those years, they would be too terrible, too cruel—but together we will make another future for ourselves somewhere—and you will be happy—and it is my happiness too—we will find happiness together. I—I think that I should die if you left me here.”

Find happiness! Make another future for themselves! It was like a glimpse of Heaven! Happiness —ah, yes, there would be happiness—and his life had been clean—if there whe said, in a low, cold voice.

Merton’s face, white, full of terror before, was ghastly now—his eyes were fired with a mad light. He clawed at his collar, and tore at it again and again—clawed at it, swaying upon his feet, until he had got it loose.

“It’s a lie!—a lie!—a lie!—a lie!” he screamed—and wriggled inertly to the floor.

“Good heavens!” cried Doctor MacCausland, as he came running into the hall. “What has happened? Ah, I see! I was afraid of this—afraid of a collapse, as I told you. Poor boy, it’s been too much for him!”

“Hum!” said Doctor Kreelmar grimly. “Yes; I think it has.”

CHAPTER XXX

THE BARRIERS DOWN

WHITISH-GREY in the full, bright moonlight the road stretched out ahead, and all the earth seemed bathed in the soft radiance and there was a great quiet, a deep, still serenity over all, as though Nature herself were taking her repose—no sound but the rhythmic beat of the horse’s hoofs, the pleasant rattle of the buggy’s wheels.

From the brow of the hill, where, in another world it seemed now, in the far past, in the long ago, Varge had first seen the penitentiary at sunrise, the prison stood outlined in the calm light, the walls traced in black, uncouth shapes, the great dome of the central building rising spectre-like against the sky. Around it, the fields, the little village, the sweep of country, white-cloaked in the moon-rays near at hand, gradually merged, blurred and indistinct with distance, into shadow, into night.

What men say to each other when their hearts are full. Doctor Kreelmar and Varge had said. They were silent now—as they had been during the last half of the drive back from Berley Falls.

Upon Varge was still a strange sense of unreality; still but the hesitant understanding when the mind is numbed for a time in the face of some great crisis and there lingers the fancy that one is but living in a world b£ dreams; .vivid dreams, it is true, but dreams from 289 which none the less surely there must come the awaken ing—to reality.

Harold Merton had told all—Varge raised his hand and passed it slowly across his eyes. To his soul a coward, Merton must have lived a life of frightful terror for the last two days—from the moment he had known his mother could not live—and then, a nervous wreck, unbalanced, half mad, the collapse had come, and, his!fears climaxed by the belief that at last there was nothing to stand between him and his crime, the little hold he had left upon himself had been tom from him and he had made his wild, frantic appeal—a damning confession in itself. It had not been a pleasant sight when the man had become more rational and the little doctor, iwithout mercy, pitilessly, tolerating no word of interference, had probed and dragged the miserable story from Merton, and in the presence of Doctor MacCausland as a witness had made the wretched man sign his confession.

And then—it seemed to ring in Varge’s ears yet—they had gone downstairs and left Merton tossing upon his bed, locked in his room, where they had taken him. They had stood in the hall, Doctor MacCausland with white, horror-stricken face, Doctor Kreelmar mopping with his handkerchief at his brow, his jaws clamped and outthrust a little; and then—yes, he could hear it yet—the sullen, muffled report of a revolver shot. It was he who had broken in the door and found Merton a huddled heap upon the floor—that was all—the man had never spoken again—but darkness had fallen and evening had come before Doctor MacCausland had finally straightened up from the bedside, and in strange, awed, reverent tones had said: “ It is over. Thank God he took that way.

That was all—they had s:arted back then, Doctor Kreelmar and himself—and now they were nearing the penitentiary again. A dream? Well, there was another dream then, too, in which sombre shadow, chill and blackness had no place, where there were flowers and trees and blades of grass again, and children prattled in their happy mirth, and there was laughter that was not stilled, and there was no dreariness, no hopelessness—where there was life and love. Life—to live; and love, a love so great, so true, so strong, to fill to overflowing all the years to come that God should grant.

Dreams? No—he was no longer dreaming no:v—it was true—all true. Here were the great wall? looming over him—one more night within them, perhaps two, or three at most—and he would never emer them again. Just this once—they were stopping now—there was a light burning in the warden’s office—just this once.

Doctor Kreelmar’s hand fell upon Varge’s Liee.

“Get out!” said the little man crisply.

Varge obeyed quietly; and then, as they txh stepped from the buggy, they stood an instant silently facing each other before the prison entrance. Suddenly Doctor Kreelmar snatched for his handkerchief and began to jab at his face.

“Hum!” said He. “Hum! I’ve got t> have a little talk with the warden. I telephoned him before we left. He’s waiting for me”—he jerked his thumb toward the office window. “I’ll be some time with him, and if I were you I’d walk down the vuad to the first 292 house on the left—you ought to know it—what?” Varge was leaning tensely forward, staring into the other’s face.

“You mean,” he said, and doubt and hope struggled in his voice, “you mean that —”

“Mean what I say—usually do—make a point of it,” snapped the little doctor tartly. “You’re a free man, aren’t you?—all except some fol-de-rol and fiddle-de-dee red-tape. Your pardon ’ll be along in time enough to have it framed and hung up before you get to housekeeping! Meanwhile, I’m responsible for you until I hand you over again, and I’ll—hum!—give you an hour. After that, if the warden can’t find any better accommodation for you than a cell it’ll be a different Bob Rand than I’ve known for twenty years.”

Varge’s two hands reached out, closed upon the doctor’s shoulders and drew the little man’s face suddenly close to his own.

“I can go to her—now?” he said hoarsely, and his fingers tightened fiercely on their hold.

“Confound you!” growled Doctor Kreelmar, wriggling himself loose and rubbing glumly at his shoulder blade, “confound you, keep your hands off me—you’re as gentle as a grizzly bear! ”

Varge’s hands fell away; but he still stared into the other’s eyes, a great wonder, a great joy upon his face.

“Hum!” said Doctor Kreelmar, and a chuckle crept into his voice as he turned and started up the penitentiary steps. “I forgot to tell you that I telephoned her too!” »—another chuckle, and the little man was gone.

It was like that other night—as though the three days had never been—silent, still and quiet—the moonlight falling calmly all about, on road and trees and fields—and the shadows of the maples on the driveway were the same.

In Varge’s heart was song again, and the melody filled his soul, enraptured him—now low, now high it rang; now triumphant, rising to the heights; now softened, rippling over chords of tenderest harmony—crowning him a king of a wondrous kingdom, where he would reign supreme as monarch, and bow the knee as subject in glad, joyous homage to her love—this was his inheritance; the song was his acclaim.

And over all, pervading all, was peace, banishing care and sadness, sorrow and strife—a great peace, bearing him onward, in which he seemed to lose himself until, suddenly, out of the beyond he heard his name in liquid, silvery tones that blended like some divine symphony into the music in his soul.

“Varge—just Varge!”

She was coming. She had been waiting, watching for him, and she had heard his step upon the driveway.

Yes; it was like that other night—the soft moonlight playing upon the golden head, lingering upon the pure beauty of her face, touching, so reverently the full, glorious throat, caressing again the little, white-clad, graceful form. Yes; like that other night it was—as though he had never left her.

“Janet!” he said, and stretched out his arms. “I am free now—we can go.”

THE END