TABLE of CONTENTS

CHAPTER I—“THE AMERICAN HANDICAP.”

CHAPTER II—VICTOR AND VANQUISHED.

CHAPTER III—IN THE PADDOCK.

CHAPTER IV—FOUR AGAINST ONE.

CHAPTER V—EMBERS OF THE PAST.

CHAPTER VI—MOONLIGHT AND SHADOW.

CHAPTER VII—INDULGING A WHIM.

CHAPTER VIII—THROWING DOWN THE GAUNTLET.

CHAPTER IX—ON THE PALISADES.

CHAPTER X—A MAN AND HIS CASTLE.

CHAPTER XI—ON THE SEA LION.

CHAPTER XII—THE LAUNCHING.

CHAPTER XIII—“DOC” BAYLES TELLS A STORY.

CHAPTER XIV—A DAY IN JUNE.

CHAPTER XV—A BOLT FROM THE BLUE.

CHAPTER XVI—THE PLAN OF CAMPAIGN.

CHAPTER XVII—A COMMERCIAL TRAGEDY.

CHAPTER XVIII—AT THE VAN RENSSALAER LOW’S.

CHAPTER XIX—A MATTER OF SENTIMENT.

CHAPTER XX—PATERNAL PROBATION.

CHAPTER XXI—THE PARTING OF THE WAYS.

CHAPTER XXII—BLOW UPON BLOW.

CHAPTER XXIII—A SNAKE IN THE GRASS.

CHAPTER XXIV—A PLEDGE TO THE DEAD.

CHAPTER XXV—“A PAPER FOR THE PEOPLE.”

CHAPTER XXVI—IN A NEW FIELD.

CHAPTER XXVII—ACROSS A HUMAN SEA.

CHAPTER XXVIII—THE POWER OF TRUTH.

CHAPTER XXIX—A BOND IN HONOR.

CHAPTER XXX—PLACING THE BLAME.

CHAPTER XXXI—THE TRUTH AT LAST.

CHAPTER XXXII—A LUNCHEON BEARS FRUIT.

CHAPTER XXXIII—A NEW PORTFOLIO.

CHAPTER XXXIV—A BRACE OF INTERVIEWS.

CHAPTER XXXV—ANDREW HAVEN’S EVENING CALL.

CHAPTER XXXVI—MANOEUVRES IN FORCE.

CHAPTER XXXVII—PHILIP CRAIG’S PROMISE.

CHAPTER XXXVIII—MEMORY PLAYS AN OLD TUNE.

CHAPTER XXXIX—IN CABINET MEETING.

CHAPTER XL—THE NINETEENTH OF APRIL.

CHAPTER XLI—GENERAL MACMAHON’S PLEDGE.

CHAPTER XLII—THE AROUSING OF THE TIGER.

CHAPTER XLIII—DESPOT OR MARTYR?

CHAPTER XLIV—“ON SATAN’S MOUNT.”

CHAPTER XLV—THE NEW CABINET.

CHAPTER XLVI—’NEATH THE EVENING STAR.

CHAPTER I

“THE AMERICAN HANDICAP.”

THE trinity of earth and sky and sea, blessed indeed when each is at its fairest, smiled in most indulgent mood at the thousands of men and women who were gathered at Oceanic on a certain day in June to see the running of the greatest turf event of the year, the American Handicap. The human butterflies caught the infection of perfect air, unclouded blue, smooth-shaven, flower-spangled green and far off flecks of white on a turquoise sea. They fluttered and danced—if one saw them from a distance—filling the gigantic steel pavilion with life and color. At closer range their laughter and chatter and screaming badinage smote the ear like the noise of some vast aviary, which, in fact, the great structure, of marvelous lightness and elegance, crowned with gilded domes and minarets, and colored in extraordinary tints, strongly suggested.

Through two fine bronze arches poured into the beautiful enclosure an unbroken stream of other gaily dressed holiday-makers from the great metropolis to the northwest, all come to seek the pleasure that men and women ever find in a contest, and find to the supremest in a race of thoroughbreds upon which enormous sums of money are staked. To such a crowd the horse is noble not because he works, but because he runs.

The variegated tide swept in, rising higher and higher among the tens of thousands of luxurious seats in the pavilion, filling the cheaper enclosure with black and restless waves and swirling about the long, parti-colored marquees where the bookmakers congregated with their stands, blackboards and little tin boxes of money. It was within a few minutes of flood, the flood of a tide as cold and pitiless, in the aggregate, as that of the neighboring sea.

Now and then a dull roar came from the pavilion as some famous and popular patron of the “sport of kings” was seen, or some idolized little jockey^ walked past the expectant thousands with the nonchalance born of long public experience.

The American Handicap had become the most potent racing event in the country, some said in the world, because of the prodigal richness of its stakes and the growing desire of the enormously wealthy and the socially and politically powerful to figure in its glories.

The horse of the President of the United States had only last year been entered, but unsuccessfully, while the princes of finance and industry were regularly represented by their splendid stables. To win the “American” had become the sole life-ambition of many; it was the English Derby over again, lacking the romantic tradition of that classic event, but now beginning to surpass it in all other respects.

For several years European millionaires and potentates had sent over their best in the attempt to win a prize so enormous as to be welcomed even in the cash-box of a prince. But thus far the golden laurel had not traveled over-sea.

To-day the country trembled. Even in the remote villages national pride, that had grown to centre itself so strongly about the supreme effort of some one beautiful horse, was perturbed by doubt and made less aggressive by fear. The finest animal in Europe, the winner of the Derby and the Grand Prix of Paris, was even now in the pad-dock, swathed in silken blankets and guarded by a group of gorgeously arrayed stablemen. Count Sandstrom, the young scion of a long race of great financiers, pawnbrokers to kings and outfitters of empires, was somewhere in the vast throng to see his Barbarossa beat the best that America could muster. The magic of his very name, traditionally associated with success, was enough to make his horse a favorite with those who bet to win; even those who conceived it to be patriotic to back American horseflesh at all hazards laid their wagers with more self admiration than hope of gain.

The musical call of a bugle stilled the crowd into tense silence for a moment. Then came a pandemonium of partisan cheers and hand-clapping as the gallant horses began their parade past the pavilion. It was a sight to fire the blood, this proud-stepping procession of the most beautiful and highly developed animals in all the brute kingdom. Especially did it bring light to the eyes of a sunny-haired girl, who made one of a little party in a box just opposite the finish wire. With lips slightly parted and a deepening color on her cheeks she watched the review, carefully scrutinizing each horse, until at last a tall black, with ears viciously laid against his head, danced past.

“Ah, splendid old Dandy,” murmured the young girl, “this is your hour for doing! Don’t fail us!”

But the big black, it was evident, did not control a large share of popular approval. The elegance of Barbarossa, Count Sandstrom’s handsome chestnut, forced the applause of many; the lithe energy of Regulus, the bay on whom the hopes of the country rested, brought forth a salvo of encouragement; the splendid action of the rather undersized Hector, of the famous Armstrong stables, won its recognition, and there were Nebula, a brave gray mare, and Hottentot, a winner of many of the season’s lesser events, to be greeted by their respective followings. The pavilion trembled with the combined tumult of all the factions. To add to the din the “touts,” frantic purveyors of “tips,” fantastically arrayed in garb of Indians, cowboys, army officers and farmers, made their last appeals for the sale of the absolutely certain knowledge of the outcome of the race contained in the bunches of envelopes they waved enticingly in their hands.

Ain I he a beauty?” cried a little man whose thin, sharp face spoke of an age that was almost belied by his youthfully shrill voice. “Regiilus’ll win held up.”

“Win!” echoed his fat stable comrade contemptuously, “yes, he’ll win all right if all the other hosses drops dead. Not otherwise; see? There’s nothin’ in it to-day but that blasted Dutchman’s Barbarossa.”

The argument then left horses and verged on personalities. From that point the transition to fisticuffs was rapid and easy; then the warm partisans were hustled off the track to continue their battle at leisure.

It was now the final moment for the “commissioners/’ and they swarmed through the pavilion and in front of the boxes to take the wagers of those who could not or would not go to the ring. One of this gentry, a tall, sallow young man, with thick sheets of bank bills tucked between his fingers, seemed a special centre of attraction. He whispered something in the ear of a red-faced gentleman whose stoutness was successfully accentuated by a glaring plaid coat.

“It can’t be,” snorted the stout man, “I’ll go to the ring and see for myself.” And he was followed by a nervous crowd of small bettors, for he was a well known plunger, and his lead was worth observing.

The sallow messenger of the bookmakers wended his way to the row of elaborately decorated boxes. He scanned the long line of gorgeous toilets and jaunty garments of “horsey” men, as if in search of some desired face. Then he nervously elbowed a path to the box wherein sat the bright-haired girl, whose classically pure contour of face seemed not wholly in its natural environment. Something of the sort even the runner thought aa he looked with admiration at her fresh beauty; but his errand was not to worship feminine loveliness. He touched his hat respectfully to a large-framed man whose smooth-shaven face was just then as cold and impassive as the mask of one dead. A mere glint of recognition came into his eyes.

“Well, Smithers, how’s the betting? What are the odds?” he asked in a tone as dully monotonous as that of a man droning a chant.

“Hottentot, ten to one; Nebula, ten to three; Hector, five to three; Regulus, five, four; Barbarossa, even money; King Capital, four to five.” “Ah.”

Only one word, and not a shade of expression in it. It might have been a comment on the price of iron in Mars.

But the girl clapped her hands and threw a glance of delight at the messenger that stirred the heart in his thin body.

“Oh, isn’t it splendid?” she cried. “Dear old Dandy the favorite; of course he’ll win now.”

“Hush, Helen,” said a plain-faced, soberly dressed little woman by her side, “you will attract attention, dear.”

It was evident that the report of the quotation had been heard in the adjacent boxes. A nervous shifting of men followed, and calls for bookmakers’ agents were loud and frequent.

“King Capital the favorite,” growled a dapper, nervous young man in immaculate white, “why, he’s a rank outsider.”

“He was, you mean,” returned the messenger grimly, “but in the last ten minutes someone has been pouring oceans of ‘stuff’ in on him, and they’ve got the ‘bookies’ played to a standstill. Hello, Jenkins, let’s hurry back.”

This last to another young man armed like himself with betting book, pencil and money. Together they made their way rapidly to the ring.

“What was ‘John Peter’ asking you?” queried the newcomer.

“Who, Norton? Is that ‘John Peter’?” replied the other, incredulously.

“Sure it’s ‘John Peter.’

’Spose he inquired how his King Capital stood. Just as if he didn’t know!”

The news of the complete reversal of opinion in the betting ring spread with characteristic rapidity through the pavilion where winged rumor always seemed to have double her usual pinions. There was a wild scramble to hedge, a stampede of those to whom money was the all in all of sport. The clear notes of the bugle calling the horses for the start urged them to greater speed; they would lose the spectacle, but save their precious stakes. And so the rout went on.

Helen Norton gazed with entranced interest at the unfamiliar scene. To her it was the acme of picturesque social activity. A lover of horses from girlhood, and the mistress of many not noted for sweetness of disposition, this was her first race. She took a sensuous delight in the myriads of beautiful toilets, the stirring music of the fine military band, the atmosphere of luxury and rank that surrounded her. The perfectly conditioned track, circling about like a broad band of brown velvet, appealed to her horsemanship. Ah, to gallop a favorite thoroughbred, or perhaps her cherished mustang around that oval at full speed!

But here were the horses at the barrier, snorting, pirouetting, tossing their heads in the air. The midgets in the saddles, garbed in all the hues of the rainbow, wheeled and wheeled again to gain a favored position, until their silken jackets formed a kaleidoscope of color. In all this riot of tint the peculiar dress of the jockey who rode King Capital was most striking. Black he was from head to foot, and as he clung closely to his black mount it seemed as if horse and rider were one. The wiseacres shook their heads dismally; no stable that flaunted such gloomy colors could hope to win a race; much more cheering was the resplendent jacket of pure gold thread emblazoned with the dark blue crest of Count Sandstrom. Yes, Barbarossa was the horse; America was beaten. Thus the superstitious.

A touch of an electric button by the starter, and the wire barrier shot suddenly into the air. Then that cry as old as racing, and yet as new as each forward plunge of gallant steeds:—

‘They’re off!”

It was a perfect start, and for a moment the glistening backs of the horses formed a straight line as one looked across them to the green beyond. Then Hector, of the Armstrong stables, shot out from the ruck and took the pole from Regulus. A roar from his adherents greeted the performance. So to the first turn they flew, well bunched. There daylight showed between Regulus and Barbarossa, but only for an instant, for the golden clad jockey began to use the whip thus early. The punishment was effective; the splendid chestnut stallion closed up the gap, passed Regulus, and was neck and neck with Hector as the horses entered the far stretch.

Close behind the three and on even terms ran Hottentot and Nebula, while King Capital brought up the rear. It was a sight to bring a choking of the throat to those who had bet on the lately made favorite. Into one girl’s voice tears did come.

“Oh, father,” she faltered, “are—are we going to lose?”

“Who knows, Helen?” the man replied calmly. “There are still probably fifty-nine seconds left. Much can be done in fifty-nine seconds. I have made a half-million in much less time.”

Far over in the back stretch was now seen a struggle that made the great crowd silent through the very intensity of excitement. The brave little Hector was again in the lead, with Regulus and Barbarossa neck and neck close behind. Then arose a cry of dismay mingled with curses. Over and over in a frightful heap rolled the gray mare Nebula, writhed frantically for a moment, regained her feet and galloped aimlessly back toward the first turn. But the little jockey did not rise. Those with glasses could see the pale blue of his jacket prone and still amid the dust. Then no one looked again.

For suddenly out from the undulating mass of horseflesh swerved the gigantic black as if propelled by some enormous, invisible force. Past the big bay Regulus, plainly laboring now, he flew; his nose seemed to touch the flank of the little Hector and slide silently along the body inch by inch. A thunderous shout burst from thrice ten thousand throats:—

“King Capital; King Capital—Ah-h—A winner —No, no—Barbarossa—Hector—The whip, the whip!”

Again his rider was punishing Barbarossa, and again the splendid spirit of the thoroughbred answered to the whip as they thundered into the homestretch. Regulus had shot his bolt and was merely cantering. But Hector of the unconquered will still put forth every ounce of strength there was in him, and, with bloody nostrils- and foaming Hanks, was doing his desperate best to keep Count Sandstrom’s horse from passing him. But the huge stride and greater strength of the chestnut were having the inevitable result.

“Barbarossa, Barbarossa,” roared the multitude. It was like a cheer for some great personage; it was a people’s tribute to a conquering stranger. But it was the last.

Just as the final furlong was before the nearly spent leaders, the black rider raised his arm for the first time, and laid one savage welt across the flank of the black horse. The great animal sprang forward, quivering with anger and outraged pride. With a burst of speed never before seen at Oceanic, an almost incredible dash long famous in its annals, he passed Hector, drew up on Barbarossa and, in the wild pandemonium of frantic human things, pushed his reeking nose past the chestnut’s head, the victor.

The cheers, the blaring of the band, the showering of flowers upon King Capital’s jockey as he came up for the weighing in, were all the manifestations of a national pride that still existed in the matter of sport. America had triumphed over the supreme challenge of the old world. King Capital had not been a popular favorite, yet he had proven himself a champion when the country was in need. Popular idolatry is an easy thing at the right moment and the right place, and the throng fell clown and worshiped a black horse. But this John P. Norton, the owner, who and where was he?

Down in the box in front a sunny-haired girl was flinging her arms about the neck of a tall, large-featured man, and a sweet-faced woman was smiling in silent happiness. The man whose horse had won the American Handicap neither smiled nor frowned. Victory no more changed his countenance than had the threat of defeat. Even the quiet young man who had sat with the party felt impressed by the older man’s absolute self-control. A stoical winner of the “American!” It was a paradox in which he might have seen the earnest of what was to come in another and a far different battle. He glanced at the charmingly exuberant girl and mused, oblivious to the gay stir that swirled about him. He was aroused by the even tones of Norton.

“Come, Harriet,” said the man who knew that in to-morrow’s prints he would figure as the hero of the American Handicap, “we’ll go over to the clubhouse and have dinner. You’ll join us, of course, Craig.”

CHAPTER II

VICTOR AND VANQUISHED.

THE great dining room of the clubhouse was rapidly filling as the Norton party entered and was escorted to a table near a large window by the pompous, over-decorated negro head-butler. As this functionary marched down the room at the head of the little company he felt that this was also his day of triumph; he knew that the big man behind him was the target for every glance, as his name and fame had but a moment before been the theme of every tongue. He knew, also, that the news had already flown across space to every quarter of the world; he was pilot to a man, who for the moment was more than kings, and his African heart rejoiced.

“John Peter,” new as he was to racing, was no unfamiliar figure in the world of finance and achievement. Plis strong-featured face flashed into the first pages of the newspapers at the least excuse, while his name was synonymous with cold and relentless force joined with unlimited money power. His sobriquet had followed him from the west, which had ceased its ability to attract when he had conquered it. To New York, that inevitable Mecca of the princes of Mammon, he had come several years before, armed with millions and a great conviction of his own infallibility. He chose his battle-ground with all the care of a skilful general. London, he saw, had lost its old-time supremacy; Berlin was now the strongest rival of the American treasure-city, and Norton knew that she must either be cajoled into alliance or crushed into submission; which, no man could yet foresee, lie decided to cast his fortunes with New York.

John Peter Norton had gone far since he had come in from the west, with none of the legendary western breeziness and bonhomie. Stern, self-centred, emotionless, he had elbowed his way into the forefront of the financial leaders of Wall Street, stopping neither at the hurts of others, nor at his own occasional wounds. He loved the smell of battle. From little skirmishes, in which he never knew defeat, he sprang into wars of finance, and overthrew Titans. Then men saw that he must be reckoned with, and he was called into the councils of the great by the very force of their own necessities.

But an ordinary seat among the rulers did not satisfy “John Peter.” His gaze was fixed on the supreme place of power, the throne, as it were, of the realm of money. Pie soon found that it was not to be seized, nor even bought. He must win the confidence, the personal and social friendship of the millionaires of tradition. They had their price, but it was not represented by the writing on a cheque.

To some of them he was of the “nouveaux riches,” and was often made to feel the stigma in disagreeable ways. He had been blackballed by a famous yacht club, merely as a matter of “principle;” his wife had been refused inclusion among the patronesses of a great charity ball, although he had clearly expressed a desire that she should be honored. He winced, but was shrewd enough to see that the ramparts of society’s forces must fall if assailed in season and out with golden ammunition.

For the conventional social life of the metropolis he had supreme contempt; he would use it simply because it was a part of his scheme, just as a courtier might play the fool to win state secrets.

Norton’s horse, too, was merely his servant; for the winning of the American Handicap he would have cared nothing, had it not suddenly thrust him forward a long way on the path to his goal. A million dollars could not buy King Capital now; “John Peter” could be grateful for great effort— when it had proved successful.

His presence in this splendid and exclusive clubhouse to-day was evidence that his campaign had begun to succeed. But he had fought, as usual.

“If I were you, Norton,” volunteered a friend one day with some trepidation, “I wouldn’t push this Oceanic business. I get it from some of the members that they’re going to blackball you; that would be deucedly unpleasant, you know.”

“I don’t believe they will,” returned “John Peter” curtly.

“Why not?” asked the other, impressed by the tone of the millionaire.

“Because, sir, I have bought and hold a majority of the bonds of the Association. If I’m blackballed, I’ll sow the race-course down to wheat. Just tell ’em that, if you will.”

Norton’s physical characteristics well bore out what men said of him as a financier. He was in the early fifties, tall, ruggedly and rather squarely made, and possessed of the long, striding, almost slouching walk acquired on the plains. His smooth-shaven face was of the eagle type, with its large aquiline nose, its cold, yellowish-brown eyes and its two thin strips of almost curveless lips. In all the years of his career no one of his associates had ever seen him laugh heartily; nor was there any one who could say that he had ever stormed in anger. In moments of great mental tension he had a way of compressing the thumb of his left hand under the curling strength of the forefinger, till circulation ceased, and a livid white band testified to the power of his emotion. Such a band might have been seen only a few minutes before, when King Capital was in the ruck on the race-course of the Oceanic.

The Norton party had scarcely settled themselves, and given their directions for dinner, when a little plump gentleman sidled up to their table as if distrustful of the polished floor. Benevolence beamed through his big, round spectacles as he awkwardly thrust his hand in the direction of John Norton.

“Ah, my dear Norton, I trust my congratulations will not bore you. A phenomenal victory, really. And you, Mrs. Norton; this must be a source of great pride to you. Eh? Yes, to be sure.”

“Any success of Mr. Norton’s is a pride to me,” returned the lady, with a smile.

“You see, Andrew,” observed Norton, “that my wife differs from the crowd. With them my success—rather my horse’s success—is only another affront to their self-esteem. You’ve doubtless just been hearing a lot of uncomplimentary remarks about me.”

The other protested feebly, and his blush still further weakened his denial. Andrew Haven liked Norton, whom he had first met several years before on a trip to the west, and he was grateful to the stronger man for financial help when he was in desperate straits, a help that had saved him from a dishonorable bankruptcy. In his timid and awkward way he was a Norton partisan for life. It seemed to be his nature to wish to be of service everywhere, but so clumsy was he in performance that he appeared always on the point of falling over himself to do a favor. In his present confusion he suddenly caught Helen Norton’s glance of amusement.

“And Miss Norton? I beg your pardon”—as he stepped gingerly to one side—“I fear I am incommoding you—in your way, you know.” “Oh, not at all, Mr. Haven.”

“And you are pleased, too, I daresay; yes, I daresay that.”

“It wTas glorious!” exclaimed the girl, her face yet eloquent of the inspiriting scene. “Such beautiful horses; such a wonderful picture.”

“But your horse: King—King—”

“Capital,” put in Norton drily. “You should remember that—although you do forget the interest,” he added inaudibly.

“Yes, yes, of course; how stupid of me,” said Haven nervously. “Capital; King Capital. You say nothing of him and his victory. Miss Norton.” “Dandy is the dearest horse in the world. See, I have saved the best of my candy for him.”

“Dandy?” queried the little man in bewilderment. “f—I thought—”

“Dandy is his pet name. It was his real name until father changed it.”

“You see, Haven, it would scarcely do to enter a Dandy for the ‘American/ ” explained Norton, “so when he began to show speed on the ranch I had his name changed. He has justified his new one.”

“Ha, ha,” tittered the ever-appreciative Haven, “very good, very. Won a pot of money for you to-day.”

Dinner was a notable function at the Oceanic that day, and none enjoyed its brilliancy and its artistic prodigality more than the young woman who loved the winner of the American Handicap. For the Norton party as a whole it was also an occasion of gaiety, in so far as any meal could be gay with the grave, silent “John Peter” at one part of the round table, the strangely preoccupied Craig opposite him and the vapid, effusive Haven sandwiched between the two ladies. At last, but not until the sweets had been served, the girl grew restive.

“Come out to the paddock, father, do. I want to see Dandy,” she pleaded impulsively.

“I cannot just yet, Helen,” was the reply. A few words, and a negation, but uttered in a tone that would have sounded strange indeed to Norton’s associates on the “street.” “Perhaps Mr. Craig will escort your mother and you.”

The girl’s blue eyes threw a pretty petition to the straight-limbed young man’s dark ones. Again he started as from a revery.

“It would be a pleasure to me, I am sure,” he replied, “the escort duty even more than the seeing of the horses.”

To tell the truth, Philip Craig’s preoccupation, not at all a usual characteristic, had much justification. He could hardly realize even now that that very morning he had been summoned to the office of his chief, and offered the position of private secretary to Norton, a place made vacant by the hopeless illness of a trusted employee who had held it for twenty years. He knew that the confidential man of “John Peter” was very near to the throne. Full of faith in himself, he had yet wondered at his sudden elevation. And this social recognition, the invitation to the race and the dinner! It was all very new and surprising.

As Craig and the two women rose to go, the blundering little Haven managed to collide with the pilot of the party. He was profuse in apologies.

“I really beg your pardon, Haven,” said Norton grimly, “you have not met before. Mr. Haven, this is Mr. Philip Craig, my new secretary. Mr. Craig, Mr. Haven—an old friend.”

The men performed the usual act of salutation, not without some difficulty, owing to Mr. Haven’s attempt to seize Craig by the left hand. They murmured the stock phrases of alleged gratification.

“So you are to succeed poor old Bennett,” said Haven. “Well, his loss is your—well, doubtless— if I may say it—elation.”

He looked at Craig with a fixed expression which he soon realized was a stare. Amid his stammered excuses the trio bound for the paddock escaped through the open window, and were gone.

“Craig? Craig?” mused the small gentleman;

“don’t remember a Craig, ibut the face is very familiar.” Then aloud to Norton:—

“Nice appearing young man.”

“What young man?” said the financier absent-mindedly.

“Craig—beg pardon, I’ve forgotten his first name.”

“Oh, Philip Craig. Yes, he’s got the right sort of stuff in him.”

“Who is he?”

“John Peter” looked at his little friend curiously for a moment.

“Didn’t I tell you?” he asked with some acidity. “My secretary.”

“Yes, I know,” returned the other, employing his full stock of amiable persistency, “succeeded Bennett, but—I beg your pardon—who—of what family is he?”

“Don’t know; never inquired.”

“But you—I really fear I’m rude—but he is to be your confidential secretary, isn’t he?” “Certainly.”

“Well, then, why—why—”

“Why didn’t I get a ‘character’ with him, I suppose you mean?” returned Norton with a sneer. It always angered him to have the propriety of any of his actions doubted. Haven cringed.

“Oh, not that; of course, not exactly that. But, if I may say it, isn’t it a bit dangerous?”

“To trust a man of whose antecedents you know nothing? I haven’t found it so. A man’s family is often about the poorest possible guarantee of a man’s metal. I have known men .whose genealogy ran back to the nearest cross-roads to the garden of Eden to be the biggest sort of rascals. Haven’t you?”

At this forcible hint at his own irregularities Haven grew a bit apprehensive. He looked at Norton out of the corner of one eye, but, shrewd as he was under his exterior of doddering simplicity, he could read nothing in the face before him. He decided not to take offense; in fact, he knew that although Norton could crush him at any moment, the .great man would not do so as long as he continued to be of use. And to the gospel of subserviency he vowed himself with more than the fervor of.a nun. He would become invaluable, if such a thing were possible.

‘‘Come along, Haven, let’s go to the smoking-room,” said Norton in.his even, unaccented tones. ‘‘There are several fellows there who, I know, are dying to congratulate me.”

As the big man and his little tender moved into the crowded room, with its blue atmosphere, its hurrying waiters and its groups of devotees of alcohol surrounding numerous small tables, there was something akin to a shout, and a rush of many to congratulate the hero of the day. He shook the hands of several, selecting those who had up to now been most hostile to him. The felicitations of friends were to him superfluities; to be sought out by someone who had two days before attempted his ruin was the true gratification.

Soon wearied of attention, Norton took his associate into a retired bow window, and sat down to smoke. He affected curious little slim panatella cigars, and these he smoked only when in good humor. Tobacco never appealed to him, as to most men. in times of mental or physical disquiet.

Now he slowly blew out the fragrant smoke, and Haven was pleased at the augury.

It was not long before a fresh stir in the room attracted their attention. The cause appeared to be a rather undersized, but not puny man, very blonde and with immense moustachios that swept down almost to the chin and then curved upward like scimitars. He was prematurely bald as to his forehead, and the hair on the sides of his head fell in curls over each ear. Despite his lack of height, he had an air of great distinction. Norton’s keen appreciation of the quality that makes a man unusual was quick to note the newcomer.

“Who’s that, Haven?” he asked brusquely. Before the question could be answered the blonde man’s voice could be heard incisively above the clatter of the room.

“Poof; it wouldn’t be so bad to be beaten, but to be beaten by such canaille—”

Andrew Haven trembled with apprehension. He glanced at his companion’s face, but found it as uneloquent as ever. “Will nothing ever move him?” thought the little man.

“Who was that speaking, ‘Haven? I didn’t quite catch his words.”

“That—er—that is Sandstrom, Count Sandstrom.”

“The owner of Barbarossa?”

“The very man.”

“Well, I want to meet him.”

“To—to meet him?” stammered Haven in affright, “to meet Count Sandstrom?”

“Why not?” queried Norton coldly. “A victor should be magnanimous, shouldn’t he? There are things I would like to say to him. You know him, don’t you?”

“Ye-yes, but—”

“I tell you I want to meet him, Haven. I think he is getting ready to go; there is no time to lose.” Haven caught the glint he knew so well in ‘the eyes of the financier. He had purchased wisdom through experience.

“Very well,” he said, and tiptoed out to the group of which Sandstrom was the centre.

“John Peter” was already fairly well informed as to the Count’s position in life. He knew that the German was now nearly thirty years old and was the head of the greatest financial house of Europe by virtue of the recent death of his father. His “metier” had not yet been taken by the bankers of the world, who were uncertain as to what his attitude in money affairs would be. Whether he was to be reckoned as a man with great wealth, or a man of great wealth—a pregnant distinction —could not at present be determined. He was pleasure-loving and spent money freely, yet the genius of his family and the solidity of his race had kept him from excesses. In his clear and frank blue eyes Norton thought he saw something worth respecting. In a moment more Haven was bringing the nobleman to the window.

“This is Count Sandstrom, Mr. Norton. Count, you of course know Mr.‘Norton by reputation.” “Ah, the owner of King Capital?”

Norton bowed gravely.

“I wanted to see you. Count Sandstrom,” he began, “to tell you how grateful to you are the American people and myself.”

“Grateful? To me?” questioned the Count in some perplexity.

“To you, for having given us ‘the pleasure of seeing the finest race ever run by a losing horse. And furthermore—”

“Ah, you are most gracious, my dear sir, most gracious. Some other time I shall be delighted. As for me, I have now many things to do. Au revoir.” And he bowed with extreme punctilio, turned coolly on his heel and walked away.

The affront was clearly noted by the club habitues, who had been eager to see the outcome of a meeting between two such men. Haven, in a species of panic, toddled away and out of sight.

“John Peter” threw his half-consumed panatella out of the window, and gazed somewhat amusedly at the white line on his left thumb. Then he arose to seek his wife and daughter in the paddock.

“There is a man who must either be crushed or bought,” he said to himself.

CHAPTER III

IN THE PADDOCK.

PHILIP CRAIG’S emotions as he walked across the rich green toward the paddock, with his pretty charge and her placid mother, were more complex than any he had yet known. Across the calm of his everyday life had suddenly swept the breeze of wealth and fashion, ruffling it in a manner new and strange. From the dawn of remembrance existence had been a serious affair with him. His boyhood had been regulated by his father, a Scotchman of the old school whose whole conduct of life was circumscribed by theories, and his youth had been completely outside the range of ordinary pleasures.

Now there came back to him an evening when, it being his fifteenth birthday, his father called him into the little room that served as a library, and bade him sit down in the hard leather chair hitherto all but forbidden.

“Philip, my lad,” he had begun, “ye’ve had a bit more schooling than ever I did. Ye’re ready to meet the warld. Ye can do as pleases ye best; bide along wi’ me, or seek ye’er fortune elsewhere. But if ye stay here ye must pay your boord. My faither said the same to me when I was ye’er age, and it made a mon o’ me. If so be ye choose this place and me, there are books, gude books, that ye can study, and I’ll help ye all I can. The more ye ken in this warld, the better ye’ ll be off, if ye ken the richt things.”

The books had conquered his youthful irresolution, had kept him at his father’s side. Since he had been old enough to read he had felt the fascination of the world that lay behind the sober bindings of the library of Angus Craig; he longed to explore the mysterious realm of bookland, and once in a while he was given a brief little excursion under his father’s guidance. But he was not to go alone. Ah, no. The severest punishment he had received was when he had ventured to take a book from its place unbidden.

All that had changed, he remembered, on the day he was given his choice between the parental roof and the world.

“My library, Philip, is a’ that I shall leave ye when I dee,” said his father, “till then ye are free to use it when ye will.

“Ye’ll find books gude schoolmaisters, lad, but ye must be ye’er aiu scholar. They’ll teach ye without reproof or anger, and without price. If ye stumble in ye’er lessons, they’ll not appear to note it; if ye’er ignorant, they’ll not ridicule ye. They’ll be ye’er frien’s if ye’ll let them, but they’ll never force themselves on ye. Remember that.”

So the boy had stayed in the little cottage purchased by Angus Craig when land was cheap, but now surrounded by great manufacturing establishments and worth ten times what the canny Scotchman had paid for it. For the father’s trade of steel engraving he had little taste; he preferred to square the weekly parental debt by doing the various odd jobs that a bright boy can always command. His first year as his own master was rather a precarious one, but, as he scorned to seek favors, it made for a sturdiness and independence of character that eventually brought him recognition.

When he was appointed carrier for a daily financial bulletin service, Philip considered that his real start in life had been made. Having plenty of spare time, he took a special course in the College of the City of New York, his racial proclivities adding to a general education the practical branches of typewriting and stenography as a possible means of livelihood. Through the remarkably swift delivery of a very important bulletin he had come to the notice of John Norton, who said to him one day in a most matter-of-fact tone:— “Would you like to go to work for me, Craig?” “Yes, sir,” he had answered just as calmly. “But how did you know my name?”

“I know it because it seemed to me worth while finding out.” The boy pondered long on that reply; for many years it was to him the rarest compliment he had ever received.

From errand boy he was advanced to clerk in the Norton establishment, having one day volunteered to do the work of an absent employee. From post to post of honor and trust his keenness, his honesty and his vigor had carried him, until to-day, at twenty-six, he found himself made a peer of the realm of finance, as it were, and was furthermore invited to court to meet a very sweet and beautiful princess. And at this point the young Scotchman smiled to find himself indulging in a day-dream, as rare a recreation for him as a seat at the opera or a dinner at the Oceanic. Then he heard the pleasant voice of Mrs. Norton:

“This way, Mr. Craig, please. I see Bayles at the lower gate to let us in apart from the crowd.”

Around the paling of the paddock was a thick fringe of men and women, the uninfluential many, who must stand on tiptoe and writhe against one another in the effort to peer through the slats and see the great black horse that had saved the day for America. Craig noted their faces pressed against the barrier, feeble enough had they wished to destroy it, and a curious feeling of self-repugnance came over him that he, a man from and of the people, should be admitted by the easy gateway of the rich while they must be kept outside.

He now resigned his position as escort to a tall, thin, wiry, sallow individual dressed in brown corduroy trousers and a blue flannel shirt. ‘A wisp of hay was stuck in the left corner of his mouth, and at it he pulled as at a cigar.

This was Bayles, the Norton trainer, otherwise and inexplicably known as “Doc.” Diplomaless, so far as medical colleges went, he was a master at his profession, a friend and confidant of the horse and a skilled and tender physician to all equine ailments. “More’n half hoss myself, I reckon,” he was often heard to say, and indeed his long legs and perfect poise as a rider sometimes made him look a very centaur.

There was a rumor about the stables that “Doc” had once been a cowboy on the western plains before the industry of raising cattle had been forced into the great Canadian northwest, and as a relic of that past and gone life he aroused the liveliest interest in the training quarters.

Helen Norton shook hands warmly with the horseman, and his face grew a shade less sallow.

“How is dear old Dandy?” cried the girl eagerly. “Not tired, nor hurt, nor—anything?”

“Tired? Not he; he never turned a hair. He’s a glorious critter, Miss, and Ma’am. No wonder hunchback Richard wanted to swop his kingdom for a hoss, if they had sech animiles as Da—I mean King Capital—in them days. Here’s the hoss now.”

And there he was, swathed in a black blanket, walking placidly up and down in tow of a small black stable-boy. Helen ran toward him, calling his name aloud, and the throng stared through the pickets the harder.

The splendid animal pricked up his ears and whinnied at the familiar voice; in another moment he was blissfully munching the sweetmeats reserved for him. Craig thought he had rarely seen a more attractive picture than the girl’s fair head in sunny relief against the dark muzzle of the horse. He wondered, too, at her simplicity; many times afterward it surprised him, until he learned that Helen had led a quiet home life, even her education being given her by her mother, who had been a New England schoolmistress of unusual attainments before she had gone west, eventually to become the wife of John Norton.

“Oh, there’s Muggsy,” suddenly exclaimed the young woman, as a diminutive replica of the old trainer ambled into view. He was still clad in his black silk, and Craig recognized him as the jockey who had ridden King Capital to victory under the name of Bayles.

“Muggsy, you’re a darling. I haven’t any candy left, but you shall have a kiss,” and the pretty girl bent forward to reach the jockey’s forehead, on which she implanted a hearty smack.

“Thankee, Miss,” he said, in much the tone of a waiter who thinks he has received an insufficient tip.

“Now tell me all about the race, Muggsy—just how you won it, and—and everything.”

“Didn’t yer see it yerself, Miss?”

“Why, of course, you silly. But I didn’t really understand it. Now I want your story of it. Please!”

Thereupon the junior Bayles proceeded to describe the greatest race in American history as stolidly as if he were telling what he had had for breakfast that morning.

“Yer see, Miss, it was this way: when the gate went up we all got off together with Reg’lus at the pole. At the near turn we was all well bunched, until Reg’lus and Barb’rossa got into a kind of scrap, and I see the Dutch jock use the braid. ‘Pretty early,’ thinks I, and I keeps Dandy in, ’cause I knew there weren’t nothing to fear in the bunch behind.

“By this time we was tail-enders, Dandy and me, but Lord love ye, Miss, I knew ’twas only going to be so for four seconds. Then come Nebula’s tumble which did for poor Dalgren, and I ‘clicked’ to the boy. We left the rear gang in one, two, three, and crawled up on Reg’lus. I smacked my lips like you do when you call a bird, and then Reg’lus was a dead one. Then we slowed down a bit.

“Hector and Barb’rossa was fighting every inch that was in ’em at the three-quarters. All at once Hector swerved a bit. ‘Now.’ says I to Dandy, a bit sharp, and he dug his heels into the ground and went after Hector. Myers looked at me, and I could see in his face that his mount was done. ‘It’s Barb’rossa now, Dandy,’ says I, raising my voice a little and patting his neck.

“Then the jays in the grand-stand—beggin’ your pardon. Miss—sets up a holler of ‘Barb’rossa, Barb’rossa,’ and Dandy he hears it and begins to feel a bit worried. ‘It’s all right, boy,’ says I in his ear, Sve’ve got him licked for sure.’ Then I tapped him once with the whip, just to show him that I was in earnest, like, and looked to the right. I could just see Barb’rossa’s nose. Then I hears a bigger yell than the one before, and straightens up. ‘Dandy, you’re a prince,’ I says. He whinnied a bit and come down to a canter. And that’s all about it, Miss.”

“Muggsy, you’re—you’re a hero!”

“Thankee, Miss; I rode for all there was in it, sure.”

“There, now,” broke in the parental Bayles, “don’t go a-swelling your head over it, Muggs. Better take the boss down to the stables.”

“Oh, may I ride him down?” asked the girl excitedly.

“Why, Helen, child, before all these people?” replied the mother gently.

“Well, I suppose not, with these”—flirting her skirts rather viciously. “If I only had my habit. But I’ll go down behind the stables. I must have just a canter. I’ve not been on Dandy’s back in a year.”

It was a triumphal procession that accompanied the gallant horse to the stables, Helen and Muggsy acting as bodyguard, and Craig. Mrs. Norton and Bayles proceeding more at leisure.

“I suppose you love horses, Mr. Bayles?” observed Craig, with the conventional desire to be agreeable to a new acquaintance.

“Love ’em?” replied the trainer fervently, “you may well say that, sir. When I was a cow-puncher forty years ago a horse was sometimes the only intelligent critter I saw for months. Love ’em! Lord bless you, they’re the best comrades a man can have. Some may run away, but it’s because they’ve been badly treated by somebody before, and they don’t always know the difference between men. But there, I’m like the feller Shakespeare tells about who ‘doth nothing but talk of his horse.’ ”

Craig smiled in spite of himself. Here was an anomaly worth observing more carefully. “Shakespeare is evidently a favorite of yours,” he remarked pleasantly.

“Yes, sir! There was a man who loved horses; he knew ’em. I never see a man in a temper but I think of what he said: ‘Anger is like a full hot horse, who, being allowed his way, self-mettle tires him.’ Then there was that king who went about crying: ‘Give me another horse.’”

“Mr. Bayles is quite a student,” put in Mrs. Norton, with whom the trainer was clearly on very pleasant terms. “He has a whole trunk full of the poets.”

“Indeed!”

“Yes, sir,” assented Bayles, “and all the passages about hosses is marked.”

“And what do you think,” laughed the matron, “he has hay between the leaves at the marked places.”

“Yes, ma’am; that’s to find the hoss-talk easy.”

“I should think it would be safer to turn down the leaves.”

“It might, ma’am, but I wouldn’t take such a liberty with the poets.”

At the stables the tall form of John Norton strode forward to meet them. From an inside pocket he took a blue envelope which he handed to the elder Bayles. The trainer opened it and gazed at the little strip of yellow paper it contained. Then he passed it back to Norton.

“A big sum of money, sir,” he said quietly.

“It’s the handicap stake, Doc.”

“I see it is, sir.”

“It’s for you—and Muggsy.”

“For me and Muggsy!” exclaimed the trainer in amazement. He was used to the ways of his millionaire employer by this time, but the tender of such a fortune staggered even him. “For me and Muggsy! Why—why, no. Why should we have it?”

“Spoils of victory, Doc.”

“But I was not the victor.”

“True, it was the horse. But he cannot cash checks. You’ve made him what he is—you and Muggsy—and the money shall be yours.”

The attention of the friendly disputants was at this point attracted by the sight of a fair-haired young girl galloping about the space back of the stables on a powerful black horse that bore a remarkable resemblance to the winner of the “American.” The young woman’s flying draperies accentuated the slender grace of her figure, while the pretty feet that now and then flashed into view by no means marred the picture. It was not long before horse and rider bore down upon the group at a furious pace, and drew up with a half-wheel that excited Doc Bayles’ liveliest approval.

“Oh, father,” called out the flushed and happy girl, “won’t you give me Dandy for my very own ?”

“What, are you going to turn sportsman?” asked the financier quizzically.

“No, no, you goose”—Craig actually winced— “but he is such a lovely saddle horse.”

“Why, young lady, I had thought of selling him. I am done with racing, and I suppose we ought to get rid of him in some way, oughtn’t we, Doc?” The elder Bayles winked very solemnly. “We surely ought, sir,” he replied.

“Then it’s either sell or—”

“Give him to me. Hurrah, I knew you would all the time.” And she sprang down from the saddle to kiss the John Norton whom men called hard and cruel.

As Craig took his leave of the Nortons at the great Long Island Union station, his employer said to him apart from the others:—

“Come to my office as soon as I come in the morning, Philip. There may be things to talk over.”

With the young man’s speculation as to the exact nature of his new work was mingled surprise at Norton’s attitude toward him, evidenced In many ways during the day and especially by the use of the name “Philip.”

“Why should he, so imperious and distant, so self-contained in victory or defeat, unbend to me?” asked the new private secretary of that other consciousness to which we all find ourselves putting questions at one time or another. The problem was too deep; he would let the morrow begin its solution, if that were possible.

But he could not quell his own spirit. After he reached home he found himself in such a restless mood that he determined to go and see his father, from whose house he had removed more than a year previously at the old man’s broad hint that now that his son had become such a great figure in the world, and was so “muneeficently” paid by his employer, whom the Scotchman always mentioned as “the plutocrat,” he would do well to find another residence more in keeping with his position in society.

CHAPTER IV

FOUR AGAINST ONE.

THE chance passer-by through an especially dusty and unkempt street in the Department of Brooklyn often paused to look with unmeasured surprise at a small and quaint cottage, vine-embowered and with picturesque diamond-paned windows, set in the very arms of huge, grimy, forbidding factories. Between the street and its pleasant porch grew a profusion of rare and curious flowers; the hollyhock of ancient days, and now almost forgotten; the cockscomb, of which the owner of the tiny house had some of the few known specimens; the larkspur, only a tradition of the poets. In the rear one could see the thriving green of a kitchen-garden, where, the neighborhood report was, grew many strange vegetables long since discarded by human tastes.

Indeed the grimy factories that so tightly held this bit of sylvan greenery in their grasp were themselves an anomaly, relics of an age when dirt and shabbiness were permitted to exist. The modern employment of electrothermal power for all manufactures had long since abolished smoke and soot; the renaissance of municipal art had decreed the doom of ugly structures, no matter for what purposes erected. So this section of the Department of Brooklyn was made doubly paradoxical : by the presence of the dingy, unesthetic barracks of toil and by the old-world cottage they embraced. Here, for some strange reason, had the inarch of progress been brought to an abrupt halt. Here lived Angus Craig, the Scotch steel engraver.

Early in the evening of American Handicap day two men could be seen through an open window of the cottage engaged in that meditative recreation, a game of chess. Both were in shirt-sleeve neglige, which constituted about the only point of resemblance between them. One was a man of about fifty, although he looked older by reason of two large furrows between his deep-set eyes. Elis strongly Scottish face was surmounted by a tousled mass of reddish-gray hair, and far down under his chin was a little semicircle of whiskers. This was Angus Craig The other was a short, thick-set Englishman, with a round, ruddy face of the bulldog type, save that his nose faintly suggested that of a pig. He was as full of opinions as a nut of meat, and fond of expressing them in a loud and sententious voice that carried conviction to the majority of his fellows. This was Geoffrey Fairbrother, like Angus Craig a skilled steel engraver and a crony of years’ standing. As such he took liberties.

“Checkmate,” he snorted, “I’ve done it again. Whatever’s the matter o’ you, Angus? That makes two to one.”

“My mind’s not in my warrk the nieht, Geoffrey. I can’t get that silk-hatted body out o’ my head. The fair presoomption o’ him, to think I’d sell my bit property for his factory!”

“Well, all the rest ’ave sold, ’aven’t they, or else bonded their land and buildings?”

The Scotchman ran his fingers through the fringe beneath his chin.

“Aye, ye may say that, but not one of ’em has a hame here. This has been my bidin’ for near thirty year. But dinna let’s speak of it.”

“Shall we ’ave another game?” asked the good-hearted Englishman, anxious to divert his friend’s thoughts.

“No, it’s ower near time for the meetin’.”

Craig carefully put away his chessmen, beautifully carved by himself in ivory given him by an old sea captain.

Fairbrother lit his pipe and stared out into the gathering dusk. The great light-discs of the city had not yet been flooded, and the occasional gleam from some factory forge, telling of night work, pierced the shadows.

Craig came to the window and peered up the dismal street, coughing vigorously as he caught an indrawn breath of Fairbrother’s cloud of smoke.

“Ach, ach—they’re coming the noo. They’ll be —ach, ach—Ford and Langmaid, I’m thinking.”

As the two visitors came up the graveled walk, it might be noted that one was tall and the other short. Eater under the lamp-light—Angus still held to the practically obsolete kerosene—their characteristics were better revealed.

A grizzled, dried-up morsel of humanity was Joseph Langmaid, looking every one of his fifty years. He was a shoe machine operator, and his sharp little eyes had a habit of darting from one object to another, a trick acquired from the watching of many mechanisms. He was a wonderful fellow at talking, with a sonorous voice, strangely out of consonance with his small body, and a steady stream of words which he delighted to bring to a sudden stop—then, shifting his glance to various of his hearers, to roll out the end and clincher of his argument with great deliberation and impressiveness. His gestures were methodical and continuous, as if influenced by the tending of machines.

Quite opposite in physical attributes was his companion, Luke Ford. A much younger individual and a lank Yankee of the ancient type, he was a man of silence. He was a prodigious and constant devourer of tobacco, and he chewed with the large, swaying, ruminative manner of a cow with her cud. Nothing escaped his keen observation. Now and then he would open his mouth as if about to speak, and then, as if reconsidering, would lapse into his reflective movement of the jaws. But that Luke Ford could be a man of action was evidenced by the occasional flash of his eyes. Rarely he expressed his distaste for the endless arguments of his friends, but generally he was silently content to bide his time, strong in the conviction of his mission in the world and that he would one day fulfil it.

These four men, unlike as they were in personal attributes, were held together by a common love for sociological studies and theories. They were all educated to a fair degree in the sciences, and they read much, both in private and aloud in their “meetin’ ” from works on industrial, financial and moral problems. They had all written treatises of more or less merit for the journals devoted to economics, and Ford was commonly reputed to be writing a book on the immorality of class distinction. Twice a week they met at Angus Craig’s cottage for the reading and discussing of their favorite works. New books, too, they reviewed in their sessions, and woe to the luckless author who should be stamped as heretical by the combined force of their four intellects.

This night it was Langmaid’s turn to read, and that worthy cleared his throat and moistened his lips with pleasurable anticipation. Angus Craig sat himself down in a large wooden rocking-chair, and, with closed eyes, gently put himself in motion. Ford bit an enormous quid from his piece of black tobacco, and Fairbrother fanned his red face, which was growing warm under the lamp-light. Langmaid felt that the psychological moment had arrived.

“I will now read, friends,” he began, “some random selections from a book called ‘The Power of Manhood/ by Prof. Sabin, of the Socialist University of the Australian Republic. Brief comment will be in order, as usual; ‘brief comment,’ I said;” and he threw his rapidly shifting glance from one to the other of his hearers.

“ ‘A government exists in theory by the consent of the governed; but if the consent is obtained, which is dubious, it is extorted beneath the pressure of moneybags.’ ”

“Hech, mon, but that’s a canny phrase,” interjected Craig. “It’s true, and fause both, which I wull expound later.”

“ ‘The world may not be ripe as yet for an uprising which shall force the principle of equal rights and equal burdens.’ ”

“Ripe? It’s rotten,” growled Fairbrother.

“ ‘The aristocracy of wealth is far more inimical to the people than that of blood and the favor of kings, for the man whose power rests on money has respect for only two things: his own wealth and the man with more/

“And I say to that,” continued the reader, “that precious little respect most of them have for themselves, with their silly parties and their empty twaddle to kill time. I tell you, friends, the day is coming—” and he paused for effect, and then added in his deliberate fashion, “when these things shall be no more on earth!”

“Amen,” said Craig, whose closed eyes added impressiveness to his prayer.

“ ‘The people of every time have had a weapon ready to their hand. Here and now it is the ballot; what the world needs is more direct practical politics.’ ”

Luke Ford’s thin face flushed, and he moved as if to rise to his feet, but did not.

“What it needs,” he almost shouted in his raucous, penetrating tones, “is more action and less talk. I could—” But what was in his heart to do his friends did not then learn, for he suddenly lapsed into himself, tore off another piece of tobacco with his sharp teeth, and sank into his customary silence.

The reading had proceeded not very much farther when Philip Craig reached the cottage. He smiled as he came within sound of the droning voice of Langmaid, and quietly made his way inside without knocking. His entrance to the little sitting room made no more stir than had the appearance of his father’s old gray cat a little while before. Angus merely nodded in silence, and the reading went on without a break.

“Capital, h’mph,” snorted Langmaid, as he finished reading a paragraph in which the obnoxious word had been prominent, “what has capital ever done for the amelioration of the condition of labor? Capital fattens when labor starves. No wonder it forces us to short rations,” and he transfixed Philip with a glare from his steely little eyes, as if defying him to combat.

“My dear Mr. Langmaid,” said the young man pacifically, “aren’t you a bit hard on capital? It is spent foolishly, senselessly if you will, but not a dollar comes from the strong box of the rich that does not eventually find its level in the wages of the poor.”

“Nonsense. Theory exploded long ago. Mediaeval political economy,” returned the reader stubbornly.

“It has always seemed to me,” continued Philip, “that capital is to labor as the water to the millwheel; without the one the other sends no corn to the grist.”

“You’re a great one to talk,” retorted Fair-brother, ceasing his fanning for the sake of argument, “you who deserted your father for a plutocrat’s protection. You’re a renegade.”

If the younger Craig’s temper rose a little at this name-slinging, he gave no sign of it.

“I’ve often noticed, Mr. Fairbrother,” he returned quietly, “that the man without an argument ready always has an epithet at hand.”

“There, there, let’s have no squabbling,” broke in Angus, “Philip has his own opeenions, and, good or bad, he’s a richt to ’em. Thought is one thing that’s free. We’re four against ane, and that’s not fair anyway.”

Despite the good-natured protestations of Philip, it seemed to be the consensus of opinion that the “meetin’ ” had been effectually broken up by his coming. After a decent lapse of time the three visitors took their departure, and father and son were left alone.

CHAPTER V

EMBERS OF THE PAST.

THE Craigs, father and son, were alike and yet very dissimilar. In his sinewy, clean-cut frame the younger man resembled the elder, and in voice there was the same rather high-pitched and incisive, yet musical tone. The long, slender fingers of the father, kept soft and shapely by the delicate work of his profession, were reproduced exactly in the son.

But in the faces of the two men one could have read no relationship. Philip had nothing of his father’s Scottish cast, nothing of the reddish tinge of hair and skin, nothing of the prominent brows. Some beautiful dark American woman had evidently bequeathed to him her features and eyes, to be transmuted by masculinity into a strong and attractive countenance.

“Weel, lad, how fares it wi’ ye?” asked Angus at length.

“Very well, indeed, father. In fact, I’ve to-day been made confidential secretary to Mr. Norton. The salary is large and the advancement great. It was a complete surprise to me.”

“So. I trust ye’ll do ye’er duty, for we a’ maun strive for that. But ye’er in the power o’ the reech, boy, and ye’d best keep a watchfu’ e’e lest ye coom to harm. Oh, the strength of wealth; I’ve felt it this verra day. It e’en grudges us our hames.”

“What do you mean, father?”

“I’ll tell ye. This noon a smooth appearin’ body wi’ a tall shiny hat cooms up on the porch and knocks verra politely. I leaves my bite and sup, and goes to let him in.

“ ‘Is this Maister Angus Craig that I’ve heard sae much aboot?’ says he. ‘My name’s Holloway.’ “ ‘I’m Angus Craig, at ye’er sairvice,’ says I, ‘though I dinna ken why ye should have heard o’ me.’

“ ‘They say ye’er a fair clever warrkman and a mon o’ abeelity in ither lines,’ he replies. ‘But I’ve coom tae see ye mainly on a matter o’ business. How wad ye like tae sell ye’er property, here?’

“ ‘My hame?’ says I, all ta’en aback, ‘not for a’ the gowd ye could pit inside it.’

“ ‘Weel, I’m authorized tae offer ye five thousand dollars for the place,’ he goes on, verra easy like. ‘A seendicate is goin’ tae pit up a great factory on this site, and your land is needed.’

“ ‘Gae back tae ye’er seendicate,’ says I, ‘and tell ’em that they liavna money enow in all their strong-boxes tae buy out Angus Craig.’

“ ‘Better conseeder a bit, Maister Craig,’ says the mon. ‘Even if ye dinna sell, there’ll be a great, noisy factory all around ye for the making o’ pneumatic engines. Ye’ll be driven crazy by the racket. Maybe ye conseeder five thousand too little; if so, I think I may induce the seendicate tae pay ye seven. But not a dollar mair. Ye’d better be reasonable, Maister Craig.’

“ ‘Maister Holloway,’ says I, ‘once and for a’ the place is not for sale. Good day tae ye.’ ”

A feeling of pity for his father arose in Philip’s heart. Hitherto the elder man had seemed to him the incarnation of strength, a sort of rock incapable of erosion by the waves of circumstance. Now he was human like the rest, threatened by a force that would use every endeavor to crush him. And for the first time, too, he thought of his father as growing old.

“Ye’ll be wonderin’ what makes me sae sair against partin’ wi’ the place, perhaps, lad. Coom wi’ me for a bit.”

Together they walked into the garden behind the cottage. Under the faint luminosity from the light discs in the street they could easily see their way about. The old man led to a vine-covered mound in one corner.

“There’s auld Neb’s grave, lad. Ye ken the dog. For fourteen year he was leal and true. He saved ye’er life once when a runaway horse was cornin’ doun the street. Shall that be leveled for a mill?

“Here’s the rose-bush planted by your mither before ye were born. She nursed it into life and fought off the wee bit pests that wanted its sap. Do ye think I’m the mon tae let a gang o’ warrk-men tear up its roots and cast it tae the rubbish-heap? Not while God leaves a spark o’ life in this puir body. Coom now into the house.”

Philip followed as in a dream. This passion-racked, grief-shaken man his stern, unemotional father! A sudden glimpse of the true nature of his sire came to him in that moment, as, when a great gale sometimes blows the mist from a mountain, one sees all at once the hitherto hidden top. He wondered to what extent he himself had been endowed with like attributes.

Angus seized a lamp with trembling hands and went unsteadily up the narrow stairway to the second floor. Fumbling at the lock of a door Philip did not remember ever having seen opened, he at length threw it back and entered the room, holding the light high above his head. A faintly sweet, warm odor, subtly suggestive of death, was wafted out to the young man’s senses. He paused at the threshold, held by an indefinable dread.

“Coom in, lad, coom,” said his father gently, “there are nae ghaists here except the wraiths o’ memory. This was ye’er mither’s room. In that chair she used to sit and sing to ye when ye were a wee bairn. There’s the cradle close by in which ye used to lie and listen to her sweet voice. On that couch she de’ed; I moved her there because she said she wouldna bring unhappiness to the bed where I must sleep after she had gone. But I never used this room again. All’s just as she left it, only kept neat and clean as she would like. There’s not a day passed since she went but I’ve coom here and prayed, and often I’ve seen her sweet face hoverin’ ower me. But it wouldna stay, lad, it wouldna stay. Oh, Philip, ye’er faither’s had a sair cross tae bear!”

Angus Craig set the lamp down gently on a quaint mahogany table. There at its centre was a little old-fashioned work-basket, still gay with its red cushions and bright with polished steel. At the sight of it the old man’s grief was stirred anew. He buried his head within his outstretched arms, and sobs shook his spare frame.

Philip’s eyes moistened with sympathy and a pang of self-reproach moved him to unaccustomed tenderness. He laid his hand gently on his father’s grizzled head.

“Don’t grieve so, father,” he said, as softly as to a sick child, “perhaps the matter can be adjusted somehow. I never realized how much you loved this place. You never used to take me into your confidence, you know.”

Angus raised his head, and wiped his eyes with his great red handkerchief.

“Ye think I’m a harrd mon, Philip,” he exclaimed, “and perhaps I am. But do ye ken what made me so? How auld do ye think me? Aboot sixty-five or so, I doubt. Weel, I’m not; I’m but fifty-two. Do ye ken what made me an auld mon before my time?”

“How should I?”

“Weel, I’ll tell ye the noo, though ’tis late. It may be better so, for ye’re a mon settled, and perhaps can better understand.

“Twenty-five year ago, or mair, I was an engraver in a great watch factory in this city. The wage was glide, and I was a happy mon. Ye’er mither and I lived here in peace and comfort, and when ye came yersel’ I was that glad I sang for joy. Ye never heard me sing, lad—no, nor never wull, I’m thinking.

“Weel, there came a time by and by when the men in the factory went on strike. There was nae fault wi’ their employer, for he was a kind mon, and treated us fair. There was nae question of wage, either. The trouble was all ower a sort of foreman who had been stiff-backed against the manager, and had inseested on doing some things in his ain way. He was finally deescharged, and then the men gave notice that if he weren’t taken back, they would gae on strike; he was high in the union, and a great mon for the gab. He weren’t reinstated, and the ithers, three thousand of ’em, struck—all but Angus Craig. He believed the employer richt, and he stuck to him, the one mon oot of a’ those thousands who went to warrk the next dav and the next.”

Philip looked at his father with admiration. This was the Angus Craig he knew, the staunch soul who would dare anything for opinion’s sake. “You were a brave man,” he said.

“Weel, perhaps, though it’s no’ much bravery to stand by the richt or what ye think is the richt. I paid a dear price for it, though. I was scorned and hooted and mobbed. I was ca’cd ‘Judas,’ and my life was threatened. Warse yet, a crowd of hoodlums, who took the excuse of the strike to vent their own rage for disorder, came to this house one nicht and cursed me and threw stanes at the windows. Ye’er puir mither, delicate as she was, was turribly frightened, and I believe her decline began from that nicht. But she was leal, and never made ane warrd o’ complaint. She believed me richt, and that was enow for her.”

“She was braver even than you.”

“Ye may weel say that, mon, for she was. a woman. . . . Weel, the factory manager, Glasby, got thegither some outside help, and ran on for a while. But I could see that things went hard. Ane day I was called to Maister Glasby’s office. I went in expecting a bit more wage or a higher poseetion for stickin’ to the company.”

“Maister Glasby was verra affable, and asked after ye’er mither and vou like an auld friend.

Then he began to talk about the strike. He told me how hard it was to get skeelled men outside the unions, how business had fa’en off, and how the shareholders, resenting the seetuation, had held a meeting and at the advice o’ the president o’ the company voted to end the strike by taking back the discharged foreman and a’ the ithers.

“ ‘A’ richt,’ says I, Tm glad the trouble’s to be settled.’ Then I saw there was something else on his mind. He hemmed and hawed, and didna seem to ken how to begin.

“ ‘Anything else, sir?’ I asked.

“ ‘Yes, Craig, there is one ither matter,’ he says, ‘that I dinna like to speak about. Ye’ve been a gude mon, and stuck tae us through thick and thin. But the men are doun on ye, and make it a condeetion o’ returning to warrk that ye leave the factory.’

“ ‘That I be deescharged, ye mean, I suppose,’ says I.

“ ‘Weel, that’s aboot it, Craig,’ says he. ‘It’s a thing we a’ hate tae do, but beesiness is beesiness, and it’s the fortunes o’ warr. We’ve lost the fight, Craig, you and me.’

“I said nae mair, but put on my hat and started tae gae.

“‘Wait a minute, Craig,’ says Glasby, ‘there’s something that’ll please ye. I am authorized to pay ye a whole year’s wage as a testimonial of our regard for ye.’

“‘Please me?” says I, full o’ wrath and scorn that I couldna keep doun, ‘please me tae take siller for bein’ disgraced and discarded? I’d rot in the poorhouse fairst. Tell that tae ye’er stockholders, Maister Glasby, and wish ’em long life and prosperity from a Scotchman who made a fule o’ him-sel’ in their sairvice.’ ”

As the father finished this part of his recital his voice grew strong and a faint smile as of triumph in the remembrance of his sturdy manhood illumined the thin face. To add to the impressiveness of the picture the lamp-flame sank lower and lower, and feebly flickered away. Then the room was filled with the soft, pale glow of the city’s light-discs, diffused equally in every nook and corner. With its antique furnishings and its quaint and simple utensils of an age long dead, it seemed a habitation of ghosts. If soft whispers and the rustling of a woman’s dress had come to Philip’s ears, he knew he would have felt no surprise. There reigned a stillness which he would not be the first to break.

“The warst was yet tae come; I had tae tell the news tae ye’er mither. For days I didna dare, and used to go out as usual, pretendin’ I was at warrk, when I could get nane. But she had to ken at last. She was brave as ever, but I could see that it was a great shock. Yet weak as she was, she brightened whenever she looked at you. The expenses went on—for nursin’ and medicine and a bit dainty food noo and then. But she—God love her— faded mair and mair, till ane nicht she whuspered goodby to you and me and won awa.”

The full tide of remembered sorrow swept in upon Angus’ soul, and the tears flowed without restraint. Then he seemed to remember the presence of the other man, his son, but still a stranger to his emotions, and he stilled the storm.

“Now do you wonder, Philip, that I hate the power o’ the reech? Oh, the greed for gowd! It makes the strong trample the weak and the weak curse the weaker. It makes enemies o’ brithers, and puts the de’il into the hearts o’ babes, a’most. It sends the love o’ God cowerin’ back tae heaven, and fills the airth wi’ rapine and tumult. It shakes the dice for the verra clothes of our Saviour, after it has betrayed him for the pieces o’ siller. Philip, lad, keep a guard on ye’er immortal soul; ye’re in great danger the noo; ye’re in the temple o’ the high priest o’ Mammon. Beware, mon, beware.”

CHAPTER VI

MOONLIGHT AND SHADOW.

JOHN PETER NORTON sat in the library of his home on the evening of the day on which he became world-famed, and reviewed the events of the afternoon in his peculiarly analytic and calculating way. By virtue of superior bunches of muscles in a horse’s legs and that unknown something called courage in a horse’s brain, he had been sent further along his chosen pathway than by months or years of the most careful and energetic labors on his own part. Prestige had come to him with the rush of many feet, and he knew that his battle against exclusiveness was nearly over.

The beautiful room was unlighted, save by the moonbeams that slanted in through the broad bow-window formed of one immense semi-circle of glass. Just beyond, the stiff, pointed trees and the marble seats of an Italian garden were clearly visible under the flood of radiance. One could almost see the towering fence of gold-capped steel bars and the gates of massive masonry that shut the Norton palace from the street. The estate was not large, for it was in reality a city residence, one of the hundreds congregated in a sightly suburb of the Department of Brooklyn, where lived the multi-millionaires of the great metropolis in a sort of concentric colony; “John Peter” was very near the centre of this circle of superb luxury and elegance. He could not have had more land even had he desired it, for money had long since ceased to be a purchasing power in this region. Indeed, he had obtained the few acres he possessed only by the exercise of his utmost resources of intimidation. Through a certain stock “corner” he held the owner of the land in a strangling grip, and the price of release was the property. The price was paid.

From the towers of the great stone house, which, by reason of its turrets, battlements and embrasures, had become known as the “castle,” could be seen the encircling dwellings of the people of less wealth, and beyond them a stretch of country dividing by a half-mile or so the pride of the aristocracy of wealth from the meaner houses of the poor and the outer limits of the giant city where lay the real wealth of the rich—a sleeping power for good or evil.

But tonight, thinking only of himself and his plans for further greatness, John Norton sat in his library watching the moonlight as it fell upon a polished table, where his hand was resting, and woke into life the fire of the diamond on his finger. The Hashing points of color seemed somehow typical of his own success, and he moved his hand gently to increase the brilliant scintillations of the gem/

He smiled as he recalled the eagerness of many to meet him that afternoon: how Van Renssalaer Cruger Low, one of the most conservative of the middle-aged men of millions and of family, had extended him and his wife an invitation to dine “en famille;” how several of the most prominent members of the turf club had insisted that a dinner be given in his honor, and how he had been still more insistent that he, as the fortunate winner of the American, should be host and not guest. He wished to pick his men and not have them chosen for him. Already he was planning the details of the banquet, which he determined should surpass anything since the days of Rome. He would have the foremost men of the hour there; of several of them he felt morally certain. The others would follow, he was sure.

“After all,” he reasoned, half aloud, “men, be they barbarians or of the highest type of culture, are much like sheep; they’ll follow their leader over any kind of a stone wall if only the tinkle of the bell-wether is sufficiently alluring.”

A gentle tap on the door interrupted his schemes and his philosophy.

“It’s I, John,” said the sweet, low voice of his wife. “Are you busy?”

“No, indeed, Harriet,” returned the husband cordially, “come over to the window. Here is your favorite chair already placed.” And he kissed her as she took her seat.

“But why are you in the dark, John?” she asked.

“Don’t call it the dark, my dear. This is as beautiful a light as any we know; I like to sit in it.”

“As much as you did thirty years ago?” she queried gently.

“Ah, thirty years ago! That was moonlight for you, Harriet. It was the friend of our courting days, the good genius of a sleigh ride, the discreet lamp of all the lovers’ lanes we walked together.

And to think that this is the same moon. No wonder I’m fond of it.”

She looked at him with tenderness and gratitude shining from her mild eyes. It mattered not what he was to the world, how hard and cruel he was called, he was the John Norton who won her when lovers were many and he was poor.

“But Harriet,” he continued, more soberly, “it seems to me that you are not wholly well. I thought I saw a drawn look in your face at the race to-day. And, pardon me, but I really believe there’s a wrinkle or two.”

“I’m sure there are many of them, John, dear; it’s time, you know,” she replied laughingly.

“Time? Not a bit of it. You are just as young as you were—well, the night I punched Solon White’s head for him out at Elder Chase’s well because he dared ask you to walk home with him from the donation party at the parsonage. You remember, Solon, of course, Harriet?”

“Of course I do. And I remember, too, that you were wrong.”

“But I licked him,” said Norton, triumphantly. His wife laughed merrily.

“Then it’s not always true that the battle is to the right. You were surely wrong, because I had hinted to Solon—you were late, you know—that I was afraid I might have to walk home alone.” “He was an impudent rascal. Like a lot of the others, he thought that because you were a school teacher anybody had a right to beau you about. . .. But about your health—are you really well?” “Yes, I am well, but—”

“But what, dear?”

“Well, I—I am anxious.”

“Anxious? About what or whom?”

She made no reply.

“Come, Harriet,” he persisted, “tell me what you mean by ‘anxious.’ ”

“John, I am anxious for you.”

“Me?” he exclaimed in amused amazement, “why, how is that?”

“This struggle—this battle for great wealth; when will it end?”

“When I do, Harriet.”

Her tender femininity shrank from the harsh expression, as a delicate plant from a biting wind. He realized the cruelty of his speech, and hastened to amend it.

“I mean, Harriet,” he said, “that I shall always be active in affairs; I could scarcely live otherwise.”

“But why?” she persisted. “We surely have more money than we or our child can ever hope to employ. When will you begin to enjoy it, John?” “Enjoy it? I never can, never do enjoy it. One million, two millions, fifty millions, are all alike— they are but weapons. The soldier cherishes his sword, the general his guns, because through them they can make their power felt. They do not enjoy them otherwise. Money: what is it? The ruin of the strong, the temptation of the weak. To me it is not money, but the emblem of power. You know as no other of my early struggles, of the obstacles that money threw in the way of an honest fight for a home—a fight for you. You know how I vowed that I would win—how I did win. And the man who fights with money must fight for more money, or his antagonists will laugh at him for a fool or spurn him as a coward. I owe it to myself, to my past, to my friends who trust me, who have stood shoulder to shoulder with me in the fight that I go on till I have done all that is to be done. Money? Bah! Often I sicken of it, its false glitter, its hollow ring, its sneering crispness. I’m not certain sometimes but I should be happier to-day were you and Helen and I still out on the arid and thankless farm where I first met you.”

The gentle woman gazed at her husband in a sort of waking dream. It was all so strange, so new. Rarely had he made so long an utterance to her, never had he so pulled aside the curtain of his mind to let her see the real drama that was going forward there. From that moment a new understanding of the strong, silent man came to her; in the intensity of that revelation she knew not whether to feel reassured or more troubled still.

Something of this uncertainty John Norton saw in his wife’s face. His animation, unknown even to his best friends, died away, and the sparkle in his eyes fled into the night. His voice lost its hardness as he said kindly:—

“There, there; don’t let me frighten you. It is strange that in nearly thirty years of married life this is the first time you have ever said a word that hinted at regret. Why is it? Why do you worry about me—now?”

“I have never before felt the need. Your business was your life-work. I rejoiced in your success because it was your happiness. I watched the growth of your plans because they were yours, John, not because I coveted the money they poured into my lap. But never till to-day did I realize that the incessant strife of a quarter of a century has worn upon you.”

He laughed in his quiet, rather inexpressive fashion.

“Worn upon me? What on earth put that idea into your level little head?”

“Because to-day for the first time I saw your nerves unstrung.”

“At the race?” he queried, with a smile.

“No, not at the race,” she returned, gently. “After. When you came to us at the stables. Something had happened at the clubhouse; I could see it.”

He threw his keen glance at her still delicately pretty profile outlined against the moonlight. Better than all the rest she could read him, he thought, and he marveled.

“I was a trifle bothered,” he admitted, “and— well, the race was a bit fatiguing. … By the way, I met Sandstrom.”

“The Count? It is foolish, I know, but I cannot conquer a dread of that man.”

“Dread?” he laughed, “wait till you see him. He is about as opposite to an inspirer of dread as can be. A well-bred man who looks as if a long line of ancestors had preferred weak claret and water to the national hop beverage. He’s as harmless as Helen’s angora kitten. But as for me, Harriet, I’ve been in harness for thirty odd years, and there I’ll stay as long as there is a load to draw.” And he patted his wife’s head affectionately.

“Well, dear,” she said, “as long as money stays in your head and does not trouble your heart, I shall not care.”

“Don’t you abuse money because I have,’’ returned Norton, with mock indignation, “it’s a good servant after all.”

“But a bad master,” she insinuated.

“It hasn’t mastered me yet. The almighty dollar, I have found, is chiefly denounced by those who need it most.”

“But it isn’t essential to happiness, is it, John?” she asked, wistfully.

“Well, money may not sow the seed of happiness, but it is often a great fertilizer for it.”

“Yet after all, it is only a mighty slave driver.” “Well, my dear, it sha’n’t drive me forever. Some day I will retire from active life, and we will spend our declining years gazing into the fireplace or at the moon. Seriously, Harriet, I have a duty to perform—to myself and to others. I could no more drop my obligations now, with honor to myself, than I could desert you and Helen. Women do not always understand such things, but a very rich man has moral obligations far greater than any of a financial nature can possibly be. Should I lay down my burden now, thousands would suffer. I must go on—to the end. . . . But the moonlight and its shadows have aroused dismal fancies. Let us banish them.”

He touched a tiny button, one of many buried in the stamped leather walls. There was a slight tremor of the air and at once a flood of amber radiance filled the room in its every part.

“There,” he exclaimed, “my moonlight paradise is gone. I fancy the Garden of Eden’s only illumination was moonlight—if there ever was a Garden of Eden.”

“Well,” retorted his wife, “if the Garden of Eden story isn’t true, it’s rather hard on the serpent.” “Very,” he assented. “Ho, hum; who would think that we, the envied Mr. and Mrs. John Peter Norton, would indulge in such a strain of talk? It’s true, indeed, that one-half the world doesn’t know how the other half lives.”

“But it isn’t because they don’t try to find out,” said his wife, with a touch of half-remembered indignation.

Light steps and a little burst of song just outside were a welcome diversion to both. And when Helen came in, her face radiant with anticipation, John Norton found himself catching something of her buoyancy.

“Oh, father,” she cried, “I have been hunting for you everywhere. I want—”

“Oh, yes, of course you ‘want,’ ” he interrupted indulgently, “I could see that in your eyes.”

“But this is different—different from anything. Just listen: this morning in the park I saw a little crippled boy riding in a cart hauled by his brother. Poor tot, I pitied him, and asked all about him. And I even got James to follow them home, and he says the family is wretchedly poor, but seemed honest and worth helping. And I am going to help them. Now I want some money.”

John Norton looked at his pretty daughter, all a-flutter with the excitement of her plea, and pulled out a cheque-book. From it he tore a leaf, wrote something and handed the slip of paper to the girl.

“This will pay for your cripple’s treatment by Dr. Murch, who’s the best man in America at the business,” and, after a moment’s thought, he added, “Your appeal suggests something. Would it strike your fancy should I enable you to found a hospital for children?”

“Me? Oh, father!”

“Well, then* it’s settled. I’ll secure a site tomorrow, and set an architect at work right away. Have you, as the founder, any choice for a location?”

“No-o-o—only let it be in the country where the poor little things can see the grass and flowers and hear the birds. They must get well then.”

“It shall be as you like. And, Helen, this is almost as good a way to spend money as on horseracing, eh?”

“Better; far better,” replied the girl, earnestly. She could not be jocose at such a moment. “Racing is a pretty picture, but it’s cruel. This is all kindness. There’s no comparison.”

“Millions upon millions have been poured into libraries and colleges,” continued Norton, thoughtfully. “Why not turn a few into places for building up feeble little children into men and women able to study and read in them?”

“Oh, you’re the dearest father in the world,” exclaimed Helen enthusiastically, “and—and the best man, too. You’re always doing something that’s fine and noble and—”

“H-s-sh; it’s a state secret, little girl. You might have difficulty in convincing the ‘street’ that you are correct, able pleader though you are. . . . Hello, what’s this?”

A servant stood before him with a card on a golden tray. The card bore the name of a man who three days before had tried to defraud him of some railroad bonds, and who was now come to sue for mercy. Norton’s face was transformed; the hard lines swept into their accustomed places and his voice was as cold as the ring of steel upon ice as he said to the butler:—

“Tell the gentleman I will see him for exactly three minutes.” Mrs. Norton sighed, but there was pleasure, too, in the end of the evening’s talk; she was filled with gratitude that her daughter, spite of John Norton’s prodigal indulgence, was still unspoiled and a girl with a heart.

CHAPTER VII

INDULGING A WHIM.

PHILIP CRAIG’S somewhat uneasy journey next morning to the great office of John P. Norton was interrupted by a blockade in the central subway of the Municipal. Something had broken down, it seemed, and great was the indignation of the passengers.

“Hang these new-fangled ether-motors,” fumed Craig’s seatmate, “the old electricity was bad enough, but this is twice this week I’ve been delayed. Now in my day—”

But the bit of ancient history was cut short by the renewed speeding up of the train, and in a few seconds Philip found himself at the terminal and upon the gigantic lifting platform that raised the multitude to the street.

He was late in reaching the office, and ascertained that his chief was already closeted with someone, while the anterooms were filled, early as it was, with the heterogeneous crowd that daily besieges a great financier. Most of them would never reach “John Peter,” and they knew it; yet even to be seen there gave them a certain stamp of importance in their smaller sets, and they waited patiently for the inevitable denial, more or less courteous according as they looked more or less prosperous. Others were well-known clients and associates of the Norton house.

As Craig reached his newly-assigned office next the very penetralia of the temple, as it were, he saw a door open, and Henry Partridge, a prominent real estate dealer, come out. Then Norton appeared.

“Ah, Craig, just in time,” he said cordially. “Come in. This is a matter in which you are to be specially concerned.”

In the beautiful room that served John Norton as private office—more like an apartment in some luxurious club than a business man’s work-place— Craig found a slender, handsome, middle-aged man busily occupied with a paper pad held on his knee.

“Craig, this is Mr. Armisted, of Armisted, Leighton and Mills, you know,” said Norton, “Mr. Armisted, Mr. Craig, my private secretary.”

The great architect bowed with considerable deference at the sound of Philip’s title. He had come there in answer to Norton’s telephone call of the night before asking the firm to send “a man” to consult on some new work. That he, the head of the firm, had come in person was significant of the way the world had begun to regard this John Norton. The merest hint at his patronage was enough to arouse the interest of men who were themselves princes in their special domains.

“Now Mr. Armisted,” said he, “our matter can quickly be disposed of. As I told you a moment ago, I want a design for a children’s hospital. It will be erected somewhere on the Palisades. Partridge has undertaken to get me options on several good sites, and you are the man of all others to plan the building.”

The architect smiled faintly at the compliment, took off his glasses, breathed upon them and then wiped them carefully with a silk handkerchief. He wanted the commission, but professional honor demanded that he appear calm.

“Precisely,” he said at length. “And what—er —style of architecture, if any, had you decided upon, Mr. Norton?”

“I don’t care, if only it is as unlike a hospital as possible. Build it as if it were the country residence of a rich man with a lot of children. But be sure it’s big enough.”

“Ah, I catch your idea, I think, Mr. Norton; something airy and homelike—say in the Queen Anne style.”

“M-m-m,” returned “John Peter” reflectively. “What I’d like to do would be to have a whole row of farmhouses with vines all over the porches and eaves. But there—what do the poor children of this big city know about farmhouses? They would probably be terrified and homesick in them. Besides, it’s impracticable, I suppose. Use your own judgment, Mr. Armisted, and send the plans to Mr. Craig.”

“And—er—the cost, Mr. Norton?” This was a delicate hint that there would be a cost, but merely insinuated as a sort of after-thought of no essential importance.

“That is a question that cannot be settled until we know how much room we shall require. Wait a moment; perhaps we can get some light on the subject.”

He pressed one of the battery of buttons concealed under his desk, and presently a boy in the Norton uniform stood in the doorway.

“Inquire if the Rev. Mr. Bentley is waiting,” he ordered.

“I sent for Mr. Bentley, gentlemen,” explained Norton, “because I’ve been told that he is the best informed man in the city on the needs and conditions of the poor, and especially children.”

“That is true,” observed Craig.

“Do you know him?”

“Yes, sir. He was very kind to me as a boy.”

“Good. You will work well together.”

Against Philip’s wonderment that he was enlisted in such a mission and given so high a rank, came the stronger emotion of pleasure that he was to be thrown into relations with the Rev. Mr. Bentley. He had personal knowledge of the goodness, the inspiring optimism, the never-failing charity of the clergyman whose whole life was spent in trying to create the millennium from what seemed to others very unsatisfactory materials.

To Adoniram Bentley all things and all men and women were constructively good. Evil—and he knew it well from a lifetime of practical missionary work—was to him only a certain undesirable foreign quantity which interfered with the growth of what he recognized as of value in the outcasts with whom he was brought into contact. It was as a chemical element that could be sent away harmless into the atmosphere if only the right precipitation were made.

“If he had only had our chance,” was his favorite phrase when speaking of some great sinner. Had he met fallen Lucifer himself, he would unquestionably have attempted to show that the cloven hoof, tail and horns did not completely conceal the underlying goodness of the prince of darkness. Tf ever he mentioned the devil in his mission room talks it must have been with an apology. His great affection went out to mankind in its fullest dower when human souls were deepest in the mire of disgrace and despair, for then he felt that their need of someone’s love was the greatest. Sleek, contented churchmen called him “fool;” but for this fool despairing, half-crazed women in bonds had been known to pray to a God to whom appeal had been unknown since the lisped prayer of babyhood.

As the good clergyman entered John Norton’s office, presenting his physical attributes in necessary comparison to those of the three well-made men who rose to receive him, he was another living example in the long line of those who arise to demonstrate the fatuity of their parents. Could the Bentleys of the former generation have foreseen that their son would not attain even the five feet four, of average womanhood, they would scarcely have named him Adoniram—“lord of height.” For the fact was that, with all the advantages of a tall hat and thick-soled shoes, the Rev. Mr. Bentley could hardly rise to the five-foot mark.

Nor could his face, by any of the canons of portraiture, be considered handsome. With its broad nose, its large, up-curved mouth and its wide, high forehead, it had been likened by some to the countenance of the cow. But those who said that did not, or could not realize the beauty of the tender gray eyes, a beatitude and a benison shining forth from folds and rolls of inexpressive flesh. At the recital of wrong or woe those wonderful eyes might change expression with the progress of the tale, but they never lost their gleam of compassion. There was a something in his gaze that few could withstand.

Prison officials, calloused as they were and wont to make merry over the seamy sides of life, recognized this strange influence. “Another striped bird gone daffv over Parson Bentley’s hypnotic eye,” they would say, and there was truth in the quip. Men and women, cursing their Maker and themselves, often became calm under his pitying look; expecting censure, they found tenderness; looking for the lash of a clerical whip, they received the balm of a minister to their wounds.

Such was the man at whom John Norton gazed rather curiously and almost doubtingly for a moment. Their glances met, and the financier’s uncertainty vanished in a moment. He greeted the visitor pleasantly, and introduced him to the architect. Craig and the clergyman shook hands cordially.

“I want your assistance, Mr. Bentley,” began Norton, “in a matter of some importance to myself and another. To be brief, we are going to build a hospital for the children of the poor. I desire your opinion, as an expert, as to the extent of the need for such an institution.”

“The need? Enormous, and ever growing, Mr. Norton. No one could estimate it without falling far short of the reality.”

“Could two hundred child patients be found?” “I could give you the addresses of twice that number from my own books.”

“Worse than I imagined,” said Norton. “Mr. Armisted, it’s pretty clear that we must be more particular about room than about architecture.

Now, Mr. Bentley, if we should provide room for a thousand children do you think we would overshoot the mark?”

“Not at all, my dear sir,” returned the little clergyman, striving to quell the tide of excitement that rose from his heart to his voice. He was staggered at the largeness of the plan, but filled with delight at the prospect of a vital beneficence that meant so much for the morale of the city.

“Well, then,” continued “John Peter,” in his most matter-of-fact tone, “let it be for a thousand. And Mr. Armisted will provide for additions as they are required. I would be happy, Mr. Bentley, if you would act as adviser in the construction of the building and as investigator afterward. We need such men as you. Mr. Craig, who supervises the work, tells me that you are acquainted.”

“We are, sir, and it was a very pleasant acquaintance.”

“Now, gentlemen,” continued Norton, incisively, “the work will begin at once. It only remains for me to say that the hospital is, in a certain sense, the suggestion of my daughter Helen.”

“Indeed! Plow considerate, how touching!” murmured the architect, imbued with all the appreciation aroused by the assurance of a commission on a very costly building.

Norton flashed a keen glance at the speaker and then at Mr. Bentley. The clergyman said nothing, but his eyes were eloquent, as always. “The name, I suppose, should be decided.”

“I would suggest the ‘Helen Norton Hospital,’” observed Armisted.

“I think not.. Two names I especially detest are ‘hospital’ and ‘home.’ And my daughter wouldn’t care for any notoriety. In fact, Mr. Bentley, why will you not stand sponsor for the whole affair? Let it be understood that the retreat is the contribution of wealthy men. It would please me if you would, and ‘Bentley-on-Hudson’ strikes me as a particularly good name.”

“I shall be most happy to serve you,” exclaimed the clergyman, grasping Norton’s hand warmly and giving him a glance that affected the financier strangely. “And now I will take my leave, if you please, as I have many calls to make.”

Armisted, also, prepared to go.

“Do I understand you correctly, Mr. Norton? You want plans for a building that will accommodate a thousand patients as well as nurses and physicians?”

“Precisely.”

“But have you reckoned the cost?”

“No; that’s your detail.”

“It will be nearly two million dollars.”

“Make it quite two millions, then. There’s luck in round numbers. Mr. Craig and you are expected to see that it all goes into the building and not into some contractor’s pocket. Good day, sir.” Norton turned to his secretary with one of his rare smiles.

“A good deal of money, perhaps you think, Craig, for a girl’s whim. And yet it may not be all whim. . . . When I was a lad a brother, crippled by a fall from a hayrack, although my elder by several years, was in my care until he died, a victim to poverty and the ignorance of a country surgeon. Such cases shall be less common, if I can bring it about. . . . What is it, boy?”

“Mr. Andrew Haven asks if he can see you.”

“Haven? Show him in at once. Wait a minute, Craig.”

In less than half that time Haven shuffled in, barely avoiding a fall over the Turkish rug at the threshold. Pie was apologetically effusive, but his chief cut him short without ceremony.

“Well, what result?”

“The Jamesons say that they will not sell at any price.”

Norton’s left hand clenched in an instant, and his eyes grew stern.

“They won’t, eh? Did you use all the arguments I recommended?”

“Yes, but they—pardon me, but they did—they said that they were perfectly able to conduct their own business in their own way, and rather than bury it in a syndicate, they would destroy it.”

“We’ll try and accommodate them.” He touched a button with a swift gesture.

“Ask Mr. Hastings to step here,” he said to the answering boy. Hastings was a sort of superior clerk who enjoyed his employer’s full confidence.

“Mr. Hastings, you were once in the hay, grain and cement business, I believe,” he said when the clerk appeared.

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you know this firm?” He handed a card to the subordinate on which was written an address.

“Yes, sir.”

“Secure a building near them, fill it with the best of everything the Jamesons carry, and undersell them twenty-five per cent. Meet every drop they make. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

Draw on the cashier for what money you want, and keep your own counsel. If you break them in a month, you get ten thousand dollars. For every month’s delay, you lose a thousand dollars of the bonus. Your salary will go on as usual, but don’t let me see you until your work is done. Good morning.”

Craig went back to his office marveling at the revelations of one brief hour. But in the light of what he had seen he could only feel that there must be some just cause for the crushing of the Jamesons.

CHAPTER VIII

THROWING DOWN THE GAUNTLET.

IT was not long before the newspapers of the day were exciting themselves and their readers with heavily displayed advance accounts of the great dinner that was to be given a select coterie of guests by John Peter Norton, iii honor of the victory of King Capital. It was agreed by all the prophetic scribes that no such dinner had ever beeii given as this was to be, and that probably emulation would be stifled for a long time to come.

There was a fine air of mystery over the whole thing that set the populace in a delightful state; no paper pretended to be able to give the complete details of the affair, and, consequently, all disagreed on most essential points. But they were unanimous in saying that the great figures of the metropolis and of the country were to be there, and that expense was absolutely out of the consideration. Pictures of Norton, his family, King Capital, “Doc” Bayles and “Muggsy” became as familiar as the advertisements of the newest soap, and long biographical articles of the “typical American sportsman,” plentifully bestrewn with the flowers of fancy, filled the pages of the Sunday journals.

The newspapers and Andrew Haven did not agree in one very important particular. That industrious henchman was careful to state in the tentative invitations he was commissioned by Norton to make, that the banquet was in honor of Count Sandstrom. As an emissary of this sort he was admirable; his family connections gave him the traditional right of go-between for the great, and his ingratiating, if superficial simplicity, brought him more success than a more straightforward man could possibly have attained.

Norton issued no formal invitations until thirty-six men of unquestioned eminence had signified their willingness to attend. It was no easy matter to get some of these, even Haven found, for acceptance would inevitably stamp Norton with their public endorsement, but the wily agent had one trump card in reserve when all else failed: the occasion was to be in honor of that thorough sportsman and best of losers, Count Sandstrom, and Messrs. So-and-So and Whatd’y’call’im— naming the two most prominent thus far enlisted —were sure to be present. To refuse under such conditions was certain to be construed as an affront to the Count, and none cared to figure in that light.

Haven appeared before his patron one morning in a particularly felicitous mood. His list of thirty-six had a little cross after every name.

“They’ve all accepted, Norton,” he chuckled. “I had a note from Entwistle this morning. He was hard to get—pardon me, but he was—the hardest. Said he’d consider the matter. I had to use diplomacy. I saw Van Renssalaer Low and rather hinted that Entwistle might not be invited. I knew they were to meet that night at the Lenoxes’.”

“And that Low would tell him that society was agog over the affair. Very clever, Andrew, very.” The little man beamed at this unqualified praise from his chief. He had often been censured just as heartily.

“Well, we’ve got them all,” said he, triumphantly.

“Of course we have,” returned Norton, “it was the thirty-six that did it. Restrict the opportunities for anything to a given numeral, not too large, and you arouse rivalry; when rivalry and curiosity combine, there is no resisting it. As for the latter element, the papers have done their work well.” “Thirty-six?” repeated Haven, thoughtfully. “You said there were to be forty-two covers.” “You are coming, too, aren’t you, Andrew? Or must I use some special sort of argument with your

“My—my dear Norton, surely you—”

“Very well, then, you accept. I thought you would. There are consequently, you and I, Craig and the guest.”

“Forty,” said Haven, counting on his fingers. “The other two, eh? Wait and see. Perhaps there’ll be another vacant chair—the noble guest still remains to be invited.”

Haven’s cheery countenance was transformed at a word.

“Yes, I know. I suppose I—”

“No, Andrew, your troubles are over,” said the other with a grim smile. “See here.”

He held up for Haven’s inspection a handsomely engraved card of invitation. Crossing a golden horseshoe were the American and German flags embossed in colors. The text was this:—

“You are respectfully invited to be present at a dinner to be given on Tuesday evening, August fourteen, in memory of the June meeting of the American Handicap Association at Oceanic and to meet—”

There then followed the names of the thirty-six selected men who were to give the banquet its especial tone. Haven rapidly went over the list with ever-increasing wonderment.

“But—but, I don’t see Count Sandstrom’s name,” he almost gasped.

“Why should you,” asked Norton, coolly, “that is his invitation. Here’s yours; you will not find your name there.”

“Why—why, then, they are all different?” “Precisely.”

“And you had thirty-six plates engraved?” “You are an excellent logician, but a poor mathematician, Haven. I had thirty-nine engraved, as you will see on a moment’s calculation.” “And you had them all made before you knew?” “When I begin a thing I usually carry it through successfully, Mr. Haven.”

“And—and Sandstrom?”

“He will be there,” replied the financier, with a calm assurance that could not but satisfy Haven on that score. Still there were things that perplexed him.

“There—there,” he repeated vacantly, “but where? I see nothing on the invitation.”

His patron handed him a smaller and plainer card. “This will accompany each invitation,” he said.

Haven read: “The guests will kindly assemble at or before 7.30 p. m., in the private car Barbarossa at the South Central Station of the L. I. & M. P. R. R.”

“Ah, I see,” exclaimed Haven with all the joy of a great discovery, “at the shore?”

“Your curiosity will lend zest to your appetite, Andrew, so I believe I won’t tell you.”

“But ‘Barbarossa’? Strange there should be a car by that name.”

“Haven, your density surprises me. There isn’t, but there will be. Ten days is a long time.”

On the evening of the fourteenth the splendid stable of John Norton near the Oceanic racecourse was a scene of peculiar and very unique activity. The great harness room had been cleared, and, instead of a chief trainer, the famous chef of the most celebrated restaurant in New York was in command. Under him was an army of cooks, servers and waiters, and his keen eye took in every detail of the complete culinary outfit that had come down in a car that morning. It had been said that no banquet could be served successfully outside the city, and “Christoforo” was here to give the lie to the assertion. He had been told by Norton to make the effort of his life, and the promise of a thousand-dollar special fee if he outdid his own celebrated self had a potent effect.

Clever decorators had transformed the stable loft into a place of exquisite beauty and brilliancy. The German and the American colors, in silk, covered the walls in festoons, caught up, here and there, by great golden horseshoes, while the double eagles of the Kaiser and the great seal of the United States glowed in colored lights at either end. Strange prismatic effects flashed from the ceiling like an incrustation of diamonds, while the table was a mass of rare flowers, costly crystal and burnished plate. Even the guests, hardened as they were to the magnificence of special dining, were aroused from their usual nonchalance as they entered the room.

It was a company that filled Andrew Haven with a glee that was almost visible. In its representation of the most powerful elements of New York life it exceeded anything within his remembrance, and he had gotten it together! If “John Peter” was elated, none could have suspected it under his mask of calm courtesy and complete self-possession. He knew that to betray the slightest gratification would be as disastrous as to the card player who holds a phenomenally brilliant hand.

The mayor of the city was a guest, as a matter of course, as well as the senior senator and the most famous congressman of the state. Norton wanted them to lend official status to the feast. But far above mere politicians he held the great princes of finance and industry, and they were all at hand. Had an earthquake suddenly swallowed the stables, he thought with satisfaction, the entire world would see a panic the like of which had never occurred since the days of Noah.

He saw at his board Van Renssalaer Cruger Low, far prouder of his descent than of his millions; Stuyvesant Lord, a railroad king whose boast it was that with a few strokes of his pen he could command the commerce of the country to stand still—a modern Joshua with a round, bullet head almost destitute of hair and an affectation of illiterate speech; Belmont Drexel, a great banker with branch houses in every part of the globe; Herbert Fish Wilson, the owner of a hundred immense retail stores in as many large cities; Biddle Jaffrey, whose private flag flew over two-thirds of the shipping of the country; Ward Neilson, the inventor and sole owner of the new light discs that had brought him many millions—a youngish, handsome, athletic man who had bested in a private bout the greatest pugilist of the day; Gibson Davies, keeper of the granaries of the west; Louis Rhinelander, head of the Allied Metal Trade; Evarts Choate Cleveland, the most brilliant of corporation lawyers; the others were of equal rank in their especial spheres. Only the arts and letters were unrepresented.

At the close of the banquet proper, a marvelously effective combination of German and American dishes, John Norton rose from his place at the head of the table. Someone, perhaps Haven, had called for a speech and it was forthcoming—as clearly foreordained as any decree of the fates.

‘‘Gentlemen,” began the host, “ you have called for a word from ‘the winner of the Handicap/ He is in his stall with a double portion of oats in honor of the occasion, and is doubtless by this time more speechless than usual. If I must speak for him, I must say first what he certainly would say were he given the opportunity: that is that to the gallant Barbarossa and his noble owner, to conquer whom it was an honor and a privilege, he extends a heartfelt greeting.”

“Good!” shouted half a dozen men, “very-neat—so do we.”,

“And now, gentlemen,” continued the speaker, “I offer this toast to be drunk standing: long life and happiness and every victory—save one—to our distinguished guest, Count Sandstrom, of Germany.”

With a shout of approval the guests rose to their feet and drank to the smiling nobleman— Norton in water, as usual. After a few more happy phrases, the speaker, suddenly throwing an impressive gravity into his voice, made the most careless of his hearers straighten into attention.

“Gentlemen,” said he, “this is a gathering of representative men. We are alone. Nothing that is said here to-night can be given to the outside world save through us. It is on my mind to speak frankly to you, if I may.”

“Of course you may—Go ahead, Norton—Let’s hear it,” were the cries around the table.

“I thank you. I realize that the idea of this gathering, with me at the head of the table, would have been laughed at as an impossibility not long ago. Yet we are here, which is one more proof that the impossible is always possible in certain contingencies. I realize, too, that this assembly of representative men of this and another nation” —and he bowed gravely to Count Sandstrom, seated at his right—“has further significance than its social side, and I thank you for the confidence it assures.”

At this clear declaration of Norton’s motive, the more conservative of his guests, mellow though they were with perfect food and the choicest of vintages, looked at one another in a sort of vague alarm. This then, was the construction that would be placed by all the world on their wining and dining with John Norton. But the trap had been sprung and there was no withdrawal. Craig, who had been a rather silent member of the party, felt a new admiration for the courage and coolness of his chief; he waited with intense interest to see what would come next from this extraordinary man.

“Nine years ago,” resumed Norton, “I came to this city a stranger. Perhaps even now you do not know as much of me as you should. Thirty-one years ago this month I told the farmer for whom I worked as a sort of superintendent that I should leave his employ after the harvest. He was astonished, asked what was wrong and offered me an increased salary. I thanked him, but said my determination was strong to cut out a furrow for myself.

“The next winter I spent in the study of modern agriculture and in prospecting. In the early spring I put some of the few hundreds I had left in a tract—immense, you would call it, but small out there—of arid land near the foot of a small chain of hills—mountains they would be termed in the east. The land was cheap because no one wanted it. I bonded more land for several miles on three sides of my territory. Those who were interested enough to pay any attention to what I was doing said I was crazy or a fool. Perhaps I was. While hunting in those hills two or three years previously, however, I had found several streams dashing down their sides whose steady flow the severest season of drought did not affect. The problem was to divert that water to my land.

“I thought of piping the water, but material was expensive and I had little money. What I did was to construct troughs of boards and run them over my fields. They were clumsy contrivances, and the people of the farms on the other side of the hills laughed at me. But the water was all that was needed. For centuries this land had been storing up fertilizing substances which needed only the magic touch of moisture to spring into enormous activity. On those arid acres I raised enough corn and grain in two years to pay every obligation, buy all my bonded land and hire a force of men to whom I gave employment all the year round. I bought and bought land till my acreage was far up in the hundreds of thousands.

“Then my rivals began to take notice of me. In the third year an attempt was made to destroy my work. One night I stood at the gates of my head reservoir with two or three faithful fellows and beat back a crowd of forty armed men. They invoked the law, but I beat them again. They tried to crush me commercially; I did crush them. I undersold them in the open market, and still made money. They fought hard, and when their means gave out, resorted to mortgages. It was my agents who lent them the money. I didn’t foreclose, for the loss of their property would have been as nothing compared with the thought that they were dependent on my mercy.’’

By this time every eye was intently fixed on the massive, determined face of the man who made so little of acknowledging his own vindictiveness, who, in his quiet, self-contained way, boasted of his own power. Such a speech at such a time not one of the assemblage had ever heard before.

‘‘Well, gentlemen,” went on the emotionless voice, “my farming days have long been over. From the field to the produce market was an easy step, and thence to stocks and bonds. You know my recent history well enough. I relate my early experiences from no desire for self-glorification, but simply to illustrate what I wish to impress upon you: that I do not undertake a venture in which I do not thoroughly believe, and that, when begun, the work is completed, cost what it may. Some of you are already allied with me; it is right that they should know my principles. Some of you may be my antagonists; I am willing that they should know me as I am. I believe that a great business enterprise successfully completed is a blessing to the world, and that if a thing is worth doing, it is worth a fight. Whether you stand shoulder to shoulder or face to face with me, you will find that I act as I speak.

“Gentlemen, I again propose the toast of our guest, Count Sandstrom.”

The effect of this dramatically abrupt transition from Norton’s bold statement of his methods and purposes to the complimentary mention of Count Sandstrom was strong with the guests. It was as if this rugged product of the western mountains and deserts had thrown the gauntlet in behalf of himself and America at the feet of the scion of centuries of European wealth.

If anything of the sort occurred to Count Sandstrom, he gave no sign. His answering speech was brief, courtly and gracious. He thanked America for its kindness, and hinted that he might some day return to contest the great prize that he had so nearly won. He even referred to his host’s entertaining story of his early struggles with a skilfully flattering phrase or two, declaring that the possessor of inherited wealth was indebted to the self-made man foran impressive lesson in manhood. He closed with a happily expressed wish for a continuation of the cordial relations between Germany and the United States.

There were little speeches by several of the other guests, cautious, courteous and meaningless. Then there walked into the room, at a preconcerted signal, two odd and rather uncomfortable figures. They were the thin “Doc” Bayles and his offspring “Muggsy.” As they dropped sheepishly into the two vacant chairs, a hearty round of applause was their portion, which they acknowledged by appreciative grins. Withal, there was a look of importance on their faces, as if they were the custodians of some tremendous secret.

Now the orchestra struck up “Hail to the Chief” and every light in the great room was suddenly extinguished. Then slowly the wall of the upper end slid back and there before the astonished eyes of the banqueters was revealed the figure of “King Capital” set in a massive golden frame and brilliantly lighted by cunningly concealed bulbs. So motionless was the beautiful animal that most of the spectators believed the picture a painted one, until “Muggsy” approached, when the horse whinnied his recognition.

The newspapers next morning gave much space and black type to the dinner, nor did they lose a single detail of the significance of Norton’s speech and the attendance of the great figures of the city. Some of these same great figures were mystified as to the origin of such unusual journalistic accuracy. They did not take into account, however, the industry and acumen of Mr. Andrew Haven.

CHAPTER IX

ON THE PALISADES.

ON a beautiful afternoon in early October a little party went to the Palisades of the Hudson on a pilgrimage that was to help bring a bit of the millennium to suffering little children. It was an oddly assorted group: Philip Craig, earnest, considerate, firm in his belief in the ultimate happiness of the world; Armisted, the architect, upright and downright in his rather insinuating way and something of a pessimist as to the motives of men; Rev. Mr. Bentley, the friend of sinners, the tenderly tolerant and gentle; Mrs. Norton, strong under her placid demeanor, and Helen, buoyant with the light-hearted joy of youth, easily turned from sunshine to shower and back to sunshine again.

Now as they stood on the splendid height, far above the broad band of blue that rippled under the mellow sun and flashed with its myriad commerce, the delight of life was strong within the girl, and Craig, too, caught the infection and was filled with a strange desire to laugh his gladness into the bracing air. Before them gleamed the towers of the teeming city; behind, all the riotous tints of autumn on tree and bush and turf. Here was to be built “Bentley-on-Hudson” upon land that Partridge, the real estate king, had finally succeeded in securing for the hospital; here were to centre all the plans of Helen Norton, in whose company Craig had been thrown by the force of circumstance. If he wished that the building be slow, it was not that he was indifferent to the needs of the poor, but rather that the good red blood in his veins answered to the nearness of a beautiful and enthusiastic young girl and would not rest until its call had been satisfied.

“It is a lovely spot,” said Mrs. Norton, as she scanned the horizon from north to south. “How the poor little things will enjoy it, will they not, Mr. Bentley?’’

“Enjoy it, my dear lady, they will positively think they are in heaven—when the pain will let them,” he added, sadly. “But we shall banish pain some day. perhaps, and then—”

“Then, Mr. Bentley,” broke in Armisted, “half the joy of your life will have vanished because your occupation will be half gone. And the poor themselves will lose all sense of gratitude; what an unsatisfactory state of things that would be.”

“But there will still be sorrow and sin,” said the little clergyman gently. “My work will remain with me till I die; it’s the wisest dispensation.”

“Well, every man to his taste, I suppose,” returned the architect, pulling out his sketchbook and dropping to his knees on the ground, as he ran his eye along the surface in every direction. “Just at present, however, we must fix our energies on the forthcoming hospital. First of all I want to find an old man who lives near here. I have been told that he was a quarryman in his young days when it was proposed to cut down these palisades and when that gross indignity to nature’s face was prevented by the people. I want his opinion as to the character of the ground for the excavation.”

“I will go, too, I believe,” said Mrs. Norton. “I am a bit tired and I’ll rest while you are talking.”

“And I, too,” observed Mr. Bentley. “I am not tired, but I would like to see your old quarry-man.” The good man would not confess that he went with the thought that there might be some form of trouble in the quarryman’s house that he could relieve.

“Now, Mr. Craig,” exclaimed Helen, as she sat down on the soft yellow grass, “we are all alone in the world—or rather out of the world; there is the actual world, that immense city over there. At least, my father says so.”

“A hard and relentless thing the world would be if that were all of it, Miss Norton. Your father meant it as a figure of speech.”

“A speech of figures, you mean,” returned the girl with a laugh. “It’s money, money, money, over there. Why don’t they pave the sidewalks with gold, and be done with it? Ah, how much better this”—and she turned and pointed to the glowing gifts of autumn at their backs. High up on a rock maple was a shaft of crimson that caught her eye at once.

“What exquisite leaves! Cannot we get them? Let’s go and see.”

She pouted when they found the flaming branch much too high for them to grasp.

“Why are the beautiful things always out of reach—in nature, I mean? Of course my father’s money—but this is different. You don’t know, you inconsiderate maple, that I’m the daughter of the rich John Peter Norton.” And she shook her fist in mock indignation at the offending tree.

“We’ll have that branch, Miss Norton,” said Craig, gaily. “I haven’t much money, but I can climb.”

Up the trunk Craig swarmed in the best style of his school days. A brief tug at the coveted branch, and the deed was done; yet not all done, for on the way down the young man’s coat was caught by a stout twig and torn royally. He dropped to the ground and ruefully examined the rent.

Helen laughed at his serious face, and, so well attuned were their two natures that day, he laughed in unison. Then the girl deftly entwined a little chaplet of the brilliant leaves, and made him stoop while she placed it on his head.

“The reward of valor, sir,” she exclaimed. “He who tears his coat for his lady’s favor is a brave man, indeed. Rise, Sir Philip, and—no, no, I didn’t say you might kiss my hand.”

“But that is the invariable custom when one is knighted,” returned the young man, in no wise abashed. The wine of October is a seductive potion, and Philip Craig was drinking deep with each indrawn breath. He did not analyze his emotions, nor would he have cared to; sufficient for his own gladness were the sky and color and the nearness of a naive and very delightful girl.

“Oh, well, if that’s part of the ceremony, never mind,” she replied merrily. “We may as well have our sport now, for when October comes again how different it will be just here: a great building filled with poor little things with withered legs and crooked backs and aching wounds. I can see the long rows of tiny white cots and the pretty nurses. And, oh, the smell of medicines, and the operating room with its dreadful knives! The dear babies. But it’s all to cure and help them, isn’t it? So the picture is pleasant, after all.”

Her old vivacity was quick to return as they went back toward the road. She was like a fawn to which bodily repose is impossible for long.

“I dare you to race to the road,” she exclaimed, suddenly. “Come on!”

Then there was a wild and laughing dash, into which Craig entered with so much abandon that he forgot the usual rules of gallantry and actually beat his pretty rival by a yard. But she, having reached the fence, vaulted lightly over.

“I win,” she cried, her golden hair flying about her face in dainty confusion. “The goal was this side the fence, sir.”

Craig’s rising protest against this bit of feminine sharp practice was stilled by the sight of a rapidly approaching road wragon drawn by a handsome cob. The driver was a large, florid, overdressed woman whose most salient points seemed to be a black, befeathered hat of enormous proportions, a pair of beady black eyes and earrings of very large and aggressive diamonds. She stopped opposite the two young people with such suddenness as to drag her steed back upon his hind legs.

“Ah,” she exclaimed in the loud and metallic voice one would expect from such an ensemble, “it is you, Philip. I thought I couldn’t be mistaken in a face, although I haven’t seen you since you were a boy. You don’t remember me, I suppose.”

Craig struggled politely to reproduce the woman’s face in the chambers of his mind, but failed, and admitted it.

“Well, I’ve held you in my arms many, many times—when he was a baby, miss. If you’ve forgotten me, Philip, I don’t believe you’ve forgotten Geoffrey, my husband.”

“Mrs. Fairbrother?”

Craig’s voice had a touch of surprise that was quite involuntary. This loud, too gorgeous creature the wife of the simple-minded plain old fellow who was the friend of his Puritanical father? It seemed an anomaly too great for belief. However, she had said it, and he accepted the situation.

“My husband,” said Mrs. Fairbrother, with a note of contempt in her voice, “wastes more time than ever at Angus Craig’s house talking a lot of rot about how men make money. If he saved his breath and put it into work, he’d have less reason to prate about the ‘inequality that money makes.’ If I talked and talked, and never did anything, I’d be as poor as he, but, thanks to my common sense, I know how to pick up a dollar here and there. The capitalists, like old Dives, don’t gobble all the crumbs, and if Lazarus is sharp, he can get a good many of ’em.”

Rumor credited this rather remarkable woman with collecting a great many of the crumbs and even very much larger pieces of the banquet of wealth. She was a shrewd speculator of the most catholic sort; nothing that held forth the promise of quick profit was foreign to her. Whether it was a ship, a milk route, a parcel of land, a block of stock or an abandoned church made no difference to her so long as there was advantage in the buying and selling. She and the nimble dollar danced merrily together, each tireless in the performance of the combined duty and pleasure. She was a living contradiction of the assumption that the clever are usually silent, for she had all the volubility of her more artless husband. Fluency never fails the speech of those whose chief topic of conversation is themselves, and Mrs. Fairbrother launched forth into a wordy account of what she had done that day, from her uprising until the present moment.

Craig was embarrassed, Helen half amused, by this torrent of self-revelation. He tried to end it by various conversational devices, but it was like trying to stem a mountain stream with a dam of bark. On it swept in full flow of intimate exposure.

“I came up here to buy some lots of land as an investment,” said Mrs. Fairbrother, very loudly. “I had looked ’em over a year ago, but like a fool I thought they were too high and didn’t take ’em —felt sure they’d go lower, you know. Now I find that a grasping moneybags named Morton or Norton or something of that sort has bought up the whole territory, it would seem. Not a smell left for an honest woman who wants to make an honest penny. It’s enough to make one sick.”

Craig imagined that Helen had flushed ever so slightly at this aspersion of her father and the hospital scheme. She had found a bit of grass by the roadside, and, true to her instincts, was making friends with the cob, which whinnied his appreciation and allowed her to kiss his velvety muzzle, although in general a rather ill-natured beast. Craig wondered if she had caught the woman’s remarks, and what she would do if they became more offensive, as they very likely might.

“Well, Mrs. Fairbrother,” said he, pleasantly, “the world is large, and I take it there are plenty of other opportunities to buy and sell land. They tell me that out Montauk Point way—”

“Montauk Point? Bah! A cold-blast desert. But here—oh, if I could only get at him!” she almost screamed, returning to the charge with more vigor than before. “Pd just give him a piece of my mind. To come along and buy up property with his millions from beneath the very noses of other people who have just as much right to it as he has, and just when I had a chance to clear a cool couple of thousand by selling the land again! But this Morton or Norton, or whatever his name is, has to step in and cheat me out of my profit. The impudent moneybags!”

Her anger rose higher and higher at the recital of her woes, undoubtedly embittered by the thought that her own lack of foresight had been her undoing, and she gave her horse a vicious cut that made him spring forward in mute indignation. With a nod to Craig she dashed off down the road in a great cloud of dust.

Helen turned toward the young man with amusement and wrath contending for expression on her face. But her good sense conquered.

“Rather a decisive person, your friend; eh, Mr. Craig?”

“Spare me, Miss Norton. She’s no friend of mine, I’ll swear. Simply because her husband— may the fates preserve him—is a crony of my father’s gives her no credentials from me. But wasn’t she—immense?”

They both laughed heartily at the recollection of the outraged feelings of the big-voiced woman, and the incident was closed. Then the witchery of the sky and air resumed its sway, and they chatted gaily of the many trifles that youth finds in plenty to talk about To Craig, at least, this experience was absolutely new, and he gave himself up to its delicious mastery as a novitiate to a seductive drug. Now and then some waking self-consciousness would ask him if this was really Philip Craig, the sober, hard-working man of business, who was talking to a young girl as if there were nothing in the world but the flame and spice of October. Helen was her own exuberant self, he felt sure, but he? He pursued his self analysis no further, but let himself float on the pleasant tide of destiny. He had inherited something of his father’s belief in foreordination, and when fate and inclination go hand in hand, the rest is easy.

At last the appearance of Mrs. Norton and the others warned Craig that this bright day was about to end. The mother looked keenly at her daughter’s radiant face and at the no less joyous countenance of Philip. If she read anything there, she kept her counsel for a long time afterwards.

They were a merry party as they dashed down the river in the swift Norton launch, stopping only to land Armisted and Rev. Air. Bentley at their destinations. The hospital plans took more definite shape during this ride than ever before, and Helen went home happy in the anticipation of telling her father what a grand success the new institution was bound to be.

But Craig, as he lay awake at night much longer than was usual to his well-regulated life, found that the thoughts of the hospital were crowded into oblivion by the visions of tender, blue eyes, sunny hair, a rippling laugh and all the attributes of charming femininity which had hitherto been to him as a sealed book. Just before sleep conquered him he drowsily told himself what a lucky fellow he was to be chosen to work in co-operation with a girl whose name was Helen.

CHAPTER X

A MAN AND HIS CASTLE.

VERY early in his career as John Peter Norton’s private secretary, Philip Craig decided that his title and his duties were paradoxical. Indeed, the clerical and technical work as assistant to the magnate was almost entirely handed over to a middle aged stenographer of methodical ways and reliable discretion. Craig himself was Norton’s confidential agent in a great variety of affairs that sent him out into the world and brought him in touch with men whose mere acquaintance was of extraordinary value. He was the avant courier of every new scheme of the millionaire, and he confessed to himself, in his occasional midnight introspections, that he liked this latest turn of fortune’s wheel. Nor was there for him any of that deprecatory feeling common to mankind when a life work is a thing of delight; he would have scorned any assumption that he was getting more than his deserts, for he knew that “John Peter” was one who never tolerated the slightest sentiment in business matters. He paid for no more than he received, and Craig was certainly very useful. His clear head and unemotional mind made him a most admirable investigator for his busy chief.

“Examine into this thing, Philip,” Norton said one day during the first summer, when Francois Deschapelles, an inventor with an almost unintelligibly rapid speech, had spent a fruitless hour in the capitalist’s office over drawings and a working model which he carried in what appeared to be a cross between a safe and a Gladstone bag. “If it is what he says it is, it will tear a big hole in present commercial methods. You’ve got a good head for getting at the bottom of things. If you recommend it, I’ll go into the thing with Deschapelles.”

Craig went over to a little cove on the New Jersey coast that had been entirely surrounded by a high wooden fence. There he saw a practical craft, in miniature, whose evolutions amazed and delighted him. Through his urgent advice Norton obtained control of the patent.

The supervision of such things as this, together with the hospital work, kept the young man pretty actively engaged, and yet he found that he had more spare time than had ever before fallen to him? When winter came he devoted this leisure to the improvement of the aesthetic side of his nature. He was not long in discovering his deficiencies in the fine arts, music and the drama; it dawned upon him that the knowledge of the printed page can never make the rounded man. Sunshine must come to grain or fruit or flower as well as the soberer earth and rain, and intellectual warmth was what he had always lacked.

Sometimes his actual ignorance of the more delicate sides of education was a source of great embarrassment to him, as once when he casually remarked to Helen Norton that he had not seen the great actor, Farrell.

“Not seen Farrell?” she exclaimed. “Why, I thought everybody had seen him.”

It had pained him to feel outside the pale even of this rather unsophisticated girl’s experience, and his face revealed the fact.

“Pardon me,” she said quickly. “I had forgotten that father told us you have been a hard student, and have had no opportunity for such frivolities.”

But “frivolities” or not, he found himself, somewhat to his own surprise, in a stall that very night at the State Theatre, one of the three in the metropolis subsidized by the government. After that he was a frequent visitor to the best playhouses, a Shakespearian cycle at the Comus particularly attracting him, with its bi-weekly presentation of some great comedy or tragedy.

For music, too, he developed an unexpected taste and liking. Nor was he, as one might have thought, an adherent of the somewhat antiquated and quiet methods of Wagner, Tschaikowsky and Richard Strauss. On the contrary, he accepted at once the “new tonality,” as it was called, and what some of the gentlemen of the ancient regime were pleased to term “barbaric and brutal noise,” was to him a delight to the ear and the senses. He read much in musical history and was amused and surprised to find almost the exact words applied to Beethoven, Berlioz, Sclniman and Wagner by the classicists of their day. He found that all new art is “caviar to the general” and that the hooted of to-day is the adored of to-morrow.

One Sunday night in February when he had planned to go to the first performance of a new religious opera, the hunting up of the text in the little Bible of his boyhood suddenly brought before him the face of his father, and he thought with a pang of self-reproach how little he had seen of him during the winter. Although never made to feel very welcome in the cottage, he determined to-night to forego the music and try, at least, to enact the part of a dutiful son.

It was bitter weather as he came out of the great apartment house where he lived. A howling wind tore around the gulfs between the tall buildings, dashing a needle-like sleet in the faces of those who ventured to battle with the blast. The pavements and streets themselves were, of course, clear, thanks to the great network of steam-pipes that lay near the whole surface of the city; further out, however, Philip met a thick, wet covering of snow as he stepped from his car, and he slipped and stumbled as he went, quite unused to this sort of walking.

As he approached his father’s house he was surprised to see that many of the gaunt buildings around it had either been razed or were in process of destruction. The desolation of the scene was complete. Not a human being beside himself was stirring on the deserted street; the tiny cottage, standing there in the midst of the ruin, buffeted by the storm and ghostly white with snow, only accentuated the dreariness of the picture. Philip’s throat tightened as he thought of the saddened man who dwelt in that region and in that house all alone. He noticed that the only light in the cottage was a feeble gleam, now and then effaced by the fierce waves of snow, in the second story. He feared his father might be ill.

Silentlv he made his way upstairs and to the now well-remembered room that had been his mother’s. The sound of Angus’ voice, like the monotone of a litany, hushed the greeting that rose to his lips. What he saw made him shudder, despite his good blood and nerves.

By the dim light of a candle, the old man was talking to something in the chair that had been the favorite of his dead wife. To that and to other articles associated with her he was pourine forth a pitiful plaint about his broken home and the threat to tear it from its foundation stones.

“An’ they say we must go out into the warrld, you an’ me, an’ again seek a bidin’ place. Oh, the cruelty of the reech, the flinty hearts that wad drive us aboot from hearth-stane to hearth-stane till we dee. We’ll gang, if so be ’tis written, my ain dear heart, but till then we’ll fight; aye, fight— fight!”

His voice rose into a wild scream of defiance, from which the shrill yell of the wind was scarcely to be distinguished. Philip could stand no more.

“Father,” he called very gently. His voice had a tenderness born of sudden remorse and pity; it was like the voice of a woman.

“Eh, what?” said Angus, casting his glance about with a sudden exaltation. The light of a great joy shone on his thin face. “Eh?”

“Father,” said Philip once more, louder, but as full of kindness. This time he was heard distinctly.

“Ah. . . . It’s you yersel’, Mary, come back to the lonely mon in his darrk hour. ‘Father!’ That’s what ye used tae ca’ me after bairnie Philip cam’ tae us. Ye pity me to-night, dearie, I ken, an’ so ye speak tae gi’ me strength tae bear the burden we a’ must tak’ up, some time. Aye, lass, we’ll bear them thegither, now that ye have come tae Angus. God bless ye for’t, God bless ye.”

Tears streamed down his seamed cheeks as he fell on his knees before the chair and grasped its inanimate arms with his trembling hands. Philip could not find it in his heart to interrupt such a communing with the spirit of the dead past; he felt that it would be like the profanation of a prayer, and he went quietly down the stairs and out into the furious night, where he halted like a sentinel before the cottage, that he might know by the light when his father should come down. As he stood there a defect in his own nature was suddenly revealed to him. Might he not, like Angus, be possessed of a surface coldness that belied the warm depths within? Had he not been unappreciative of that very father’s benefits toward him? After all, it was the curt command, “Shift for yersel’ ” that was the foundation stone of his present fair fabric in life. A new affection arose for the lonely man he had just seen laying bare the inmost recesses of a loving soul. He would make amends, he thought, not only hereafter, but now, in this stormy night so aptly typifying the surges of emotion within that tiny dwelling.

After a little he saw the flicker of light fade away from the front windows, and he knew that his father was coming down stairs. He went inside to the sitting room, and was there when the older man appeared.

A great and inevitable reaction from his tender exaltation had set in for Angus. He even felt ashamed of his passionate outburst, and he was pettishly suspicious of the son’s presence in the house, and resented it as an intrusion.

“How long hae ye been in this room?” he asked, sharply.

“I just came in, as you see,” said Philip, pointing to the snow on his shoulders.

“Weel, ye don’t come so muckle often that ye need come oot such a nicht as this.”

An inauspicious beginning, surely, for the interchange of olive branches. But the son’s resolution was firm against the well-remembered crabbedness.

“Well, father, I know that,” he returned, “but to-night somehow I—well, I want to say to you that I feel I haven’t always been the dutiful son I might have been. You—you understand?” “Dutiful? Dinna ye worrit aboot that. Ye were dutiful enow tae tak’ the hint I gaed ye that gin ye took up wi’ a plutocrat, ye’er room was better than ye’er coompany.”

“Well, father, I—”

“We’ll not haggle over it. The warrld’s wider than life is lang, fortunately. Gang ye’er ain way. It’s weel ye cam’ tonicht, however, if ye wanted tae see the auld place as it is; they threaten they’ll tear it doon aboot my ears.”

“They? Who?”

“The vultures who’ll have nae nest but this. The sharks o’ capital, who wad swallow a home into their damned maws. The greedy priests o’ Mammon, who wad offer up ilka honest heart on their sacrileegious altars. Mon, Philip, I say tae ye that—”

“But who are they, father?” broke in the young man. He was becoming rather impatient of this seriatim invective. If his father really had a grievance, he wanted the facts instead of rhetoric. “Who are they, and what do they say?”

Then Angus told him of the new threat he had received; how written notice had been sent him to the effect that if he did not sell out to the promoters of the new manufactory at his own price, he would be forced to leave by legal means.

“It can’t be done, father,” exclaimed Philip, warmly, “there’s no warrant whatever for such proceeding.”

“Sae I thoucht, but there was summat in the paper aboot the terms of an auld lease back o’ my title by which I could be deespossessed. I dinna ken.”

“Let me see the notice.”

Angus fumbled in the pocket of his black coat for a moment, in vain.

“Aye, to be sure,” he said, with almost a smile at his own forgetfulness, “I gave it tae Geoffrey last nicht.”

“To Fairbrother?”

“Yes; he has a friend, ane of those lawyer bodies, and he’s gaen tae him to-day tae ask aboot it. But I dinna think he’ll try tae get here in this storm.”

“’How long did they give you?” pursued the son, now thoroughly interested in the case. There must be some tremendous influence back of the attempt to oust his father, he thought. He wondered if he could not enlist Norton’s help against the promoters; then he knew that the case was hopeless, for Angus’ life could be made unendurable in the cottage, even should he be able to maintain his position there. He pitied the old man’s distress, though he could not enter into it; for him the place was no treasure house of pleasant memories.

“How long did they give you?” he asked, kindly.

“Twa months, or sae.”

“Oh, then, it isn’t so bad. You’ll have time to look about and get a good location with the money you receive.”

Angus Craig’s meagre frame stiffened with anger, and he passed a hand through his shock of hair with a swift movement of irascibility. That his own flesh and blood should so fail to comprehend him was as embittering, almost, as the onslaught against his home.

“Look aboot?” he shouted. “Gude location? Money? An’ ye think I’d sell, do ye? Then it’s mickle ye ken of ye’er ain faither. No, I’ll not sell. If I gang, they’ll have tae drag me oot. I’ll shoot the first mon who dares cross my threshold when I forbid. Ilka mon’s house is his castle, they used tae say years agane. I’ll show ’em it’s ower true the day. I’ll—”

The dashing jingle of sleigh bells, subsiding into a fugitive tinkle as their wearer stopped in front of the cottage, interrupted the fiery flow of Angus’ tirade. A moment later the burly figure of Geoffrey Fairbrother plunged into the room, his round face aglow with travel and excitement. From without came the coarse, strident voice of a woman.

“Hurry now, Geoffrey; this horse is worth money and he can’t stand out here in the cold.”

Angus grasped his visitor by the hand and fairly dragged him to a chair by the lamp on the table. There Geoffrey attempted to explain the presence of his wife, whom he had met driving home and who generously offered to take him to his destination, but he was cut short by the anxious Scotchman.

“What did the lawyer mon say, Geoff? Must I gang?”

Fairbrother waved a paper in the air as if it had been a triumphant banner.

“Here ye are,” he exclaimed, jubilantly. “He wrote it down on the bottom of your paper of eviction.”

Craig seized the sheet with nervous energy and held it close to his eyes. But his spectacles were missing, and he could make nothing of the writing. He thrust the paper back into Fairbrother’s hands.

“Read it, mon,” he commanded. “Don’t stand there gaping like a fu’ moon. For God’s sake read it!”

“He’s as good a lawyer as there is,” prefaced Geoffrey for the benefit of Philip.

“Read, mon, read.”

Then Fairbrother began, in slow, ponderous fashion, prolonging the words and making little pauses between sentences to heighten the effect of his delivery. Thus ran the opinion:

“ This notice is bravado. If Craig does not choose to sell, he need not. Real estate cannot be seized by private parties under any pretext whatever of public good. Only the state can do so under the right of eminent domain. Craig’s title I have had looked up, and it is perfectly sound. (Signed) Nathaniel Wentworth!’ ”

No courier bringing news of victory to his general could ever have effected a greater change in a man than that which came upon Angus Craig at his friend’s report. He arose from his chair to his full height, and there was a something in his face that seemed almost supernatural in its light of joy. He took the paper from Geoffrey, folded it reverentially and put it in his pocket. Philip’s expressed desire to see it met with a cold denial; the document was too precious for any other scrutiny, and since he had won, what need of further examination? He buttoned his coat tightly about him and strode to the window. He stood there for a moment, as if in defiance of all the elements of evil, seen and unseen, that were outside his home.

“Noo let them come on,” he said, with a ring of exultation the son had never heard in his voice before, “we’re ready, the cot and me. They thoucht tae bully Angus Craig, did they? Fools, fools a’, blinded by the greed o’ gowd!”

CHAPTER XI

ON THE SEA LION.

ON a brilliant afternoon in waning May the passengers of a monster incoming ocean liner were filled with curiosity at the gala appearance of New York Harbor. A flotilla of elaborately decorated steam yachts, excursion boats and sailing craft was making its way toward the outer side of Staten Island, the tooting of whistles and the screaming of sirens adding to the noisily festive flavor of the day.

Immense barges, filled with exuberant children, were proceeding in stately array, each enlivened by the strains of a brass band, whose music threatened to be extinguished altogether by the snorting and puffing of the tugs that provided motive power. Behind these was a fleet of rowboats whose occupants were all pulling as lustily as if some great prize were to be the reward of their exertions.

The liner’s people hailed a passing tugboat to get information. “What’s up to-day?” shouted some one through a megaphone to a grimy fellow who had just emerged from the engine-room of the little steamer. “What’s all the excitement? Is this a holiday?”

A look of contemptuous pity filled the streaked face of the tugman. “Holiday? Naw! It’s Norton’s shindy. Didn’t yer know that?”

Had the passengers been supplied with the daily papers, they would have been well prepared for the prodigality of flags and music and noise. For days the city journals had been swelling with ‘‘exclusive” accounts of the mysterious something that had been building in the Staten Island yards for months. But spite of columns of conjecture and a vast number of excellent photographs of the exterior of the yard, not much in the way of facts had been given the public. It was known that three gangs of men had been working day and night on the strange machine which John Peter Norton had been heard to say would revolutionize the commerce of the world; that the same financier was backing the scheme and that the inventor was one Francois Deschapelles, a Frenchman. Beyond that even the most astute journalists were all at sea.

Strict military discipline had prevailed at the mystic enclosure. Cordons of guards perpetually surrounded the place, and no one was admitted save the workmen, who lived in a species of barracks within a high stockade. In general they were a faithful lot, and kept sealed lips; the few who were occasionally overhauled in their cups by the “sleuthhounds of the press” had little to tell, owing to the fact that each gang worked only on a small section of the craft, which was divided by closely fitting walls into a dozen impenetrable parts.

Some of the newspapers, despairing of getting any authentic information about the machine that was being built by the Norton millions, hired learned and verbose scientific men to write treatises upon its probable character and its chances of success. The savants varied greatly in their guesses. One affirmed that the affair must be an aerial car on the aeroplane principle; another that it was a steel railroad train of tubular shape intended to run on ball-bearings in a semi-circular groove and propelled by thermo-electrical power. This writer proceeded to argue most convincingly that the speed developed would be so great that human life could not be sustained, consequently the train must be intended solely for the transportation of merchandise, and its machinery would be so constructed as to require no attention after it had been set in motion. Violent quarrels arose among the scientific gentlemen, and the brochures published during that memorable spring were long held in high esteem.

Nor did “John Peter’s” invitations, issued personally to a few selected guests and, through the newspapers, to the great public of New York, throw much light on the matter. They contained a simple announcement that on the twenty-first of May, at 3.30 p. m., would occur the “first public trial of M. Francois Deschapelles’ new merchandise transportation machine.” Norton himself had furnished the hundreds of decorated steamers and barges for the free use of such of the populace as cared to become his guests. Thousands accepted, as a matter of course.

The financier’s personal party was small enough to be comfortably accommodated on his splendid steam yacht, the Sea Lion. He smiled as he reflected that only a year ago that marvelous exemplar of aquatic luxury had been the wonder of an hour, its supreme beauty of form praised by poets and pictured by artists, and its regal splendor of fittings held up as a model by decorators all over the world. Now another marvel was filling the popular mind, and the Sea Lion was, as it were, a servant to the new sensation.

On the shaded decks of the yacht was one of Norton’s favorite assemblages. “I like variety in people, as well as in food,” he was wont to say, “and I believe it is rather more necessary.”

Certainly his guests of to-day were sharply individualized. Beside Mrs. Norton, Helen, Craig and the inevitable Haven, were the Rev. Mr. Bentley, childishly happy in his day’s outing; Biddle Jaffrey, the shipping magnate; Stuyvesant Lord, the great railroad man, the hairs of whose head could now be numbered by a child; Ward Neilson, the disc millionaire, handsome as an Apollo, and markedly solicitous of Helen Norton’s comfort; Herbert Fish Wilson, the dry-goods potentate, and a score of others who had figured in the “Handicap” dinner, and were by this time quite willing to be known as “John Peter’s” friends. And, most observed of all, the short, solid figure, the flaxen moustachios and the blue eyes of Count Sandstrom. His presence occasioned some surprise, for few knew he was in the country.

“Well, ef there ain’t Sandstrom,” exclaimed Lord, with his inexplicable pretense of illiteracy. “Didn’t know the cuss was ’round. Wouldn’t expect to have seen him here, anyway. What’s in the wind, I wonder?”

“Nothing much,” replied Jaffrey, who was sitting near, “except that Sandstrom and Norton have been on very good terms ever since that banquet, and that his noble lordship came over on purpose to see this festivity. I understand that Norton has let him in on several good things.”

“H’m,” growled the other, “my advice to John Peter’d be to play pretty darn foxy with that feller. He’s a deep customer, and I hear he means to be the money boss of Europe as his dad was before him.”

“I don’t think we need worry about Norton,” returned Jaffrey, quietly, with a rather contemptuous glance at the ornamental foreigner. . . . “Hullo, Price.”

The salutation was for a large man whose plenteous flesh seemed illy attached to his frame, so exceedingly did it shake when he walked. His heavy jowls always appeared to be on the point of injury from his high collar, and the stubby black mustache he affected did little to conceal a thick and sensual mouth. The light of great energy and shrewdness, however, shone from his handsome brown eyes, and his forehead would have delighted a phrenologist by its nobility and symmetry. “Below his nose Price is a satyr,” someone had once said; “above, a Newton.” This dividing-line was also present in his conduct of life; he could do incredibly mean things, and he could also perform acts of real self-sacrifice and honor.

Such was Orville W. Price, the most famous and successful editor in America, and the proprietor of the “American News,” a paper published in twenty-two cities every morning and evening in the year. “A paper for the people” was its motto and subhead, printed so large that the most casual runner could but read. Its circulation reached into the millions and its influence with the masses was more potent than that of the church itself.

He was proud of his paper, proud of himself and proud of his editorial page, which he declared was worth more to any given project than all the orators the country could boast.

The Rev. Mr. Bentley, whose plans had often been materially assisted by Price’s paper, spied the editor from afar and came trotting up to the group, which Norton. Haven and Craig had also joined, kindness exuding from every moral pore.

“A delightful occasion, Mr. Price, I am sure; and one that means so much for humanity,” he said.

“I fear I do not quite follow you, Mr. Bentley,” returned the editor, pompously.

“Why, sir, if this new ship does what Deschapelles claims for it, will it not be a great public blessing?”

“Ahem. Possibly.” He paused as if deliberating some great question of state. “Possibly.”

The little clergyman mildly insisted on his point. He was no weakling, even in the presence of so great a man as Price.

“But will it not. by reducing time and cost of transportation, cheapen all articles used by the poor?”

“Possibly—ahem. You know, Mr. Bentley, that invention, the child of necessity, often has a progeny that takes back to the grandmother. I— and when I say I you realize, of course, that I mean the News,—I cannot, I say—ahem—cannot endorse anything that threatens the interests of the workingman, the—ahem—the reduction of the working force, the—in short, the sacrifice of the individual to the good of the majority. My paper, you know, is with, of and for the people.”

“And for the people’s cents, eh, Mr. Price?” observed Norton, quizzically.

“Yes, sir,” returned the editor, in no wise disconcerted, “an engine of progress must be, so to speak, fed, nourished by the mites of the public, given in exchange for instruction and counsel combined judiciously with the presentation of the topics of the day.”

“He certainly looks well nourished,” observed Haven in a loud aside to Craig, who was listening to this discussion with an interest he himself scarcely realized. This was his first view of the celebrated newspaper owner, and he determined to study him carefully to find out, if he could, the sources of his immense power.

“Now if this Frenchman, this—ahem—Deschapelles, could present any valid argument to show that his invention is for the benefit of the individual, I would be pleased to hear it. I would allow him space in the News, and he would be granted the privilege, I may say, of affixing his signature to his article. The News, sir, aims to be fair in every controversy.”

“You’re very kind, Price,” said John Norton, drily. “I think I see M. Deschapelles coming this way now; we’ll let him speak for himself.”

CHAPTER XII

THE LAUNCHING.

M FRANCOIS DESCHAPELLES differed from the majority of inventors in that he was not a self-assertive man. The spark of genius that undoubtedly lay within him never blazed up into visible pyrotechnics; in fact, he was timid to a degree, and had a habit of shrinking from any unpleasantly decisive word as from a blow. There were no graces in his tall, lean body, while his sallow face, thin wisps of dark hair over the lips, beak-like nose surmounted by heavy gold spectacles, and high forehead encircled with queer little curls, formed an ensemble that the deceived onlooker generally mistook for the face of avarice. Nothing could have been further from the truth, for Deschapelles, to do him justice, cared only for the success of his invention, and not at all, at this time, for the money that might accrue therefrom.

The Frenchman was excessively nervous and excitable, and irritatingly voluble when once he had begun to talk. This was not loquacity, but the result of a dread lest his voice should run down, as it were, before it had fulfilled its task. How he had ever succeeded in impressing the value of his machine upon Norton was a mystery to those who did not know of the infinite tact and patience of Philip Craig in getting the truth from a tornado of words. The secretary had even compelled the inventor to write in French a succinct and comprehensible treatise on his achievement. Deschapelles had sense enough to know that to Craig was due the whole fact of to-day’s launching, and he was grateful in a tempestuous fashion that irritated rather than pleased the young man.

For some time, as the Sea Lion proceeded toward the yard where to him was the centre of the universe, the well-spring of life itself, Deschapelles had been pacing the deck in actual agony. The possibility—he was inclined to say the probability —of failure had made of him a moral coward. He had no valid reasons for his fears, for his working models had been eminently successful; yet now that the supreme test had come, now that the eyes of the whole civilized world were fixed on the creature of his brain, he was afraid to stand the issue.

His very presence on the yacht at this moment, instead of at the yard, was the result of this gloomy foreboding. In fact, he had been abjectly running away from the trial when Norton, on his way to embark, had seen him rushing for an up-river steamer, and had dragged him back to duty by main force. Disgusted by such a pusillanimous exhibition, the capitalist had not spoken to him during the entire trip. Now, as the inventor approached the group of his friends, he looked at him with a species of wonderment that such men could actually exist.

“Well, Deschapelles,” he said, as kindly as he could, after a sweeping introduction to the party had been made, “have you mustered up pluck enough to face the music of your own making?”

The inventor shifted uneasily from one foot to another and spasmodically twisted his puny mustache. He looked piteously from face to face as if in search of moral support.

“Je ne sais pas,” he stammered at length. “I do not—I cannot—oh, mon Diet Norton’s thin lips set in a straight line, and his eyes dilated. He forgot entirely the presence of his guests.

‘‘You infernal coward,” he exclaimed, ‘‘at the very brink of success you show the white feather!”

The Frenchman started back as if struck by a lash.

“Ah, Monsieur Norton and gentlemen, my nairves! Zey are—what you call him?—all unstrung.”

“Nerves!” ejaculated “John Peter” with supreme contempt, “here, take hold of my hand; steady, isn’t it? Feel of my arm; firm as a bar of iron. Yet it is I, not you, who might be excused for trembling. You are a nameless inventor; if you fail, you are no worse and no better off than before —you will only be forgotten. But if this is a fiasco, I shall not be forgotten. I shall be ridiculed for putting any stock in you; I shall be reminded of ‘a fool and his money.’ They’ll sneer as they say that ‘John Peter’ wasn’t too smart to be gulled by a wild-eyed crank. Be a man, for heaven’s sake.”

“Ah, oui, a man. Zat ess eet. Zat ees what I would admire to be. Mais, how, how, Messieurs?”

“As good a way as I know,” broke in Neilson, lazily, though really pitying the man’s mental distress, “would be for you to assimilate a good stiff horn of whiskey. Norton, can’t I ring for a steward? It’s a real act of charity, you know.”

“As you like, Neilson,” returned the host, calmly, “though to my mind a heart that has to be fired with that sort of fuel ought to be banked for good.”

The miserable object of Norton’s scorn walked away slowly and prepared to go below. But just as he reached the companion-way he felt a light touch on his arm, and, turning, saw a delightful vision in blue with a face all compassion and encouragement. He wondered how much of his denunciation Helen Norton had heard, and his shame was deeper than ever.

“Yon are anxious, M. Deschapelles,” she said, kindly; “so are we all. But I—we—all, believe in you and the ship.”

“You do, Mademoiselle? You think I have not failed?”

“Failed? Certainly not. How can we fail with such a genius as yours and with my father supporting it?”

She spoke proudly, as befitting the daughter of a man who had conquered the encrusted conservatism of New York by the sheer force of his courage and ability. And as the poor inventor saw the strong light of faith in her pretty eyes, he, too, revived. No alcoholic stimulant could have had half the effect of this womanly help.

Together they paced the deck for a while, the girl cleverly leading the conversation away from the dark topic of the new boat. The inventor began to smile and actually lost something of his haggard look.

As they walked back and forth, Craig from the group of magnates looked on with a curious sense of solicitude. Helen must certainly be annoyed by the vagaries and confidences of the inventor. She had probably begun by making herself agreeable, and had become an unwilling victim. Really, it was too bad. He turned to Rev. Mr. Bentley with an expression of his thought.

“I believe Deschapelles is distressing Miss Norton with his fears,” he said. “Perhaps I’d better go and rescue her.”

The kindly eyes of the clergyman followed the figure of the young man with a different expression than was usual to them—a look of merry appreciation. Every man to his own duty, thought the kindly, honest gentleman, and if the call is to a lovely young woman who smiles when you draw near—why, so much the more reason for gratitude to providence.

The yacht had by this time reached its moorings, and Norton’s party proceeded to disembark into small boats, to be rowed to the shipyard.

“Vill you not veesh me bon fortune?” whispered Deschapelles to Helen, as the girl was preparing to descend the landing-steps.

She smiled and extended her hand.

“You will succeed,” she said, and the memory of that hearty hand-clasp dwelt with the inventor long after he had hurried ashore and had taken his post to direct the event of the day.

The scene presented to the thousands of eager eyes was one long remembered in the records of great crowds around New York. From either side of the ways extended a line of steamboats and barges, forming a lane half a mile in length. Flags fluttered, bunting waved, bands played and people cheered. Around and behind the enclosure multitudes were massed in lavishly adorned stands, rising high into the air, tier upon tier of solid ranks.

Over the place of mystery was a gigantic tent, at each corner of which was a balloon at short tether. At once the stock of those scientific men who had predicted an aerial car, rose enormously, and the other disputants, all of whom were collected on a stand well in front, were silenced into acquiescence.

The Norton platform near the water’s edge was a gorgeous affair covered by a silken canopy and decorated with the richest of velvet and costly rugs. The regal fétes of the Venetian doges had furnished the suggestion for the structure, and the old world had been ransacked for fabrics and ornamentation.

But more attractive still to the eyes of the spectators was the figure of the girl in pale blue who stood in a little golden semi-circle that jutted out from the capitalist’s stand. Her fluffy golden hair aureoled her sweet face, on which the dainty flag of excitement was already flying. She stood there alone before that myriad-band of men and women, undismayed, and yet modest as a Diana, a fit type of American girlhood at its purest and best.

Only for a moment, however, did Helen stand out before the rest. Then she touched a tiny knob, and immediately the balloons rose into the air carrying with them the great tent, and revealing on the marine stocks the strangest craft that was ever seen. Its most striking feature was a series of propellors of peculiar corkscrew type along the immense hull just below the water-line and beginning back of amidships on either side. It was evident to the crowd that tremendous power must be a characteristic of the new Norton boat, but at what expenditure of fuel or motive force could scarcely be estimated.

Before the scientists could even mentally calculate the cost of running such a monster, there was a great creaking of timbers, a shrill cry of triumph in the French tongue, and the sweet exclamation of a girl as she dashed a bottle against the side of the descending craft; then, amid the booming of cannon, the flaring outburst of a gigantic band and the shouts of tens of thousands of human voices, the boat slid into the sea with the grace of a water-fowl, and rode the turbulent waves like a conqueror.

Only those near the Norton stand heard the agonized cry of a woman as the ponderous vessel went past; only a few saw the coil of a great hawser, as if it had been some malevolent serpent, suddenly snatch up a lithe figure in blue and whirl it into the green and white water below. Craig heard and saw, and the picture was never afterward quite effaced from his consciousness.

With a mighty spring he leaped over the velvet-bound railing and plunged into the swirling water. Even in the brief second of his descent he could see where the hawser had dragged its victim below the surface, and for that spot he swam desperately. A few yards ahead appeared a mass of golden hair floating on the tide.

“I’m coming; I’m here, Helen,” he cried, but there was no answer and no sign of life in the upturned face. Craig knew that the girl was a good swimmer, and he realized that the cable had crushed animation, perhaps life itself, from her body. He plunged on like a madman.

Just as the fair head was slowly settling in the seething water, Craig had the supreme joy of thrusting an arm around the girl’s waist. The touch seemed to revive her, for she opened her eyes and gazed at him in bewilderment. She smiled, too, and murmured something he could not understand. But he felt sure that she knew she was safe.

Boats had now reached them, and their rescue was prompt and easy. The Sea Lion’s sailors rowed them swiftly to the yacht, where John Norton was already waiting for them. Only the deathly pallor of his face showed the ordeal through which he had passed.

“I thank you, Philip,” he said, simply, as he grasped his secretary’s hand. “You have done me a great service. I am your debtor, and I shall not forget it.”

CHAPTER XIII

“DOC” BAYLES TELLS A STORY.

PPIILIP CRAIG lived the few days following the rescue as one in a dream. Sleeping or waking, he saw the fair face of Helen Norton floating on troubled waters, and felt the pressure of her limp body against his own. And while he shuddered at what might have been, he rejoiced at what was, for the episode had transformed him from an admirer to a lover. There was no further disguising the condition of his heart. He, the strong and earnest scion of a stern race, was a slave who courted the privilege of continuing in shackles.

The usual torture of uncertainty was his, but to a more than usual degree. That he, without any of the graces he thought necessary for the attraction of a young girl, should quicken the pulses of the pretty Helen, was too much even for his usually serene self-confidence. For the first time in his life he found before him a barrier that none of his ordinarily trusted qualities could overcome. So, from the pinnacle of his first wild exaltation, he was cast down into the depths of despair in the fashion that mankind has ever known since the time when the wooer won his inamorata by the forcible persuasion of the club.

There came occasional bright days when he saw Helen and dwelt in the sunshine of her interest.

This was, of course, during the discussion of the plans for Bentley-on-Hudson. The walls of the hospital were already partially erected, and a date had been set for the dedication ceremonies. He found that there was a something new in their relations, at least on his part—not restraint so much as the feeling of awe common to young men when they are in that stage of love where even devotion seems a sort of profanation. Yet to be with her, to feel the subtle currents from her personality to his, to read what he might in her eyes, was to Philip sufficient reward for whatever gloom he experienced apart from her.

He was a busy man at this time, too, yet not all his multiple duties as John Norton’s charge d’affaires could quite banish the love-thought from his mind. His employer had once or twice urged him to bring certain projects of which he had executive control to as speedy completion as possible, as he had other and greater plans pending.

The trial trip of the Commerce—so the Deschapelles ship was named—brought in its wake a train of hard work. The vessel proved to be a wonderful craft, indeed, cutting large slices from the best records of navigation, and the demand for the type was immediate and insistent. Contracts for a large number of the boats had to be placed, and Craig handled every detail of the business.

At times the French inventor nearly drove him frantic with his suggestions and negations; but pretending interest in another of the man’s creations, he finally got clear of him by inducing him to go to work at it.

One dull afternoon, about two weeks after the launching, Craig betook himself to Oceanic to consult with “Doc” Bayles about the disposal of the splendid string of Norton’s race horses. They were not to be sold—“John Peter” would have met such a proposal with the utmost contempt, and did, in fact, nearly annihilate Haven for mildly suggesting it. All the noble animals, save King Capital, were destined to be gifts to those men whom Norton cared either to propitiate or to retain as financial friends.

At the entrance to the great circular stable Philip brushed aside the flunky who was for calling Bayles to the reception room, and walked out into the exercising yard in the rear, where he felt reasonably sure of finding the trainer. And there, in fact, “Doc” was, engaged in the prosaic task of rubbing an old horse’s knee with liniment. He straightened up with some exertion, and touched his cap respectfully to the protege of “John Peter.” In view of the rank of his caller he would have stopped work and taken him to more luxurious quarters, but Craig declined to interrupt such a laudable task.

“Go on, Bayles,” he said, “we can talk here as well as anywhere else. A sick horse, I see.”

“Yes, sir. Rheumatism bothers Cowboy powerful bad these days. He ain’t never got used to the east wind hereabout.”

“Is he a racer?”

“Lord bless you, sir, no indeed. Just an old saddle hoss o’ mine. Like me, he’s kinder outlived his usefulness. But I keep him for the sake of other days.”

The old fellow stopped again, and resumed his rubbing, while his equine friend lay his nose on the man’s shoulder and closed his eyes as if in great content.

‘‘Seems to do him good,” observed Craig, touched by this eloquent tribute to the trainer’s kindness.

“Yes sir, it relieves him mightily. Dunno’s it really stops the pain, but it makes the poor old critter feel as if somebody cared for him. Do you know, sir”—and he looked up from his work with a faraway expression—“do you know I think they can tell when a man cares for ’em by the touch. As the poet says, ‘the first inclination that an animal has is to protect himself,’ and that applies to flosses.”

Much more of equines and of authors the garrulous trainer would have said had not Craig felt obliged to be at the business of the day. He carefully repeated the instructions of Norton as to the disposal of the horses, and gave Bayles a list of the men to be favored and the location of their respective stables. “Doc” was to ride each animal to its given destination, and there leave it with John P. Norton’s compliments.

“And that being done, Bayles,” continued the secretary, “you are to report to Mr. Norton’s city stables “for duty.”

At this the old man’s face, which had lengthened woefully during the recital of the plans to break up the string, lighted up amazingly. He chewed his wisp of hay with all the relish of old, and actually began to hum a bit of weird tune. Then something else occurred to him.

“I—I don’t like to look a gift horse in the mouth, Mr. Craig, but why are we to go there?

There’s more hands there now than they really need.”

“Mr. Norton intends to have you take charge of the stables as a sort of general overseer, with your son to do the active supervision.”

Now “Doc’s” simple joy was complete, his faith sublime.

“There, I told ‘Muggsy’ that it was a horse of that color, and that John Norton wouldn’t ever drive us where we couldn’t serve him. I was a bit afeard, though, when he gave us that piece of paper.”

“What paper?”

“Why, that there check for the Handicap stakes. Of course that makes us independent, if we wants to use it.”

“So you haven’t used it?”

“No, siree. Me and ‘Muggsy’ are agreed on that, ain’t we, youngster?” This to his hopeful, who had just rolled stolidly up to the region of the lame horse.

“We are, ‘Doc,’ ” assented the son without a sign of emotion. He always addressed his father after the manner of the stable.

“Who knows,” continued the elder Bayles, “but some day—but, there, there. This here stable’s to be broken up right away. ‘A short hoss is soon curried,’ as the—.” Again he seemed to be lost in meditation. “Tell John Pe—I mean Mr. Norton—that we’re very happy that he remembered us; aint we, ‘Muggsy’?”

“Yes, ‘Doc.’ ”

“Well, why in thunder don’t you say so, then? Ain’t you got any heart in yer? Why, I shouldn’t wonder if you was in love, you young rascal.”

At this direct and disturbing accusation the little jockey looked very sheepish indeed, and tried to hide his confusion by chewing vigorously on a bit of cracked corn he had taken from a grain-bin near by. But he had no answer to make.

“You see, sir,” said “Doc” apologetically, “ ‘Muggsy’s’ nerve has been trained so fine at horse racing ever since he was a youngster that he’s a bit slow in warming up. But jest you say anything about Dandy and he’ll get to going all right. Dandy’s Miss Norton’s hoss now, you know—going to be sent to town to-morrow, and I’m durned if he don’t get the sweetest and purtiest mistress a critter ever had.”

At the mention of Helen, Craig, who but a moment before had been all impatience to go, now cast about for some plausible excuse to stay. So changes the very atmosphere of a place upon which has been breathed a loved name.

“You know Miss Norton well, I take it, Bayles,” said the young man insinuatingly. If the trainer were as loquacious on this subject as on that of horses, what a delightful companion he must be.

“Since she was knee high to a grasshopper, sir. I was with Mr. Norton long afore he ever owned any race bosses. Nat’rally, I used to see a good deal of Miss Helen, and she of me. That was out west, you understand. I taught her to ride, and we’ve had many a good, hard gallop over the plains together. And sometimes when it rained she’d come out to the stable and hear me read Shakespeare; I was a purty good reader in them days, if I do say it, afore my voice got kinks in it.

Anyways, she alius said so. She was an all-fired sweet little gal, but, Lord love you, she was an independent puss, too. Used to set her will up again her father’s, and sometimes she’d win. Why, I remember once—but mebbe I’m tiring you with all this gab, Mr. Craig.”

“Go on, Bayles,” urged Philip. This was more enchanting than even the music of the “new tonality.”

“Well, sir, one time when Miss Helen was about nine she happened to see some of us brandin’ a hoss. My, how mad she was! She didn’t git over it for a week. Some time arter that we had about a dozen new hosses arrive, and Miss Helen she overheard some talk about brandin’ - them, too.

“You kin jest bet she made a great row—forbid me to do it, and so on. But I told her that orders was orders, and I had to obey ’em. Then she rushed off to find her father and git him to stop the brandin’.

“Purty soon she come back, and I could see by her face that she hadn’t succeeded.

“ ‘Well, how ’bout it?’ says I.

“ ‘Papa says that it has to be done, or else the hosses will all get lost or stolen,’ she says. ‘There has to be something to ’dentify ’em.’ And with that she dried her eyes, and goes off to play, and I thought no more about it.

“The hosses was to be branded next day, and I got up early so’s to git the job off and out the way afore Miss Helen came ’round. But when I opened the door of the stable and looked down the row of stalls, I see the durndest,. queerest sight a man ever laid eyes on. Every blamed hoss had a bit o’ pasteboard tied ’round his off hind leg with a blue ribbon! I found that each one was a business card o’ John Norton’s, and on ’em was written in ink: ‘Please Return.’ ”

At the remembrance of this startling event even “Muggsy” came out from his apathetic state. A grin wrinkled his little face, and then he laughed with a staccato series of chuckles that resembled nothing so much as the bark of a prairie-dog.

“Well, sir,” went on “Doc,” “that blessed gal had been out in the night and tied on them cards to see if it wouldn’t satisfy her father on the identification business. How she ever escaped bein’ kicked to death was a miracle; the Lord must a’ took good care of her.

“When Mr. Norton heard of it he give orders that there weren’t to be no brandin’ and the hosses went gallavantin’ ’round the plains with them cards on till they was all wore out. Arter that we made metal tags fastened on with little chains, and brandin’ was given up altogether. And that there gal did the whole thing, bless her purty blue eyes. She’s thoroughbred, and nothin’ else.” “That’s so, ‘Doc,’ ” said “Muggsy” sagely. “That’s so, ‘Doc,’ ” said Philip Craig to himself fervently, as he took his leave and went back to plunge anew into the maelstrom of the great city.

CHAPTER XIV

A DAY IN JUNE.

PHILIP’S love for Helen burned the more ardently by concealment, as is the habit of that species of conflagration. His rather high-strung conscientiousness kept him from being an open wooer for two reasons.

In the first place, he felt that it would be almost disloyal to his employer to take advantage of the situation in which he had been placed with such entire confidence. Proximity, the most powerful of all Cupid’s friends, had been granted him solely in a business way, and he was not the man to use it to further his own love-interest.

Again, he knew that, as yet, he had not proven himself, had not “arrived.” To be worthy of Helen Norton in the eyes of the world, or even in his own regard, he must do something far more notable than to act successfully as executive agent for a millionaire’s carefully outlined plans. He was sure that with “John Peter” it would be achievement and not descent, nor moral qualities, nor even mere money, that would best plead his cause as a suitor.

So he forced himself to bide his time. He would distinguish himself in some way and at some time; of that he had little doubt. Then-.

But for young blood to martyrize itself is no easy task, especially when it flows in contiguity to other young blood of opposite sex molecules. Craig realized this on many occasions. Being a sensible young man, he knew that he was persona grata to the pretty daughter of the house of Norton; he was often sorely tempted to make a further test of her sentiments, and know his fate once and for all. Then up would rise his delicate sense of honor and guard the slight barrier so firmly that he would not try to break through.

He was almost glad, therefore, when, one day in June, Norton called him to his private office and told him to be in readiness for a European trip to occupy, it might be, several months. He had a certain feeling of relief that he was to be removed from associations that might any day strain his fortitude to the breaking point. And even in foreign lands he could go on with his dreams; baseless hope was better than shattered hope, he told himself.

Another thing that cheered him in a really positive way was Norton’s announcement that this European mission was one of vast importance, and that if he carried it through successfully, he would be substantially advanced in salary and power. “And all for her sake,” thought Philip.

What the great errand might be gave him little concern; in fact, he had never attempted to probe beneath the surface of his chief’s undertakings. He had done his work faithfully and well, neither asking nor desiring any explanations. He did not know it, but this soldierly quality had been one of his chief means of finding favor with the impassive Norton. And now, when confronted by a proposal that would have thrown many men into ecstasies of delight or tortures of nervousness, he replied simply:—

“Very well, sir. I will go home at once, and be in readiness in the early afternoon.”

“I scarcely think there is need for quite so much haste,” returned Norton with a smile. “You may not go for a week yet. Let’s see, aren’t there some dedicatory exercises up the Hudson at which you must be the animating spirit?”

“Yes, sir; a week from next Tuesday.”

The question and its answer all at once suggested a new thought to Philip. Would it not be honorable, would it not be best for himself to seize this opportunity to tell John Norton of his love for Helen, to ask to be a tentative lover whose future would depend on his own accomplishings? But, with swift reasoning, he decided against it. Instinct told him that the time was not yet ripe. As for concealment, “silent affection can do no harm,” he thought. “I shall be no less the faithful employe because I remain the undeclared lover,” and so the opportunity went by.

John Norton declined to go to the dedication of Bentley-on-PIudson, and his reasons were characteristic.

“If I should go,” he declared to his disappointed daughter, “the newspapers would slop all over the thing, and very likely accuse me of all sorts of unwholesome motives. You and your mother will attract very little attention, my dear. Besides, Pm extremely busy. But you know I am heartily in sympathy with your scheme, and if you should need anything more, call on me.”

The weather was graciously fitting for the occasion; it was the rich mellowness of mature June, when the youth of summer is still above suspicion. Around the hospital were waving fields of grass, with their myriad points of wild-flowers and their sweet, warm odors. Further back were the forests of spraying green, long untouched by any axe. Birds were furnishing the music for the ceremony far more enthusiastically than could any hired performers. It was a day when young hearts could revel in life and older ones be at peace.

The dedication was simplicity itself. Besides Rev. Mr. Bentley, Mrs. Norton, Helen, Armisted and a few contractors, the only others present were a couple of city reporters whose chiefs, in that mysterious manner known to editors, had gotten wind of what was going on. These two gentlemen looked rather disgusted at the apparent poverty of the event in a news sense. They had expected some elaborate function on the usual Norton scale, with perhaps a “feed” that would justify their coming.

This pair Craig received graciously, for he knew it to be a theory of John Norton’s that it was cheaper to conciliate than to offend even the most offensively hostile journal. They were tactfully led to suppose that Mr. Bentley was the real projector of the work, and this they were quite ready to believe; they were therefore pleased to perform what they considered a public spirited action.

In pursuance of the Norton policy’ of never depriving any portion of the press of news given to others, Philip decided to send out a duplicate telegram to papers and news associations giving the salient points of the day’s event.

The exercises were soon over. Grouped about a fountain in the fine central courtyard, the little party listened to a few words from Armisted on the structural advantages of the building, and then to a prayer from Mr. Bentley, who asked the blessing of God on the undertaking.

As Helen gazed at the little man, his head bowed in prayer and his fine voice attuned to the tenderest and most solemn tones, she saw him as one transfigured, and forgot all the oddities of his appearance in her admiration for his beautiful nature.

At the end of the ceremony there was found to be an hour’s wait before they needed to take carriages to the station to meet their train. Philip had completed his telegram to the papers, and announced that he would walk on ahead, file his message and wait for the others.

“A walk?” exclaimed Helen, “that’s just the thing. Then you won’t have to take that stuffy old hack. Mama, why can’t we walk, too?”

Mrs. Norton was rather dubious.

“I’m afraid, my dear, that these rough roads will be a bit too much for me. But you may walk if you wish. I have no doubt that Mr. Craig will let you go with him.”

“Will you, Mr. Craig?” she asked, with a charming air of demanding a favor she knew was already granted.

Would he? He felt the blood leap from his heart and somehow tighten his throat. To walk with her alone under the June sky and through the blossoming loveliness of the country, was more happiness than he had dreamed of. Would he?

“I shall be delighted,” he said truly and with what calm he could summon up. “Perhaps we had better be starting on, so that we may not have to hurry.”

Hurry! He knew that he would not hurry for all the telegrams and trains in the world. He knew that he would make this golden hour so full of precious seconds that the laws of time would seem to be null and void. He knew himself for a hypocrite, who only wanted to get a young girl quickly away into his own keeping; and he gloried in the knowledge.

As they proceeded along the winding country road, a silence fell upon them after the first few words about the hospital. For Craig this was no hardship; to be walking with this desirable maid on such a day was a sufficient gift from providence.

Helen was still pondering over the approaching tenancy of Bentley-on-Hudson by the tiny halt and maimed, and Craig could read the traces of feeling on her expressive face. He blessed the “stuffy hack” that had given him this piece of happiness, and he was thankful that the road was comparatively free from travel. Once when a rosy young Hebrew peddler, pack on back, passed them with a lively whistled tune, he was almost inclined to resent the fellow’s journey as an intrusion.

By and by they came to a little wooded dell where a brook passed under the road. The sight of it roused the girl from her revery. The warm sun and brisk walk had set a flush on her cheeks, and the shade’s appeal was very inviting.

“Oh, let’s rest here a bit, Mr. Craig,” she cried. “I confess I’m rather warm. We’ve plenty of time, haven’t we?”

“Plenty; but I think there’s a prettier place up the brook a little way,” returned the young man diplomatically. “See, the trees are shadier and there is a fine rock to sit on.”

“All right,” she agreed cheerily, “you lower one bar, and I’ll vault the others.” And over she went, touching one hand lightly, with all the grace of a trained steeple-chaser.

Philip’s dell was certainly an improvement on the other, and Helen admitted as much. She sat down on a large, smooth rock overlooking a dark pool wherein seemed to lurk piscatorial possibilities.

Philip threw himself on some soft moss at her feet and watched her remove her hat with a childish delight. A simple thing—the removing of a hat—and yet it seemed to him under the circumstances intimate and intoxicating. He thought she had never looked lovelier than at that moment.

Helen was now as full of animated chatter as she had before been held by silence.

“What a beautiful place this is!” she exclaimed. “It will really seem to the poor children as if they had reached heaven. There, I suppose Mr. Bentley would think that speech sacrilegious.”

“It certainly will be heaven compared to their home surroundings,” said Philip.

“’Yes, indeed,” she returned fervently. “Oh, you should have seen what I did to-day! I went to see a little chap whose leg is bent way up under his body and will never straighten, they say. And the horror of his home! No sun, no air, hardly any light. What a blessed change it will be to—this. I shall love to come here often while the building is going on; and you will come here, too, of course, Mr. Craig?”

“Yes, if I am so situated that I can; business, you know.”

“Yes, but my father said you were to supervise everything; he’ll find time for you.”

“If I am here—if.I am in New York, I mean.”

“Why, you are not thinking of leaving us—of leaving my father?”

Did he detect a note of vague alarm in her voice? For a brief moment he thought so, and then he was smiling at his own folly.

“No, I have no thought of leaving,” he replied, “but Mr. Norton warned me the other day to be in readiness at an hour’s notice to start for Europe.”

“For Europe? You? For how long?”

“He did not say, but as the undertaking is of importance I imagine it means a considerable time.”

The girl made no further comment, and again silence crept between them, a stillness that not even the wild paean of a bobolink in a neighboring hay field could render less oppressive.

A great dread came over Craig’s heart, the fear that at any time the call of duty would set the seal of repression upon him. Why should he more than other men, happy lovers, be driven from his Eden because of his own folly of dumbness? He idly wondered if Adam had no inclination to fight the angel of the flaming sword when turned out of Paradise. He began to throw pebbles into the brook, aimlessly.

At last something in Helen’s long silence attracted his attention. He saw that she was looking to the thin strip of the blue Hudson, just visible between the trees and far away to the north. Her gaze was dull and wistful, and his heart grieved at the change upon the fair face. Was it what he had told her? Was it—?

“Helen,” he said, choosing his words with great deliberation, “would you care if I were going away never to return?”

“Never?” she echoed with a curious accent, as if she had heard but did not understand.

“If I were to go to a faraway land, if I were never to see you again—would you be sorry?”

A hunted look came into her blue eyes, an expression of protest as at some undeserved punishment.

“Sorry? Oh, Mr. Craig, I—I—”

“And if I went, would you wish me to go with an unspoken secret?”

“A secret?”

“My, dear—yes. The secret that I love you.” He rose to his feet in the stress of his emotion, and paced the mossy ground.

“There, I’ve blurted it out,” he cried. “Perhaps you will despise me for it, but you cannot refuse at least my friendship. And if it is presumption, you will pardon me for it?”

There was no answer. He turned and saw that the girl’s face was buried in her hands and that her shoulders heaved gently.

“Don’t—don’t be troubled,” he said tenderly. “I can’t bear to see you troubled.”

He gently stroked her fair hair with a touch of infinite love and devotion. At that she raised her head, and her eyes, moist and filled with a light that was newly born, looked into his. With that adorable gaze the golden world around him seemed to flash fire.

“Helen,” he cried, “you cannot mean it; you cannot—”

She spoke no word, but on her beautiful face was woman’s yielding, woman’s answer, in the tender dawning of a smile. Ever so little her head bowed its allegiance, so slightly, indeed, that he thought it only his fancy. Then she rose, and, trembling, stepped toward his outstretched arms.

But quicker than she, he sprang forward and clasped her willing body against his own, straining her in a passionate embrace that spoke of long repression. An ardent kiss sealed their troth, and for both there was born a new heaven and a new earth.

From that moment and as long as he lived the odor of new mown hay was for Philip Craig the very perfume of love.

CHAPTER XV

A BOLT FROM THE BLUE.

JUST how Philip Craig piloted his party home from Bentley-on-Hudson was never quite clear to him. He had a misty recollection of trains, tickets, swift motion, a carriage and a tender pressure of the hand at parting. Quite free from mental fog, however, was the picture of a face, the glance of blue eyes in which a new light shone, the radiance of a happy smile. Love may be blind himself, but he gives his devotees so marvelously clear a vision that they see beyond the veil of mere physical attributes. So to Craig this pretty young Helen Norton was a veritable Helen of Troy, worth the loss of a kingdom or the battles of years.

And was he beloved in return, he asked himself, as he sat in his library that night and tried to read. Ah, yes, for beside the yielding and the kiss he had a tangible pledge of their plighted troth. Fumbling in his pocket he drew forth a tiny square of lace-bordered muslin that she had shyly thrust into his hand when he had asked for a token. As he kissed it in the way of lovers, its subtle fragrance seemed to him as the odor of new mown hay, the scent of which still intoxicated his brain. And if his dreams were all of Helen that night, perhaps it was due to the magic influence of the pretty trifle that rested beneath his pillow.

The morning- light roused him into the realization that the world does not stand still upon its axis simply because it bears a new pair of lovers on its course. He sprang into the activities of the day with an energy and zest he had never known before. It was a wonderful thing, this life, and all the people who shared it with him were superior beings.

“John,” said he to the negro elevator boy as they reached the ground floor, “how long is it since I gave you anything?”

Th’% dusky youth grinned with mirthful anticipation.

“Well, sah, I doan adzackly remember, sah; but I specks it’s about—lemme see—one, two—”

“Well, never mind; here’s a dollar for you. I want you to look sharp after some parcels I’m going to have sent home to-day.”

“Yes, sah; you kin ’pend on me, sah. Mornin’ sah.”

As Philip was leaving the house he was met by a telegraph messenger who had just alighted from his auto-cycle.

“Telegram for you, sir,” said the boy, who knew Craig by sight. “It was given me as ‘rush/ and I just hustled up here with it, you bet.”

“Right, my boy. And here’s something to encourage you.”

Still in his happy frame of mind Philip opened the envelope absently. One glance at the signature of the dispatch quickened him into apprehensive interest. Then he read:—

“Come to the office at once, dropping all other matters. J. P. Norton.”

He crunched the bit of paper in his fist, and turned back toward his apartments.

“So it’s come,” he muttered, “and to-day of all days!” He pulled his newspaper from his pocket and hurriedly searched for the shipping department.

“Yes, here it is,” he said aloud, to the wonderment of his friend, the elevator boy, “at noon, 30th, the Webster for Liverpool and the Sachem for Bremen. I wonder which it will be.”

He had taken Norton’s previous instructions so closely to heart that it was but the matter of a few minutes to lock his luggage, close his apartment and proceed down town in perfect readiness for a trip to Europe or the remotest antipodes.

Yesterday he might have been glad of the summons; to-day he was disposed to rebel at fate. Yesterday he loved; to-day he loved and was loved again—a difference so vast as to make of him a constructive mutineer against his chief. But the folly of any thought of disobedience against John Norton, her father, was borne in upon him with such force that he almost laughed aloud. Then came a ray of hope, quickly fading, however.

“I will tell him all,” he thought, “and perhaps— but no. With him business is above everything else. What right have hearts to get tangled up in his affairs? Still, I shall tell him, and ask him to explain to Helen. It is useless to try to see her before I go.”

At the office he was met by a clerk who told him that Norton wished to be notified immediately upon his arrival. The man disappeared, and returned a moment later.

“Mr. Norton will see you in about fifteen minutes,” he said, “he is engaged with his stenographer just now.”

Philip literally passed a very bad quarter of an hour at his own desk. The time dragged dismally, and his love-thoughts were tinged with a melancholy he could not shake off. He wondered what Helen would say when she heard the news, and whether she would not blame him for going, even at her father’s command, without a word of farewell. Then he smiled at his own stupidity. He would write, of course.

He penned a brief and fervent note of love and regret. He could say little, for what assurance had he to give, who knew nothing of his undertaking or its duration? Bitter doubts, fitted to his mood, assailed him. Who could tell but that yesterday’s yielding was but the fruit of the day and the place? Might not separation dull the keenness of affection on Helen’s part, and give opportunity to other suitors? She would not be to blame, he told himself, for young love demands its daily food, though it be nothing more substantial than ambrosia. Then came the natural reaction to better thoughts, and he saw again the light of happy confidence in those blue eyes; were they not radiant with steadfast promise?

The incisive voice of the head clerk broke in upon his musings. It seemed to him that the tone had something more of deference than usual.

“Air. Norton asks if you will come to him at once, if you please, Air. Craig. And, by the way, might I be allowed to offer my congratulations?”

“Why—why—of course; thank you,” mumbled Craig rather incoherently.

“Well, well,” muttered the clerk, as Philip crossed to the door of the private office, “I never saw him unnerved before. But who could wonder —such responsibility.”

The head of the house greeted him with a smile, but waved him into silence as he dismissed his stenographer.

“It will have to be short stories, Philip,” he said. “Pardon my abruptness, but I must do all the talking. Now that we are alone, let me talk freely. Here are your instructions.”

He took from his desk several large, heavy linen envelopes which seemed on the point of bursting with papers. Philip started to speak.

“No, not a word, please,” continued his chief. “There are less than two hours, and much must be done before the steamer sails. Philip—” and a strangely gentle tone altered his voice—“Philip, I think it is due you that I should tell you what led me to pick you from the ruck of your associates and advance you as I have done. You will understand me better then, and we will work better together.”

Philip marveled once more at the manner of man he saw before him, a man who could plead poverty of time, and yet begin a personal explanation of the most intimate sort. But the friendly tone also filled him with delight, for now it seemed as if he might indeed break down the embargo of silence and tell of his love for Plelen.

“I was first attracted to you,” went on the steady, kindly voice, “by your faithful performance of your humble duties as a paper carrier. After you entered my employ you pleased me in many ways. You never gossiped. I told you thing’s that many another boy would have been quick to retail to his fellows to gain a fictitious value by his superior knowledge. In higher places you were just as reticent. You did what you were told in the way you were told, if you could; if not, in some other way. You didn’t trouble me with inquiries and requests for new instructions. You had initiative and ideas of your own. Your ability—but any man could see you had that. In the past year, with added responsibilities, you have always proved equal to any emergency. In a word, you have come nearer to doing things as I myself would do them than anyone ever associated with me.”

In the moment’s pause that ensued Philip’s natural embarrassment rose to his face. But the eulogy was not yet completed.

‘‘When I decided that the trip abroad was necessary, I knew that no man but you, except myself, could be entrusted with it. You will realize this when you read those instructions.”

The young man looked vaguely at the envelopes, which suddenly seemed to be a leaden weight in his hands.

“Philip,” said his employer with intense seriousness, “I never inquired about your early life and family, and did not care to know. I take men as they are, and not as their parents were. I feel that in you—come in.”

This last was in answer to a knock on the door, and the head clerk entered.

“The auto-car is at the door, sir,” he said, “and it is now half-past ten.”

“Thank you,” returned the chief. “Now good-by, Philip. Read your instructions; I know you will not follow them slavishly. For many reasons I regret that I must take this journey, instead of you, but it had to be.”

Had a mine exploded under his feet Philip would have felt less startled and dazed. When the fiery intensity of the words, had burned their meaning into his intelligence, a great flood of joy came too. He was to remain at home, home where dwelt the woman of his heart. But now there was more need than ever that he should speak. Norton was already departing.

“Mr. Norton,” he cried, “I—

“I cannot delay another minute,” replied the financier, “if in doubt, use the cable. Good luck.”

The elder grasped the younger man warmly by the hand, and looked him straight in the face.

“If I had been given a son, Philip,” he said “I should have wished him to be like you. Good-by, and God bless you.”

An instant later and the magnate was gone. When Philip had collected his scattered wits sufficiently to rush to the window, he saw the autocar turning a distant corner. A wild desire to give chase immediately came over him, followed by the conviction that if he were to lay in wait at the steamer there would be no time there for explanations. No, the fates had meant him to be happy this day and for many days; he would not dispute their will.

Mechanically he turned over the letters which he still held in his hand. The uppermost was a thin envelope addressed to him. He opened it, took out the single sheet of letter paper and read, after the formal address:

“DEAR MR. CRAIG:—

“On and after this date you will be general executive manager of the John P. Norton Company, and will transact all business as I would do were I on the scene. Herewith is power of attorney. Information of your new position and authority has been conveyed to all concerned.

“Very truly yours,

“JOHN P. NORTON.”

This, then, was the new trust, this the underlying motive of Norton’s strange words. He realized the enormous change in his fortunes, but he felt that he had arrived at a mental impasse, a point at which he must stop and think, must get into the open and see the sunshine. Mechanically he picked up the letter he had written a half hour before and looked at the superscription.

“Helen,” he murmured, and never had the name been so sweet on his lips, “you are the first to whom I shall tell the news.”

And within a few minutes he was speeding toward the stately home of the Nortons.

CHAPTER XVI

THE PLAN OF CAMPAIGN.

THE rapid ride served to clear Philip’s mental murkiness in a great degree, as the swift inrush of a stream of water might cleanse a woodland pool. The further he got from the scene of his recent perturbation, the clearer became his perspective and he saw himself at last in his true relation with the rest of the world, to Helen especially.

So his projected dash to the house of his lady love began to assume too much the savor of mediaeval chivalry. This descent upon her at high noon was something that even the impetuosity of love did not demand. To strengthen the conviction came the recollection that this was one of Helen’s days for investigating prospective cases for Bentley-on-Hudson; she would probably have left home already. What to do, then? He could not go back to the office; the very thought seemed stiffing.

He dismissed his driver, and getting out, strode along through the magnificent concentric ring of estates surrounding John Norton’s castle. For miles he walked, paying little heed to the artificial beauty of the resort of wealth, knowing only that the sun was shining brightly and that the wind was breathing warm fragrance into his nostrils. On and on he went, until weariness began to make itself felt, and he suddenly remembered that he had had no breakfast.

Ten minutes later he was at one of Christoforo’s faultless tables, and just beginning the disposal of his soup, when he heard a familiar voice.

“Hello, Craig; you here?”

It was scarcely necessary for him to look up to know that Andrew Haven was standing by his side, timid, apologetic and apparently ill at ease, as ever. He would have preferred almost any other company, but there was no escape.

“I—I’m not intruding, if I sit with you?” ventured the little man.

“Oh, no.”

Haven slowly sank into his chair, then wiped his lips nervously with a napkin. He fixed his gaze on Craig through his large, round spectacles, till the younger man wondered if he had not some special sort of vision that could penetrate the secrets of the mind. When he found his look returned, Haven flushed and pretended to drink some water.

“I’m glad to meet you, Craig,” he said in his plaintive fashion, “I want to congratulate you. No offense, I hope.”

“On what, Mr. Haven?”

A look of amused incredulity came into the other’s little eyes. He even laughed decorously.

“Upon what? Dear me—beg pardon, I’m rude, perhaps—but really it was funny to hear you ask why you were to be congratulated. Your discretion is most commendable, but the news of your advancement was the talk of the Street this morning. It was officially announced by the exchange at noon, together with the fact that Norton had gone to Europe.”

For the first time Philip fully realized the magnitude of fortune’s loan to him—he would not consider it a gift, since he had not yet perfected his title by achievement. But that his name should be officially coupled with that of John P. Norton in the greatest money mart of the world was a stupendous thing. It threw about him the protecting regis of millions and made of him a man whose power and influence might be beyond computing. Meantime Haven was dribbling on.

“I knew it before, of course, if you will allow me to say so. Norton has few secrets from me—or, at least, .so I imagine. He told me yesterday. And what a prodigious salary!”

“Indeed.”

“You don’t think so? You amaze me.”

“I didn’t say so. In fact, I have no idea what it is. You really must excuse me, Mr. Haven, for I have a train to catch.”

He called for his bill, paid it and strode out, leaving Haven muttering apologies and trying to catalogue this strange young man in the archives of his active brain.

In one brief moment Philip decided where his first duty lay. He would go to the Norton house after all, but to see Helen’s mother, tell her of his love for her daughter and abide by her advice. To tell the truth, he had little dread of making her his confidant, for he knew her sweet kindliness of disposition and her old-fashioned ideas on love and marriage.

Mrs. Norton was at home and received him with her gentle cordiality.

“Pray consider me quite at your disposal, Mr. Craig,” she said in reply to his request for a few moment’s conversation of a personal nature. “We shall expect to see more of you, now that Mr. Norton has gone away and left his business in your charge.”

She knew, then, thought Philip. But why should she not?

“I should have thought that you would accompany him,” he said, still dealing in the commonplaces. He was not quite ready for the real plunge.

“Oh, dear, no,” she replied, “the great lakes are as near as I have been to a sea voyage. Once was enough. I say with Herbert, ‘Praise the sea, but keep on the land.’ The ocean is almost the only thing that has power to part me from my husband. Besides, Helen needed me.”

The mention of the dear name was enough. Without more ado he opened the door of his heart and let his hopes and desires come trooping out. Pie told his story in simple and honest fashion which he feared was blundering enough, but which the sympathetic woman found manly and convincing. But alas for the secrets of lovers; how thin and futile the disguise he immediately found out.

“I will confess, Mr. Craig,” she said with an indulgent smile, “that I have had some notion of this. No, Helen has said nothing, but there are signs, you know, to such acute observers as mothers. You say you could not speak to Mr. Norton?”

Craig nodded assent.

“Perhaps it is just as well. I know that he regards you highly: you have already had proof of that. In any event, if you love Helen, and she you, I cannot think that John Norton would do anything different from what I do: wish you as happy a life together as he and I have had.”

She held out both her hands to him with a most charming air of welcome. Obeying a sudden impulse, he stooped and kissed her on the forehead. Her eyes met his with a merry twinkle.

“Will you do that when I am your mother-in-law?” she asked.

He protested fervently that thus it would ever be, but she held up a warning finger.

“Be careful. Don’t promise too much. You may regret it. But it is not an old woman you came to see. Had I not better send for Helen? She has just returned from her mercy-trip, as I call it.”

The rest of the afternoon and dinner, at which he was the guest of honor, passed in the miraculously rapid fashion of happy hours. For the first time in all his life Philip opened the gates of his reserve, and talked of himself, of his boyish dreams and struggles, of his sacrifices for an education, of his final foothold on a career and of his ambitions for the days to come. If he was eloquent in the recital, what wonder when a pair of dewy eyes matched struggle with sympathy and victory with triumphant approval. And the moment of parting when Mrs. Norton generously betook herself away—the kiss—the hand-pressure! All these things seemed to Craig the beautiful and fitting close of a day of wonder.

The next morning he was at his desk early, ready to grapple with the great duties before him. He began by opening the envelopes containing his instructions in order to familiarize himself with the general plan of campaign, and found typewritten memoranda of the status of certain transactions. These he did not read in full, preferring to deal with each matter as it should come before him from the man having it in special charge; this was Norton’s invariable method. One folded sheet inscribed “Pneumatic Engine Mill, Andrew Haven,” he did not even open.

A sheet backed “Office details” appeared more urgent, and he read it carefully. It advised one or two changes in the allotment of work, if Craig, on investigation, should deem them advisable. The closing paragraph was as follows:—

“The salary of Philip Craig, executive manager of the John P. Norton Company, shall be $100,000 per annum, and said Craig shall transfer monthly to his personal account one per cent, of all profits accruing to the concern.”

The piece of paper fell from his hand and fluttered to the floor.

“This, then, was what Haven meant,” he muttered. “It is almost beyond belief. . . . Come, come, Philip, old chap, he evidently thought you were worth it. Brace up, and try to earn some of it, at any rate.”

After this there was no more hesitation or weakness. Craig felt again the thrilling tide of battle and he went at the business of the day with a quickness of decision and a firmness of grasp that gave the gossips food for digestion, and sent a rumor into the “Street” that it wouldn’t be safe to try any games with “John Peter’s” interests even if that financial scourge was away.

One of Philip’s callers was a short, stout man, who might have been anything from a parson to a butcher so far as personal appearance went.

“I am Smithson, sir,” the man announced. “Mr. Norton told me that in his absence I was to report to you.”

“Very well, sir. What is the nature of your report. What is it about?”

“About Count Sandstrom, sir.”

“Sandstrom? Please explain. I’ve not had time to look into all these matters.” And he selected a sheet endorsed “Sandstrom,” and ran his eye over it.

“I am engaged to keep an eye on him and see that he doesn’t leave the country,” murmured the stout man.

“Ah, a detective, I presume.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And if he does leave?”

“I am to report to you at once.”

“I see. I understand the situation by this paper. Well, what have you to say?”

“He has no intention of going right away, for he has given out invitations for a lawn party August 30th.”

“But couldn’t that be what you detectives, I believe, call a blind?

“It might be, sir.”

“Well, keep on watch. Report to me weekly by wire. If anything new occurs, come at once. Good morning.”

“A sharp customer. He’ll stand no fooling,” thought Smithson, as he bowed himself out.

“M’m,” mused Philip, as he again read the Sandstrom document, ‘‘so it was to investigate the Count’s connections and the methods and alliances of his house that I was to have gone abroad, and it is for this that Norton has gone. Something of magnitude is in prospect, and Mr. Norton feels that he must make sure of his ground.”

Not long after Haven put in an appearance. He professed himself as delighted to be privileged to do business with Mr. Craig, but Mr. Craig was not particularly impressed by this display of gratitude. In fact, he cut him short.

“Well, then, we had best proceed at once to the business.”

Haven’s face wore an injured look, but he went on without comment.

“It’s about the Pneumatic Engine Mills. You have some of my reports in your hand, I see, and are doubtless familiar with the case. The works are nearly completed, but ground cannot be broken for the designing-room until we have the rest of the land. . . . What’s the matter, Mr. Craig? Are you ill?”

His sharp little eyes, that never missed a detail in another man’s countenance, had noted that Philip turned pale while reading one of the documents.

“It is nothing. Go on,” said the executive manager.

“Well, this one man has refused every offer we have made through Holloway. Yesterday we tried threats, but Holloway says he knows the law, and that a more stubborn mule never existed. Mr. Norton’s instructions were to buy, if money would do it, but if Craig remained obstinate—by the by, curious coincidence of names, isn’t it?”

“It is. Proceed.”

“If Craig remained obstinate we were to resort to the last extremity.”

“And that is?” queried Philip, striving to the utmost to mask his emotions before this cunning schemer.

“We have bonded a strip of land 125 feet wide leading from opposite his cottage to the state highway. We own enough beyond the site of our works to make a boulevard from the highway to the water. Craig’s land, you see, will be right in the way. Sad, isn’t it?”

“Go on with your report,” said Philip, sternly. “Now, then, the plan is to give the land to the state. If Craig still refuses to sell, his property could be seized under the right of eminent domain.”

“Can this be done?”

“The proper state officials have given us their assurances that it will be.”

“At a price, I presume.”

“Well, not exactly that, but we do hold out certain reciprocal advantages.”

Philip rapidly wrote some figures on a bit of paper.

“I see that this will cost about $420,000,” said he, not including the ‘reciprocal advantages’ to the state officials. What do we get in return?” “Craig’s land.”

“Which is worth?”

“Five thousand dollars, more or less.”

“Then we lose—”

“It is not a question of loss, sir. It has gone beyond that. John Norton is not accustomed to being thwarted, and he—”

“Prefers losing money to losing his own way?” “Precisely, Mr. Craig.”

“Well, we will let the matter rest.”

“But Mr. Norton—”

“Is not here. Till he returns I am in authority. You will take no further steps in the matter. Good morning, Mr. Haven.”

The little man left the office feeling that his opportunities for service to the house of Norton would be very seriously crippled by the presence in power of this keen and conscientious deputy. He bitterly resented the peremptory tone of Craig’s instructions and vowed that he would not forgive the injury until its memory was blotted out by some greater harm in return. For there was a bit of the Indian in Haven, as well as considerable of the reptile.

CHAPTER XVII

A COMMERCIAL TRAGEDY.

ONE goal stood forth before Philip Craig’s mind during all the remainder of the business day—his father’s house. As soon, therefore, as he could lift his hand from the lever he made his way to the region of grime and noise where the cottage still stood in mute defiance of its enemies. No signs of life were to be seen.

Philip raised the ancient brass knocker again and again without arousing anything more tangible than dismal echoes. He was on the point of descending the steps when he heard the soft shuffling of feet within and saw the door cautiously opened a mere crack; across the dark slit of space he noted the links of a strong chain.

“Who’s there? What’s wanted?” came forth the querulous voice of an old woman, Angus Craig’s deaf day-servant.

“It’s I—Philip Craig.”

“Well, he ain’t at home,” piped the dame, preparing to draw the chain closer.

“I am Philip—Philip Craig—Philip,” shouted the young man.

The chain rattled down and the door swung open.

“Oh, Master Philip, is it? You’ll have to pardon me. sir, but Mr. Craig gave me strict orders not to let a living soul I didn’t know into the house, nor take in any messages nor papers of any sort. Why, I even make the grocer’s boy leave his provisions on the doorstep.”

Philip laughed heartily. “Dad’s in a regular state of siege,” he exclaimed. “Well, he’ll soon be out of fear.”

He went into the quaint little sitting room, comfortable enough, despite its angularities and oddities of furnishings. He noted that his mother’s favorite rocker had been brought downstairs, and that a faded photograph of her, framed in beautifully carved ebony, was hanging over the fireplace. In a pot on the red-covered table was growing a slip from a rose-bush—Philip could guess its origin and its purpose.

“Poor old fellow,” he thought, “he is growing that slip from my mother’s rose-bush, so that, in case the worst comes, he can carry it away with him.”

As he sat there in the twilight he began to understand and appreciate his father’s love for the place and his fierce determination not to leave it. After all, it was home, the spot of the hearthstone, the haven of refuge from the stress of life. He felt his own lack of just such influences, now so soon to be supplied him, and his heart warmed to his father even as it glowed with love for Helen.

Angus’ return was not long delayed. He was in one of his most ungracious moods, and returned his son’s greeting gruffly.

“Weel, Philip, I didna expect ye wad veesit me sae soon. How could ye leave ye’er fine friends?”

“Come now, father,” returned Philip, kindly, “you know I’d be here a great deal more if I believed my visits were pleasing to you.”

“Imph.”

“And as for my fine friends, they certainly have no influence in preventing me from doing my duty.”

“Iinph. . . . Weel, what is’t ye want, lad? I canna talk lang wi’ ye the nicht. Some friends o’ mine, who are nae friends o’ yours, are coomin’ on important business. Besides, I’m a bit fashed the day.”

The old man dropped wearily into a chair, and pressed his hands to his eyes. In truth, he seemed like one who had been buffeted by fate until the spirit had gone from him.

“What’s the trouble?” asked the son.

“Naething that should bother me, I dare say; a plate is missing again.”

Philip knew what that meant. Once before his father had spent several wretched days over the disappearance of a bank-note plate from the establishment where he worked. Even though there was no question of his integrity, he knew that in such a case suspicion must hover over good and bad alike. That plate had been found under some rubbish in the yard; whether it had been carried there by accident or hidden by intending forgers was never known.

“Probably it will turn up like the other one,” suggested Philip.

“Verra like, verra like. But it’s terrible tae be spied upon and treated like a thief when ye’ve done nae wrang. Money’s nae the root o’ evil, Philip, it’s evil’s verra self. I sometimes think I do the deil’s work when I scrape a tool into a note-plate. But a body maun live.”

Philip could scarce repress a smile. To hear this man, accounted one of the finest engravers of the country, revile the profession he loved was little short of ludicrous. But he was sympathetic, and presently the talk drifted to other things.

“Ye see I’m still here, lad,” at last said Angus, with a gleam of triumph in his faded eyes. “They’ve nae turned the auld inon oot yet.”

“No, father, and that’s what I’ve come to see you about.”

The old man’s wrath flamed up from its bed of suspicion in an instant. He saw in his own son an embodiment of the rapacity and relentlessness of the money power. He did not hold the young man to blame, especially, regarding him rather as a helpless creature of environment. His hatred was for the system.

“Ye’ll be tellin’ me that ye’ve joined wi’ these deils and made common cause wi’ ’em tae drive me oot,” he sputtered.

Philip grew angry in turn.

“Father—I—”

“Weel, weel, I mean nae harm,” said Angus, in a more conciliatory tone.

“I came to tell you,” resumed the son, “that you need have no fear. I have the best of reasons for saying that you can keep this house as long as I choose.”

“Keep it?” cried Angus, excitedly, “of coorse I can. I kenned that lang ago. They’ll need some Satan’s trick tae get me oot, an’ I’m as canny as they are.”

It was impossible for Philip to explain the situation, for he knew that his father would forever hold him as an accomplice with his enemies, no matter what his version. He said no more on the subject,, and soon after took his leave.

“Gude nicht, Philip,” was his father’s parting shot. “When ye tire o’ ye’er frien’s in Mammon, coom back tae us again.”

Next day the full tide of promoters, schemers, inventors, beggars, financial giants and commercial pygmies swept in upon Craig and tested his powers of discernment to the utmost. He had given orders that practically all the men who called should be admitted to his presence; for one day, at least, he wanted to receive his impressions of this part of his work at first hand. Afterward he would rely on the filtration of office-boys, clerks, and private secretary.

Philip pricked many a bubble during the day, exposed the worthlessness of many a loud-sounding scheme and shunted off once and for all the importunities of professional charity manipulators. He also made some valuable alliances and began plans of immense advantage to his house. He sat at his desk cool and imperturbable, with something of Norton’s sang-froid, yet with a mellower humanity to temper it and a more genial sense of humor to cheer himself. He took his work seriously, to be sure, but not morbidly so. In short, he was an able regent on the Norton throne, and he impressed everyone, and, through everyone, the “Street,” with the sense that a keen, hard-headed, far-seeing young man was in power.

He went to luncheon at a famous restaurant much affected by brokers and financiers. Here was a severer test, for he knew that men nudged one another and followed him with keenly critical or envious eyes as he walked through the throng to his table, the place always reserved for John Norton. It is easy to be unperturbed; to appear so, however, is another matter. The heart may be of iron, while the face is of plastic putty impressed by emotions scarcely more than skin deep.

But on the whole the young man received his many congratulations in the right spirit and made friends by his good common-sense and likable ways.

Just after luncheon a card bearing the legend “Mr. Hastings” was brought in to him.

“What Hastings?” he asked the bearer.

“He was a clerk here, sir, but for some months he has been doing outside work, I believe.”

“Oh, yes, I remember. Show him in.”

Hastings was a large, florid man, with immense side-whiskers and a bald head as red as the shell of a boiled lobster. He was in a state of much excitement, it seemed, for he continually mopped his forehead with a large handkerchief.

“Take a chair, Mr. Hastings,” said Philip. “You are evidently, may I say—troubled?”

“Yes, sir, I am troubled. I didn’t learn of Mr. Norton’s absence until to-day, and it was to him I was to make my report.”

“Let’s see, it was about a hay and grain firm, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, the Jamesons.”

“You were to force them to enter the Norton-Davies syndicate, I believe.”

“Yes, sir; that’s it.”

“Well, in Mr. Norton’s absence I am Mr. Norton. You can report to me freely. Have you succeeded?”

Great beads of perspiration stood on Hastings’ rosy forehead, and he stammered as he replied:— “Succeeded? W-vvell, I think I m-may say so.” Philip looked at the man with impatient curiosity. Was this shaken, nervous fellow the sort of agent John Norton was willing to employ. He wondered what sort of reception the chief himself would give him.

“Well, that must be satisfactory to you,” he said. “It has been a long struggle; how did it end?”

“Oliver Jameson shot himself last night, and his firm was declared insolvent this morning.”

Philip felt as if someone had dealt him a swift, stinging blow on the head, and for a moment his senses did not grasp the full meaning of the announcement. Then in the clearing mist he saw the dead body of the wretched man slain by the inexorable demands of a commercial tragedy. He could realize how the two brothers, grown old in the conduct of their business and proud of their independence, had struggled on against the resistless force of combined capital, until, at last, with ruin knocking at their gates, one of them, in the insanity of despair, had turned his hand against himself. It was pitiful, and so pitifully needless.

Hastings’ story of the details was brief and he was dismissed to complete the affairs of the enterprise and to take a brief vacation before he should return to his regular duties. As he was about to depart Philip said:—

“Let me see, Mr. Hastings, were you not to receive a bonus for this work?”

“Indeed, sir, I couldn’t take a cent of it—not a cent,” he said with something like a shudder. “It would be like blood-money. Besides, the time for the bonus has expired.”

“Very well, sir,” returned Philip, with a growing respect for the man. “You may report for duty in the office in three weeks.”

Craig pondered long over the tragedy of the Jamesons, and at last his course seemed clear. Me wrote a brief anonymous letter of sympathy to John Jameson and enclosed in it a cashier’s check for a large sum obtained from a neighboring bank in exchange for a personal check drawn by Philip himself.

“The enclosed check,” said the closing words of the note, “is sent by one who appreciates a brave struggle against a great wrong. It cannot recall the dead, but it can rehabilitate the firm he loved into what men call ‘business honor.’ Do not refuse to employ this money, for he who sends it has no sympathy with a code of business ethics that permits of brutal coercion.”

This was despatched by a trusted messenger with instructions to leave it at the Jameson house without comment.

But even the sense of duty performed did not lift the burden from Philip’s mind, as he had hoped. Strive as he might he could not rid himself of the picture of that desolated home and the man who was mourning over a brother and a disgraced firm.

The similarity of the methods employed against the Jamesons and his father came strongly to his thoughts. He had felt no compunction about stopping the proceedings against Angus, and in the present instance he was sure that John Norton would deeply regret the issue. But whether or no, of one thing he was firmly convinced: that such dealings were indefensible by any standard of morality.

The trouble was, he reasoned, that men who engage in these business schemes do not realize the end. They think merely of their own advantages and not of the results to others. They are like gamblers whose passion for the stakes of the game blinds them to the realization of what loss means to their adversaries. It was even worse in the case of the Jamesons, for they had found the contest forced upon them, and had staked their all through the sheer necessity of surviving.

The impression made upon him by the tragedy was neither temporary nor sentimental. It had immense practical bearing upon certain half-finished schemes that were presented to him within the next two or three days by men designated by Norton long before his departure for Europe. Many of these seemed to Philip to have but one legitimate conclusion: the ruin of men and firms against which they were directed. These he crushed with relentless hand, either by modifying the plans or ordering their complete abandonment.

Nor did he feel that he was in the least unfaithful to his trust, for from what he had experienced of John Norton’s kindness of heart to himself and others, he was assured that the truth need only to be presented clearly to make his chief see things as he saw them.

CHAPTER XVIII

AT THE VAN RENSSALAER LOW’S.

THE weeks flew by for Philip Craig, and life seemed a very cheerful and pleasant thing indeed. Plis duties were many and often difficult, but he caught their swing admirably, and, like a sensible young man, felt great satisfaction in the sense of power. He saw Helen often, and in the delightful role of acknowledged lover. Altogether he counted this season the happiest of his life. And it seemed likely to continue for some time, for although he had received several cable messages from Norton, there was nothing said of the probable date of his return.

One morning in late August he was somewhat surprised to receive from Mrs. Van Renssalaer Cruger Low an elaborately engraved invitation to a “Sherwood Forest Féte, to be Given in Behalf of Rentlcy-on-Hudson, at Low Manor on the Evening of September Two.”

He turned the card over curiously and wondered why he should have been chosen for social honors by one of the proudest families in New York. He had met Mr. Low, to be sure, at a small dinner given by Mrs. Norton, and although he had thought vaguely that the aristocrat had liked him, he was not prepared for any further manifestation on his part.

The fact of the matter was that Low, besides being attracted by the young man, had recognized him as a great potentiality in the finances of the city. Then, too, as the regent of John Peter Norton, he was a commanding figure and one well worth cultivating. So he determined to invite Philip to the forthcoming function, and asked his wife to send him a card.

That lady demurred. “Who is this Mr. Craig?” she asked, anxiously, “has he any family? I never heard of them.”

“You surprise me, my dear,” was the reply. “Very distinguished Scotch ancestry—Craigs of Loch Levin; castles, deer-parks and all that sort of thing, you know,” he said, with a smile behind his newspaper.

“Oh, well, if that’s the case, of course we must have him.”

And so it happened that Philip found himself at Low Manor on the specified evening. He rubbed his eyes at the strange sight presented as he stepped from his carriage. The great lawn in front of the Low mansion had entirely vanished, and in its place was a thick forest of magnificent oaks implanted during a night by some magician’s wand. A carpet of moss covered the whole expanse, and artificial glades, rocks, brooks and cascades made a bewildering picture of sylvan beauty.

All at once the significance of the “Sherwood Forest Féte” came to Craig’s mind. It was a reproduction, at what enormous cost he could only vaguely guess, of that romantic land of the woods where Robin Hood and his jovial crew laid tribute of the traveler; where Maid Marian loved and Little John died; where Friar Tuck drank solidly and cursed roundly—the most enchanted country that fancy has ever devised.

From within came the twinkle of lights, the mellow winding of horns, the lusty music of glees, ripples of laughter and the babel of human tongues in rapid action.

Philip was immediately seized upon by an archer in Lincoln green and a billy-cock hat, and hurried away to be presented to the chief patroness of the occasion, who was holding court in a tent of gorgeous material. All around were fascinating evidences of someone’s artistic planning. Deer flitted through the forests, pursued by bands of Robin Hood’s archers; milkmaids and yokels wandered hand in hand; Richard Coeur de Leon and the Jolly Priest were at a bout with quarter-staves; all the famous heroes of the outlaw crew were stalking abroad regardless of the Sheriff of Nottingham and his minions. There were courts for archery, games of bowls and contests at wrestling. And into the mediaeval picture swept the throng of men and women in evening dress, indifferent to the anachronism and wondering, many of them, how a decent supper could be provided in such bizarre surroundings.

At the tent of honor, where he was received most graciously, Philip found a group of men he knew. Price, the editor, was there, giving Mrs. Low patronizing assurance that the American News would do justice—ample justice, madam— to the quite unprecedented fete. Lord, the railroad man, with his wife, a young and vapidly pretty woman, with a restless ambition to enmesh every social lion of repute, was talking the eternal “shop” with Biddle Jaffrey. Ward Neilson, doing cavalier duty to a clashing brunette, the only daughter of Belmont Drexel, the banker, had obtained possession of Deschapelles, now a noted figure in the world, and the young woman was chatting gaily with the Frenchman, Philip saw also Winslow and Davies in the little coterie, and rejoiced that he, a hard-headed man of affairs, was not entirely without appropriate compeers. These men stood forth prominently from the crowd of insipid and bored-looking individuals who strove to uphold the prestige of that “society” that is judged by the frivolous use of its millions.

The chattering small-talk of a social assembly, like the popping of snapping-crackers, makes much noise but little danger, although in both cases the atmosphere may be rendered malodorous, and Craig’s induction into such an exhibition of verbal fireworks both amused and annoyed him.

Price eras speaking in his most profoundly oratorical style as Philip joined the group. It pleased him to pose as a fearless critic of those whose hospitality he shared, and that he was not debarred from the functions of the elect was due only to fear of the immense power he wielded by his paper.

‘‘Society, my dear Mrs. Low,” he said, loudly, ‘‘is a maelstrom from which the plunger emerges, if he emerge at all, dizzy and bruised from his buffets with the waves of convention and his blows upon the rocks of disappointment.”

Having thus delivered himself, he looked about him with the air of a modern Ajax defying the social lightning.

“My dear fellow,” observed the handsome Neilson, “I fear you magnify the importance of the thing we hedge about with ceremonial and call ‘society.’ It is no maelstrom, but rather a foolish little sea rippling in shallows over a not too odorous sandbar, which divides the wavelets in harmless nothings to lap noiselessly upon the shores of life. Those who are drowned in such a sea lie there by their own free will.”

The black eyes of Alice Drexel sparkled approval. She was very much in love with this plain-spoken, clever young fellow, and she especially despised the editor of the American News. She gloried in such a match of wits.

“Now you’re talking in epigrams, Neilson,” sneered Price.

“Heaven forbid,” ejaculated the young man. “The chief need of the average epigram is a diagram, and I cannot undertake to be a purveyor of that sort of thing.”

“But don’t you think,” drawled Mrs. Lord, “that we find true happiness in developing the social side of our lives?”

“Happiness, my dear Madam, is something that most of us search for so busily that we have no time to stop to realize that we have found it.”

“Most of us,” thought Alice Drexel, with a little throb of joy at her heart. She knew that he and she had found their time and their happiness. Her passionate devotion was so plainly written upon her face that Craig warmed toward her at once; here at least was one genuine creature, whatever the rest might be.

At this point Price felt impelled to return to the attack.

“You may be right, Mr. Neilson, in your general theory,” he said, sententiously, “but you forget ambition, which takes the place of happiness, and for which there is no cure.”

“Ambition? Yes, there is a cure. The specific is failure, the physician Death,” retorted Neilson, grimly.

“Oh, this is positively dreadful,” cried Mrs. Lord, gaily. “Is it not time to call a halt? Let us go and look about the forest.”

As the party split up into smaller groups, Craig found himself accompanied by Price. The astute editor made it a practice to cultivate all new men of prominence, to tap them, as it were, and test the quality of their abilities. Here was the marked figure of the day, to know whom might be of inestimable advantage in the future. He determined, therefore, to cling to Craig with more than brotherly closeness for the time being. First he would be agreeable, he thought.

“Queer coincidence happened in my business to-day, Mr. Craig,” he began affably. “My ‘feature’ editor told me a very interesting story of an old man named Craig who is fighting the whole combined power of the Pneumatic Engines Company over in Brooklyn. The man owns a queer little cottage on land the company wants, and he won’t sell or be evicted or anything else. There he holds the fort while they are tearing everything in ruins almost about his ears. It sounded so interesting that I ordered my man to get up a page spread, illustrated, on the case. It will be an excellent chance for the News to show its devotion to the people. ‘Brave old Scot defies the money power,’ or something of the sort for a heading. By the way, isn’t Norton interested in the company?”

“I believe so,” replied Philip, shortly.

“That settles it, then. Old Craig will have to go as sure as fate. You are acquainted with John Norton’s methods, I take it.”

“Mr. Norton’s methods are not a proper subject for discussion, sir,” returned Craig. “I am acquainted with the case you mention, however, and I think I am justified in saying that no injustice will be done anyone.”

Just before them the path broadened and there, in a blaze of light, was a sight that gladdened Philip’s eyes and made him forget the great editor and his insinuations. At one of the archery booths was Helen, his pretty Helen, just in the act of bending a bow, and Rev. Mr. Bentley, similarly armed, was looking on with the greatest delight writ on his fat little face. Twang went the string, and the clergyman clapped his hands as the arrow sped on into the very bull’s-eye of the target. The girl turned her radiant face to meet her mother’s eye, and so caught sight of Philip. And although she was properly reserved and maidenly in her greeting, the light in her glance told him that all was well. This was the first time he had seen her surrounded by her own set, and he had to confess that the exigencies of social etiquette, making for little bands of devotees and constant shifting of groups of admirers, were not wholly to his liking.

Out of some depth of the forest came at last the flaxen Count Sandstrom attended by Andrew Haven. The nobleman had been the prey since his appearance in Sherwood of designing mamas and over-willing daughters, to all of whose attentions he had responded with only bored politeness. But Helen Norton, with her freedom from artificiality, her sunny simplicity and her fresh beauty, interested Sandstrom. He made his devoirs so gallantly and so wittily that Philip felt at once his great superiority as a courtier and conceived a quite unreasoning dislike of the man. Even Mr. Bentley and Mrs. Norton, he noticed with chagrin, seemed greatly entertained at the German’s brilliant flow of talk, and he himself lapsed into moody silence.

But all these petty troubles, born of jealousy, he confessed to himself with a pitying smile, were quite put to flight when Helen, in answer to the loud calls of criers sent through the woods, took his arm to be led away to supper. And the gentle pressure on his arm when they reached a particularly dark spot in the forest sent all thoughts of Sandstrom and the rest flying into nothingness.

The supper was strictly in keeping with the spirit of the place. It was served around open fires at which Christoforo and his assistants had been steaming and stewing and broiling and roasting sundry articles of food for several hours. There were haunches of venison, great joints of beef, noble boars’ heads, pasties of many sorts, pheasants cooked in clay, sweetmeats of wondrous construction—all accomplished with the most consummate art, and the general verdict was that Mrs. Van Renssalaer Low had won a personal triumph that years could not efface.

As Helen and her mother were about to leave, Philip noted the approach of Count Sandstrom quite as if by accident. With the most elaborate courtesy he asked that he might escort the ladies to their carriage.

“We thank you, Count Sandstrom,” replied the mother, sweetly, “but we are in charge of Mr. Craig.” And the German vanished as mysteriously as he had appeared.

But as he was smoking his ante-retiring cigarette that morning the Count said to his valet:—

“Heinrich, make a memorandum to answer that letter I received from John P. Norton some three weeks ago, and say that on further consideration I have decided to consider his proposition to join him in that Homburg investment.”

CHAPTER XIX

A MATTER OF SENTIMENT.

SEPTEMBER was in its closing hours, more rich and beautiful than was ever September before, it seemed to Philip, when a cipher message came from Norton.

“I sail to-morrow by Sachem,” it said. “Do no business with Sandstrom.”

Craig was puzzled at this, for he knew by the tenor of certain correspondence with the Count that until recently Norton had had no dealings with him. It was a curious coincidence that his chief’s orders on this point should arrive at almost the identical time that negotiations were about to begin. But there was no difficulty in obeying instructions, for the deal in which Sandstrom had expressed interest was of no special importance, and could be stopped at any time, or at least deferred until Norton’s return, by a polite note.

A few days later the mammoth liner was warped into her dock seven hours late, nor had she been reported by the aerophone for nearly seventy-two hours. This was a remarkable incident, for ocean travel had been reduced to such a systematically accurate science that schedules rarely varied more than half an hour except in case of severe storms.

Early as it was on this bright autumn morning, the immense dock was crowded by men and women of all sorts and conditions and brought together by many motives. Rich and poor were there to greet their own, whether in the conventionally correct garb of the first cabin or streaming in picturesque riot of color and variety of raiment. The curious and the criminal, the haughty and the meek, the rich and the poor, were for once herded together into one primeval human family.

Helen Norton was interested in the clatter of voices, the struggles of the crowd for positions of vantage, the clanking of chains, the roaring of escaping steam and the piercing yells of the omnipresent small boy, even as she grew impatient at the preternatural laziness of the ocean monster in getting itself docked. She could not understand why the swift racer of the high seas should become such a helpless lubber at the wharf. Something of this she said to Philip, whose arm she was grasping with a maidenly confidence that was more delightful to him than even the entrusting of the Norton millions.

‘‘Well, dear,” he replied with a smile, “it’s a habit of great things, whether ships, or deals, or hopes, to show their power so long as they are moving. Let them slow down for a bit, and they are as helpless as this big steamer.”

But now the gang-plank was thrust forward from the side of the Sachem, and among the first to land was John Peter Norton. His commanding form was at once surrounded by an army of reporters eager to get the great man’s first word. These well-meaning, but necessarily persistent gentlemen he courteously brushed aside with the promise of a statement later in the day, and strode to the spot where stood his pretty daughter and her lover. A kiss for the one and a hearty handclasp for the other were before long duly chronicled as events of national importance.

“My dear little girl, how you are improving!” he exclaimed; “quite a woman, I declare. And your mother? Good. Well, Craig? Yes, I see you are. I am, too—never better. Have you a conveyance? All right, let’s be moving, then.”

The big man elbowed his way through the crowded shed to the carriage yard, where Helen was sent home in charge of her own coachman. The two men took an auto-car and started for the Norton offices.

“Confound ship machinery,” exclaimed “John Peter,” as they bowled along toward the financial district, “it’s always breaking down, and I had planned to do so much to-day. Well, let’s do what we can. Have you heard anything from Sandstrom?”

“I have received several communications from him in regard to the Homburg deal.”

“That is excellent. You have not completed the negotiations?”

“No; your cable was received before I had time to do so.”

“Good again. That is too small an affair as it stands—or rather as it stood. Now I am in a position to offer him something worth while.”

Craig had figured roughly that the Homburg business would return a profit of over two millions, and he wondered vaguely what gigantic stroke was to replace it. But as usual he asked no questions.

“I suppose, Philip,” continued Norton, “you were a bit provoked that I robbed you of the opportunity of going abroad.”

The young man protested, with what might have been suspicious warmth had not his chief been busy with his own thoughts, that there was no regret on his part. Could there be aught but gratitude for a summer of Helen and love?

“The least I can do,” went on his chief, “is to acquaint you with the nature of my errand. I went to Germany to post myself thoroughly on the financial situation there—not the mere figures of annual statistics or the statements of individual money matters, but the intimate knowledge of the position, the desires, the investments, the weaknesses of the financial leaders. I sought especially the rock-bottom facts concerning the house of Sandstrom … By the way, Philip, I don’t think I ever told you what an old, long-headed money lender once said to me as to how he judged the financial responsibility of men.”

Craig shook his head.

“Well, Samuel Levine was the cleverest Hebrew who ever lent a dollar and got back two, and that, you’ll admit, is saying a great deal. He often had millions at interest—his own and other people’s— and if he ever lost a dollar he never admitted it. He was sometimes, in my early days, useful to me when I was carrying deals bigger than I could swing alone, and I was well acquainted with him, so well acquainted that he never charged me even the legal rate of interest. One day I mentioned the name of a prominent man.

“ ‘Don’t do peesness mit him, ma boy, don’t do peesness mit him,’ he said. I ventured to inquire why not, and remarked that he was rated A i by the commercial exchange.

“ ‘I vouldn’t lent him a tollar—not a tollar,’ insisted my Hebrew friend.

“ ‘Why not?’ I asked.

“ ‘He is no goot. He has so many servants that two-thirds of ’em have nodings to do.’

“Old Levine had no confidence in men whose business principles did not extend to their own homes. It was part of his system to study the men with whom he expected to have dealings. He inquired into their private lives, their business associates, their petty weaknesses. Levine’s philosophy, a bit overdrawn, perhaps, has in this case been very valuable to me. When I meet a man, cither as possible friend or possible foe in business, I study his connections. It pays.”

In what camp was Sandstrom, asked Philip of himself. Was there to be an alliance or a battle of giants? Under the calm surface of Norton’s shrewd philosophy he knew existed an undercurrent of tremendous potentiality. The trip itself, the last cable message, the quick inquiry as to Sandstrom—all spoke volumes to him who could read right. And he believed that he now understood Norton as well as did any living man.

Up to the closing of the market, which was notably buoyant over his return, Norton was busily engaged with his brokers. Then Philip was summoned to the private office. He found his chief looking over the typewritten statements of the various enterprises in which he was engaged, and to which Craig had added brief notes of such further steps as had been taken. He looked up with a rather puzzled expression.

“I’m surprised, Philip,” said he, “that no more progress has been made in some of these matters. That South American business, though, has been given a very clever turn; I doubt if I could have thought of as good a way myself. The settlement of the deal with Sparhawk & Co. is excellent, also. But how about the Onometer Company? Couldn’t that have been settled under the policy outlined? And the oil deal with Ward Neilson— he was all ready to put that through when I left. And I find a letter from Andrew Haven here protesting against your order that he stop the proceedings for the additional land for the Pneumatic Engine Co.”

Now that the moment had arrived to set his course right with his chief, Philip found himself at a loss to begin. How easy it had seemed and how difficult it was. Yet it was clear enough to his intelligence, and he was about to prove the faith there was in him when Norton resumed.

“1 see the Jamesons gave up at last.”

Here was the entering wedge, thought Philip, and he replied gravely:—

“They did, but under very painful circumstances.”

“Yes, one of them killed himself, I believe. Probably thought that the only thing left to do. Pity he couldn’t have been more reasonable.” Something grew cold around Philip’s heart. It seemed almost like a jest at death, a pleasantry over an appalling tragedy. His hope that John Norton would soften under the dire result of the deal, and thus be willing to forego other similar plans was almost ready to vanish. Only dimly he comprehended that his chief was still talking, and a question had to be asked twice, a thing that had never before happened during his career in the office.

“How about the Onometer Company: couldn’t we get control?”

“Yes, but I found that the only way was by wiping out the small stockholders.”

“The best way, naturally. What about it?”

“I investigated the situation, and found that those small stockholders were, in the majority at least, widows or orphaned children whose guardians had invested all their money in the Onometer concern.”

“Yes, it’s often that way in those companies. What of it?”

“This,” replied Craig with a new note of appeal in his voice, “I thought that when you knew the situation, you would—would not care to cripple such people.”

“No, not if there is another way. What move do you propose?”

“Nothing, sir.”

“Well, then, they must take their chances.”

“But I know that some of them—I have investigated several cases—will be utterly ruined.”

“Unfortunate,” returned Norton, calmly, “but they or their advisers should have been more careful. How about the Neilson deal?”

“That is much the same,” said Philip, “if those companies are united with the Consolidated, twentv thousand workers and their families will be affected.”

Norton gazed thoughtfully at his assistant, like a doctor making a silent diagnosis of strange symptoms. He pursed his thin lips and looked half amused, half irritated. Here was a new sort of figure in the world of finance and action.

“What’s the matter, Craig?” he asked. “Have you taken the burdens of humanity on your shoulders?”

‘Not at all, but I didn’t think you would wish—”

“Of course I don’t wish it. I’d help it, if I could. I’d like to see every man, woman and child in the world well and happy and—I was going to say rich, but perhaps that’s not the best sort of wish. But I can’t bring it about. The majority will always be at the bottom of the human pile, and if we try to drag them out, they’ll only pull us in.”

“But you cannot wish to profit by the distress of the innocent?”

“Sentimentality, Philip. We are doing only legitimate business. If we don’t do it, someone else will do it worse. Even if I would, I couldn’t stop their course now. You know others are interested with me.”

The last of Philip’s hopes of a different solution of these problems faded away. He feared that the tremendous machinery set in motion by Norton, and stopped by himself, would start up again at once, grinding, crushing, killing those hapless victims who were in the way. Surprise, disappointment and bitterness fought for expression on his face, and Norton’s keen glance noted the look. But for once he failed to penetrate beneath the surface.

“You’re unstrung, Philip,” he said gently. “The strain has been too heavy for you. I pitch-forked a mass of things upon you too suddenly. Get out into the open air and freshen up a bit. Take two or three weeks’ vacation at the mountains or at sea. You may have the Sea Lion and go south, if you like. Get a bracer of that sort, and you’ll be all right again.”

So saying, the financier, in kindly fashion, fairly thrust the young man from his door, deaf to all attempts at expostulation, and peremptorily ordered him not to appear again until he had regained his old-time vigor and mental equilibrium.

CHAPTER XX

PATERNAL PROBATION.

THE cool October air, blowing up fresh from the ocean, acted like a tonic on Philip’s disordered nerves and confused mentality. He seemed to have left some mephitic atmosphere, some stifling place where righteousness could not breathe.

He began to think clearly, and especially of the theme that was uppermost in his mind when he had waited on the wharf for Norton: his affection for Helen and his desire to win and wear her. He realized that he had said nothing at all of the matter to the man who should have known at once, but he could not blame himself, for the financier had attacked business with such impetuosity that all else had been swept aside.

With his walk came better hope and courage. All was not lost, he swore, when he recalled the generosity, the kindliness with which his chief had bid him begone for rest. The man’s finer nature would assert itself and temper his plans with mercy. Philip was ready even to cast part of the fault upon himself, as having been but an indifferent advocate.

“He evidently does not feel all that he said,” he thought. “I was over-anxious and expressed myself badly with regard to those matters, and he naturally resented my freedom in calling his attention to evils that had not occurred to him. He will doubtless rectify them in his own way.”

Then he fell to speculating how Norton would receive the news of his quasi-engagement to Helen. Who would tell him? Would it be the gentle woman who ruled her household through love, or the impetuous girl whose pretty tyrannies had been so characteristically exploited by “Doc” Bayles? Whichever the messenger, he felt that his cause would not suffer.

By and by, as gathering dusk fell upon the streets and the white radiance of the light-discs began to creep across and conquer the gloom, he paused in his walk and looked about him. Just ahead he saw the great illuminated clock of the central subway station and the blazing arch of light into which a never-ending multitude was being swallowed up as by magic. At that instant his determination was taken.

“Why not?” he thought, half aloud. “It is only common courtesy that I should speak to him at once. The office was no place for such a confidence. I’ll wait until he has met his family at dinner, and then I’ll go to him and ask him for Helen.”

When he was at last, after a dreary wait to use his surplus of time, on the Brooklyn-bound train, Philip felt a benumbed sense of weakness that puzzled him until he remembered that he had had nothing to eat since his early breakfast. In another instant he laughed at the idea that he, who, as a boy, had often gone supperless and dinnerless to bed, should be troubled by such a trifle as this.

Before the Norton estate he quite forgot his physical discomfort in the surge of other emotions that swept over him. He seemed to have lost all his firmness of character in the face of the simple duty that confronted him; he even feared the friendly guard who let him in at the lodge, and suspected that stolid individual of peering into his very soul.

At the steps of the house he paused to collect his scattered wits and make a sort of reconnoisance. He could hear the soft, witching sound of a Chopin waltz from within, its gay lilt almost overborne by the haunting melancholy of the melody in the bass. How like love and life, he thought; joy and sorrow intermingled, each conquering the other in turn and both joined in bonds never to be dissolved.

Through one of the broad windows shadows silhouetted themselves against the mellow light. A man was sitting near a table, reading, his clean-cut profile bent downward toward his book. A woman was sewing near at hand. And even as he gazed, the trimmest, roundest, most adorable shadow ever seen crossed the room lightly and seemed to sink toward and melt into that of the man.

“Is she telling him of me?” Craig queried of his own consciousness. “Come now, my boy, this won’t do. Go in and plead your own case in man fashion. You were never given to blue-funking before.”

Somehow he rang the bell, crossed the threshold and handed the hall man his card with the request that he would be glad to see Mr. Norton alone.

The servant winked discreetly at the man-in-the-moon of the great hall clock; he was an intelligent flunky and understood why this young man who had called so often in his master’s absence, should wish to see that master in private immediately on his return.

In the library Philip found Mr. Norton smoking one of his thin, exquisite panatellas. He was in a genial and cheery mood.

“Well, Philip,” he began, “I hardly expected to see you again to-day, but I’m glad you came. Of course it isn’t business; none of that here, you know. Suppose we join the others?”

That being the very thing Philip did not want to do at present, the suggestion threw him into a woefully nervous state. Love runs conscience a close race in making cowards of us all, and if this sturdy product of a staunch race measured- his devotion by his agitation, he was a noble wooer indeed.

“Thank yon, Mr. Norton,” he stammered, “but I—I wished to see you on a personal matter— alone.”

“Oh, very well, Philip. Here’s a comfortable chair. And have a cigar.” And then—he could never have written a clear history of the process— Philip told his story, haltingly, modestly, but with fervent earnestness and supreme confidence in his love, once the ice had been broken.

John Norton smiled and blew a particularly symmetrical ring from his cigar. Perhaps the memory of a time thirty years agone made him indulgent. This, then, was the mouse from the mountain, this the hidden element that had clogged his assistant’s brain and distorted his view of great business strokes. He felt more kindly to him than ever before.

“Philip, my boy,” he said, as he rose and placed both hands on the young man’s shoulders, “I may as well admit that this is not unexpected, although f scarcely thought it would come about so soon. I gather that you have—that there is an understanding between you.”

Philip nodded.

“I should have preferred that it had been delayed. Helen is younger than her years, for she has seen much less of the world than a girl in her position naturally does. She has been, and is still, her mother’s girl. And, by the way, does Mrs. Norton know of this?”

“Yes, sir; we told her very early.”

“Then you have a great point in your favor, for if she did not approve, I should not have heard this first from you. But there must be no haste. I should even prefer that there be no formal engagement until we are all more certain.”

Craig would have stoutly declared his own changeless devotion, but that Norton went steadily on.

“I like you, Philip. You have reason to know that. Blood has no claims upon my sympathy— that you have probably surmised. Why, even King Capital, Helen’s horse Dandy, hadn’t a pedigree as long as his ears. But the man that Helen marries must have proved himself worthy of her. Two or three years will test the metal of your love, and you will some day be grateful to me for the delay.”

Philip’s spirits sank dismally at these words. Two or three years! A lifetime for lovers, a period wherein any malign thing might happen before the final happiness. A thousand events might arise to change the father’s opinion of him; he knew the old saying about the favor of princes. But he was somewhat reassured by the kindly tones of Norton’s voice—the most gentle cadence he had ever heard from the man the world called hard.

“You will not find a captious critic in me, Philip,” it said. “All I ask is that you prove yourself what I thought you when I selected you to stand at my right hand in the conduct of my affairs.”

Again the dark spectre of the afternoon’s discussion reared its form. Philip would have referred to the matter once more, but that Norton would have none of it.

“Business another time, my boy. This evening is the ladies’. I rather think you’ll not object, eh?”

In the blissful evening that followed, a time of music, laughter and love, Philip forgot all the ills of conscience in the delights of the senses. ‘ That night marked the flood tide of his happiness; it was a roseate bit of his life that glowed gently in his memory as long as memory endured.

CHAPTER XXI

THE PARTING OF THE WAYS.

THE next day was Sunday, and Philip, in the natural reaction from the previous evening’s bliss, was restless and full of moods. He could think of nothing better to clear the mists than a long ride away from all the sights and suggestions of the city. In a high-speed auto-car he made his way to a little forest inn far up the Hudson kept by a quaint philosopher whom he had learned to like years before.

There he drank in new life, fresh inspiration and a determination to plunge into his work as never before. He would show John Norton that he could be of value even in the narrower channel of the undertakings his instincts approved. That disapproval in one meant rebellion in all never entered into his thought.

Next morning he was at his desk long before the active machinery of the day had been put in motion, and by the time his chief arrived he had perfected the details of several important matters.

“What, you here, Philip?” exclaimed Norton, kindly, as he passed through to his holy of holies, “and after I ordered you away, too? You’re an obstinate youngster, and I may have to discipline you. But since you are on deck, drop in to see me at your convenience.”

For Craig this meant immediate action, and in a few minutes he was standing before the head of the house, his mind as clear and his heart as staunch as ever in his life. Like a good sailor he had taken his soundings and charted his course, and his wheel-hand was as firm as iron. He knew that he was a different man from the confused and almost weak-spirited fellow of two days before. For once there should be no fungus growth of misunderstanding.

Norton lost no time in the social amenities.

“Well, Philip,’’ he began, “let’s clear up all unfinished business, as the manuals say. There are big things ahead of us, and we want no loose ends in the way.”

With the marvelous rapidity characteristic of him, Norton sketched out certain steps necessary for bringing some pending deals to a conclusion.

“Now,” he proceeded, “in the Onometer Company matter there is but one thing to do. Without that company the combination will be useless, for as an independent operator it will make us powerless. We must crowd out the Haynes interest.”

Philip saw that there was no escaping the issue. Like a stag in a battue he was unwittingly driven on and on toward the point where every barrier converged. There were no side avenues of exit; he must go straight ahead and fight his way through as best he might.

“But that will ruin the small stockholders,” he said, gravely.

“Small stockholders are always ruined in big deals. They’ll save what they can, and make it up in a more profitable transaction.”

“But, Mr. Norton, you do not know the circumstances; I do. I have investigated, and as I told you Saturday—”

A smile, of neither amusement nor pleasure, flitted across the thin, straight lips.

“I thought that was forgotten, Craig. You must drop sentiment and come to facts.”

“But these are facts, powerful facts,” returned Philip, the eloquence of a great earnestness filling his voice. “It is a fact that these people will be deprived of their all.”

“Your sympathy is creditable,” said Norton, icily, “how then shall we obtain control?”

“We might interest Haynes in the deal.” “Impossible, at least on any terms that I can grant. Besides, Playnes is a self asserted enemy of mine: he has made a boast of it.” A note of intense, if quiet hatred came into the metallic voice with the words; a king accusing a subject of treason could not have expressed more abhorrence.

“This thing must go on,” he said,.slowly, “it is final. Now as to the oil company deal. The consolidation papers must be signed this week. Send for Neilson, and close the matter up.”

“But the men—their wives and children!” “Pawns, Craig, pawns, to be swept from the chess-board of life because they are in the way.” For the first time Philip understood why the great world called John Norton hard, why it looked upon him as the incarnation of relentless force set in motion by the desire to conquer the world of money. He seemed as aloof from the pains and distress of humanity as the fates of mythology, who spin and cut and plan in obedience to a power even higher than their own. “And the Jameson concern,” continued the chief, “I understand that the surviving brother has secured capital somewhere—probably from some philanthropic fool—and that it is to resume business. This time the company must be crushed forever. Hastings is too slow; you must see to this yourself.”

Philip Craig’s spirit became once more his own. It seemed to him that the cumulative strength of a long race of conscience-obeying men and women gathered itself in his soul for one tremendous blow against evil. His mental vision, too, went far beyond the walls of the temple of wealth, across the inexpressible activity of the city streets to a darkened house where a widow was weeping her slain. Could he be accessory to her further tears? Was he to become the tool of oppression, selling himself into bonds that could not be broken once tighvly forged? He rose to his feet and looked into his employer’s steely eyes without a tremor.

“That I cannot do, Mr. Norton,” he said, calmly.

“Cannot? And why?”

“Because it is not right. Neither can I serve you in the Onometer and the Ward Neilson projects.”

Over John Norton’s heavy face there came a flush that welled up from his neck and spread even to the roots of his hair. His left thumb disappeared under the arch of his fingers, and the closed fist trembled slightly as it lay on the polished rosewood of his desk. But his voice was as steady and low as ever.

“So, sir,” he said, “I am to understand that, for mere childish sentiment, you refuse to carry forward the business which I have entrusted to you?”

‘‘Yes, sir—at least, business of that character. I cannot and I will not do it.”

“When you spoke in this vein on the day of my return I thought you, as I said, unstrung, but to-day—”

Craig smiled grimly and shook his head.

“No, Mr. Norton, I am speaking and acting calmly. I cannot rise on the ruined hopes, perhaps the dead bodies of innocent men, women and children.”

“You exaggerate. You seek to class accepted business methods with brigandage.”

“Is there enough difference for a distinction?”

“This passes patience,” exclaimed Norton, angrily. “Your logic to your employer savors of impertinence. Let us end this matter here and now. Will you or will you not carry out these instructions?”

With infinite deliberation, so that it seemed hours to him while the words came from his lips, Philip gave his answer.

“I—can—not!”

Norton rose almost as slowly. The red tide of anger had receded, and his face was now as pale and expressionless as that of the dead. He drew himself up to his full, ponderous height and faced his assistant as if he would overawe him by mere superiority of bulk.

“You have mistaken your man, Craig,” he said. “I confess I have mistaken mine, something I seldom do.”

“I am sorry—”

“Sorry that I do not see things as you do, I suppose.”

“No, sir. I am sorry that I have given you reason to believe that I could possibly place self-interest so far above the dictates of conscience.”

“I am sorry, too,” replied Norton, “for I had hoped great things from your co-operation.” “And you could trust to the loyalty of a man who could be so disloyal to himself?”

“I do not understand you, Craig, I confess. In thirty years of business no man has ever talked to me as you have done. I believed you clearheaded, practical. I find you visionary, sentimental. You are far from the man I thought you when I welcomed you as a possible, indeed probable, husband of my daughter.”

The grim significance of this struck sudden pain through Philip’s heart. He had not reckoned on the ruin of his castles in Spain, the blight upon his love, the bitter struggle to win this man’s treasure, if win her he ever could. There are moments in our lives when counting the cost means moral disintegration. But Craig went on without faltering; to be bought by emotions would have been to him as dishonorable as being bought by money.

“If I did otherwise than I have done, I should not think myself worthy of her,” he said.

“Are you fool or dupe?” sneered Norton. “Are you a monomaniac on conscience, or are you really better than the average man, I wonder?” “None of these, sir,” replied Philip, wrathfully. “I have only seen the effects of injustice as it has struck at a heart from which.my own life-blood flowed.”

“You mean—?”

“I mean,” said the young man passionately, “that the Angus Craig your millions would drive by legal trickery from the house they are unable to buy, is my father/’

Norton stared at his protége in utter confusion. In all the years of his activity no one had so shaken his mental poise, so nearly reduced him to the commonplace level of men who stammer.

“Craig? Why, I—oh, the Pneumatic Engine Company. But you said nothing of this. It could be adjusted.”

“That instance simply made me see other things in their true light,” replied Philip. “You will acquit me of any selfish motive, I am sure.”

The financier sat down again in his great leathern chair and idly swung to and fro, his hand pressed to his lips. When he spoke he seemed almost to have forgotten Philip’s presence.

“It was most unfortunate. … If I had but known. . . . But Haven had the matter in charge.”

There was a long silence, broken at last by the younger man.

“Will it be agreeable to you to have my resignation to take effect from writing?” he asked.

Norton was roused from his musing as by a trumpet-blast. There was that in Craig’s voice that was a call to arms, a challenge to a test of strength. And as he looked up he saw a new and stern face gazing at his own. The sense of great opposition had reached him. It was will against will, and in that gage of battle all his liking for the young man vanished in an instant. He saw in him only a quixotic fool with the hardihood to put on the puny armor of conscience and offer combat against a seasoned warrior. There was but one thing to do.

“As you please,” he replied coldly, and turned to busy himself with his papers.

Philip, without another word, walked from the room and to his desk, where he mechanically wrote the brief note that was to strip from him a princely salary, the prospect of colossal power and the right to woo a beautiful girl. Something of all this flashed through his mind as he signed his name, and yet he remembered afterward that he had had no regret at the time. He quickly sent the letter to his chief by a boy.

The reply was immediate.

“Your resignation is accepted,” was its curt tenor. “You will please send your keys to me. Of course it will be useless for you to expect to continue your acquaintance with my daughter.”

Philip stared at Norton’s closing words, and drew his hand across his eyes as if to correct his vision. Then he read once more.

With the letter tightly held he arose and walked toward the private office. At the threshold he shook his head with a grave smile and crushed the bit of paper to a tiny ball. A minute later, having delivered his keys, he was in the street, and the interior of the great Norton office had become but a memory.

The head of the house sat for some time gazing fixedly at the shining little emblems of power that were brought to him. At last he laid them gently on his desk, and pressed a button.

“Have Mr. Andrew Haven telephoned to,” he said to the employee who came at the summons, “and ask him to call and see me at once.”

CHAPTER XXII

BLOW UPON BLOW.

NOW that Philip Craig had crossed his Rubicon, there was no backward glance at the pleasant land on the farther shore. He would go on where duty led, with no regrets for his decision. If other men followed a code of business ethics he abhorred, that was nothing to him, nor could any amount of specious reasoning convince him that profit deliberately wrung from the woe of the innocent was anything better than blood-money.

He remembered an old saying of his father’s: “Show me a mon who makes a fortune in quick speculation, an’ I’ll show ye ane who’ll hae to stand sponsor before the Almighty for meesery and want.” He approved it heartily; in fact, he had found himself for some time thinking of his rather crabbed sire with a growing conviction that his bitter philosophy held great truths. Now, more than ever, he saw the elemental strength of the man.

But what the path of duty was at this juncture he did not clearly know. He felt certain, however, that the highway of business was closed to him. As a discarded employee of John Norton he would be of little value except, perhaps, to swindlers who could use his knowledge of the financier’s affairs for their own profit. He felt a sort of exultation as he thought of the havoc he could make of the great “John Peters” most cherished plans; yet he had no temptation thereto. His hands were washed clean, and he did not care to plunge them into the dirty water again.

Philip was far from believing himself either fitted for or worthy of religious work, as such, yet he did feel a strong desire to be of some use to humanity. He had sacrificed his material prospects for a principle profoundly connected with his fellow men; why not be consistent, and go farther along the same lines? Yet how? And then, there was Helen!

Being a young man of determination, he resolved not to give the girl up without a struggle. He believed she would rely upon him to show his mettle for the winning of her, and he told himself that she should be satisfied.

How to set about this battle for love Philip took some time in deciding. Manifestly he could not gather a band of devoted followers and-take Castle Norton by assault. He did not quite trust to the efficacy of the mail, for he knew enough of Norton to feel sure that all letters to Iielen would be rigorously scrutinized. And, although he never doubted her heart, he knew that she would be harassed between love for him and loyalty to her father, and should have all the aid and comfort he could give.

Next day he decided on a strategic move. He would send a message to Helen by some one who had access to her and whom he could trust. And that someone should be—

“Muggsy.”

Pie spoke the name aloud in his delight at having solved the. problem. The diminutive offspring of “Doc” Bayles saw Helen every day, he knew, for the girl was constant in her visits to the stables; then again, the jockey owed him the recompense of a good turn, for he had often employed him as a messenger of Cupid when the work was easy and the rewards generous.

“The very person,” Philip said, “he is shrewd, devoted to Helen and really owes me a service. I’ll use him.”

To call at the abiding place of young Bayles was not politic, but the telephone was at hand, and the small emissary was quickly reached.

“Hello, that you, Muggsy?” said Craig, as he pulled the shining standard across his desk. “Are you busy? Then please come to my chambers as soon as you can. I’ve an important errand for you. You’ll be here in an hour? Good boy. And by the way, you needn’t mention this to anyone. Good-b}C’

Then Philip gave himself to the task of writing an appropriate letter to Helen, and he found it a difficult thing to do. To say too much or too little, to be too ardent or too dignified was absurdly easy; but to tell her of his breach with her father with no vainglory and yet establishing the justice of his own position caused him many a qualm.

After writing and destroying half a dozen notes he evolved something that survived. Perhaps the ringing of his bell, evidently the forerunner of “Muggsy’s” arrival, had something to do with it; at any rate, the letter explaining the rupture, breathing unalterable love and imploring Helen to meet him next day at a certain hour in a certain art gallery they were wont to visit together, was sealed and addressed by the time the junior Bayles, dressed in brown velveteens and smelling very much of the stables, was ushered to the apartments by a scandalized hall-boy.

“Come in, Bayles,” he said, to the further disapprobation of the ebony servant, “I won’t detain you but a minute. How are you—and your father?”

“Doc an’ me’s well,” replied the youthful stoic. “What is it you want this time, sir?”

“I’ll tell you. Take this envelope and deliver it to Miss Norton—”

“To Miss Helen, sir?”

“Yes, yes, of course.”

“Beg pardon, sir. Didn’t know but you might ’a meant the old Mis’ Norton,” replied “Muggsy,” with just the suspicion of a mischievous gleam in his eye.

“Deliver it to Miss Helen,” continued Craig, “when she is alone—not otherwise. And have her read it in your presence. Then come back to me with her answer, whether written or spoken. If there is any delay in delivery, let me know by telephone. Now do you understand this thoroughly?”

“I does, sir. I’ll do it right, sir, you kin depend.

. . . Oh, thankee, sir.”

It was not until evening that Philip’s anxiety of waiting—he had even had dinner sent up to his rooms—was relieved by the tinkle he instinctively recognized as proceeding from “Muggsy.” He seized the receiver nervously.

“Yes, it’s I—Mr. Craig. What? Not able to see her alone? Oh, guests, were they? H’mph,

Haven? And another gentleman, you say? Well, it can’t be helped. Try hard to-morrow.”

“It can’t be till afternoon; I’m on duty till then,” came the answering voice, and with that decree Craig had to be content.

Next day, for want of something to relieve the tension of his mind, as well as obeying a rather unusual impulse, he went to see the Rev. Adoniram Bentley at his “office,” far down in the slum district of the city. During the night, which had held its wakeful hours, the mild eyes and gentle voice of the clergyman had seemed to brood over him, to hold out promise of peace, even to call him from his valley of gloom up into a hillside of sunshine. It was half dream, half walking illusion, but it moved him deeply and he answered the summons.

Rev. Mr. Bentley’s “clearing-house for misery,” as someone had called it, had been in earlier days the approach through one side of a building to some warehouses in the rear. These had long since gone the way of things mortal, and Mr. Bentley had rented the narrow space, partitioning off one end into a tiny room for his desk and library. The rest of the corridor was lined with benches for his “patients,” as he termed them.

“The poor and the criminal are all sick,” he was wont to say, “and their healing is usually more difficult than the average hospital case.”

When Philip arrived the good clergyman’s morning work was well in hand, and there were not more than a half-dozen miserable specimens of humankind sitting on the benches. They gazed at the clean-cut, vigorous young man with sodden curiosity or hopeless envy. What possible errand could lie have with the soul-doctor, they wondered.

Bentley, too, was surprised to see Philip, yet he greeted him with the great-hearted kindness that made him such a power for good among the powers of evil.

“Well, Philip,” he said, after the more formal greetings, “what is it? I know that it is out of the common, or you would not be here at this time of the day. And Pm sorry that I can see distress in your face.”

Then, feeling for the first time the tremendous strain he had undergone, seeing his own troubled soul mirrored back in the tenderly compassionate eyes of his friend, Philip poured forth his story as a child might tell its sorrows at its mother’s knee.

The little clergyman listened with ever-growing astonishment. Strange stories he had heard in his time, harrowing tales of self-corruption and disgrace, confessions of crimes that would curdle the blood, but nothing so unusual as this. Heretofore evil had alwavs triumphed over good; none had ever come to tell him that conscience had won a victory. Pie listened intently, his head bowed upon his hands.

“Well,” said Philip, with a constrained little laugh, when he had finished, “I have told my story; what have you to say?”

Mr. Bentley raised his eyes and gazed mildly at his caller’s somewhat excited face.

“I am sincerely sorry for you, Philip,” he said. “What can I say more? You have not come to me for advice, for, as you say, there can be no turning back.

“No—no—but I did not even intend to tell you or anyone. But now that I have told you, have I done right?”

“Your conscience, not I, must be the judge. Possibly—”

“Possibly—well?”

“Possibly you were overstrained by the tragedy you mentioned. Mr. Norton, generous, systematically charitable man that he is, would scarcely—”

“Charitable!” broke in Philip, fiercely. “Yes, if it is charitable to bind up the wounds we ourselves inflict.”

“Can he be held accountable for the sufferings of the children his hospital is to shelter?” asked the clergyman, with gentle emphasis.

Craig felt a hot wave of indignation surge up from his heart. Was this man, then, like all the rest, lenient to the sins of his benefactors?

“You, of course, can see no wrong in him,” he exclaimed, bitterly. “I forgot you were to be his almoner.”

“Philip!”

Only one word, but so filled with the tender melancholy of reproach that the younger man would fain have hidden his face.

“Forgive me.” he said, humbly, “I did not mean it. I scarcely know what I am saying.”

And as the clergyman gazed at the drawn and haggard face opposite him he could well believe that Philip was not responsible for his words. There was an unnatural light in his eyes, and his voice did not ring true. For a moment Mr. Bentley feared that some mental or physical link in the chain might snap under the tension. He would do what he could to ease the strain.

“Philip, my lad,” he began, “we cannot always judge of right or wrong by individual instances. Even absolute oppression sometimes changes by perspective. Great progress never fails to leave destruction in its path. Napoleon strode through the ashes of myriads of homes, over the corpses of unnumbered thousands, but the legacy of the ruin he wrought is seen to-day in an ennobled Europe.”

“But do you compare this business war upon individuals—?”

He could not go on. Argument with this man whom he knew to be noble, charitable, generous and good seemed almost like a needless insult. But the fact that the clergyman failed to see things as he saw them shocked him deeply and took the very ground from under his feet.

“Even if things were as bad as you thought,” said Mr. Bentley, “you might have done more for humanity by remaining and trying to soften the injustices than by giving the work over to other and less conscientious hands. You have suggested a personal interest on my part. Is it unfair if I hint that the fact that your father was a threatened victim may have aroused your own self-interest?”

It was now Philip’s turn to feel the sting; he was not so patient as the other had been.

“Good God, man,” he exclaimed, hotly, “as if concern for him could dwarf my other self-interest! You’re illogical.”

“True, you lose money and position,” returned • the clergyman, “but I know you well enough to realize that they would not weigh in the balance.”

“It is not that. Don’t you know—haven’t you seen—that I love Helen Norton?”

Now Mr. Bentley had not known nor surmised it, much as he had been in the company of both. To his gentle soul the manifestations of affection, had he noted them at all, would have seemed only part and parcel of the great common love humanity should share. But now, as he learned the truth, he realized how powerfully Philip had been impressed by the cases of injustice to individuals he had mentioned, and how great had been his sacrifice for conscience sake. The kindly gentleman was now on familiar ground,a place where he could minister to a wounded heart, and, in his supremely sympathetic fashion, he spoke such words of comfort and cheer as seemed best to fit the hour.

Craig listened gratefully, but could not gain any practical solace from Mr. Bentley’s well-meant efforts. Moreover, he was nervous and restless, and felt that he ought to be where he could receive Helen’s reply as soon as possible. After a little, he excused himself and hurried back to his apartments.

He had been home scarcely half an hour when his bell rang sharply. In a delirium of impatience he rushed to the door and found “Muggsy.” That small Mercury was somewhat astonished to be dragged inside with no gentle hand.

“Did you see her?” was the excited query.

“Yes, sir, just after luncheon. She was alone, and I had a good chance.”

“Yes, yes. Well?”

“She told me to give you this,” and he slowly brought forth the envelope that Philip knew only too well.

“But this is mine?” he exclaimed, “and unopened. What did she say?”

For once “Muggsy” appeared perturbed. He shifted from one foot to the other and searched in his coat pocket for a bit of his beloved cracked corn.

“Out with it, man 1”

“Well, sir, she says, ‘Who gave you this?’ I told her, and then she says, ‘Tell Mr. Craig it will be useless for him to try to commun’cate with or see me again/ she says.”

For a moment Philip staggered as from a terrific physical blow. Then he doubted his eyes, his ears and even “Muggsy’s” sanity. He plied the young man with questions, only to find the bitter truth still more clearly revealed. Helen Norton, who had vowed constancy till death, was already dead to him.

He hastily pressed a bill on Bayles and, scarcely knowing that he was doing so, the letter as well.

“What am I to do with this, sir?” asked the boy.

“Keep it; give it to her when she will take it,” “Philip replied with a harsh laugh.

In his agony of soul he paced the room until the very walls seemed to mock at him. He could endure the place no longer, and made his way to the street, already brilliant with the tide of beauty and fashion at its afternoon flood. The trappings of wealth, the smug complacency of the well-born, the insolence of liveried flunkies—all the outward signs of a luxury that counted no cost of treasure or of blood exasperated him almost to frenzy. He must get away from it, or he would do something he would regret; that much he could comprehend.

But where to go? He walked aimlessly, as a man without an abiding-place, accosted now and then by wretched fellows whose mission on earth was to suck the blood of the prosperous. He gave to every one of them, vaguely speculating as to the places they called home.

Home! Back over the path of memory went his disordered mind to the house of his boyhood, the little room he had called his own, the fireside where he had spent his winter evenings with his books. There would he go, to the stern old man who had said, “When ye tire o’ ye’er friends in Mammon, coom back.” In the little cottage where right held its sway, encompassed as it was with the powers of darkness, he would find something of peace.

When he reached the dismal street he noticed with apathetic curiosity that workmen were engaged on a great building near his father’s house. He could scarcely think consecutively, for his head was hot and light and subject to a strange pressure from within. He even staggered as he walked, so that one of the stone masons nudged his mate and laughed significantly.

“Gee, Bill, look at the swell. I wish I had half his load.”

At the moment of his passing the steam derrick swinging the heavy stone on which the men had been working began to move across his path.

“Look out, there,” cried one of the masons, as Philip took a step or two. “My God, man, look out!”

He heard the words clearly enough, but they had no meaning for him. For an instant he looked about in dazed surprise, then the great block swung across the spot where he had stood and left him prone upon the sidewalk, which was dyed by the blood from a terrible gash in his head.

Sympathetic workmen gathered about him, with the usual helplessness of a crowd, and almost as soon as they came an ambulance from the nearest police station. As the surgeon rose from his examination of the prostrate form he shook his head gravely.

“Does anyone here know this man?” he asked.

One of the bystanders, whose seamed and rugged face was surmounted with a tangled mass of reddish gray hair, pushed his way to the centre of the crowd and looked down into the still, white face on the pavement.

“I ken him,” he said, quietly. “He’s my son.”

The rest gave way with respectful silence. Then, at the old Scotchman’s stern command, the limp mass of what had a moment before been a handsome, active man was borne tenderly into the little cottage. Philip Craig had come home, indeed.

CHAPTER XXIII

A SNAKE IN THE GRASS.

A HALF hour after Philip Craig had left John Norton’s office forever, Andrew Haven came into it, filled with satisfaction, because he knew from experience that a peremptory summons generally meant profitable activity for himself. And although the great man was outwardly as calm as ever, the keen-scented old sycophant knew at once that some disturbing event had happened; he had not studied in vain the patron in whose grip he had been for many years.

Norton lost no time in turning over the carrying out of several business projects to Haven, and, much as that sleek individual wondered, he received the commissions with glee, and held his peace. He was not given to irritating his chief with questions.

But when the Onometer deal was given into his charge with instructions to put it through at once, Plaven could refrain no longer.

“You’ll pardon me, I am sure,” he said in his most deprecatory manner, “but I thought that matter was entirely in Mr. Craig’s hands.”

“Mr. Craig is no longer associated with my affairs,” returned Norton, without looking up from his paper.

A gleam of sinister delight came into Haven’s little eyes, and whatever passed for his heart gave a bound of triumph. He had hated Craig with a hatred all the more bitter because it was secret, ever since it was apparent that the young man stood closer to the throne of finance than he could ever hope to be. His envy had been well masked under a show of friendship, for he feared the strong and earnest character of his rival. But now that his path was clearer than it had ever been, he could have cried aloud for joy. Instead he only ventured to say, with an affectation of well-bred surprise: “Indeed? I thought—”

“No matter what you thought. He and I did not—agree.”

“I cannot say how deeply I regret—”

“You needn’t regret,” returned Norton, with his hard smile. “It will profit you, I daresay, well enough.”

“Oh, I—I—pray allow me—but I thought Craig a very capable young man, even if—if somewhat addicted to the habit of advancing his own ideas in preference to yours.”

“Oh, you saw that, did you? Little ever escapes you, I fancy, Andrew.”

Haven disliked hearing his own praises sung when they took a certain tone, and he now changed the subject somewhat.

“You’ll pardon me, Norton—liberty of an old friend, you know—but Miss Helen?”

“So you know that, too? Perhaps you can help me there. It will be a blow to Helen. I regret it, but she has enough of her father in her to endure disappointment.”

“Especially when she knows he is unworthy,” insinuated Haven.

“Just so. Look here, Haven, you are not averse to lying—curb your indignation—in a good cause, of course. Well, anyway, you never saw any good in Craig.”

“Why, as to that—” and the little man shrugged his shoulders eloquently.

“I shall tell Helen to-night that all must end between them,” continued “John Peter.” “I shall simply say the truth—that he is not the man I thought him. If opportunity presents, you can drive the wedge home with—well, with whatever suggests itself.”

“Why, I am sincerely sorry for Miss Helen,” Haven said glibly, “and of course I will do anything I can.”

With that promise, which his little soul was eager enough to fulfil, Plaven left the presence of his chief, brimming over with happiness. Had he seen the look of contempt Norton cast after him, he might not have walked through the clerks’ department with an air of self-confidence quite foreign to his usual apologetic demeanor. He was noticed, as he intended to be.

“Guess Andrew’s struck something rich from the old man,” observed the head bookkeeper to his assistant. “Never saw him look so cocky in my life.”

“H’mph! More likely the chief’s pulled him out of another big hole. Lord, what luck some men do have!”

Late that afternoon, Mrs. Norton, after a brief interview with her husband, sent word to Helen to come to her boudoir. Her gentle nature shrank from the task Norton had imposed upon her, but his word was law, as always, and, too, her implicit faith in his judgment made her feel that in this case he must be right.

As tenderly as possible she broke the news to the girl, who came in radiant from a brisk walk in the great park near by. The sunny face and happy eyes struck a pang to the mother’s heart. She knew too well how soon the light would be quenched, and the smiling mouth droop into curves of sadness.

Little by little, and with infinite tenderness, she drew the talk away from other things to the subject of Craig and their love. Thus far the task was easy, for the girl’s heart seconded the mother’s speech with an enthusiasm that revealed her feelings completely. Mrs. Norton sighed; the altar-fires of her own affection were still warm, and she realized the pain that she was to inflict.

“Of course you know, Helen,” she said, “that my endorsement of your engagement was subject to your father’s approval?”

The girl’s quick instinct took alarm, as a wild doe’s at the hearing of some unusual note in nature.

“Why, yes, of course, mamma,” she replied, “and he does approve. At least it seemed so last night—when he knew.”

“He did approve, dear, but many things may happen in a few hours.”

“Happen? But not—not—”

“Helen, child, it wounds me deeply to say it, but you must cease to think of Philip any more.”

The blue eyes dilated with wonder and the color left the rounded cheeks. The girl for a moment seemed not to understand her mother’s words, then burst forth indignantly:—

“It can’t be true!”

“It is true, my dear,” said Mrs. Norton, gently. “Mr. Craig is a different man from what your father thought. So far different is he that your father has been compelled to sever business relations with him.”

“Because he—because he loved me?” asked the mystified girl.

“No, no, dearest, of course not that. Your father had promised you to him in two years if he proved worthy.”

“And how has he proved otherwise?”

“I can only tell you what your father says—that he has been a terrible disappointment to him; that they separated because Mr. Craig attempted—but why should I tell you? It would only cause you pain.”

Helen stood up proudly and looked straight at her mother’s kindly eyes with an expression the elder woman had never seen on her face before. At that instant she seemed to drop the spiritual garb of girlhood.

“It is my right to know,” she said, firmly. “You say I must never see the man I love again, but you do not tell me why. You are cruel,”

“My dear,” replied the distressed mother, “it wrings my heart to be the bearer of such news. Heaven knows I wish it were another’s duty. But you know your father liked him, had advanced him to a very high position, and intended to make him his successor.”

“But how—why—”

“I can only tell you that he insulted your father, and refused absolutely to do his duty. There was more, but what, your father would not tell even me.”

Helen would hear no more. Full of the sense of outraged justice, of wounded love, of passionate pride in her devotion, she hurried to her own room and threw herself upon her bed. Then came the gift of tears, those divine streams upon which flow away so much of the bitterness of suffering.

But young hearts weep briefly, and soon Helen’s strength of nature asserted itself. She rose and bathed her eyes, full of a strong determination not to submit tamely to what she believed to be a great wrong. And as a first step she must get word to Philip, must assure him that her love was as warm and true as ever. She wrote a letter of ardent affection, promising that whatever had happened he should be allowed to speak for himself.

She thrust the note into the bosom of her dress, and went to find a safe messenger. “Muggsy” Bayles was unquestionably the right person, but on inquiring as to his whereabouts, she found that he was out; was, in fact, coming to the house. She summoned all her patience to await his arrival.

In the hall she met Mr. Andrew Haven, who greeted her with effusive ceremony. He had come to see her father, he said, but had found him engaged. and must wait. He would go into the reception room, if he might be permitted, and stay until his chief was at leisure.

Scarcely knowing why she did so, Helen followed the meek little man into the beautiful apartment and sat down. He seemed so embarrassed, so fearful of incommoding anyone in the establishment that her girlish heart actually pitied him. She talked of the things she thought might interest him, and inevitably her father’s business at last came to their tongues.

“I was greatly surprised to-day,” ventured Haven, “to learn that Mr. Craig had left your father.”

A fortunate incident, thought Helen. Here was a man who could perhaps shed more light on the darkness than her mother had been able to do. With innocent duplicity she remarked quite casually :—

“I suppose you were. You and Phi—Mr. Craig —were good friends, were you not?”

Haven chuckled inwardly at the simplicity of the idea; it was very amusing, but he believed it best not to undeceive the girl.

“Yes, indeed,” he replied, warmly. “I may say that—next to your father and, of course, yourself —T was his best friend. I regret this episode exceedingly, and I am greatly disappointed. I had expected a bright future for Philip.”

“To what do you attribute the trouble?” asked Helen, in as matter-of-fact a tone as she could.

His knowledge of the matter was less than her own, but timorous as he was in many ways, he was never at loss for an answer. His agile mind had already mapped out a course of action, and he proceeded upon it with the sublime confidence of a marplot.

“I believe that the free rein given him during your father’s absence rather unbalanced him, and he refused to accept his control on his return.”

A swift gesture of disbelief on Helen’s part did not escape his notice, and he hastened to qualify his remarks.

“But he is young and ambitious, and—well, I liked him, you know.”

To the young girl’s sensitive mind this friendly little person seemed almost an angelic messenger, a being sent by providence to take her words of cheer to the one she loved. Haste, she felt, was necessary, for she thought she heard some one approaching. With sweet and maidenly impulsiveness that would have touched a nobler man deeply, she drew the letter from her bosom and thrust it into Haven’s fat and nerveless hands.

“Mr. Haven, you are a friend of Philip, and of me, too,” she said, rapidly. “You must know that we—are very dear to each other. I have only just been told that I must see him no more. It is essential to his happiness and to mine that I hear what he has to say. This letter—will you take it to him?”

With all his cleverness at rapid decisions, Andrew Haven found himself deliberating. He had not counted on a confidence that would make him a messenger of love. His first thought was to take the letter and destroy it, but immediately he realized that this was a threadbare ruse, and easily brought home to him. He withdrew his hand, leaving the missive in the girl’s own.

“No, no, I cannot take it,” he declared.

“Why not? He is your friend.”

“But so is your father—and he—”

“And I am your friend,” continued Helen, triumphantly. “We are two to one!”

Just here a splendid thought flashed into Haven’s brain. This was the very moment to strike—to do Norton the service he had promised, as well as to make full repayment for the cold contempt with which Craig had dismissed him when he took from his hands that matter with which his chief had entrusted him.

“No, Miss Norton,” he exclaimed, “I cannot take it. I did admire Mr. Craig—I half like the fellow now. It’s hard, you know, to totally forsake a friend. But he—he is—well, he has no right to receive a note from you.”

“Explain,” commanded the girl, a bright spot glowing in either cheek. “An explanation is certainly my right.”

“My dear young lady, I am not the one to ask. Your father or your mother would—”

“It is you who have said this; why?”

“Well, I understand—that is, I know—that the disagreement between Mr. Craig and your father was because—because of you.”

“Yes; go on.”

“Well, the fact is Mr. Craig insisted on an immediate marriage with you.”

“Yes.” .She spoke with a great thrill of pride and loyalty. That was not a fault, at any rate.

“And then,” continued Haven, “when your father insisted upon a year or two of delay, Mr. Craig said he would not wait—that—you must really pardon me—that immediate marriage with you was necessary to establish his credit in some enormous outside deal he had in hand.”

A little sound as of a gasp for breath told him that the shot had gone home, and he continued:— “And he demanded either immediate marriage with a half interest in the business or a large sum of money—as an indemnity, I presume. There, I have told you, and I—”

His inveterate habit of proffering sympathy would have led him to utter a soothing phrase of some sortt but that something in Helen’s face awed him.

“I have told you what I know,” he pursued, “and I trust you will forgive the pain I have caused you.”

“I am your debtor, Mr. Haven,” replied Helen, coldly. ‘‘We have indeed been mistaken in him. This note, of course, will not be delivered.” And she walked out haughtily, tearing the paper into fragments as she went.

Haven looked after her with admiration in his sharp little eyes. “A chip of the old block,” he thought, “a girl among a thousand.” Then self, his greater idol, rose uppermost. “I think,” he said, with a smile, “that John Norton owes me more than thanks.”

In her own room, tearless and hardened, Helen set about destroying the mementos of an affection that now seemed like a mockery of sentiment, a travesty of nature’s sweetest impulse. Love’s bruised wings would never hover over her again, she was sure, nor would her nature ever recover from the shock of the day’s revelation. But her wound must be hidden; neither curiosity nor compassion should touch it or have any share in making it rankle beyond its natural smart.

Next day she wore the perfect mask of calmness, and no one heard her mention Philip Craig’s name, except “Muggsy” Bayles, when he came, in the honesty of his devotion, to attempt to deliver his ill-fated letter.

CHAPTER XXIV

A PLEDGE TO THE DEAD.

THE house of Angus Craig stood bravely against the shocks of time, and yet it bore the scars of a conflict that was not wholly due to the lapse of many days. Something new had set its impress of ruin and decay about its once trim exterior. A suggestion of unkemptness and neglect was found in its worn paint, its shabby, ill-hanging blinds, its broken window-• panes pathetically stuffed with whatever had been nearest to hand. Even the snow that covered the ground on a crisp evening long after the accident to Philip could not hide the dilapidation that had set in, for the once well-kept fence had lost man}* a paling, and the gate creaked mournfully on one hinge.

Within were the same tokens of degeneration. The furniture was more sparse and of far poorer quality than of yore, for the fine old mahogany pieces that had lent an air of distinction to the humble sitting-room were no longer to be seen. Even the honest Scotch carpet had given way to a few cheap and dingy rugs.

The lone figure that sat toiling under the light of a feeble lamp seemed in keeping with its surroundings. Not that Angus Craig had aged in appearance during the more than two years since his son had been brought into the cottage a helpless wreck; instead, it seemed as if he had grown younger, for the new and deep lines that care had set about his mouth bespoke the vigor of more youthful days. But his clothing was poor and worn, and. his general appearance that of a man who had been fighting with poverty and had lost.

Angus threw down his graver’s tools with a deep sigh.

“There, I’ll work nae mair the nicht. My auld eyes’ll not stand it. For such trumpery, too. Imph!’’

He disdainfully surveyed the work on which he had been engaged, a beautiful bit of wood-engraving, the miniature head of one of the great composers of a past age.

“Four glide hours gane into that bawbie, an’ they’ll probably offer me a dollar for it to-morrow. I’ll be ower lucky if I get a dollar and a quarter.’’

He went to the window and peered out into the white night.

“Nae signs o’ them,” he said, and turned to put a pathetically small bit of fuel on the dying fire.

As he knelt to straighten the andirons, a dull clangor, like the stertorous breathingof a distressed giant, came to his ears. He raised his head with a proud gesture of triumph and defiance, and his eyes glowed under his shaggy brows.

“Aye, thump on, day and nicht, ye everlastin’ machines, poundin’ awa’ the heart-beats o’ the slaves that tend ye. But ye didna drive the auld mon frae his hame wi’ a’ ye’er din.”

A resounding knock at the outside door brought the Scotchman to his feet in a hurry. Then, with a great gush of cold air and a stamping of feet, entered Joseph Langmaid and Luke Ford.’

Time had treated these two worthies with a lenient hand. Langmaid was no more grizzled nor weazened than before, and his sonorous voice was even more impressive. His rapid glance shifted from point to point in the room as he returned his host’s greeting with a grandiloquent phrase expressing confusion to capital. Then he pulled out an enormous meerschaum pipe, lighted it, and sat down to read a newspaper in which an article of his own had that day appeared.

Ford had actually improved in two years. His lank frame had filled out somewhat and he stood straighter, as if prepared to meet the world in any sort of combat. His old-time taciturnity had not wholly left him, but it was to be noticed that when he now advanced a proposition he generally completed it, and was not afraid of giving words to the radical thoughts that were in him. He had not lost his love for tobacco, and was even now masticating that solacing substance with a swinging movement of his powerful jaws. While waiting for the completion of their usual party he took out a tablet and began to write rapidly.

Silently Angus sat and watched them, gently swaying back and forth in his rocking-chair. He would have preferred rest and quiet to-night, but it was the stated time for the “meetin’,” and personal comfort must not oppose itself to the ancient habit.

Not long after the arrival of these two came another knock, deferential, not to say timorous.

“Wha can that be?” said Angus. His cronies were not in the habit of announcing themselves with any lack of confidence, and he was suspicious of all other callers. He went to the door and peered cautiously out.

“Bless my soul, but it’s Geoffrey,” he exclaimed, petulantly. “Coom in, mon, coom in, and na’ stand there like a stoat-in-bottle.”

Thus adjured, the rotund Englishman shambled into the lamp-light, followed briskly by his spouse, whose black eyes snapped and whose ruddy face glowed ruddily from the cold. The lady looked about her, and bowed with little, jerky inclinations as she was introduced to the others.

“Ye see, boys,” explained the somewhat uneasy Geoffrey, “the missus thought she’d like to come to-night. I’ve told her—”

“Yes, he’s told me how you sit here night after night and discuss problems. As far as I can see you do nothing but waste time and light. I thought perhaps a woman might find some thread in your skein of theory that she could pull out for practical use.”

Thus spoke the energetic woman of affairs, whom Angus Craig forthwith welcomed with a gentle courtesy that made his cronies stare; they little knew how the most self-assertive member of the feminine clan was able to arouse tenderness in the gnarly old Scot. There were many things in his curiously complex inner nature that would have astonished them still more, could they have been possessed of some magic reading-glass.

Mrs. Fairbrother’s loquacity found a pleasurable outlet in this assemblage of mere men, and she took woman’s advantage of her superiority. Paradoxically, she gave her opinion as to the uselessness of talk, reminding her hearers very pointedly that wasted breath never coined dollars. She even glanced critically about at the sorrowfully shabby room, and shook her plumed head significantly.

“And you, Mr. Craig—” she said, effusively, “the world doesn’t seem to be using you very well —that is, judging from what Geoff used to tell me of your comfortable home.”

Unmindful of her abashed husband’s tug at her arm, Mrs. Fairbrother proceeded to take off her immense fur cloak and sink into the most comfortable chair she could find. Nor did she cease her monologue.

“When I saw you last,” she ran on, “you looked fairly prosperous, but now—” she shrugged her shoulders with thinly veiled contempt, for she had no patience with poverty. “That son of yours seems to have brought you no luck.”

Old Angus’ thin face flushed slightly, but he gave no other sign of vexation. Instead, he raised a warning finger.

“Hush, Mrs. Fairbrother, I beg o’ ye,” he entreated. “Philip’s in the room above, an’ may hear ye.”

“I’m sure it might do him good if he did,” she declared. But her voice lowered noticeably.

The three callers looked at one another aghast, and to hide his confusion at his wife’s rudeness, Geoffrey ventured to ask: “How is Philip getting along, Angus?”

“Weel; verra weel,” returned the old man, brightening. “The doctor says he may coom downstairs whenever he pleases the noo, but—I’ve not tauld him—he doesna ken—”

He looked sadly about the denuded and cheerless room, and a mist came over his wearied eyes.

Poverty, privation, discomfort—what were they for him to bear? It was onlv when he beheld the shining opulence of the rich that he felt his gorge rise, for the bitterness of sight is often more potent than the bitterness of suffering. But the thought that his son must find him sunk so low among his fellows, stripped of the power to command a decent livelihood, cut him to the quick.

“M’m,” said Mrs. Fairbrother, reflectively, “so he hasn’t been from his room in—how long has it been?”

“Two years last October,” Angus replied.

As he disappeared into the kitchen to bring another lamp, the woman turned to the others.

“Two years for a—a blow in the head, wasn’t it?” she remarked, incredulously. Like poverty, illness, too. aroused her suspicious antagonism.

“Now lookee here, Jane,” protested her fat, good-natured husband, “I told you all about it, don’t you know? To be sure ’twas an injury in the head, but Philip had brain fever, too, and some hurt to his spine that kept the poor chap from walking. It’s been a hard rub for both of ’em, and you ought to be more considerate.”

It was Mrs. Fairbrother’s settled policy to receive all marital suggestions as to her duty in any particular contingency with silent contempt. So she continued on the even tenor of her remarks.

“Yes, I believe you did tell me, but about that time I went into that F. & B. deal—” Here came certain muttering which in any other than a woman of some financial standing might have sounded vastly like imprecations. The florid lady had good reason to remember the “F. & B. deal” with reviling, for by it she had lost heavily—many thousands, rumor said. She had been led into the scheme by a couple of persuasively eloquent brokers, who frankly admitted that it was a bit “off color” and that the people on the other end would get squeezed. This description troubled Mrs. Fairbrother very little, but later when she woke up one morning to find herself on the “other end,” and “squeezed” to a very lively tune, her righteous indignation knew no bounds.

In her novel state of mind she listened with awakening interest to Geoffrey’s accounts of the meetings at Angus Craig’s, where, according to him, plans were being formulated as to how the world could be relieved from the “tyranny of great wealth.” She had just begun to suspect that she herself stood in need of protection.

But however much she enjoyed her visit, the four old cronies passed an uncomfortable evening indeed. She disputed their every proposition in a very loud voice, and when logic failed her, jeered and pooh-poohed in a manner that admitted of no adequate reply. It was not long before Ford and Langmaid retired in disgust and silent wrath. Soon after, Fairbrother also rose to depart.

On the way out the hearty old fellow hurriedly whispered an apology to Angus for the trouble he felt he had caused. He was reassured by a pressure of the hand that told him his standing was still secure.

Craig stood in the open doorway for a moment, drinking in the clear, cold air. He looked up at the brilliant stars with infinite longing. In their cold scintillations there seemed to be more sympathy with his distressed soul than in the human lights about him, mellow shafts from the great mills by which the cottage was now engulfed. Here in the open came the clang-clang of the pitiless machinery, loud and disturbing. Angus shut the door angrily, and went back to his sitting room to prepare for the night.

On the threshold he stepped back with a startled cry, for there in the opposite doorway, pale and thin and trembling, stood his son.

“Yes, it is I, father,” Philip said, with a faint smile.

“How dared ye try tae leave ye’er room?” the old man asked.

“I heard what that—that woman said.”

He staggered and would have fallen, but for the two strong canes he carried.

“Please help me to a chair,” he said in a thin, faltering voice, so wofully changed from the resonant tones of other days. “Really, you are not courteous to your visitors.”

The old man’s strong arms led him safely to a seat. Angus looked down at him with a great misgiving.

“I fear, lad, ye’ll have owerdone yersel’,” he exclaimed.

“No; I feel that my long vigil is nearly over, and that, thanks to you and Doctor Blake, I shall soon be a man among men again.”

“God grant,” said Angus, fervently.

To Philip’s eyes, made all the keener by the weary months of utter helplessness, months that had quickened his spiritual and mental vision and had given him a mental grasp he had never known before, the altered aspect of the room told its story with sad emphasis.

“You have suffered, father,” he said, reproachfully, “and you never told me.”

“How could I, boy, as you—as you were?” Philip thought with gladness that the change in the physical appearance of things, great as it was, seemed less than the alteration in his father’s attitude toward himself. It was wonderful to see this rugged man, who had formerly delighted to play the tyrant over his son, now almost suppliant before the helpless invalid.

“Tell me now, then,” said Philip, “everything. Oh, I am strong enough,” he added, as he read anxious hesitancy on his father’s face. “Go on.” “Weel, then, if ye must ken—an’ I suppose it’s best, for ye ken something’s wrang, o’ course—I lost my place two year ago.”

“IIow? Because of me?”

“Because o’ ye? Why, no, mon. What put that idea into ye’er head? I was—accused o’ thievin’.”

“Father!”

“It’s true. Some stock certeeficate it was. I had engraved the plate, an’ it was brought back for an alteration. Some impressions o’ the plate—all signed, they said, before the changes were decided on—-were in the package, an’ I returned them wi’ the plate. Afterward, it seems, three o’ the certeeficates were put on the market, an’—an’—” The old man broke down with the recollection. To an honest soul accusation is as terrible as crime itself, and Angus felt anew all the agony of the stab as he laid his bosom bare to his son.

“And you were accused,” said Philip. “The outrage of it! How dared they? They knew at the plant that you couldn’t do such a thing!”

“Oh, aye, they kenned it weel enow—or, at least, I think they thocht so. But I was the only mon who had touched the package, except the superintendent, an’ he didna open it. An’ ye see this Andrew Haven was a big customer—what’s the matter, Philip?”

“Nothing,” replied the son, whose clenched hands shook nervously at the sound of the name, “only a twinge. There, I’m all right, again. What did you say the—customer’s name was?” “Andrew Haven. An’ strange tae say, lad, he was the mon who was president o’ the watch company that rewarded me so muneeficently—you remember—for my loyalty.” He laughed sardonically.

Andrew Haven! But it might be a coincidence, Philip thought, for the world was made up of them. He tried to steady his voice as he asked:— “What were the certificates?”

“A new issue of stock in the Onometer Company.”

It was true, then. And spite of all, it was through the man he had despised and John Norton that his honest father had been brought low. How much had been blind fate and how much far-seeing treachery he could not determine. The blood boiled within him, weak as he was, as he thought of the undeserved suffering of the man who had been a tower of strength to him during the days of his dependency. Yet he must learn more.

“But surely they didn’t dare—”

“Arrest me? It might have been better if they had. The story got around, an’ try as I might, I couldna get warrk; nae engraver would hae me.”

“And it has been more than two years,” said Philip. “Medicines, nursing, doctors—how have you done it?”

For a moment he thought regretfully of the large sum he had sent the Jamesons at the time of the firm’s tragedy, a sum whose loss had practically impoverished him. “Was it worth while?” he asked himself, as he looked at the struggling old man sitting amid the wreck of his former prosperity. And the Jameson firm must have gone to the wall again long ago. Yet somehow the memory of the act filled him with confidence in his manhood; he, at least, was young, would soon be at work again and his father should want no more.

“Weel,” said Angus, “it’s been an ower tough fight, but I’ve keepit at it.”

Fie went to a cupboard and brought forth a basket which he placed on his son’s knees.

“I’ve made these fripperies ye see here, an’ sauld ’em in the shops, but I’ve not got reech by it, ye ken.”

Philip’s eyes moistened as he viewed the bits of engraved wood, beautiful in themselves, but not very salable, he knew. Then the softer emotion was driven out by a fierce desire for retaliation. Someone should be made to suffer for the foul injustice that had compelled his father to earn his livelihood almost as a common hawker. He thanked God for the returning strength that would fit him for a renewal of the battle of life, for there were great things to be done.

“I might ha’ thocht,” continued Angus, breaking in upon his mental soliloquy, “that this Haven was only mistaken in the number o’ certificates, but I learned that it was he who tried tae buy this house through the mon Holloway. But I’m in it yet, and, please God, in it I’ll dee. . . . Does the clatter annoy ye, Philip?”

“No.”

For the first time it flashed through Philip’s mind that the scheme to defraud through public officials of the state had either failed or had not been attempted. He wondered that the thought had not occurred to him before; but he had been so ill, so weak, so disinclined to think at all!

Many days passed ere he wrung the whole wretched truth of his father’s downfall from the proud old man—how the little stock of money had been drawn upon bit by bit until nothing remained; how the fine mahogany pieces had one by one gone to the stores of the dealers in antique furniture never to return; how the struggle for subsistence had gone on night and day; how the father had labored below stairs in absolute silence, lest the son should know that he was not away in the factory. And Philip thought, with a great throb of gratitude, that he had all this time been living in comfort in the room sacred to the memories of the past.

But upon this night of revelation he had learned enough to feel a new impress upon his soul, the conviction that duty was before him, never to leave his presence until it was satisfied. Henceforth the world was to be for him a fighting-ground, not for riches, or honor, or glory, but for the triumph of a principle.

As he lay in his welcome bed after the evening’s illuminating talk, he reached for the little worn Bible that had been his mother’s, and which lay on a table nearby. He raised it to his lips and kissed its dingy cover.

“Mother, my mother,” he said, solemnly, “whose memory is sacred, though I remember you not, upon this book you loved I pledge myself to struggle against the wrongs of the oppressed.”

A little later, old Angus, peering cautiously in, found him asleep, with deep peace upon his face.

CHAPTER XXV

“A PAPER FOR THE PEOPLE.”

THIE “city room” of the American News at night was in no essential respects different from that of any other great daily at a like time. The long rectangle lined with green-shaded electric lights; the rows of desks and tables at most of which men in all styles of raiment from shirtsleeves to dress coat were pounding furiously on typewriters; the sinuous tubes of brass, from which, with a saturnine chuckle, belched little cartridge-shaped boxes from time to time; the rushing and squabbling of office-boys; the thick blue gusts of tobacco smoke: the laughter and badinage of the groups of temporarily unemployed; the nervous stammering of the battery of telegraphic instruments in the room adjoining, where under a huge central light a dozen or more men were seated around a long table using blue pencils, scissors and paste-brushes on dispatches of many sizes and colors—all these physical attributes of the enormous and multifarious activity of a metropolitan newspaper were as they had been for years and would be for years to come.

In one corner of the large room, behind a ground glass partition, sat Maurice Rosenfeld, the city editor of the News. He was a slim, sallow, fragile man, with eyes like ferrets’ and a habit of wiping his glasses with a bit of flannel whenever he became excited. Just now he was in earnest consultation with Brice, one of his ‘‘star” special men, on ways and means for the morrow.

“There’s no use talking, Brice,” he said in his thin, nasal voice, “we’ve got to brace up on local ‘scares.’ The ‘old man’ was in to-day, kicking like a steer, and I know he means business.”

“Well, how about Chinatown?” ventured Brice. “Rats! Dead mouldy; done to death. Show more acumen, old man.”

“Then why not make a howl about an open cesspool I know of on 239th Street, back of a lot of tenement houses? Work the typhoid racket and all that sort of thing. ‘Paper for the people,’ you know.”

“Well, that might go, if you do it in good shape,” returned Rosenfeld not very enthusiastically. “Be sure and find out, however, whether the land is owned by any advertiser or friend of the ‘old man’s.’ If it isn’t, bang ’em good and hard. Soak the board of health incidentally; Jones, the chairman, called the ‘old man’ an ‘inflated ass’ at the last meeting.”

“I’m on,” returned the reporter, cheerily. “You can bet it’ll be a good story.”

“It’ll have to be,” said Rosenfeld, grimly, “or it won’t go.”

No sooner had Brice left the little den than the managing editor of the paper waddled in. John Wesley Landor was a mountain of flesh endowed with a keen brain, a sensitive nature and an absolute aversion to his profession—when out of the office. “It’s like opium,” he said, “you can’t drop it, but how you do curse it when the spell is off.”

He had curling yellow hair and a heavy imperial that gave him a distinctly martial air.

He had come to tell his city editor that there was an immense “jam” on the paper. He liked to enforce his orders in person, though he might have used the telephone.

“You’ll have to cut everything to the bone tonight, Rosey,” he said, genially. “The counting room notified me—at the eleventh hour, of course —that the Winslow ‘elephant’ page ‘ad’ of their confounded anniversary sale goes to-night—ordered by wire.”

“Of course,” returned the city editor. “Blamed old shop keeper always waits till news is thicker than sand fleas.”

“That’s just it, my boy. Guess he had a tip on that World’s Bank ‘scoop.’ Winslow and the ‘old man’ are pretty chummy just now, and Winslow’s clever enough to advertise on a day when the paper’s sure to have a big run. Hang the ‘elephant!’ How much of a ‘reader’ is supposed to go with the beast?”

“Column and a half.”

“H’mph! Rosey, if I ever own a paper, I’ll give advertisers iust what they pay for—no more and no less. I’ll—”

“If you ever own a paper, Landor,” interrupted Rosenfeld, in his cutting tones, “you’ll do as all the rest do. You’ll probably be mighty glad to get business on any terms.”

To this the managing editor made no reply, but went to a sharp wall-hook on which the evening’s proofs were hanging, and turned the long slips over with the dexterity of an expert.

“Better nip this murder yarn into a column,” he said. “Anyway, it’s a pretty tame theory of the crime. Who did it?’’

“Dalrymple.”

“H’mph! His imagination’s petering out. Stopped drinking, hasn’t he?”

“Yes, he’s going to be married.”

“So? No time for imagination, then; must face cold facts. Old Thatcher, of the St. Louis Independent used to say to me when I was a reporter on that blessed rag: ‘Young man, don’t be in a hurry to make your best girl permanent.’ And I wasn’t, but—” The ponderous man sighed gently; there was a romance connected with Landor in some way, though none knew exactly how.

“This story about the heresy charges might be boiled into a stick,” he resumed, still turning the proofs. “People care very little about the intellectual sins of the clergy. If the parson had done something morally heretical, it would be different. And this—well?”

The question was for a smartly uniformed boy who had entered and stood respectfully by his side. “Mr. Price wants to see you at once, sir.” “Very well; you may go. Didn’t know the ‘old man’ was coming in to-night, Rosey. Wonder what crotchet he’s got now.”

Landor stepped to the elevator, and was carried high into the steel tower in one corner of the great building, where was the luxurious suite of offices occupied by Orville W. Price, the man whose slightest whim dictated what should be said and served to—as his business letter-heads asserted— “Over Twelve Million People in the Twenty-two Leading Cities of the United States.”

Landor never answered a summons to the steel tower but with a sense of dread. He knew that one day the call would come to him for the last time, and that someone else, perhaps a man who was now the least-considered of his subordinates, would reign in his stead. He knew that his own predecessor had fallen from his very faithfulness in carrying out the policy of Price. According to instructions he had attacked a corporation particularly flagrant in its disregard of public rights. So brilliant and effective had been the onslaught that the corporation had been aroused from its customary indifference, and had fought back. Such powerful and financial interests had been arrayed against Price that he had been forced not only to abandon the antagonistic policy of the paper, but to give over a peace offering in the shape of the official head of his zealous second in command.

Landor, however, saw no signs of any such untoward event to-night in the clear brown eyes of his chief, eyes whose smiling light generally blinded those who saw him to the selfish grossness of the lower portion of his face.

“Good evening, Landor,” said Price, cordially. “I see by the proofs that we’ve a fine layout for the morning. Too bad Winslow’s big ‘ad’ will crowd us. But business—ahem—is business, you know.”

Landor was certain that he had not been summoned to hear encomiums on the prospective contents of the morrow’s paper. It was not Price’s custom to waste time on the amenities of journalism with his own men. He awaited something of a critical nature, and his judgment was soon verified.

“By the way, who wrote this editorial?” asked the chief. Landor glanced at the proof.

“Mr. Phelps.”

“I thought I recognized his bludgeon style. A good writer—ahem—but lacks tact. Uses a sledge-hammer when a rapier would do as well, and not leave such an — ahem — unpleasant wound.”

The editorial in question was a violent attack on the governor of the state for his action in pardoning an official who had betrayed his trust for money, and in refusing to entertain a plea for clemency toward a friendless wretch whose crime had been provoked by the treachery of his associates and its resultant poverty. Landor had thought it well done, and especially adapted to the popular tone of the News.

Price read the editorial again with silent movements of his thick lips.

“Yes,” he said, “very strong, very strong, indeed. And true, too. This sort of thing helps the News with the people. But—ahem—well, Landor, as you know, the governor, although he’s not on our side of the political fence, did us a great favor last winter. And—ahem—there’s considerable advertising to be done by the council on the new codification laws. So I think we—”

“That editorial is going to be ‘killed,’ ” thought Landor, and he looked over the proofs of standing matter to select something innocuous to take its place. Price divined his intention at once.

“No, I don’t think I’ll kill it,” he said, with a smile. “It’s too good to be lost. It points a moral tire people like; clemency for the influential, jail for the friendless. But, Landor, we’ll compromise. Phelps has headed it ‘Gubernatorial Justice,’ with ‘Justice’ in quotation marks. Just have the ‘quotes’ taken off. That’ll take the sting out of it.”

A little buzzing sound was heard, and a disc marked “St. Louis” showed in the annunciator on Price’s desk. The great editor unhooked the telephone receiver and pressed it to his ear.

“Eh? Defalcation?” he said to his far-off subordinate. “How much? Good! Play it up strong! Eh? Why, first page, of course, with five-column ‘scare’ head, matter hand-set. And telegraph two thousand words, rush.”

“The rascally thief,” exclaimed Price, turning to Landor. “We must make an example of him for the public good. That man five years ago blocked one of the best newspaper deals I ever got hold of, and forced me to pay double to carry it through. But the newspaper man’s turn always comes, you know, Landor. Sooner or later every man in the world wants us either to put something into our paper or to keep something out. Then it • all depends on how he has treated us.”

While his chief was telephoning further instructions, Landor pressed a button for a boy, and sent to the composing, room the proof of the “Justice” editorial with the quotation marks expunged, wondering the while how far the mere matter of punctuation could alter a sentiment or ameliorate an attack. He remembered having read somewhere that a war had once arisen from the use of a “lower case” letter in a state document where a “capital” should have been, and he decided that his astute chief, being very much of a diplomat, knew what he was about.

Price, having finished his long-distance editing, picked up a proof headed “ad People’s Column,” and handed it to the managing editor.

“Do you know anything of the author of the letter I have marked?” he asked.

Landor glanced at the caption, “Man’s Right to Manhood,” and at the signature.

“No. I do not,” he replied. “Fillebrown is handling the ‘People’s Column’ now. He may know.”

“If he doesn’t, ask him to find out. I’ve noticed several strong letters signed by that name. Ahem, what—”

“Craig, Philip Craig,” replied Landor, referring to the proof-slip.

“Ah, yes. They read mighty well. Just the sort of stuff the people like. By the way, have that one set in larger type, and put a two-column head over it.”

“Yes,” said the managing editor. He was impatient to be gone, for he knew that pressing duties were piling up for him at each moment’s delay.

“And when Fillebrown finds out his address, hire him to write a series of articles on kindred topics—every other day, say.”

“Signed?”’

“Of course. The signature takes the curse off— ahem—in some quarters, while with the people it is much the same thing. This Craig’s name has a familiar sound, but it isn’t likely that I have ever known him. Men who write for newspapers usually do not amount to much—of course I mean men who write gratis.”

CHAPTER XXVI

IN A NEW FIELD.

THE morning after Philip had made his startling appearance downstairs dawned cloudless and serene. The mellow radiance of the sun against his window-shades flooded the room with a soft light and woke him early—even before his father was stirring.

As soon as he heard the old man moving about, he called him to his bedside.

“When did Dr. Blake say I should be out?” he asked.

“In twa months or sae.”

Months! And he was impatient to be up and doing at once, to prove to his father that gratitude was not a mere matter of words or of sentiment.

Later he occupied some of his time with writing letters on topics of vital human interest for the “People’s Column” of the American News. He had the satisfaction of finding his little essays in print pretty often, and that morning was surprised and delighted to see his letter occupying a place of honor on the editorial page, with the additional distinction of larger type than usual and a two-column head. “Man’s Right to Manhood” certainly looked impressive, and he felt that he was not vainglorious in believing that its treatment reached the mark for which he had aimed.

That succés d’cstime put new thoughts into Philip’s head. He was like a wanderer in the forest wilds who suddenly comes across a blazed path, leading he knows not and cares not whither, but surely to some point of vantage. When the evening lamp was lighted in the upper room, and Angus came for a chat, as he always did nowadays, the son said:

“Father, I am going to work.”

“Warrk?” echoed the old man, incredulously. “Philip, mon, ye can scarcely stand.”

“True enough, but I can sit here and write.” “Write?”

“Yes; for a livelihood, I mean.”

“What’ll ye write? Stories? Plays?”

“My bent isn’t that way, I’m afraid, father. I’ve no imagination. I thought I had it once, but it was simply a dream. No, I shall write facts, facts. Nothing else appeals to me.”

He spoke with vehemence, and his pale face colored a little. His father looked at him curiously.

“Ye’ll find ‘facts’ a poor leevin’, Philip,” he said. “Facts are ower hard to sell—we a’ have more than we want in real life.”

“I don’t expect to do exactly what you think,” said the son, earnestly. “I shall perhaps try journalism—”

“That’s not facts, surely,” interrupted Angus, drily.

“Or maybe statistical work. But I prefer writing.”

“Weel, ye’ve got a gude way o’ expressin’ yer-sel’, lad, as I ken by ye’er articles in the News— aye, I have read ’em—an’ ye get fair at the truth.

But ye must do better yet tae sell ye’er wares. Can ye do’t?”

For answer, Philip drew some closely written pages from a table drawer at his side, and began to read.

The theme was a newspaper clipping telling of the plan adopted by certain restaurants in response to the plea of the charitably disposed. Each midnight there was a distribution to the poor of the remnants of food from the tables of the more fortunate, a few cents being charged to raise the scheme above the plane of absolute pauperism. The newspaper went on to say that the dire distress now prevalent had given rise to strange and grimly suggestive scenes. Baby boys and girls, tottering old men and women, waited for hours every night in the long line of those who came with scarcely more patience than that of famished wolves, to spend their little daily all for something that might sustain life.

Upon this foundation Philip erected a structure of such logical force and direct strength of style that his father was greatly interested. Growing respect mingled with wonder in his gaze, as he rested his chin in the palm of his hand and gently rocked, as was his custom.

The essay deplored the situation that made worthy people practically beggars, and censured the state of society in which able-bodied men were unable to find work sufficient to keep soul and body together. It was temperate, but forceful; sternly condemnatory, yet not fanatical. It was not until the closing paragraph that Philip did more than paint the picture and trace the growth of conditions that had made it possible. Then his voice took on a new ring of vibrant emotion which struck fire from his father’s soul and filled the old man with great joy.

“I contend/” read Philip, “that every man born into the world has an inalienable right to the opportunity to earn his livelihood. It may be charity to give—though I think not true charity; it is injustice to forbid him to earn it. All over the Christian world prayers go up with each morning’s sun: ‘give us this day our daily bread.’ Who are the ‘us’? How many of those who pray care whether the men they meet in the street are hungry or not; whether they have work, or cannot find it? How many rise from their knees determined to do what they can to better social conditions so that he who would labor, may? This spectacle of feeding the poor from the garbage barrels of the rich is a shame to manhood, a deterrent to maternity. What mother knows to what depths of shame her child may fall in a community where honest toil will not command honestly earned ‘daily bread’?”

There was a long silence after the last earnest interrogation. At last old Angus looked up with a grateful light in his eyes.

“Ye never talked like this before, Philip,” he said, quietly.

“I never felt like this before,” replied the son. “The needs of humanity scarcely touched me. But since I have lain here, helpless, and have read, I have—thought.”

“Ay, the bukes,” thought the elder man. “And, too, he has heard us talk. God be praised, he’s begun tae see the licht at last.”

The next day Angus was startled by a resounding knock on the street-door. Reconnoiter-ing with his usual caution, he found his caller to be a tall, fresh-faced, boyish young man with pleasant gray eyes, and a smile that disclosed teeth of radiant whiteness.

“Does Mr. Philip Craig live here?” he asked.

“Aye, he does, lad. What’ll be ye’er pleasure of him?”

The young man handed Angus a rather flamboyant card on which was printed a miniature facsimile of the first page of the American News. Across this was stamped in red ink, “Mr. George Wilkinson.”

“I very much want to see Mr. Craig,” said the reporter. “You see, our city editor, Mr. Rosen-feld, heard Mr. Landor, the managing editor, asking about Mr. Craig’s address, and he remembered a ‘story’ the News printed three years ago about a Craig cottage being hemmed in by mills. He looked it up, and sure enough it said you had a son named Philip, who was a big capitalist, or connected with one. He wondered at that, considering the tone of the letters the News has been printing, and thought I’d better get an interview with Mr. Craig. It’s my first real decent assignment,” he added, wistfully, as he saw Angus’ face harden. “All I’ve had so far have been little miserable fires and meetings of women’s clubs. I’ve got a good chance to make myself solid now. And besides, I’ve a letter from our managing editor for Mr. Craig.”

“Coom upstairs, then, lad,” said the old man. “Ye’ll find my son an invalid, but I think he’ll gi’ ye whatever ye want.”

Philip was attracted by the youthful enthusiasm and honest simplicity of young Mr. Wilkinson, who was still at that stage of newspaper work - where a notebook and pencil are very much in evidence. He was willing to be “interviewed/’ and gave the reporter much matter that the latter’s instinct, crude as it was, told him would make a good “story.”

“You say you are new at the business, Mr. Wilkinson,” said Craig, when the more ceremonious part of their talk was over. “How do you like it?”

“It’s glorious,” replied the young man, his face telling of his genuine enthusiasm. “It’s a great thing to feel that what you write is read by thousands and thousands of people everywhere.”

“But they do not know you”

“Not yet,” replied the boy, hopefully, “but they will by arid by, if my stuff’s good enough. And I mean to make it good enough. When I’m a ‘star’ man I shall be allowed to sign my ‘stories/ It’s bound to come some time.”

“I trust it will,” said Philip, earnestly. “You are made of the right stuff.”

Just before leaving, Wilkinson handed Philip the letter. With much wonderment he broke the seal and read:—

MR. PHILIP CRAIG,

DEAR SIR:—I am authorized by Mr. Orville W. Price, the editor and proprietor of the American News, to ask if you will furnish his paper with three letters a week on topics similar to those you have been discussing in the “People’s Column” of the News. For each letter fifteen dollars will be paid. Kindly advise me, through Mr. Wilkinson, whether this proposition meets with your approval.

Very truly,

JOHN WESLEY LANDOR, Managing Editor.

Philip’s heart leaped with joy, as he realized that his days of dependence were over. Not only would he no longer be a burden on his father, but he would at last be a factor in the world for the cause of the people with whom he had sworn to cast his lot.

“Tell Mr. Landor,” he said to the reporter, “that I accept, and will begin work at once.”

“I will do so, sir,” replied the young man. “And I want to thank you for your kindness. It may mean much to me, and—I shall not forget it.”

It was not long before Philip became a regularly constituted member of the debating society of Angus’ front room, and he soon grew to be regarded as its leader. Fluency of speech came to him, as facility in writing had done, almost without effort. His logic often proved too much for the hot generalizations of the others, and of Luke Ford in particular.

“Tell ye what,” observed that lank individual to Langmaid, as they were walking home one night after Philip had succeeded in demolishing a pet theory of his, “it’s devilish strange hoAV young Craig comes it over me. If he said I was a darned oyster and talked over the subject ten minutes, I believe I’d be lookin’ round to see what had become of my shell.”

By nervous intensity of work Philip strove to throw the veil of forgetfulness over the past. One day his father referred to his old life, and was met by a request, almost stern enough to be a command, that he consider that topic not to be discussed. Yet he could not so order his mind. The face and voice of Helen Norton dominated his dreams and forced themselves into his waking hours. He wondered what had become of her. what friends were now surrounding her, whether —but that was torture. He now knew that had fate not struck him down on that terrible day, he would have given up the fight for nothing short of a personal rejection. Then would come the horrible thought that there might have been some mistake; yet, again, young Bayles was absolutely trustworthy.

Perhaps the most agonizing fear of a true lover is that his lady shall think him a weakling, and this came to Philip with especial force, and often gave him no peace. Notwithstanding her peremptory dismissal of him, would she not think him a recreant cur to abandon her so easily? Was not that the way of women—to freeze, yet expect to be thawed? He had no hope that she could have heard of his misfortune. If she had—worse yet, for she had neither been to see him, nor sent him a single word. Altogether it was a long and a dark path he and memory trod together, and he turned to his new work with all the gratitude of a starving man who is given food.

For several months after this he was compelled to keep within doors, for the doctor had been over-sanguine in his predictions. But at last came a glowing and gracious day in September when he was taken for a long drive into the country. The joy of life came back to him; the breath of nature was like a magic tonic in his lungs. Thereafter his recovery was rapid, and by the approach of winter he walked among men once more, as stalwart and as energetic as any.

CHAPTER XXVII

ACROSS A HUMAN SEA.

THE big policeman who stood at the intersection of one of New York’s crowded cross streets and Broadway raised his hand, palm out, against the chauffeur of a heavy auto-car, and at once the vehicle came to a stop. The chauffeur dismounted and spoke to the occupants of his conveyance. One of them, in turn, alighted and went to the window of a similar car just behind.

At the aperture appeared the stern face of John Norton, more seamed with lines of care and still more hard and expressionless than in the days when he had fought for and won recognition from the city’s greatest.

‘‘What’s the trouble, Neilson?” he asked with an irritated air. “What’s the delay about? Has your motor broken down?”

The handsome young man, still bearing the appearance of the trained athlete, shrugged his broad shoulders.

“No, but the police say that it will be impossible to cross Broadway for hours on account of the parade.”

“H’mph, that’s pleasant. What parade?” “Labor Day, Mr. Drexel says; I confess I had almost forgotten there was such a thing.”

This remark was not so flippant as it sounded, for Ward Neilson and his wife, who had been Alice Drexel of the dark and passionate eyes, had just landed from an ocean liner after two years of European travel.

“Labor Day, eh?” sneered Norton. “And to declare their own rights it is necessary, I suppose, to interfere with the rights of others, as usual.” “The only way to get to the station, my chauffeur says,” continued Neilson, “is to go up as far as 125th St.”

“Infernal nuisance,” growled Norton.

“But we can reach the side entrance to the Rotterdam, where my father-in-law has apartments. He and Mrs. Drexel suggest that we go there for luncheon and then see what develops.”

“What do you say, Harriet?” said Norton to his wife, whose sweet face was now framed by gray hair that spoke rather too emphatically of the touch of time.

“Whatever you please, John,” she replied.

“And you, Helen?”

“I don’t care.”

John Norton was partly annoyed, partly pained at the listless indifference of his daughter’s words. But he merely said quietly to Neilson:—

“Very well, Ward, we’ll go to the Rotterdam, if these—these parading gentlemen will permit.”

But little did this foremost financier of the world reck of the marching hosts of labor, as the autocar slowly made its tortuous way to the great hotel. It was his fair-haired daughter, leaning against the cushioned back of the seat opposite, who filled his mind and heart. So like her old self, and yet so subtly different, he thought with a sigh. Her outward beauty was as fresh, as fragrant, as youthful as ever; but the old animation that leaped forward toward whatever was sympathetic and appealing to her nature was visible no more.

It had been nearly eighteen months since Norton had seen Helen, for she had been abroad with the Neilsons, at whose wedding she had been a bridesmaid. Alice Drexel had been her only intimate friend among the young women of her acquaintance, and some time after that discerning and sympathetic girl had become the wife of Ward Neilson, she had earnestly entreated Helen, something of whose story she knew, to cross and join them at their villa on the Riviera. After that they had traveled in Egypt and Palestine, and their liking for one another had developed into warm and lasting affection.

To-day Norton thought he detected in his daughter that mysterious something that had so alarmed his wife five years before. At that time ill-health had been feared, and Plelen was taken to eminent specialists, who assured her parents, at round figures, that the girl was in perfect physical condition. One of them, more skilful or perhaps more honest than the rest, had hinted that some mental burden weighed heavy on her heart, but this Norton scouted as unworthy of credence or of his daughter.

He knew that the blighting of her first romance was a severe blow, but it was a first romance, and such things were easily forgotten.

But he wished that Helen had made some protest. had exhibited her old pretty wilfulness. A revolt he could quell, but dull silence disarmed him. She had not spoken to him of Craig, nor had she mentioned his name even to her mother since that day when her father’s decision had been announced.

He now remembered that he had thought it strange at first, but had attributed it to some vagary of a young girl’s heart, for which there was no accounting. When he learned, some time after it occurred, of the accident to Philip, through the Rev. Mr. Bentley, and was told that the young man’s life was despaired of, he decided that Helen must be removed from the city. He feared, he knew not what, but chiefly that the girl might, if she learned the truth, perform some quixotic action that would undo the work of months.

So on the plea of his wife’s ill-health, Norton had sent his family to one of his estates on an island off the coast of Florida early in the winter following the break with Craig. Mrs. Norton, fond as she was of her husband, was glad to go on Helen’s account. The discerning eyes of a good mother can pierce to the heart of her child, even though confidence be withheld and well meant dissimulation strive to conceal emotion. A good mother’s heart pulsates in unison with her child’s, and its sympathies are certain because the instincts of motherhood are infallible.

Harriet Norton was not lulled into confidence by appearances; she knew that Helen’s love wound was no surface scratch, self-healing in little time. Had the girl invited confidence she would have sought to console her, and might, even, for the first time in her life, have dared to dispute her husband’s will and have tried to ascertain whether, after all, an injustice had not been done.

Sometimes during their stay in Florida, the mother was tempted to broach the subject, but something in Helen’s manner awed her into continued silence. She felt as if one dear to her daughter had died, leaving sorrow too deep to be even touched by mere human words.

From Florida they had gone to the great ranch in the Northwest for the summer, where Helen appeared to enjoy the free, out-door life of the plains. The girl had ridden hard and far every day, yet not even the excitement of long gallops had brought back the old exuberance of spirits. Yet she was cheerful and sweet-natured, as always, and at last the mother began to believe that her imagination had deluded her, and that, after all, the loss of animal vivacity was but the outcome of the transformation from youth to womanhood.

They had spent little time in New York for several seasons, and then had come the trip to Europe. This journeying through the delights of the old world both Norton and his wife believed to be a perfect cure for Helen, for her letters were filled with animated descriptions of her sight-seeing, without the slightest touch of sadness or anything akin to regret.

But to see the girl herself after it all, was to bring back the old perturbation to John Norton, and he was glad when the hotel was reached, and the party was settled in the splendid rooms of the Drexels’ on the second story, facing Broadway. Surely these people would animate Helen and make her home-coming a festal affair. Old Drexel was a merry little gentleman, a dispenser of bons-mots as well as an expert bon-vivant, while his wife was a motherly soul who radiated cheerfulness wherever she went. The Neilsons were as happy as larks at their return, and Helen must catch something of their infectious gaiety, Norton thought.

Luncheon was served in a room overlooking the street, and to the pleasant jingle of glass and silver was added the martial strains of many bands, the measured cadence of marching feet and the lusty, deep-throated cheers of thousands of men pent on giving the city a hint of their strength on this their especial holiday.

“I suppose that’s for some particularly Napoleonic hod-carrier,” observed Norton with his saturnine smile, as a great shout vibrated against the walls of the building.

“No,” replied Neilson from his seat next the window, “that’s for a man who seems to have just reached the reviewing stand. Jt looks like the governor.”

“Is the stand here?” asked Mr. Drexel, his mouth full of an especially excellent pate. “Really, I apologize; I didn’t know it when I asked you here. These estimable fellows make so much noise that I can’t taste this course.”

“It’s just across the Plaza in the Park,” said Neilson, shading his eyes. Another roar went up. “Yes, it is the governor. He’s bowing in every direction.”

“It’s a great thing to be so popular,” observed handsome Mrs. Neilson.

“Especially on election day,” added Norton. “If it weren’t for politics, there’d be no labor day parades.”

“Nor labor organizations either, I daresay,” observed Neilson, with a smile. “The ballot-box gives them their power.”

“Which they don’t know how to use, Neilson.”

“But they may learn, and then, what?”

Norton made no reply, but softly jingled the loose change in his pocket. And those who could read him knew what he meant by that. For him there was no power on earth that could not be quelled and tamed by money. There was nothing to fear so long as gold glittered and men could see it.

Luncheon over, Alice Neilson beckoned to her husband, who went to her side with the courtly devotion that always marked his treatment of her. Tie smiled and raised his eyebrows as she whispered to him.

“Do you, really?” he asked.

She nodded, and he laughed aloud.

“Come now, Ward, what’s the joke?” demanded his father-in-law. “It’s a crime to make a secret of anything funny, I say/’*

“ What do you suppose this young woman, who has traveled all through Europe and hob-nobbed with about all the royalty worth mentioning, wants now?”

“Don’t know, Ward,” said Drexel, “but it’s safe betting she gets it, whatever it is.”

The others looked and spoke their curiosity.

“What docs she want?” said the sweet voice of Mrs. Norton.

“Well, she wants to see the American laboring man on parade.”

“That is simple, Alice,” called out Helen from the window, where she had been looking out with a corner of the curtain held back. “There’s a wide balcony here, and we can put out chairs and be very comfortable.”

Norton and Drexel excused themselves for their cigars, but Neilson would not quit his wife even for the blandishments of tobacco.

“I’ll stay and make sure that none of the ladies elopes with a knight-errant in tall hat and red sash,” he explained.

From the balcony the party could see the procession far down Broadway, as it rolled up to them in great waves of color like the undulations of gigantic bands of variegated ribbon. At closer range these masses became companies of men dressed in the garb of their respective trades, over whom floated banners of all the hues of the rainbow. Now and then huge drays came lumbering past, bearing the most picturesque features of the procession: the floats on which toil was illustrated by actual example. Here were the blazing forges and clanking anvils of the smiths; there the whirr of a monster printing press spitting out its thousands of perfected newspapers in the hour; again, the brick caverns of the bakers, with their attendant sprites in immaculate white.

All these things were immensely interesting and novel to the two girls on the balcony, and even Neilson had to admit that labor could present as fascinating a picture to the world, when it chose, as the bedecked men whose business is to kill.

Alice leaned over the balcony rail, her dark eyes glowing and her red lips parted with excitement. A splendid lot of fellows, steel workers, in red shirts, gray slouch hats and high boots, were passing, keeping step to the music of a famous band. The perfection of their physical manhood, something akin to that of her husband, appealed strongly to Alice s artistic nature; the band music, too, was immensely inspiring, a strong pulsating tune she had never heard before. She could not refrain from dapping her pretty hands.

“Why don’t you applaud, Ward?” she exclaimed, excitedly. “Why, they’re just magnificent! And that music—what is the air?”

None knew except Mrs. Norton.

“It’s an old song of the great civil war, I believe,” she said. “I think it was ‘Tramp, Tramp, Tramp, the Boys are Marching.’ ”

“Splendid!” cried Alice Neilson, “and it fits them, too.”

Now the great crowd, packed in dense ranks on every available space, the sidewalks, the square, the park, the doorsteps, surging to and fro with that awful human momentum which arises no one knows how, and ends often in death, claimed the attention of the people in the balcony. Far over toward the reviewing stand they could see a tumultuous swelling of the mass of bodies, and all at once the feeble rope barrier gave way against the force of those far behind. They saw an angry policeman raise his club and bring it down heavily on the head of a fair-haired youth who had been thrust forward by a power no man living could have withstood.

“Oh, shame!” cried Alice Neilson, hotly. “That boy!”

The hot-headed officer would have struck again, but that a deep and sullen growl from the crowd, and a sudden crouching backward as of an animal ready to spring, warned him of his danger. More than once of recent years had the smouldering resentment of a crowd burst into furious flame in this very city of New York, and at less provocation than now. The policeman sheathed his stick, friends took care of his victim, and the incident was closed.

But its effect on the watchers from the Rotterdam was not lost. Neilson, who had noted the episode carefully, stroking his fair mustache thoughtfully the while, was the first to speak.

“Did you see how the crowd resented that?” he said to Drexel, who had returned from his cigar. “A little knot of them sprang into fury like a maddened beast. Some day they—” But what it was he thought he foresaw he confided only to his mustache.

On swept the throng of marching men for many minutes more, until at last the men of the great typographical union came into view and the procession halted. The printers broke ranks and gathered about the reviewing stand. Cheers arose and swept through the vast multitude.

Alice Neilson had found a pair of opera glasses, and was leveling them intently at the flag-bedecked platform. She saw someone rise and bow.

“Who is it?” asked her husband.

“A portly man with a big mustache.”

“Do the ends droop?”

“Yes.”

“It’s the governor. He used to wax them until he became a candidate, and some one told him that the wax would beat him.”

More cheers. Evidently the governor is not the only man who is wanted. A short, fat individual with red beard and a redder face arises.

“That’s the lieutenant-governor,” said Neilson.

“I can tell that face from here. They don’t want him.”

And now there seemed to be some name on the multiple tongue of the crowd. Rising from scattered shouts, it finally gathered into one great concentrated clamor.

“Craig, Craig,” was the mighty cry.

Then up rose the portly governor, turned to a man seated behind him, grasped him by the arm and gently dragged him to the front of the stand.

“Craig, Craig, Craig,” burst from ten thousand throats. “Speech, speech. Hurrah!”

The tall, well-knit figure in black bowed as if with deep respect for the people. Then he began to speak.

The clear, resonant tones were wafted across the plaza to the hotel in the sudden and complete cessation of all noise.

“Workingmen of New York,” they said, “this is not the place for words. The army of industry is on the march everywhere to-day throughout the land we love. He is presumptuous who dares raise his voice amid the countless echoes of its tread.”

Then, with a slight inclination of his head, the speaker turned and was lost to view.

“By Jove!” exclaimed old Drexel, serious for once, “just the right word for an impression. He never overshoots the mark. Some men would have jumped at the chance to talk, but he—well, he knows the value of the gift of silence.”

“Who is he?” asked Neilson, greatly interested.

“Why, don’t you—oh, I forgot; you went away before he really came to the front. But you must have known him—Philip Craig.”

‘‘Philip Craig?’*’ repeated the young man, puzzled. “What, not—?” Then he looked at Helen Norton, and bit his lip.

“Yes, sir, the Craig that used to be with John Norton,” went on the old gentleman, ignoring a tap from his daughter’s fan. “You knew him, Miss Norton?”

“Yes, I knew him.”

The answer was as calm and emotionless as words could be from woman. Helen had been looking intently at the platform through the glasses she had borrowed from her friend at the first sound of the well-remembered name. Now she lowered them slowly, and looked her questioner steadily in the face.

“Well, he’s a big gun among the workingmen,” continued Drexel. “Has written for newspapers and magazines for several years on the condition of labor and such subjects, and mighty good stuff it’s been, I’ll admit. Travels a lot, I believe, and lately has given public addresses. Has tremendous power with the masses.”

“An agitator, consequently dangerous,” broke in the icy voice of John Norton, who had returned in time to catch the drift of what had been going forward.

“I can’t agree with you, Norton. He’s rather a peacemaker. You yourself know that but for him the railroad strike might have lasted till now, if, indeed, it had not resulted in anarchy.”

John Norton’s disgust at this contretemps was limitless. To think that the first day of his daughter’s arrival in New York fate should bring her path across that of this eloquent demagogue, this attractive charlatan. Yet he feared no more serious results than the recalling of a girlish fancy, which might throw obstacles in the way of an ambition which he had begun to cherish for himself and for his daughter.

The gathering dusk of the September evening and a slight chill in the air sent the older members of the party within doors. But Helen, Alice, and Neilson remained until the last strains of music had died away and the last tramping of feet had been swallowed up in the renewal of the city’s activities. Then they, too, entered the window and were lost to view.

But no one of them noticed a black-clad figure that crossed the street, threading the crowd with firm and manly strides, and stood gazing up at the balcony until they had disappeared.

And thus it was that Philip Craig and Helen Norton saw each other once more across a human sea.

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE POWER OF TRUTH.

PHILIP CRAIG, when his eyes at length left the balcony, quickened his pace along Broadway to follow the rear-guard of that army that was fast being mustered out into the weakness of individualism. He was amazed and almost self-indignant to find a dull ache at his heart. Had anyone on that morning told him that pain would come from a glimpse of Helen Norton standing proudly among her rich friends, he would have laughed. Now, there was no mirth in his soul. She who had been put away as dead was come back to life, bringing all the bitterness of the knowledge that the resurrection was not for him.

For three years Craig had buried self in the whirlpool of that most exacting labor—toil for others. He had assumed the burden of those who seemed weak or oppressed, and wherever powerful injustice reared its head there he went like a true knight-errant. He visited many states where the rights of men and women workers were less properly safeguarded than at home, and by what he believed to be hard, earnest endeavor, but what others called personal magnetism, he had brought under the bonds of a common aim and sympathy the most diversified elements of humanity. The poweiful unit for offence and defence that he had welded often gave food for thought to the students of American sociology.

Craig went once to the South in response to the Macedonian call of some of the more far-seeing of that section, and attacked the monster of child-iabor on its own ground. The dragon was slain, once and for all, for by his powerful pictures of its evils and his ruthless exposure of its attendant circumstances, he had shamed into decency the Northern capitalists who had made it possible.

Meanwhile he had continued his articles in the American News, always gaining in felicity of expression and power of argument. These essay-talks, as he called them, were now printed simultaneously in more than thirty cities of the country, and, even making allowance for Orville W. Price’s natural vein of hyperbole, were read by a really enormous constituency, to most of whom .the name of Philip Craig became a household word.

The astute editor rarely permitted a day to pass without congratulating himself upon his own cleverness in engaging this “great card” for the News. He knew that Craig had vastly increased the circulation of his papers, and, therefore, his own revenue. Being no niggard in the dispensing of money for his paper, where results told, he had once offered to double the payment for Philip’s contributions. He was astounded to meet with a flat refusal.

“I don’t know what to make of the fellow,” he confided to his managing editor—still Landor. “He said he was entitled to as much as would defray his needs and no more. You’d naturally think that he made a good thing of it on the outside, but I’ve the best of reasons for believing that he never accepts a cent from anyone, and that his services to organizations are given free, except his bare expenses. The man’s no fool, that’s clear. Then what’s his game?”

For, being a great editor, Price was morally convinced that every man was playing a game. His only wonder was as to the nature of Philip’s stakes.

But the people knew their special pleader far better than did his employer. They knew that he declined money, honor, titles, and offices. “I help you to help yourselves^” he often told them; “that’s glory enough for me.” And they believed him and loved him, for even the basest of those who came within the quickening radiance of his influence knew that he labored for them, not for himself.

As he walked sturdily along, dreaming dreams and thinking of many things he knew were best buried in oblivion, a fine rain began to fall, and he turned up his coat collar and pulled down the brim of his soft hat.

Wheeling briskly around a corner he nearly ran into a burly individual who was slouching along with his hands in his pockets and an abbreviated clay pipe between his teeth. Then there occurred one of those little passages at dodging in which ery man engages, perforce, now and then.

“Pardon me,” said Philip, as he at last found clear space between the man and the curb-stone, and prepared to pass on.

“Yerd better ask pardon,” growled the other. “You swells haven’t so much ter do, I’m thinkin’, that yer can’t look where yer goin’.”

“Why, my dear fellow,” began Craig pleasantly, and then nearly laughed outright at the term “swell” as applied to him. Was a man necessarily to be placed in that category if he preferred a black coat, collar and tie to light colors and a bare neck?

“I ain’t yer feller, and yer needn’t laugh,” said the burly man stoutly. “I’m an American citizen, I’d have you know, and have got as much right to the streets as you and your gang, as yer’ll all find out some day.”

To Craig this species was no stranger: the man who is forever trumpeting his own inferiority by proclaiming his equality. Something in the fellow’s voice had a familiar tone. He looked at the rather coarse lace more carefully, then he was certain.

“Why, Bruce, is that you?” he exclaimed.

The pipe came from the lips that opened in distressed wonderment, and the shaggy eyebrows lifted themselves in astonishing fashion. The whole face was an exclamation point, marking embarrassment.

“Well, if it ain’t Mr. Craig,” was the gruff ejaculation. “I axes yer pardon, but I—I thought it was one o’ them swell chaps who think they’ve all the right to the sidewalk, an’—well, I meant ter show him that I was as good as he.” The strong shoulders squared and the heavy jaw set in a way that was more significant than his words. Then he bade Philip good evening and went his way.

Craig sighed as he left his late antagonist, whom he knew to be a good enough fellow at heart. “That’s the sort of sentiment that excites enmity and imperils progress now,” he thought. “Later it may—” But he resolutely put the thought from him and pursued his reflections no more; he could not reform the world.

As Craig reached the entrance of the hall where he was to dine that night with the marshals and other chief officers of the parade, he brought to a definite conclusion all the fugitive thoughts that had been his company up Broadway. It took shape in half-spoken words:

“I have no right to seek to see her, even to think of her. My duty to the cause I have taken up forbids it. And why should I wish it otherwise? If her dismissal had not been final, absolutely, she would have come to me in my misfortune—and she never even sent an inquiry. Till to-night I thought the old life dead. I was right; it is dead.”

Thus did Philip Craig pass sentence upon a thought, forgetting that no mortal man has ever lived who could say to the turbulent emotions of the heart “Peace, be still,” and be obeyed.

The large ante-room of the banquet hall where the toilers’ lieutenants were to eat their dinner, was brilliantly lighted and filled with an animated crowd, when Philip arrived. The etiquette of dress had little influence among these sturdy fellows, who came to feast in the clothes they had worn during the parade. The air was full of the smoke of volcanic pipes, and the conversation suggested the idea that every man was trying to shout down every other.

A chorus of rough and hearty greeting went up at Craig’s appearance. Those “who knew him crowded about for a grip of the hand, and those who did not clamored for an introduction. To him this spontaneous welcome of earnest men was very touching. We appreciate most the tribute whose sincerity we cannot doubt, no matter from how humble a source; the love of a dog is better than the suspected friendship of a king. So, if Philip found himself a hero, it was not the rank that delighted him, but the spirit that prompted his elevation.

A little group that stood apart from the centre of interest found him a fruitful topic of discussion. .Luke Ford was there, performing the difficult feat of chewing tobacco and talking at the same time; Langmaid, too, his attendant spirit, had come, and so had Bruce, the man who had so nearly been in collision with Craig. There were one or two others in this special knot, some of whom evidently did not know Philip.

‘Ts it possible that’s the man who’s done so much for us?” asked one of these in astonishment, turning a thumb toward Philip. “Why, he looks like a minister!”

“Like a minister? Maybe,” growled Bruce. “But I’ll tell yer one thing: he don’t talk like one. Nobody goes to sleep vdien he speaks.”

“No. they sit up and listen,” said Ford. “If he’ll only say the right things now—” The rest of the sentence was lost in a prodigious working of the lantern jaw\

“What things, for instance?” queried another.

“What things? Well, speech is good—his speech is mighty good—but I’d like a little action. Howsomever, what am I to criticise? I’d better—” But his self-deprecation was stifled by a fresh piece of tobacco of preternaturally large size, even for him.

“Will he speak to-night?” persisted the seeker for information.

“I doubt it,” replied a thin man, whose red sash looked as if it might have been blown upon him from a clothes-line. “He doesn’t talk much, except when there’s something to be gained. Besides. I believe this feed is to be digested without gab.”

“If I remember rightly—and I think I do,—” observed a fussy little man with the air of one who had made a great discovery, “this same Craig used to be hand and glove with that big plutocrat, Norton. How did he get over on our side?”

“‘With the senator, do you mean?’’ asked Ford. “Yes, the man who bought his election; he buys everything he wants you know.”

“Oh, well, he simply couldn’t stand the atmosphere of that sort of thing, and he got out. Gave up a thundering salary and a lot of other perquisites. And he’s all the better for it now.”

“Blast Norton and all his gang,” growled Bruce. “D’ye know what that World’s Bank of his is goin’ ter do for us? Make paupers of the whole of us, that’s what. When such men get a grip on the money supply of the country—well, look out, that’s all.”

During this conversation Philip had remained the centre of an admiring and respectful group of the workingmen. Now and again some leader would draw him apart and engage him in a whispered colloquy. Some left him with faces lighted with hope, others wearing the look of gravity and disappointment. One resolute appearing fellow, with a Germanic countenance as clear-cut as if carved from marble, seemed especially concerned at Philip’s reply, which was so emphatic as to reach the ears of the others.

“Very well, Mr. Brandt.” he was heard to say, “if your union passes that vote, I shall withdraw from any further efforts in behalf of your men. Your employers are wrong in many things, but they are right in this, and the moment you give them the opportunity to prove you absolutely in the wrong, you forfeit public sympathy, and your cause is lost. Such a course as you propose is not only illegal, it is inexcusable by moral law. It is just such things as these that have cast a stigma on trades-unionism. Tell your associates what I have said, if you please. At all events, let them know that I have warned you.”

Henry Brandt frowned with vexation, as Philip turned and walked away. At first he thought Philip unjust, and then he feared that he had not been a good advocate of his own cause.

“Says just what he thinks,” remarked Luke Ford, who had joined Brandt just in time to hear Philip’s words clearly. He, himself, had had that sort of thing said to him. more than once.

“Yes, I know,” replied the German. “Perhaps he’s right, but it’s hard not to strike back.”

The dinner, to which the company was now summoned, was a simple, unostentatious affair, embellished by no chef’s masterpieces and moistened by no rare vintages. It was “good American grub,” as Ford expressed it, and was heartily enjoyed by the sturdy, everyday men who lined the long tables and rapidly stored away what was set before them. Lucullus, who “ate roasted turnips on the Sabine farm,” might have been its patron saint, although, truth to tell, few of the feasters would have recognized him, even by name.

That the dark-clad figure near the centre of the head-table had magnetism even in silence was made evident at the close of the dinner, when the name of Craig began to assert itself in the general buzz of post-prandial talk. The chief-marshal, who presided, turned to Philip with a smile.

“It looks very much as if we might have to suspend our own rule, Mr. Craig,” he said. “I imagine that a demand for a speech from you is brewing.”

“I’m ready,” replied Philip.

The marshal looked at his neighbor curiously. Evidently something had happened during the evening to change his determination, for it had been agreed earlier in the day that after-dinner oratory was to be strictly tabooed.

At last some enthusiast who could be restrained no longer started the cry of “Craig; speech.” Then it was taken up all around the tables, and the man who had long been used to such compliments, but who never heard them without a renewed sense of gratitude that he had been enabled to make such progress as he had in his work for humanity, rose in his place.

Philip’s remarks were brief. After a few graceful phrases of congratulation on labor’s splendid showing for the day, and a glowing picture of hope for the future, he said:

“I have but a few words more. Their brevitv may make them less difficult to remember. I have been approached to-day by a leader of men, workingmen, with the request that I aid him to a certain end. He and his associates are attempting, by refusing to work, to force the company that employed them to rectify abuses of which they were the victims.

“This is their right. No man should work who believes it for his best interests not to do so. In a union in which membership is had only after full knowledge of the conditions and which is entered into with a certain well-defined understanding, it is just that the majority should rule. The majority have voted for this strike. It should continue until its objects are obtained or until the majority give up the struggle.

“Rut when the leader of these men proposes to use force—disguised under another name, it is true—to prevent other men in allied trades, but who are not now members of their union, from earning their living, I tell you, workingmen, he transcends his rights, and goes where the American people will not endorse him.

“I will uphold any workingman’s cause as long as I have the strength to do so, if he fights fair, but when he begins to apply to his fellow laboring man the same methods of coercion and oppression that he protests against in his own employers, I cannot and will not support him.”

For a moment blank silence reigned over the tables as Craig sat down and drank some water. Hundreds of eyes, some with the glint of unfriendliness appearing in them, were leveled at this strange man who could bring capitalists to their knees and yet stand here in his chosen camp and denounce his own.

Then, from a seat far down toward the rear, came a resonant, earnest voice, relieving the oppressive stillness.

“He’s right,” it said.

A sturdy figure arose to its full height and they saw that Henry Brandt had spoken.

“He’s right,” exclaimed the German once more, “and I’m wrong. Three cheers for the man who is never afraid to make enemies with the truth. Three cheers for Philip Craig!”

The prolonged shouts of approval that followed this manly outburst were sweeter to Philip’s ears than any he had ever heard. He had won a battle for a principle.

CHAPTER XXIX

A BOND IN HONOR.

HON. JOHN P. NORTON, junior senator from the state of New York, had arrived at his present political distinction by a chain of circumstances that men described with their most sarcastic smiles. A vacancy had been providentially made by the ill-health, the papers stated, of Hon. Cyrus Fowler, who immediately undertook a European trip to restore his shattered constitution. It was noted, however, by travelers from America, that Mr. Fowler had become anchored in Paris, where he lived a life of pleasurable activity, and spent money like one who is not often compelled to balance his bank books to find where he stands.

The Hon. Mr. Fowler had been one of the few comparatively poor senators of his time. He was the relic of a legislative session several years before in which respect for brains had somehow managed to come to the fore, and which resulted in his selection out of a three-cornered fight in which the other two contestants had spent money so brazenly as to bring scandal and ruin upon their cause.

So, when the senatorial toga was thus thrown off by the stricken Mr. Fowler, it happened, the legislature being in session, that the claims of John P. Norton as a foremost adopted son of the state were advanced with great vigor by a large number of eloquent men and almost as many influential newspapers. His great services to the ruling party, quiet, though no less effective, were adduced and the argument was enforced everywhere that a giant of affairs, such as Norton had proved himself to be, would furnish just the sort of stimulus needed by the upper house at Washington, fie was practically the only candidate of his party, and was elected by a very comfortable plurality.

Of course the gentlemen on the farther side of the political ditch, made very noisy charges of bribery in the elevation of Norton, but as their powers in the same direction were limited merely by lack of contributions, their fulminations were very generally regarded as the outpourings of malicious envy.

To Andrew Haven the senatorial campaign was a veritable delight. This malodorous Fidus Achates of the great financier had been the executive officer in certain transactions where a keen brain and an unerring instinct for the limit of safety were absolutely essential. He it was who suggested to the state committee that Norton might be induced to accept the senatorship, and he divined in some mysterious way the Hon. Cyrus Fowler’s intention to resign several weeks before the fact became public.

At Norton’s request, Haven came to the office one day in early December, just before the session of Congress at which the new senator was to take his seat. The note of summons had requested him to bring a full statement of the expenses of the campaign in order that everything might be put straight before Norton’s departure for Washington.

Haven came into the presence of his chief in rather a disturbed frame of mind. For months no accounting of the large sums of money entrusted to him had been asked, and he had begun to hope that none would be. There was a rather comfortable balance in his hands, and he knew he would have to give it up or expand some of the items of payment; he wondered if it were safe to do the latter.

“You have brought those vouchers, I suppose, Andrew? Yes, I see you have. I’ll just run them over.”

Haven handed him a bulging linen envelope, and Norton took the contents and shuffled them rapidly in his hands, his thin brows contracting the while.

“There is an itemized sheet, I presume?”

Haven inclined his head deferentially.

“Ah, yes, here it is.” He ran his eye down several long sheets held together by a brass pin. At length he whistled softly, in half-amused fashion.

“Expensive, isn’t it?” he observed. “But I see you still have a few thousands left of the last sum that was transferred to your account.”

Haven breathed easier, Norton’s tone was so good-natured that it augured well for his continued possession of the money, or a considerable part of it.

“Yes,” he said timidly, “but—I beg pardon— you know that Price is not yet settled with.”

“Oh, yes, the American News man. What’s his figure?”

Haven coughed deprecatingly.

“He has none. At least it won’t do to offer him money.” -

“Ah, one of the different kind, eh? Well what does he expect?”

“He hinted to Stockwell that he was sorry he hadn’t been clever enough to buy Onometer stock when it was at par.”

Norton laughed aloud.

“Ah, that’s it, is it? Did he say how many shares he would have bought if he had been clever?”

“He told Stockwell he was sorry he hadn’t bought five hundred shares.”

Again Norton whistled, this time with real wonderment.

“Let’s see,” he said. “Onometer is now 310. If you transfer to him five hundred of your shares at par, assuming, of course, that you cannot carry the stock and do not care to make public your disposal of it, he will make $105,000. Rather a big price for his support.”

“But without it—?”

“I would have been defeated? Perhaps. Well, transfer the stock.”

The little man paled visibly. This transaction, allowing for the money he had in his possession, would make him a gainer bv only a few thousands.

“But I—”

“Oh, I’ll see that you lose nothing,” said Norton sharply. “Adding the Onometer stock, the bill is pretty heavy—but it will be worth it. Apropos, Haven, I suppose the opposition might call this prettv close to bribery.”

“Well, I—I don’t know.”

“But you do know,” returned his chief sternly. “And you know, too, that they have already said it.”

Haven shrugged his shoulders deprecatingly. He was too deferential to admit the impeachment, and too shrewd to deny a self-evident fact.

“But. I’m in,” continued Norton, “and you must find a way to silence—the usual way—the most violent of our critics.” He wrote something on a little slip of yellow paper. “Will this suffice for all and make you whole?”

Andrew Haven’s greedy little eyes sparkled behind his large spectacles as he saw the figures. His world, which was bounded equally by self and the potent sign of the dollar, once more became bright.

“It is generous, very generous,” he replied. “I—I—”

“Men who do dirty work should at least have the excuse of being well paid for it,” said Norton coldly. He had less consideration for his tools than the stone-mason for his chisel, except that similarly he demanded that they be kept sharp. Haven winced at the cruelty of the remark, but was silent under the sting, as always.

“Of course,” continued the other, “there must be no checks and no apparent gifts. You’d better make transfer papers for all in blocks of Neilson-Davies Co. stock, and I’ll pay you in currency from the World’s Bank. That will do for this morning, Andrew.”

Haven retired in his usual blundering, toppling fashion, and hastened away to begin to put his chief’s orders into execution. He knew the value of promptitude in dealing with such a man.

Norton, left alone for a few moments, began to turn over the personal mail on his desk. The first missive to catch his eye was a delicate, cream-colored envelope that bore a dark-blue crest on the wax seal.

“The tone of his note is certainly more cordial than usual,” he said half-aloud, as he read the enclosure. “It may be that at last—but to-night will tell.” And he returned Count Sandstrom’s letter to its envelope and filed it away carefully.

That evening, punctual to the minute, Sandstrom made his appearance at the Norton mansion. His dress was a marvel of taste and fashion, and his bearing that of a diplomat rather than of a financier. Always having the “grand air,” despite his lack of height, he could not but impress the gentle Mrs. Norton, whom he took into dinner with the courtly grace of one escorting a princess.

To “Helen he was polite almost to the point of extreme reserve, which made the young woman marvel in an undefinable way. At their last meeting— at Baden-Baden, where the Count had sojourned during the entire stay of the Neilson party—his courtesies had been marked by a spirit of camaraderie that had been very pleasant to Helen. He had been a delightful cavalier, frank, free, and utterly unpretentious, and the American girl’s spirit had met his with admiration and genuine liking. Now, to her quick sensibilities, he seemed cold, and she found herself speculating as to the change brought about by environment.

Still he was a very pleasant dinner-guest—she had to admit that—and he made the elaborate meal a merry one by the brilliancy of his anecdote and the facility of his wit. Even Mrs. Norton warmed to his infectious gaiety, and talked far more freely than was her habit.

“By the way, Count,” she remarked, on his assuring his host that he was glad to be in America again, “may we trust that your business on this occasion will be more successful than when we first saw you here?”

“Ah, madame,” he exclaimed in mock indignation, “your cruel words belie your kind heart. I did, indeed, lose on that memorable day, but to such a winner! What became of the horse? Won rnan^r stakes, I presume?”

“No, indeed. That was his last race. King Capital was Helen’s horse, you know, in the days when he was plain Dandy.”

“And he’s been Dandy ever since,” interposed Helen. “I suppose he is getting old, but he doesn’t seem to know it.”

“So King—I mean Dandy—was your horse, Miss Norton. That explains his victory. Barbarossa was too gallant to defeat a lady, even through her proxy.”

Through all the exaggerated punctilio of his bow to the pretty daughter of the house, one could have seen that he was fascinated by the girl, perhaps despite himself. It had not been a mere holiday fancy on his part when at Baden-Baden he had found himself in the role of comrade to the grave and sweet-faced American. Nor was he less sensible of her charm now that the more prosaic domain of home was round about her.

The mother’s quick perception noted what the Count undoubtedly believed to be admirably concealed, and she wondered a bit, for in other days she did not remember to have seen any special evidence of captured fancy on Sandstrom’s part. She even remembered a report that he was likely to be affianced to a German princess of royal blood. Yet here was the perceptible evidence of a man’s attraction toward a woman, and she was not unpleased to see it, for no mother of an attractive girl ever yet failed to resent any lack of appreciation on the part of an “eligible” man. As far as possible from the professional or even amateur matchmaker, Mrs. Norton realized the compliment and its possibilities with gratification.

The after-dinner tobacco was consumed in the library, where, on opposite sides of a ponderous, elaborately carved table, the men sat down in huge leather chairs. The Count gently waved back the proffer of Norton’s slender panatellas, and took out his golden, ruby-studded cigarette case.

“Your cigars are excellent, I know,” and he looked about significantly at the magnificent appointments of the room, “they must be to be John Norton’s. But you will pardon me if I remain true to my especial cigarettes—made for me in the Khedive’s private shops; will you not try them ? No? As for me, I believe that I am of keener brain when their smoke is inhaled. A little superstition of mine, that is all.”

For a few moments they blew out the smoke of their respective tobacco in silence. The union of the soft, balmy fragrance of the choicest of Havana with the more pungent, orientally suggestive odor of the Egyptian leaf, formed an atmosphere that an enthusiast would have called particularly adapted to the satisfactory arrangement of any sort of plans. Norton, himself, felt something of this.

“I am gratified, Count,” he said at last, “that you have consented to unite business and social pleasures. It is not my practice to bring commercialism into my house, but this is exceptional business, I take it—business that must be done under unusual surrounding’s, and quietly.”

“It is, as you say, exceptional,” agreed Sandstrom, with strong inflection on the final word. “That makes any breach of etiquette quite pardonable. Let us proceed.”

Then, for more than an hour,the two men talked in low tones across the table, Norton, perhaps, having the larger share of the conversation. Sandstrom’s keen blue eyes rarely left the face of the American, and now and again he caressed his sweeping moustachios as if imparting some great secret to them.

“That is the situation,” said Norton as a summing-up. “I have been frank with you. What do you say to the proposition?”

“I should insult your intelligence, Mr. Norton,” replied the Count very slowly, “if I did not say that you evidently feel that I realize clearly your object in all this.”

Now as Norton had not meant that he should reveal his intentions in the slightest, he wondered if he had underrated the ability of this suave and indolent looking Teuton, or whether the other was merely putting forward a “feeler” for his own enlightenment. He brought his every power of concentration to bear on the Count’s next words.

“You have found,” said Sandstrom, “that in such an arrangement as that between the houses of Norton and of Sandstrom, which figures in the vocabulary of finance as the World’s Bank, with two co-ordinate branches, one in New York, the other in Berlin, one must be subsidiary.”

Ah! The blond man had guessed the true inwardness of the situation. “What will he do?” flashed through Norton’s mind. He listened more intently than ever.

“With both equal in authority, and an ocean between them,” went on the suave, measured voice, “they are practically two banks, having branches in the old and new worlds respectively. To accomplish what you desire—the practical dictation of the financial situation—one must be subservient to the other, in fact, if not in name. That is the situation?” he asked with a well-bred insistence of interrogation.

Norton bowed in grave assent. In the fraction of a second and that inclination of the head he had decided that there could be no temporizing, no splitting of hairs with such a man. In the finesse of finance he knew that he had met a peer.

“The only question, then, is,” continued the Count, “which shall rule absolutely and which shall obey blindly?”

Again the affirmative bow.

“The question is, which shall play the respective roles? Your figures, whose accuracy of prediction I do not question, hold out great inducements.”

Norton for a moment believed that Sandstrom might be more impressed than he had feared, but his hope was short-lived.

“For mere money, per se,” exclaimed his noble guest with a new ring of earnestness in his voice, “the house of Sandstrom has cared little. I am even less, perhaps, a victim to its allurements. With us it has ever been power, prestige, the right to command! You ask that I abandon this time-honored policy and place the house of Sandstrom, the growth of more than a century, at your disposal.”

“No—not quite that,” objected Norton, brushing at his cuff as if removing a speck of dust therefrom. But the Count went steadily on.

“Possibly it was harshly put, but that is the practical import of your proposition.”

All this had been said in a tone so utterly devoid of sympathy, so suavely grave, that Norton believed the dissolution of their business arrangement to be near its end. It seemed impossible that their relations could remain unchanged after what had passed. He remembered that he had told himself long ago that Sandstrom was a man who either must be crushed or bought. Since buying was proven to be impossible, there was but the one alternative.

“At another time, with another man,” said his guest, “I should either laugh at such a proposal or scorn it. P>ut I have come from Europe with different thoughts in my mind than ambition for financial supremacy. If I yield myself and my house to your guidance, which I am confident would be a great financial stroke, it will not be because of material gain of a personal nature.”

If! There was something in that word that made Norton’s wavering hope take on new life. Yet he dared not push the thought to its limit.

“If I do this thing, Mr. Norton, it will be because of love.”

At the words the black clouds of doubt suddenly parted, and the sun shone radiantly beyond. Love! —Helen!—but it was still only a time to listen.

“Love brought me from Germany,” continued Sandstrom with a gentler inflection than Norton had ever heard from his lips, “love brings me here to-night. But for it—and you will pardon me, I know—I should not have listened to you a half hour. Germany demands the first duty of her children, and it is for her sake that I shall accept your proposition if”—his voice sank to a tense and thrilling whisper—“if you will bind yourself to me to aid her.”

Again Norton was baffled, confounded, thrown into the vortex of uncertainty and speculation. Then it was not for Helen, not for the attraction of woman for man that this astonishing individual was willing to yield his financial sceptre. A mere sentimental devotion to the fatherland—a feeling Norton could but vaguely comprehend—was the mainspring of his extraordinary course. It was enough to stagger judgment and confound the intellect. Thinking of no fit thing to say, he said nothing.

“Draw closer,” said the Count. Norton obeyed, anathematizing himself for a puppet in the hands of this masterful German. “Pledge me your business honor that no breath or hint of what I shall tell you shall pass to another.”

Norton inclined his head silently, awed by the tremendous earnestness of the man.

“Germany is on the verge of a great war. Hostilities may not come within a year, but come they must. Russia, England and France will join common cause against the old-world supremacy of the Fatherland. Without America, Germany, although she must win in the end, will fight the fight in which victory is only less destructive than defeat.”

Did this strange person believe that he could control the policy of a nation, dictate alliances, thought Norton. It was, perhaps, an honor to be so considered, yet chimerical to the last degree.

“America will be, for her own sake must be, neutral,” continued Sandstrom. “All Germany hopes for is that in some way she can rely upon it that the product of your granaries will be open to her. In other words, I am empowered to ask your cooperation in a plan by which we may have absolute dependence upon all the wheat and grain that we shall need. The crops of India and Russia will be forbidden us. Those of America will be ample. Money is of no value, but we have reason to believe that, once war has begun, our enemies will leave no means untried to prevent our securing what we want. Will you, in exchange for my acquiescence in the plans for the future of the World’s Bank, bind yourself to such control of the American crops as will insure Germany whatever she asks?”

Norton was amazed, yet once more on his own ground. Since it was to be a great contest in the markets, a business campaign he knew so well how to wage, he could accept the commission with the dogged determination of a veteran soldier. But being an American, he answered the question by asking another: “Why do you think I can do this?”

“Because,” was the reply, “ever since the night of that banquet when we first met as friends, I have remembered. A man who could begin as you began, in the arid deserts of the West, and who can achieve what von have achieved, is the man upon whom Germany can depend.”

John Norton rose to his full, impressive height, and extended his right arm to the Count.

“It shall be a bond in honor,” he said solemnly, and the men’s hands met in a long and firm clasp.

“I thank you,” exclaimed Sandstrom. “Germany will add her thanks to mine at the proper time. And now there is a personal matter of which I wish to speak, if I may.”

“Speak freely,” was the cordial reply, “and command me to the utmost.”

“I love your daughter, sir, and I beg your sanction to ask her to become my wife.”

Pride in the prospective alliance with a man who was little less than a prince filled John Norton’s soul, but his sturdy nature forbade any revelation of his pleasure even to one to whom he owed a glorious future for his most cherished ambitions. Nor would he barter away his child’s freedom without making her a knowing party to the transaction.

“I am sensible of the honor of your declaration, Count Sandstrom,” he replied, “but my daughter’s heart is her castle. It must be won.”

As he spoke they heard the faint sound of a pianoforte from the music room in another part of the great house. The plaintive air of a German lied, instinct with delicate tenderness, seemed to the Count an omen of good cheer.

“I shall be a doughty knight,” he said, with a radiant smile.

CHAPTER XXX

PLACING THE BLAME.

WINTER opened with more than its usual menace to the poor. Its autumnal forerunner had, with its early frost and dismal sky, made gloomy prophecies of what was to come, and these had been amply verified. For weeks there had been practically no sun, and the high winds, laden with dust, had brought disease and consequent suffering to those least able to endure. All over the country conditions had grown steadily worse, and Philip Craig had found himself encompassed with such pressing demands for his service that he scarcely knew which way to turn.

For workingmen the times were violently askew. A season of great prosperity had suddenly felt the enormous, if legitimate, reaction from lavish expenditure, over-capitalization, and the too-san-guine investment of money in any sort of enterprise that could purchase a hearing. Capital now became as timid as it had before been bold, and countless thousands who had been employed under inflation, found themselves either terribly crippled in their earning capacity or thrown out of work altogether. The western crops had been greatly reduced, adding a dangerous element to the situation. Prices of all necessities rose, but not the price of labor.

The great working forces found themselves harassed and torn by anxiety, and the radical element in the labor organizations cast their seed upon fruitful ground. Craig battled long and hard to keep men in check from the almost suicidal measures which they would have adopted under the belief that they were stronger than they were. He knew too well the direful effect of hopeless strikes upon women and children, and whenever he could patch up some sort of truce between the contending elements he rejoiced as having done a service to humanity.

But strong and masterful as he was, respected though he continued to be, impressive and adroit in argument as he had come to be regarded, he could not always succeed. Men smarting under a sense of injustice are rarely far-seeing; the question of bread is more potent than that of logic.

As Philip descended the steps of Harmony Hall one winter evening, thinking with grim mirth of the misnomer, he realized that he had failed dismally in this instance, and that failure meant suffering to those who had no voice in the decision. All the afternoon he had been seeking to dissuade from an industrial war the delegates to a convention of the allied organization of shoe-workers. Their employers, under stress of bitter competition from a great New England association of manufacturers, had entered into an agreement to reduce the price for piece work in such a way that the aggregate saving was considerable. The individual loss to the workmen was small and could have been practically made up day by day by increased speed in labor. But, for the sake of principle, the men had decided to fight with the one weapon that seemed to be nearest at hand and most effective— a strike.

On the sidewalk he found Joseph Langmaid, who had stood shoulder to shoulder with him in the contest. The fact that both of them together had not been able to stem the tide—for Langmaid was high in the committee of the organization— showed to what extent the temper of the delegates had led them.

“Well, Philip,” he said, darting his little eyes about and blinking hard at the violent lights in the windows of the mean shops adjacent, “we’ve lost for sure. The ballot will be three to one to quit work. God pity the women and the children in these awful times.”

“Strange they should be so blind,” replied Craig. “I thought that my statement that I had the best of reasons for believing that a strike now meant a shut-down till next fall, at least, would have weight.”

“They didn’t believe it. Not that they doubt you, of course, but they think you’ve been misinformed. Jacques and French and their crowd have made themselves and the rest believe that the manufacturers must go on or be ruined. You and I know they have an over-production that will supply the trade for months.”

“It’s the old, old error, Langmaid,” said Philip sadly. “A man believes himself indispensable to society until he has withdrawn from the sea of life. Then he finds that his going is like the taking of a bucket of water from the ocean. But I’m sorry for this day’s work.”

He looked at the little knots of women, who, too anxious to remain at home, had come to the entrance of the hall to learn what decision had been made in a matter that so vitally affected their lives. Many already bore the melancholy imprint of poverty, and all talked with subdued excitement. The squalid street, with its blank and dismal rows of tenement buildings; its long line of seedy loafers, and its poor little gutter-snipes of children, still out at play because it was warmer to play than to sit chilled at home, heightened the feeling of depression on Philip’s soul.

“As you say, Langmaid,” he exclaimed, including the whole scene with a broad sweep of his hand, “God help those in the homes. If I—”

His sentence was never finished, for just beyond them and from the middle of the street suddenly burst a piercing shriek, the death cry of some young thing in agony, followed by an appalling, crooning wail still more awful to hear.

The two men saw a heavy automobile carriage come to a stop with a sudden jolt which caused the man on the box almost to lurch into the street, while behind it was clustered a crowd that looked down at something in its centre. Then a frantic woman picked up the body of her child and folded it to her meagre breast with a weird swaying of the body. Cries of pity from the lips around her swiftly changed to oaths and a dull, vindictive roar of wrath and threats of vengeance. A wild charge was made on the automobile, whose occupants were looking out of the windows in surprise and alarm.

“Curse them and their damned machines,” shouted a shock-headed, red-faced man. “Down with the aristocrats! Mob the rich murderers!”

“Curses? What good are they?” jeered a slattern woman with a shawl over her frowzy hair. “If you are men you’ll do more than curse.”

“Drag- ’em out!” yelled a pale boy.

“Drive ’em out!” shrieked a buxom girl in cheap finery. “Don’t ye dare do anything?”

This appeal was not in vain, for a stone went crashing against the panels of the carriage, just missing a window.

Philip, closely followed by Langmaid, pushed his way through the mob and reached the vehicle just as a man had opened the door and was about to descend.

“Back,” he said with quiet authority. “Close the door, and remain quiet.” Something in his manner impressed the man, and he was obeyed.

Although his appearance had created a diversion. Philip knew that he could not hope to keep in check these people, whose only known form of justice was physical retaliation. If something could only be done until the arrival of the police. In desperation he turned to speak to the chauffeur, whose hat had just been knocked off by a well-directed missile.

“How did this happen, driver?” he asked, sternly.

The man’s reply was a senseless leer and a lurch that brought his face nearly to Philip’s own. Then was the truth revealed in the strong fumes of liquor and the glassy, stupid rolling of the eyeballs.

Craig sprang upon the steps and shouted to the crowd that was just making ready to overturn the automobile by the combined strength of many arms.

“You are right in resenting this crime,” he said, “but wrong in placing the blame. The people who are inside, whom you call ‘rich murderers/ are not at fault. It is one of your own people who has done this thing. See,”—and he dragged the now cowering wretch to his unsteady feet, whimpering like a beaten cur—“this man is drunk. I will be responsible for him. He will receive his deserts. Here are the police.”

The crowd melted sullenly away at the potent word and the clattering of patrol-wagon horses on a gallop. Craig gave Langmaid a hurried instruction, and the latter went to the window of the carriage and presently spoke to the occupants.

“Mr. Craig!” exclaimed the sergeant of police in astonishment, as he reached the scene. “What has happened, sir?”

Philip told the story with a few vivid words, and the officer seized the drunken chauffeur and bundled him into the patrol-wagon with about the same consideration he would have had for a log. He ordered a policeman, who had been an autodriver before donning brass buttons, to convey the party to its destination, one of the Broadway theatres.

As Philip stepped to the sidewalk, Langmaid. who had spoken to the sergeant, joined him, and they started homeward.

“You gave the sergeant the names?” Craig asked.

“Yes, and here is a card a young woman in the party wished me to give to you.”

“to me?”

“Yes. She told me to ask you to send her the address of the poor mother, and she would see that everything possible was done for her in her affliction.”

Philip put the bit of pasteboard in his pocket, and then, obeying a sudden impulse, drew it out again. In the light of a shop-window he read:

Miss Helen Norton.

For a moment the name seemed to burn in letters of flame, and Craig saw it shake in his own hand. What was its import? She must have seen, have recognized him, and perhaps sent this as an envoy of better things. It were easy for her to get the woman’s address from others, he reasoned, so here was a token. Then he laughed aloud. Was the meeting of an instant, during which he had not even seen her face, to shake the belief of years? Hope, he realized, was the imagination of the unhappy, but he was not unhappy.

Still, thought and memory would not down, no matter what conviction might be, and as he walked along in the sharp air to another meeting where he was to make a speech, the vision of a fair face and a June day long past rose between him and the crowded city, and even as he spoke, clearly, concisely, eloquently as ever, he could have sworn that somewhere in the intangible atmosphere about him hovered the fragrance of new-mown hay.

As he was leaving the hall after his address, he heard his name called, and, turning, beheld “Muggsy” Bayles, as youthful in appearance as on the day he won the American Handicap for John Peter Norton. Under his arm was a big bundle of books that seemed to threaten his loss of equilibrium at every step.

“Muggsy, how are you?” said Philip cordially to his old-time faithful messenger. “And your father, how is he these days?”

“Me an’ Doc’s we”—began the ex-jockey in obedience to the habit of years, “that is, I’m all right, but father’s powerful bad with rheumatiz’ just now, an’ does nothin’ but read. I’ve just been to the library to get these books for him. An’ how are you, sir? We reads a good deal about you in the papers, Doc an’ me, an’ is mighty glad to know you’ve got on.”

After this preternaturally long speech, “Muggsy” trotted along in silence, doing his best to keep pace with Philip’s strides.

Finally Philip asked him something about his duties.

“Pretty much the same, sir,” he replied, “only p’raps not quite so much to do since the ladies kind ’er took to automobiles. They was out in one tonight—op’ry, I guess.”

Then Philip briefly narrated the episode of the drunken chauffeur and the mob. Young Bayles shook his head sagely, apparently unwilling to cast the whole responsibility on the driver.

“The worst o’ them automobiles is,” he remarked, “that they ain’t got no hoss sense. Count Sandstrom prefers ’em, though.”

“Sandstrom? Was he one of the party?”

“Oh, yes. Him and Mrs. and Miss Norton. He goes with ’em everywhere now that he and Miss Helen’s engaged. Well, good-night, sir; I’ll have to turn this corner. Good-night.”

“Good-night, Bayles.”

Walking homeward, Philip turned the news over and over in his mind, surveying it from all points and with what he believed to be calm consideration. Pie decided at last that there was no reason for surprise, that the outcome of events was but natural, and that his dead past must bury its dead.

As he went to sleep that night, he was conscious of a dull, disordered pain that seemed ever on the point of surrounding his heart. He was working too hard, he told himself.

Count Sandstrom and Helen Norton rode home together after the opera, owing to the party’s inability to replace their discarded vehicle except by two smaller ones. All things had conspired to rouse the nobleman from the delightful lethargy in which he had been steeped during the past weeks. The excitement of the accident, the intoxication of sensuous music, the nearness of a beautiful woman, the semi-obscurity and the smooth, exhilarating motion of the carriage, fired his heart and put a declaration of love upon his tongue.

In the courtly way of polished men of his rank he made his avowal, with gentle and respectful ardor and an evident sincerity that touched Helen deeply. She listened in silence until his declaration ended in the direct question:

“What is your answer? Will you be my wife?”

“I cannot,” she replied, as gently, as considerately, as kindly as could any woman in the utterance of that negative which man dreads most. The Count was dismayed, but not crushed.

“But may I not continue to pay my addresses, my dear Miss Norton, in the hope that some day—”

“That would be useless, Count Sandstrom,” she said firmly, “and an injustice to you. I shall never marry,”

CHAPTER XXXI

THE TRUTH AT LAST.

HELEN’S thoughts as her maid arranged her hair for the night were complex, almost tumultuous. The sight of Philip and the proposal of Count Sandstrom, coming in such startling proximity, thrilled her with the feeling that Fate was standing somewhere near, silent, uncommunicative, but none the less strong and overmastering.

It was as yet too early to put the incidents in their proper relation. The German’s offer had surprised her; men there had been fluttering about her wealth and beauty like the traditional moths, but before their wings had been badly singed they had all been warned away by prudence or driven off by circumstances.

That the Count had really fallen into the flame gave her a curious feeling of resentment, though she admitted the injustice of it; he was certainly all that a woman might ask of a man, and he had been kind to her. Why, then, did she regard his proposal as almost an affront, she asked herself, and she saw a flush on her cheeks as she looked into the mirror of her dressing-table. She frowned at the self-revelation, and the lovely counterpart frowned back at her, which seemed right and proper and well-deserved.

Was it—could it be that her annoyance at Sandstrom had been the outcome of her remembrance of the strong man who had dared the anger of a mob, not for her sake, but for people unknown? What right had she to lift the veil for even one brief moment on the ignominy of the past? This man, who not only had degraded himself in his quarrel with her father, but had shown the absolute pretense of his love by his tame and silent acceptance of the destruction of his hopes—was he worth a single regret?

But hearts have a habit of rendering their own judgments quite independently of intellects, and so if Helen’s pillow was moistened that night with girlish tears, it was not strange; nor was it remarkable that in her hours of wakeful unhappiness she almost wished that she might be content to give herself to Count Sandstrom without her love.

Next morning Helen arose unrefreshed and dis-spirited. She was so distraite at breakfast that Mrs. Norton rejoiced when she announced her intention of paying a visit to Bentley-on-Hudson. She went early, armed with a carriage load of flowers, and filled with a desire to forget self and its burdens in the soothing of the physical distresses of little children. Vain hope. Everything reminded her of Philip Craig in this place upon which his personality had been so strongly stamped. She could scarcely walk through the corridors without seeing some new convenience, some scheme of architecture that owed its inspiration to him.

All day long Helen stayed at the hospital, a veritable angel of beauty and light to the hundreds of small sufferers whose cots she visited. With flowers and books for the better cases, and sweet sympathy for the desperately ill, she passed from ward to ward, and for a time forgot her own depression in the joy of doing good. It had been her pleasure from the first to remain unknown, as far as being the donor of the hospital was concerned. She felt that it would hurt her to have the children regard her as other than a visitor who was kind to them.

One pathetic mite of a girl, long afflicted with spinal disease, died before Helen’s eyes, her feeble arms encircling a doll that had been a gift of the “‘lady,” and a happy smile on her lips because the fair vision, somehow suggesting heaven, had been before her glimmering gaze until the last. When the pure little spirit had gone home, Helen knelt by the tiny bed and prayed for a life as blameless.

There the Rev. Adoniram Bentley found her, and his gentle eyes grew moist at the sight. But she, much as she loved the great-hearted clergyman, could not look at him without wretchedness, for he was the most potent factor of any in arousing memory pictures of the days when Philip was her all in all. She went home soon after, chastened somewhat by the experiences of the day, but no less under the haunting spell of remembrance.

As she entered the house, dusk had shadowed everything, but she saw dimly her father’s form sitting in the library. At that moment a light sprang into his study lamp, and she thought she noted a look of anxiety upon his illumined face. She stepped softly to his side.

“Ah, my dearest,” he said, with a smile, “what a day of it you have had! And how goes it with Bentley-on-Hudson?”

“All is well there, father. At least, as well as can be with such a place.”

“But are you not tired with such a long visit, seeing so much suffering?”

“No, indeed, not so tired as—”

He divined her thought, and laughed gently. “As I seem to be, you mean. Why, do you think—?”

“Yes, father; there was something in your face a moment ago that looked as if you were troubled. Is it so?”

“What a wonderful little sooth-sayer you are, dear,” he replied. Then gravely: “Well, yes, Helen, I am troubled. I have just heard of your refusal of Count Sandstrom.”

“And you regret it?”

He bowed silently.

“But, father, L do not love him.”

“Yet you love no one else?”

It was a bold stroke, Norton knew, yet such was his way in business, and why not in matters of the heart?

“No,” she replied decisively, and he felt that his bolt had reached its mark.

“Then why reject him, a gallant and worthy gentleman, of whose love and name any woman might be proud?”

“But marriage without love!” There was a ring of indignation in her words. “Would you counsel that?”

“It is frequent,” he answered calmly. “Respect is often the unrecognized preface to love, and marriage may turn the pages to the beginning of romance.”

There was no answer, and the father resumed still more gently: ‘‘Perhaps I am wrong in telling you, but I had set my heart on seeing you his wife. I love you dearly, and much of my ambition has centred around your future. You are no longer a child, and—you are affectionate and demand affectionate care. Your mother and I are growing old—” this with solemn emphasis—“and my life has been laborious. I may not be spared for long to shield you.”

“Oh, father!”

“With you the wife of this man, who has declined an alliance almost royal for your sake, I should feel that I had fulfilled my duty to you.” He paused to let his words sink deeply home. In a faint whisper, almost inaudible to his attentive ears, Helen replied:—

“Would it make you so very happy if I should consent; if—if he would take me without love?” “Very happy, Helen.” The unprejudiced observer might have detected a note of triumph mingled with the gratitude in his voice, but the girl felt only that she was to repay the debt of years of indulgence and generosity.

“Then I will try and do as you wish.” she said slowly. “Give me a few days to—to accustom myself to this, and you may tell Count Sandstrom.” She kissed her father on the forehead and then left him, closing the door as gently as if shutting-up forever something fragrant and precious in her past.

For some moments Norton sat as motionless as a statue in his great leathern chair. Then he sighed deeply, and, raising his left hand, observed with seeming surprise the livid welt upon his thumb.

“After all,” he said aloud, “it will be for her good, and love will come. With Sandstrom as my son-in-law, anything is possible.”

No sooner had Helen pledged her word to her father than a certain relief came soothingly to her troubled mind. Gone was the harrowing tension of uncertainty, the feeling that she was dividing her household against itself. She accepted the situation calmly, and even fell to wondering what the responsibilities and privileges of her new life would be.

A great tenderness for all that had been near and dear to her girlhood days came upon her, and made her heart warm toward all the world. Her mother noted a new depth of affection, and rejoiced at what her husband told her that night. Surely a yielding that had worked this subtle transformation must be right, she thought.

Helen went to her favorite nooks in the garden next morning with the feeling that she was to bid farewell to old friends. The grave of her Angora, which she had reared from kittenhood to fiercely solicitous maternity, the grape-arbor, the little tennis-court, the’ great shade tree under which she had loved to lie prone upon the grass with a book —all these unsentient things seemed to say good-by and wish her well.

The stables, nearest to her heart, as ever, stirred her emotions the most. There was Dandy, sedate now in his great box-stall, but putting on the counterfeit of youth at the sight of his gift-bearing mistress. She stroked his nose gently, pressed her face against his warm muzzle, and talked to him in whispers, knowing well that the brutes who love us would never betray our confidences if they could.

She had just rewarded the noble animal with a final pat and an extra lump of sugar, and was leaving the stall, when the elder Bayles appeared upon the scene, leaning heavily on two canes.

“Lord love ye’, Miss Helen,” he exclaimed heartily, “it’s like ‘a breath from the verdure-clad hills,’ as the poet says, to see ye in the stable again.”

“What’s the matter, Doc?” she asked solicitously, noting the crippled condition of the old man.

“Oh, these canes? Rheumatiz. It’s mighty bad this morning.”

“And yet you smile.”

“Why, yes, of course; it might be worse. Besides, I think I caught it from poor old Cowboy just before he died, an’ it sorter consoles me to think—you’ll laugh at it, Miss Helen—that my takin’ it eased the loss’s pain a bit.”

Helen did not laugh, for the old trainer’s fancy appealed to her nature strongly. She lent him the assistance of her strong arms, and together they went into the little den near the feed boxes, which the house servants had long ago nicknamed “Doc Bayles’ surgery.” There they found “Muggsy,” astride of a saddle on the floor and performing some queer evolutions with an enormous curved needle and a trail of waxed thread. He jumped up quickly and dusted a chair with his cap.

“Sit down, Miss Helen,” he said gruffly, “me an’ Doc’s glad ter see yer. This here library smells kinder horsey, but we knows yer like’s the flavor.

Sence Doc’s took with rheumatiz all he does is ter come in here and wrastle around with the books. I’ll bet he’s arter one of ’em now.”

“My memory ain’t what it used ter be, Miss Helen,” said the senior Bayles, ignoring his hopeful’s remarks, as usual, and fumbling about the shelves that occupied one side of the room. “Ah, yes, this is it.”

With somewhat uncertain grip he drew down a volume, and began opening it at one place and another where wisps of hay indicated something especially interesting.

“But I think I quoted right. Yes, here’s the place. Where are my glasses? You read it, Miss Helen, where the mark is.”

“ ‘I never could believe,’ ” began the girl.

“Yes, that’s it,” interposed the old man, chewing gently at the erstwhile bookmark, and gazing placidly at the ceiling.

“ ‘I never could believe that providence had sent a few men into the world, ready booted and spurred to ride, and millions ready paddled and bridled to be ridden.’ ”

“That’s it,” repeated Doc. “Your father gave me that book, Miss, an’ them’s my sentiments.” With which vigorous expression of opinion he hobbled off to the stable yard, giving a parting smile to the woman he could think of only as the flaxen-haired little girl he had taught to ride. Helen noted idly that the book was a volume of Macaulay’s History of England, and let it drop into her lap.

Left alone with Helen, “Muggsv” seemed peculiarly ill at ease. He fidgeted on his saddle-seat, and several times opened his mouth as if to speak, but put cracked corn into it instead. The girl noted his embarrassment.

“What is it, Muggsy?” she asked in amusement.

“Well, you see, Miss,” the young man blurted out, as if greatly relieved, “I had a kind of a message for yer.”

“A message? What is it?”

“It’s here.” And he drew from his pocket a soiled bit of paper, yellow with the dust of cracked corn, which he proceeded to unfold. It was a little card which he handed to Helen.

“It’s the address of the mother of the child who was—who was—”

“Yes, I know,” interrupted Helen, softly. She saw that the card was her own, changed only by a penciled street direction.

“How did you come by it?” she queried curiously.

“Mr. Craig gave it to me when I met him the other night after one of his meetings, an’ I—well, 1—”

“Forgot it, I suppose,” she prompted kindly.

“No, Miss, not that; but I didn’t see you and I didn’t like to send it to you.”

“Indeed? And why not?” she asked coldly, though she repented at the next moment, for she knew that the faithful little man did not merit it. But at first blush the return of the card in that fashion seemed like a studied insult on Philip’s part, although she laughed at the idea as soon as it was born. However, something was necessary to remove the impression she saw she had created on the wondering little face before her.

“And Mr. Craig, is he well?” she asked casually.

“.Well? Yes, I s’pose so. He’s alius workin’, and must be well to stand it. But sometimes I wonder if he has all recovered.”

“He has been ill, then?” Her voice sounded like that of another to her own consciousness.

“Well, not lately. I meant his long spell after the accident.”

“Accident? What accident?” It was the real Helen who was speaking now.

“Muggsy” gazed at her with wide-mouthed astonishment, even forgetting the corn, that came near choking him as he drew a deep breath of surprise.

“Why, don’t you know?” he exclaimed. He saw on the instant the futility of the question, and proceeded to tell, in his odd way, the whole story as he knew it. Helen listened with dilated eyes. No romance, no history had ever gripped her heart like this simple, pathetic recital.

“When was this, you say?” she asked, with a tightening at her throat and a dread lest she should hear what she longed to hear.

“Lemme see,” replied “Muggsy” judicially. “Yes, it was the very day I saw him about the note I brought to you from him. P’raps you remember —What’s the matter, Miss Helen? Shall I call—”

“It’s nothing, Muggsy. A little faintness. It— it is close here.”

She had grown as pale as death, and leaned trembling against a harness case. The book of “Doc” Bayles had fallen from her lap, and she stooped to pick it up.

“You were saying—the note,” she continued mechanically.

“Yes, the note,” repeated the small man, helplessly, pondering over his next speech. He idly watched the book in Helen’s hands, and saw something white slip from its place and flutter to the floor. Bending from his seat on the saddle, he picked it up.

“Bless my eyes, if that ain’t it now!” he ejaculated. “I remember he gave it back and I put it in one of Doc’s books. ‘Give it to her when she will take it,’ he said to me.”

Helen stretched forth her hand, as it were, across the chasm of years, and received the missive, that seemed to burn in her fingers. A great desire to be alone, to get beyond any human eyes, however kindly, came over her, and she turned to go.

“I think I will dispose of this,” she said, with a laugh that haunted “Muggsy” for some time after she had passed into the open air.

In the grape arbor Helen sat down and read the words she had long ago refused even to see. The letter was brief, earnest, manly, eloquent, appealing in its tenderness and thrilling in its denunciation of the injustice that had condemned him to a life alone. She could not doubt the words that came so strangely from the past to accuse her.

“I have been forced to leave your father’s employ.” she read, “because my ideas of business rights and wrongs, of the limits that should be set upon individual oppression by the power of combined capital do not agree with his. Whether I am right or wrong, you shall be the judge. My love for you, Helen, is deeper and truer to-day than it ever was, for I feel that I am more than ever worthy of you.”

Tears blinded her eyes, and a great wave of pitiful reproach engulfed her soul. She knew that she had read the truth—and she had been the first to judge him unheard. Even her father, stern and relentless as he was in business, had not done that!

But what had her father done? It was horrible for a daughter to think of, but she relentlessly pursued the logic of the situation. He had known the truth, and had given her no hint of it. Andrew Haven had lied. And she, childish dupe that she had been, had believed the worst, had been a traitor to the loyalty of love. How she must be despised, and how justly!

But there should be no more mistakes, no more groping in the dark. Thrusting the note into the bosom of her dress, she hurried into the house, put on her furs, and started for her father’s office by train. Half an hour later she was admitted to his private room.

“Why, Helen, what brings you here?” asked Norton with surprise, as he looked up from a balance-sheet on his desk.

His daughter walked proudly to his side and held out Philip Craig’s letter.

“Read it,” she commanded, answering the question in his eyes.

Norton opened the envelope carelessly, but as the handwriting met his eye he started in amazement. Ashe read on slowly he felt that his daughter’s gaze never left his face, and when he had finished he handed the letter back to her without meeting her glance.

“Is that the truth?” she asked, with an icy contempt that froze his nerves. This man, who could face a world of men in bitterest enmity without a tremor, was helpless before the outraged dignity of a woman. But even in his humiliation he felt a pride in the fact that she was his daughter.

“Is it true?” she said again.

He could not lie., he could not even temporize with this girl who seemed suddenly to have become a young goddess of justice.

“Yes,” he answered, “it is.”

A moment more, and he found himself alone. A head clerk who entered long afterwards found his chief staring rigidly out of the window, and was obliged to speak several times before the great man seemed aware of his presence.

On that same afternoon, Helen went to her mothers room, and remained there for half an hour. At the close of their interview the mother was in tears. The girl soon after left the house, clad in the simple skirt and jacket she had worn on shipboard.

John Norton returned to his home in moody silence, and sought his wife at once. The servants noted with wonderment that dinner that day was not served, although neither of their employers went from the mansion.

Early in the evening the well-ordered routine of the Rev. Adoniram Bentley’s life was broken into by a visit from the daughter of the man he regarded as a philanthropist. Her story was quickly told, and his protection implored. The good man could see no other way than to grant Helen’s plea, for he knew that her strength of character would keep her to her avowed course, even should he refuse to be a party to it. And foremost in the plan of assistance was his solemn promise that, come what might, he would admit Philip Craig to no confidence,

CHAPTER XXXII

A LUNCHEON BEARS FRUIT.

IN a private room of the Metropole Club, styled “The Billionaires” by the envious outside its portals, two men sat at table. The bright April sunlight glistened on polished crystal, and set in relief the strong faces of the twain. It was whispered about the club that John Norton and Orville W. Price were taking luncheon together.

The financier-senator was rarely seen about the Metropole of late, and never, within the memory of the oldest servant, had he been known to eat his mid-day meal there before. His usual luncheon was severity itself, but to-day he had ordered an elaborate repast, which he barely tasted. His presence at the club at this hour, when he was invariably at his office—indeed his appearance in town at all, for Congress was still in session—was enough to set the wiseacres in a flurry of excitement, and to start the portentous rumor that he had an object in view. And so, indeed, he had.

He had come to New York for the express purpose of having an hour’s talk with the heavy-jawed man who now sat opposite, and who did his full duty as a trencherman. It was not a part of Norton’s plan to let the editor know this, and when they met quite casually at Price’s customary hour for lunching, and the Senator invited him to be his guest, the thing seemed so spontaneous that the journalist was quite charmed, and responded in most amiable mood. Thus it happened that they sat vis-a-vis in the finest small room in the club, and chatted pleasantly of everything except the business that brought John Norton to New York.

For his part, Price was preparing to turn the conversation into channels that might prove useful to himself. He knew, as did all who were conversant of affairs below their surface, that Senator Norton had become the real leader of his section of the dominant party. The days when senators were expected to serve an apprenticeship of silence in the upper branch, and to aspire at once to no methods of actual influence, had long since passed away, and Norton found that his gigantic wealth, his imperious force and his great acumen had prevailed with senators—most of whom were only less rich than himself—as with other men, and that he ruled because he was able. His political life was undertaken purely as a means to an end, and that end was to direct and control certain matters in legislation that concerned the business interests of himself and his business associates. For statecraft, per se. he cared nothing. That sort of thing, he believed, might have been necessary in the early days of the republic, but not now. Even his absolute control of state politics gave him merely the satisfaction of knowing that he thereby held the business and financial policies of the commonwealth in the hollow of his hand.

The meal was now approaching that state where Norton felt that generalities must cease to figure in the conversation. He saw that the choice wines, which he never tasted, were manifesting themselves in Price’s flushed face, and he determined to proceed to the matter in his mind. The editor had mentioned the severity of the past winter, and had expressed curiosity as to the probability of less straitened times.

“This European war,” he said, “seems to be injuring us, instead of bringing us prosperity.”

“Yet I remember that the News told us in big type last winter,” rejoined Norton drily, “that when Europeans went to war, Americans would have the prosperity the foreigners lost.”

“That’s the strangest part of it. And the only result has been to raise the prices of food stuffs, and shake public confidence.”

“That’s just it,” interrupted Norton quickly. “It’s all a matter of confidence, and I think it is due you, Price, to tell you that the administration and its advisers attribute no little of this lack of confidence to the press.”

“To the press?” echoed the editor in astonishment.

“Yes, sir, to its eternal policy of croaking, in season and out. I know what you would say,” he continued, noting a wave of deprecation on Price’s part. “Of course it is business with you fellows of the opposition. In these days, when great newspapers must be supported by the masses, it has become essential to chief eminence in circulation that the so-called popular journal should pose as a type-and-ink Moses to lead the people out of bondage.”

Price smiled in spite of himself, but said nothing. He would not argue self-evident facts with so astute a man as Norton.

“Now it seems,” continued the senator, “to official Washington, at least, that it is time that a halt be called in this—well, this calamity campaign.”

“But,” objected Price, toying with a glass of rare Tokay, his especial delight, as Norton knew, “is there not more reason now than ever for the insistence of the press that more respect be paid to the rights of the common people? Provisions go up, wages go down, or cease altogether, strikes and lockouts multiply; in fact, the future looks blacker every day. Why do the facts not warrant the newspaper warnings and the demands for a change?”

“Argument is fruitless,” rejoined Norton, with more decision than he had yet shown. “It is certain that agitation will only shake confidence still more. With confidence restored, conditions would soon adjust themselves. At all events, it is felt in Washington that unless something is done to check this firing of public sentiment, we shall be forced by the lower, or, if you please, the poorer classes—at all events by those who, having nothing to lose, feel that any change would be a gain—into a condition very like anarchy. But you should know this as well as I.

“I had not meant to mention this,” he continued after a pause, “but you’re a good fellow, Price, and I’ll be frank with you. The American News is held chiefly responsible for the socialistic spirit in the people that bids fair to undermine our institutions.”

“The News? Why? Many other papers do the same.”

“Exactly. The small fry swim in your wake. Reforms will come, but they must come slowly. Harsh dealings with investments by capital will inevitably result in a panic that will tumble our commercial structure about our ears. Neither you nor I, Price, can afford this,” he added significantly.

The editor thought of his many investments and wondered how much truth there was in the prediction. Yet he was not prepared to surrender in tame fashion.

“The people,” he said blusteringly, “are my chief investments, Mr. Norton.”

“True,” returned the other calmly, “but tell me who feed the life-blood to your paper, the people with pennies, or those with thousands; the men who buy your product on the street corners, or the business houses that make it possible for your presses to run: the individual with the penny, or the man with the advertising contract?”

“Well, of course, advertising—,” Price began feebly. Norton took out his watch.

“It is later than I thought,” he exclaimed. “I have said more than I should, perhaps, but I will, for personal friendship, go a little further. I tell you, Price, that if there is not a radical departure from your present methods, Washington is determined to find a way to end your newspaper career.”

“End my newspaper career,” said the editor hotly. “Why the damned—” he was about to add “presumption,” but something in Norton’s face checked him.

“Did yon ever know me to lie?” asked Norton sternly. “Well, I pledge you my word of honor that unless you use your newspapers for the restoration of confidence, they will be crushed,— crushed completely and forever.”

The hidden suggestion, the sublime confidence of power unrevealed, was more potent than any specific threat could have been. Price stammered, hesitated, and then said helplessly: “What—what am I to do?”

“As a friend I should advise, as the first step, that the tone of the writings of your man Craig be modified materially.”

“Impossible. He writes what he thinks. The American News is not responsible.”

“Ah, there is your error,” returned Norton with his thin-lipped smile. “It is the power and prestige of your papers that give him his hold upon the people.”

“But he will not submit to dictation. I tried it once—a mere suggestion—.”

“And he refused, and said he would go elsewhere?”

“Not exactly. But he did say he must write what he thought, or not at all.”

“Then let him go, Price.”

“But my papers?” pleaded the editor. “He does so much for them.”

“With the rabble,” returned Norton contemptuously. “Will they, or your advertisers, pay your paper bill and your employees? You can control the one, for no other paper of any power would print Craig’s stuff. As for the advertisers, Washington knows how they are to be reached. And now I must bid you good day, Price, for I have to catch the Capital Limited at three. I trust you will carefully consider what I have told you.” Price did consider carefully—almost prayerfully for a man whose religion was of his own forming —and he could see no hope of escape from his manifest duty.

He hurried to the office of the News and summoned Mr. Wilkinson, the new managing editor, who, after a few years’ service on the paper, had been elevated to the seat occupied by John Wesley Landor, owing to the latter’s unfortunate error in printing the details of a scandal in high life. It was not that Price did not like a spice of naughtiness in the News, but the odor of this especial exposure happened to be very offensive to the senses of Herbert Fish Winslow, whose dry goods houses, as everybody knew, fattened Price’s bank account more than any other ten interests combined.

“What’s on for to-morrow. Mr. Wilkinson?” asked the chief, when the young, chubby-faced man was in the great presence.

“Big story, sir,” said the managing editor confidentially. “Flemming—he’s a great digger-out of queer yarns—has a crippled nephew up in a hospital on the Hudson. He went to see him the other day, and saw there a nurse, the daughter of one of the city’s richest men.”

“Indeed! A very sympathetic ‘story’ should be made.”

“Oh. there’s more to it. It seems the girl is there under an assumed name, and that she left her home after some sort of a quarrel six months ago.”

“That is a ‘story’,” exclaimed Price, rubbing his plump hands. “What did you say her name was?”

“Helen Norton, daughter of the—”

“Daughter of the senator?” He sprang to his feet in great excitement and faced the astounded Wilkinson in a blaze of wrath. “Kill the story and—and the man who wrote it. Is it in type?”

“No.”

“Who knows it besides you and Flemming?”

“No one.”

“If it gets around, you’ll go the next minute. Flemming can’t keep his mouth shut. Pack him off to—to South Africa—anywhere—on any pretext, but get him out of the way.”

The speechless Wilkinson needed no further impetus to speedy action. Two hours later he himself saw Flemming board a western express and reiterated his instructions to him not to appear in New York again until he had received orders to do so, or had discovered in the coast cities of Japan a certain mysterious new sort of warship said to be building in that country. He added such imaginative details as he knew would make the quest practically impossible.

Flemming, after the manner of the trained journalist, to whom space and time are merely relative terms, took his abrupt trip calmly enough. He knew that it meant leisure, pleasant experiences and a liberal allowance of money. He did not quite like the “killing” of his “story” of the millionaire’s daughter who was a nurse, and on his way over he wrote an entertaining narrative by deftly weaving fact and fiction together, and sent it, with photographs he had secured, to a certain monthly magazine that made a specialty of personal sketches of the great, more or less highly colored. That done he proceeded towards Japan with a light heart and an approving conscience.

Price’s interview with Wilkinson had been for the purpose of ascertaining if Philip Craig’s “copy” for the morrow had been received, or if he was likely to come to the office that day, but his excitement attending the discovery that he had been on the very verge of arousing the bitter enmity of John Peter Norton with the ill-fated Flemming story, had driven all else from his mind. Now he remembered that something had to be done along the lines of the senator’s direction, and, learning that Craig was in the building, he summoned him to the private room in the steel tower. He greeted his contributor with exaggerated deference.

“How are you, Craig? Sit down, pray,” he said. “Wilkinson tells me you are not looking well, and, indeed, I fear he is right. It may be that this daily grind of ‘copy’ is too much for you, added to your other work. Hadn’t you better take a vacation?”

Craig’s eyes opened wide for an instant. He was not conscious of any special reason for solicitude on the editor’s part. He must look more wearied than he felt, he reflected. But he repelled the suggestion earnestly.

“I cannot. Mr. Price,” he exclaimed. “Now, if ever, my work is needed.”

“Yes, I know; but you must give up something.”

“You are kind, but really there is no need. My thinness and pallor are partly constitutional, though, I admit, the strain is great.”

Price saw that he must take another tack, or port would never be reached.

“I thought you might not be averse to a rest,” he said gravely, “but since you are. I must speak frankly. Your articles have aroused criticism as tending to excite lawlessness and shake public confidence/’

Indignation leaped to Philip’s face and voice. That he, the pleader for sobriety in all things, should be accused of fomenting the very things he wished to avoid!

“Indeed,” he replied. “What have I ever done except to counsel moderation and respect for the law?”

“I know, I know,” said Price with more suavity, “but unfortunately all men are not alike. Others interpret to their own ends. You know yourself that violence often springs from movements undertaken with the most righteous motives by law-abiding men.”

“Yes, I am sorry to say I do,” was the regretful answer. “But the evil would come, anyway. No article of mine can be pointed to that should not make for patriotic action that is creditable to any American.”

“Yes, yes. But—well, the fact is that I must ask you to aid me in restoring public confidence.”

Craig looked the heavy, flushed man straight in the eye. There was no doubt, no mystery about it now. This poseur, this fictitious “friend of the people” was asking him to drug his convictions and give the lie to every manly impulse of his soul.

“By lying?” he asked, sternly.

“Well, yes, if you call it that to aid the nation in time of need.”

“It is the people who are in need, Mr. Price. If the nation requires aid, it is aid from the people against the politicians who twist and turn the laws to their own advantage. Your meaning, however,’is plain. You wish to dictate my writings. Such writings would be useless to us both. The only alternative is that they cease altogether.”

“Let them cease, then!” cried Price, in a crimson rage, his anger at the coolness with which his arguments were met putting to flight his desire to compromise with the man who had such influence over the readers of his papers.

“As you please,” returned Craig calmly, and with a bow he turned and left the room.

CHAPTER XXXIII

A NEW PORTFOLIO.

THE summer had not advanced Philip Craig very far from the sudden severance of his relations with the American News before he discovered that the event was of greater moment than he had realized when he “kicked over the traces,” as Price expressed it in a letter to John Norton. Several papers to which he offered his services, among them some that had tried to win him away from the News in the old days, politely refused his tenders with various excuses. “Our payroll is full”; “we are already supplied with an abundance of similar material” were some of the reasons advanced by the editors to whom he wrote.

Only one of them was honest in the expression of his views. This was Maurice Rosenfeld, formerly the city editor of the American News, and now editor and publisher for the new syndicate that had purchased the Argus and its branches, already a serious rival to the News.

“To be frank with you, Craig,” he had said. “I’d like to print your stuff. It would win the Argus much of the following Price lost when he dropped you. But I simply can’t do it. No newspaper is so great as to be able to scorn conservative sentiment as reflected by its advertisers. The community is scared, and it is not possible for a paper to continue banging away at public confidence at such a time and not practically close its counting room doors. It was all well enough to cry ‘wolf, wolf’ when the animal was only problematical, but now that he is actually in sight it is necessary to tell people to look the other way or try and persuade them that it is not a wolf at all, but a lamb with an unfortunate habit of yelping.” “Then you admit the desperate straits of the poor and middle classes?” Philip had asked earnestly.

“Admit it? It’s not necessary.”

“Then why wouldn’t it be the best policy for at least one paper to tell the truth?”

“Truth, my dear Mr. Craig,” Rosenfeld had replied, his thin, dark little face lighting with the pleasure of a valuable discovery, “is a beautiful thing in the abstract, or at the bottom of a well, but in a newspaper office it is often about the worst possible asset. I venture to say that the paper that tried to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth for ten days would find its editor in jail or an insane asylum within a week. Newspapers control and direct popular sentiment to a degree; when the limit is reached, then they yield to public opinion, and, with a wry face, must beat an ignominious retreat, perhaps before the advance of the very monster of excitement they themselves have created.”

So Philip had gone away, with an added respect for Rosenfeld’s acumen and a more comprehensive view of the ethics of journalism.

“Whatever the reason,” he said to his father one night, “no editor of all who were once so anxious to get me away from the News will give me an opportunity for a hearing—not even as a gratuitous contributor.”

‘‘Ah, weel, Philip,” returned the old man, rocking slowly in his beloved chair the while, “it’s the way o’ the warrld. The mair a body does for some people the greater the contempt he is like tae incur sometimes. It’s a verra human failin’ not tae like the rnon who shows us our fau’ts.”

“But they shall not gag me,” exclaimed the younger man, with the air of one who had not been listening. “Now, more than ever, my message must go to the people.”

“But how, Philip, how? Ye canna—” “Langmaid, Fairbrother, Ford and Brandt and several other prominent leaders are coming here tonight, aren’t they?”

“Yes.”

“I will meet them.”

“But I thought ye—”

“That must rest for the present. We must move at once. I will go to my room and get my plan into practical working shape before they arrive. Call me when they are all here.”

Angus pondered long as to what his son was intending. With closed eyes, he thought of that and many other things as he gently swayed back and forth, until the noise of footsteps on the porch warned him of the approach of the company. He was glad, for of late the little sessions of the reading club had grown quite infrequent; Ford and Langmaid ‘were too busy with practical affairs, while Fairbrother had been kept at home by the wishes of his wife, who had begun to develop a species of melancholia. Now it seemed like the good old times., with the added zest of the presence of noted leaders in his home.

By twos and threes they arrived, the last being Brandt, the keen-witted, resolute German, who greeted Angus with the serious courtesy of his race. When he arrived, the old man addressed the gathering briefly.

“My son, Philip, wishes tae speak tae ye a’ on an important topic touchin’ the cause,” he announced. “I’ll ca’ him.”

In another moment Philip entered the room, with a light in his eyes that Ford noted and rejoiced to see.

“Ah,” he muttered to his neighbor, Langmaid, “he looks as if he meant to act—at last.”

Philip began to speak, very quietly and earnestly.

“You all know,” he said, “that my influence through the press has been stifled. You do not know how. I have learned today that powerful influences were exerted, that a great senator of a great state came to this city with no other object than a two-hour interview with Price, of the American News, who, the same afternoon, forbade me his columns.”

There were hisses, groans, and cries of “shame” and “gag-law” at this.

“Price would not have abandoned the course which has made his paper what it is.” he continued, “except under great pressure. The attitude of Washington shows that the power of the press is feared. ‘Weakerdom,’ as I characterize the men and women for whom we fight, is feared. Do you know what that means, my friends?”

“It means that it is time to act,” exclaimed Ford sharply, and his words were received with murmurs of assent and approbation. Philip smiled approval, at which Ford wondered for a moment.

“You are right. We must act. How? I had thought of starting a newspaper in the interests of ‘Weakerdom,’ but the time for that has passed.” “It has,” said Ford, and again the others agreed. “It is time that the oppressed should prove their strength, should demonstrate their unity. Capital is organized, but it has the weakness of over capitalization, like a building too high for its base. Dividends paid on watered stock are sapping the life-blood of the people. More than ever with America it is ‘every man for himself.’ For their own salvation the people must act. We must show our strength, peaceably but effectively.” “Peaceably! Humph!” growled Ford half-aloud. “Haven’t we been peaceable long enough, and had nothing come of it?”

“I am of no politics,” went on Philip calmly. “I vote for men. I am working for no class; workingmen and employers are alike to me. Both have rights to be respected; both may have wrongs. I am for the people who suffer; who are oppressed. Let us plan together.”

Then for over an hour Philip talked rapidly and earnestly, now and then reading from notes his plan, which, his enthralled listeners found, was the perfecting of a unique organization. Under the simple name of “United Men of America” he proposed to gather all who labored for a daily wage for one purpose—self-assertion.

“This must not be a political party,” he concluded, “It must be a political power, working through and upon present political parties and present office-holders. In no other way shall we be taken with the seriousness that the situation demands.”

Even Ford joined in the cheers that followed. His keen scent detected the growth of an organization which might easily be made to fulfill his cherished dreams of “action.”

Then details were earnestly discussed, and every man was called upon to present his views. As for way and means, Philip gave assurances that money for the expenses of organization would be readily forthcoming. When the meeting broke up the little party went forth with a definite idea in their minds. It was settled that organizers should be appointed for every state, and that Philip should speak for the cause in every great city.

Through the summer the work went on, received with intense enthusiasm everywhere. Open-air meetings all over the country served to recruit hundreds of thousands under the new banner, so that with the beginning of autumn the growth of the strange order, whose members pledged themselves simply to “the good of fellow man,” filled Washington with astonishment and some degree of apprehension. The practical results of the movement could not be foreseen, since its founders made no claim for it. But the name was not reassuring. “United Men of America” was regarded as a veiled threat, and the party in power feared for the results on the fall congressional elections.

One hint, however, the politically wise were quick to take. It was voiced by Craig in the rather primitive form of handbills and posters. “Every interest is represented in the councils of state at Washington/’ it read, “except that of the man who works.”

When the inspired newspapers—chief among which, curiously enough, was Mr. Orville W. Price’s American News—failed to check the growth of the new brotherhood by crying “socialism,” and when the politicians began to see a definite effect on the elections, the leaders of the dominant party awoke one day and determined that something must be done. Just what was a question that puzzled the most astute of them’.

The suggestion for action came from a hitherto despised source, a weak-voiced, weak-minded senator from a western state, who had vaulted into the upper chamber from the heights of his heap of gold, amassed in the manufacture of a superior sort of pickles. That man one day had an idea. Andrew Haven might have explained the seeming paradox by telling that it took full two hours to force that idea into the pickle-senator’s head, and to make him realize fully what John Norton wanted him to do.

However, the idea, once implanted, did fairly well, and finally came to be regarded as the spontaneous sentiment of the Senate. In this form it reached the ears of President Burlingame, at a time when public dissatisfaction at existing conditions was at its height. In due course of events the idea bore fruit in the shape of a message from the President to Philip Craig, requesting an interview.

Philip’s respect for the office, as well as the man, whom he had personally known as the governor of a great state, brought him speedily to Washington. Within a few hours he was closeted with the chief executive. At the close of the interview he returned to his hotel to ponder alone on the strange dispensation fate was again revealing to him. In the evening he saw the President again, and announced his decision. Within an hour he started on his way to New York.

The members of Congress were now beginning to assemble for the extra session which President Burlingame had called for the third week in October “in view of the self-evident demand for the sitting of the supreme legislative body.” His enemies called this action a desperate attempt to avert defeat in the elections; even the leaders of his own party had opposed the move, as unnecessary in view of the quickly impending regular session and as giving the public clamorers an exaggerated idea of their own importance.

But since James Burlingame had succeeded from the vice-presidency to the executive chair early in the spring, by reason of the death of his predecessor from a chronic malady, he had surprised and disappointed many of those who had been instrumental in putting him in the second place on the ticket by exhibiting initiative of the righteous sort, and by clearly demonstrating that he was by no means the servant of the chiefs in the councils of his party. He therefore adhered stoutly to his determination, and the extra session was convened.

After some minor appointments had been confirmed by the Senate, President Burlingame sent a message to Congress recommending the creation of a “Department of Industry” as an addition to the official bureaus of the government. “Commerce under the recent law has its department,” he wrote. “Industry, that makes our nation what it is, should not be ignored.”

With the utmost celerity a bill was passed under suspension of the rules, putting the President’s wishes into practical shape. A day after it had been signed, the portfolio of the new department had been offered to Philip Craig, of New York, and accepted.

With the public announcement of the name, the country was very doubtful if the appointment would be confirmed by the Senate. Bitter enmity toward Craig was known to exist, especially among those whose word was the law of the upper branch, and laboring men already denounced the capitalist senators for their prospective action. But the unexpected happened, and Philip Craig’s nomination was confirmed with absolute unanimity. Senator John P. Norton had moved the confirmation himself, and no other of his party cared to be put on record as against him. With his personal friends the significant remark that the whole thing was a “sop to Cerberus” did much to allay their anxiety and convince them that no harm was to come to wealth.

Labor and the common people greeted the appointment as a victory of great and splendid possibilities. Bon-fires blazed on thousands of hill-tops, enormous torch-light parades of the “United Men of America” took place, thanksgiving services were held, and everywhere sprung up the hope of the dawn of a better day.

CHAPTER XXXIV

A BRACE OF INTERVIEWS.

ATYPICAL January storm was raging over Washington. Great gusts of wind tore down the broad streets, laden now with rain, again with sleet, and finally with heavy, moist snow, that clung to everything like splashes of paint, and transformed the city into an arctic capital, magnificent in its massive, white beauty.

A short, stout man whose identity was completely hidden in the darkness by the folds of his storm coat and the eaves of his slouch hat, and who alighted from an open automobile that had come to a stop before an imposing mansion on Alaska Avenue, was in no mood to see any of the picturesqueness of the night. Pie shook himself in canine fashion and beat his hat against the ironwork of a handsome gate set in a heavy stone wall that surrounded the house.

“Whew,” he sputtered, as he waited a moment for the automobile to disappear, “this Washington weather is the worst in the world. They tell us that they have mild winters! Ugh!” And he stamped the wet snow from his well-shaped boots, turned to a small side entrance in the wall, and pressed a tiny button. The door opened and he passed in.

“This way,” said an apologetic voice in guarded tones. One might have thought that the speaker deemed himself responsible for the atrocious weather.

As the two entered the house, the one who had played sentinel at the gate said in a whisper:

“It is all right now, Count. We shall meet no one.”

“Thank you, Mr. Haven,” replied the other, throwing aside his dripping hat and coat. “We cannot be too careful—for Mr. Norton’s sake.”

“He is waiting for you. Beg pardon, but you are going the wrong way. Follow me, please.”

In the library they found John Norton awaiting them, pacing restlessly to and fro, and just in the act of consulting his watch. He greeted Sandstrom with a relief that was heightened by Haven’s assertion that no one had seen him enter.

“You evidently received my wire,” said the Count, when the social amenities had been briefly disposed of.

“Yes—Mr. Haven.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Will you kindly step into the next room, and see that we are not interrupted? I am forced to take every precaution,” he explained, as Haven retired as gingerly as though he were party to some dark and terrible plot.

“Well, it wouldn’t do for the world to know of my visit here,” admitted the Count. “Yet, after all, it is only simple business.” He lit a cigarette and blew the smoke through his nostrils appreciatively.

“It’s not that,” replied Norton quickly. “I fear nothing open, but of late I have been receiving threatening letters. Some of them have been left in this room, and no one could be found to acknowledge their delivery. One was found fixed to this desk with a bowie—see the mark there?”

Sandstrom’s eye followed the direction of a trembling finger and detected in the polished rosewood a slit that made him give a little shiver. Yet stranger still were the signs of shaken nerves on the part of John Norton, the man he had learned to consider as absolutely made of iron. He fell to wondering what else had happened since he had seen him last.

“It’s a terrible thing, Sandstrom, to have enemies you cannot see. I’d fight without fear so long as my enemy met me face to face. But this intangibility, these threats of nameless things”— he laughed in a strained way—“are ‘boogerish,’ as we used to say when we were boys. And, do you know, some of the letters have hinted that you are considered a spy here against the interests of England and Russia. I hear that the legations, even, are whispering it.”

The Count smiled derisively.

“Let them say what they please,” he rejoined coolly. “I am serving my country; that is enough for me.”

Norton appeared to regain his old impassiveness as he noted Sandstrom’s unruffled air.

“Let’s proceed to business,” he said decisively, and the half-hour’s conversation that followed appeared eminently satisfactory to both.

“In what shape is the money?” Norton asked at length.

“In drafts on London, payable to bearer. I knew that would be safer for you.”

“Good.”

The Count produced a pocketbook, and drew from it a large envelope of blue paper, which he handed to Norton politely, remarking:

“You will find it correct, I think — 300,000 pounds.”

The Senator verified the amount carefully, and put the packet away near his breast.

“Quite correct,” he said. He felt all at once as if he had received the invisible protection of some supernatural power. This substantial amount of money covering his heart seemed at once a defiance and an armor. For the first time in many days he lit a cigar, and sank back into his chair with more of comfort than he had experienced for a long time.

“And now about the supplies,” began Sandstrom, anxious to know that the compact was in good order on both sides; he had felt a bit of uneasiness at the first sight of Norton that night. “Can we be assured that they will not fail?”

“Most assuredly. The market is quite under control.”

“But Congress? My government has heard—”

“That it would pass a law forbidding the exportation of food-stuffs, I suppose? Mere political buncombe. Men in this country sell to the highest bidder.”

“But the papers say,” persisted the German, “that a poll of the House presages the passage of the bill.”

Norton sneered quite in his old-time manner.

“Newspaper polls and straw votes are absolutely worthless, except to the other side. And even if the House passes such a bill, the Senate will not. I give you my word on that.”

“Quite sufficient, Mr. Norton,” said Sandstrom, bowing. “But supposing—”

“I gave you my word once; I have kept it—at no little cost I assure you.”

“Cost? Why, my government—”

“Your government is very rich and powerful,” replied the Senator with a grim smile, “but it cannot pay this particular kind of cost—the expenditure of a man’s peace of mind.”

“But you are not known,” observed Sandstrom, with a growing conviction that not even he had penetrated the complexities of this strange character, nor ever would. The man who could crush with a ruthless hand innocent and guilty alike prating of “peace of mind,” like a weakling with a conscience! It was too much for his Teutonic philosophy, and he gave up the attempt at analysis.

“No, I am not known,” Norton was saying, “but I am suspected, and suspicion is often more damning than certainty. Unfortunately for the country, last summer’s floods ruined nearly half of our crops, as you know, and injured much of the remainder. Nature, as usual, goes blameless with the people, and we of capital, or, at least, we who make the laws, have to shoulder the responsibility.”

“I regret the—” began the Count, but scarcely knew his next word. Norton saved him from embarrassment.

“It is not necessary, Count. It is a business deal; its results are unpreventable. The people have to take the bitter and the sweet, like the rest of us. But you are confident that the war will soon end?”

‘‘Quite. Long wars in these days of great armaments are too expensive.’’

“I hope so, I hope so,” muttered Norton with a return of his depressed air. “It is a great strain, very great, indeed.”

When Sandstrom reached the snowy air again, he threw away his cigarette with an impatient gesture and twisted his great moustachios vigorously. Nor did the companionship of Haven, who had been ordered to return to New York that night, and was on his way to his hotel to prepare for the journey, give him any especial comfort. He had seen a weak spot in the armor of a man he had deemed impregnable, and he feared lest the defect should grow until others, too, could perceive the daw.

The National Hotel, a magnificent new structure much affected by politicians, if not statesmen, was blazing with light and resounding with the babel of men in every form of conversation, from the exchange of risque stories to the violence of party argument. The storm had driven in the floating population, who regarded the place as a sort of political barometer, while the regular habitues remained in the lobbies, the barrooms and the billiard halls, not displeased to see the tide of noisy life that eddied in and about them and created an activity that was inspiring, and in some cases, valuable.

In a cheerful room somewhat apart from the clatter, three men stood talking earnestly. Craig, Ford and Langmaid had not met since Philip’s coming to Washington, and the two visitors, or Ford, at least, had evidently been giving vent to utterances that were not wholly making for peace. The tall, spare Ford was excited, and excitement always made of him an impressive figure. Furthermore, he now dressed with much care in ministerial black, and the strong-jawed, sallow face, the dark, cavernous eyes and the long, black hair surmounted by a wide-brimmed soft hat made him a man likely to attract attention anywhere. Lang-maid had changed little, but even he seemed to have acquired a pessimism which he had formerly kept pretty well in subjection. His shifty little eyes were as nearly fixed on Philip as he could fix them on anybody, while Ford was saying something that he had feared would bring on an explosion.

“See here, Ford, you know as well as any man living what I have done for the cause you have so often misrepresented,” said the new secretary of industry warmly. “I don’t doubt your honesty of purpose, but your mistake is just as great. This congress of men assembled through the machinery of the organization which I inspired and began—” “And then dropped,” broke in Ford sullenly. “Which I inspired and began, and which could not have existed but for me—this congress can do great good, but it can do greater harm.”

“I don’t admit the harm.”

“That remains to be seen, Ford. Its presence in the city at a time when Congress will be considering measures of relief—”

The other laughed bitterly.

“That’s just it—always ‘considering,’ never doing.”

“Its assembling here, I say, may be regarded as a threat,”

“What if it is?” muttered Ford under his breath. As an avowed man of action, he could see no harm in that, either.

“And if disorder should come, the cause of the rights of the common people will receive a serious blow.”

“But Philip,” interposed Langmaid, with conciliatory mildness, “the delegates are good men.”

“But good men smarting under wrongs. If they are discreet and rightfully led, they will do no harm, but I am honestly afraid of the outcome.”

“If you would only preside,” suggested Langmaid, with genuine appeal in his voice. He was loyal to his chief, as he always called him, yet he sincerely believed that the times were ripe for the self-assertion of the people.

“I cannot,” replied Craig. “It is not even wise that I address the gathering, in view of my official position as their representative. But I have decided that I will speak if”—he looked meaningly at Ford—“if there is no evidence of a disposition to create disorder or make threats against the government. You may say this to the committee.”

Ford’s mind worked rapidly. He felt that it would be no credit to himself should he return to New York and say that he could neither persuade nor force the secretary to speak before the People’s Congress. And he knew that he could not accomplish his mission unless he disavowed anv desire to make trouble. He spoke with all mildness.

“I’m sure, Philip, I’m for nothing except what’s needed. I wouldn’t have urged this congress if— if—”

“Why don’t you out with it? If I had done what you expected me to do when I was put at the head of the department of industry!”

“Well, that’s about it,” replied Ford grimly. He could not resist showing their old-time leader how he had disappointed the group he represented, even though it might mean personal offence. But Craig held his temper in leash.

“I have done all I could,” he said. “But I believe—and you may say this, too, in New York— that relief will soon be forthcoming. President Burlingame has given me reason for confidence. Now good-night, gentlemen. It is late, and I have much to do.” And he pointed to a table upon which was a great pile of letters and papers awaiting attention.

“Good-night, Philip,” said Ford. “I’ll say to the committee that you’ll talk to the congress, then?”

“On the conditions I named, yes.”.

“Good-night. Mr. Craig,” said Langmaid. “You’ll find the delegates a right good set of men.”

“I don’t doubt it, Joseph. It all depends on the leaders. See to it that they know how to lead. Good-night.”

CHAPTER XXXV

ANDREW HAVEN’S EVENING CALL.

FORD and Langmaid passed into the next room to pay their parting respects to Angus Craig, who had been with his son since the latter’s coming to Washington. The old man was now intensely proud of Philip, with that added comfortable feeling that to the father’s character was due some of the son’s glory. He was a fiery partisan, naturally, and it would have fared rather badly with Ford had he dared to say to him the things he. had not hesitated to fling in Philip’s teeth.

As a matter of fact, Luke had been right to the extent that he represented the opinion of the constituency that had sent him to Washington. Ever since the creation of the Department of Industry, the appointment of Craig to the office and his prompt confirmation by the Senate, it had been hopefully believed by those who ruled the United Men of America that sweeping reforms would immediately be made. They expected their strong and brilliant leader to buckle on the armor of righteousness at once, and proceed to slay the dragon of social injustice without more ado. When the combat did not take place, they began to have serious misgivings that the “great triumph of American labor” which was proclaimed with such joy at first, was scarcely more than a victory on paper.

However, neither Ford nor his companion said anything of the sort to Angus. This was to be a purely social occasion, an hour’s renewal of ties which still held them in memory, if not in practice.

“Weel, an’ how d’ye fine Philip?” asked the old man cheerily. “In a gude way, I ken, for he’s a’ right the noo. It’s a fine thing for the people that thev hae such a mon in the councils o’ the great. Eh?”

“We hope so, Angus, surely/’ replied Lang-maid, “hut time’ll tell better than we. We called in to bid you good-bye, for we’re going back to New York at midnight.”

“The nicht?” said Angus with surprise. “Mon, but ye’re tumble fellows for the travel. Weel, weel; an’ ye expect tae sleep on those rackettin’ cars?”

“We’ll sleep all right,” replied Ford, “for we’ve done enough to-day to put us to rest in a boiler factory. P>ut,” he added judiciously, “perhaps it ivoidI be better if we had some sort of a night-cap. Suppose we all go down to the.bar and have a parting smile.”

“Verra weel, for auld times’ sake I’ll gae wi’ ye,” assented Angus, not ill-pleased at the prospect of a glass of excellent Scotch, well brewed and comfortably hot.

On his way back to his room, after parting with his friends, he came fairly upon Andrew Haven in the corridor.

The very sight of this smirking, deprecatory little man roused every slumbering passion in the Scotchman’s heart. In the one instant that he faced him all the various acts of enmity from which he had suffered trooped past in his mind. It was Haven who had repaid loyalty with treachery in the watch-factory episode years before; it was he who had attempted to thrust him from his home; it was he who, he believed, had set the tide of suspicion against him as a thief in the matter of the Onometer certificates; it was he who had ever been his evil genius, the one enemy upon whom he could lay his finger with certainty. And now the man was before him, and with him the opportunity to tell him what a villain and a cur he believed him to be. He was delighted beyond measure, and he smiled sarcastically as he said with exaggerated courtesy:

“Ah, Maister Haven; I’m verra glad tae see you, sir.”

“Oh, it’s you, is it. Craig?” replied the other, not at all at ease, though assuming an air of nonchalance. “I—T beg pardon. I didn’t quite recall you at first. You have—”

“Changed, is it, Maister Haven? Maybe, maybe. But just step inside, an’ ye’ll see me better in the licht.”

“Why, I—I—” stammered the other, “well, you must excuse me, but I—”

“Oh, coom in, coom in. I’ll nae detain ye lang.”

“Well, if you insist,” murmured Haven. He wondered what the man wanted with him at such a place and hour. He felt still more uneasy and confused when Angus calmly locked the door and put the key in his pocket.

“I really—it may be curiosity, merely,” he began, “but I really would like to know why you locked the door.”

“Oh, wad ye, Maister Haven,” said Angus contemptuously. “Ye wad, eh? Weel, I’ll tell ye— tae keep ye in.”

“To keep me in?” blustered Haven. “This is a scandal, sir, nothing less.”

“Not the fairst ye hae been in, I ken.”

“Open the door, sir.”

“Ye seem tae be in a sair hurry, Maister Haven. Ye’re not responsive tae my hospitality, mon. It should na be thus wi’ auld friens. But I’ll tell ye, sir, that I’ll open the door when I’m through wi’ ye, an’ not before. Sit down. Na? Weel, stand up, then, but listen. Ye’er path and mine hae crossed often in life, by nane o’ my seekin’. Ye dismissed me from ye’er employ—”

“The company—not I. A vote of the company.”

“We’ll pass that the noo. Ye tried tae drive me frae my house; we’ll pass that, too. But why did ye accuse me, an honest mon, o’ the theft o’ ye’er stock certeeficates?”

“Why, I—I didn’t.”

“Yes, ye did. Ye said nae ane had touched them but versel’, the superintendent in your presence, an’ me.”

“Well, that was the truth, wasn’t it?” asked Haven, with a feeble little tone of triumph. Craig’s eyes flashed fire, and his hands clenched menacingly.

“Yes, it 71 ’as the truth,” he shouted, “but when you said the certeeficates were taken from that package before I handed it tae you, ye lied!”

“Mr. Craig, Mr. Craig, you—>”

“Ye needn’t ‘Maistcr’ me. Plain ‘Craig’ is gude enouch. Tell the truth noo, if ye never did before.”

“I tell you, as I said then, that the certificates were sold.”

“But who sauld ’em?”

“Plow can I tell?”

“They were signed,” said Angus scornfully.

“Yes; they couldn’t have been sold otherwise.”

“By Armstrong as president, an’ you as treasurer?”

“Yes, I was treasurer then.” A look of alarm came into the mean little eyes as Angus went to a desk, fumbled in a drawer and brought out a crisp, folded paper. It was a stock certificate.

“This,” said the old man, “is one of the certeefi-cates that were intended tae be cancelled, an’ which were stolen, isn’t it?” Plaven took it gingerly and peered at it closely through his great, round spectacles.

“Yes, the error in the second line is here. How do you happen to have it?”

“Eh, mon? I bought it frae its owner as evidence years ago. \n’ that is ye’er seegnature?”

“Undoubtedly.”

“Then how did it happen, Maister Andrew Haven, that ye’er seegnature was put on it after it had left my hands?”

“What do you mean?”

“Ye ken weel enouch what I mean. When the certeeficates came tae me they were signed by the president only. When they were sauld they bore ye’er seegnature.”

“Nonsense,” returned Haven with more spirit than he had yet exhibited. He began to feel that his position was improving. “Nonsense; I signed all three. This was number two.”

“Yes—it is number twa. Twa and three were nae signed by you, but number ane was.”

“Absurd,” sneered the other. “Now, if you have finished your examination, I’ll go.” And he rose from his chair to take his hat from the table.

Angus sprang at him with the fury and strength of a maddened animal, seized him by the throat and forced him squirming and sputtering into his chair.

“Ye’ll not gae, Maister Haven,” he thundered, still holding the other’s neck in his muscular grip, “till I wring the truth frae ye’er fause heart. I tell ye, ye signed that certeeficate after it left my hands. Look,” and he relaxed his hold, and pointed to the certificate which he held before Haven’s face. “When I made the change in the plate it rested on the certeeficate. In changing the bottom border my graver slipped, an’ made a deep cut in the certeeficate. This is the ane—look here. You signed ower it, and the ink ran in the path my tool had cut. The magnifying glass don’t lie as you do.”

Trapped, baffled, at bay, Haven had no more defense to make, except the one recourse of defiance. He laughed insultingly.

“Well, what if I did? You can’t prove it. Who’d believe you?”

“Why did ye do this?” demanded Angus, sternly.

“Because,” replied the other, furious with an anger that could only vent itself in hostile words, “because I hated you, or, rather, your son, which is the same thing. I’ll crush him yet.”

“Crush him?” jeered the old man in the full pride of a great possession. “He is a member of the cabinet!”

“Cabinet!” sneered the other. “A stick of wood put under lock and key to keep people from stumbling over it—that’s your precious son.”

“Dinna ye believe it.’ He’ll win for the people yet.”

Haven felt sure of his ground now. He had heard and seen enough in his capacity of sycophant to assure him how matters stood in political circles. If he could make this terrible old man wince, he would do it with the greatest delight in the world. “Win!” he echoed. “They’ll be laughing at him as a miserable failure in a month or two. John Norton will see to that.”

“Norton? Imph,” snorted Angus derisively. What was Norton against his son now?

“It’s Norton who’s doing it all,” continued Haven. “He is the man who is manipulating the ‘foodstuffs’ your son preaches about. He controls the Senate, and when he says so, Philip Craig will go!”

“Where to, Mr. Haven?” asked a new voice, as Philip pushed open a door behind the speakers. “There are plenty of places, to be sure, but don’t you think Air. Norton might resent your violation of his confidence?”

For the first time it flashed over Haven that he had made a consummate fool of himself, and he could have bitten his tongue out for his indiscretion. His ruddy face grew sallow, and his lips twitched like those of a man in pain.

“Ye’ve heard, Philip?” asked his father.

“Everything.”

“So you descend to eavesdropping, then?” said Haven, feebly.

“Quite as respectable, especially when I couldn’t help hearing, as trying to force guilt on an innocent man.”

Haven rose unsteadily and walked toward the door.

“I demand to be released from this room,” he said, with as much dignity as he could muster. The others were totally unmoved.

“In a moment, Mr. Haven,” said Philip. He sat at a table and hastily wrote something on a heavy sheet of paper. “You may go after you have signed this statement that Angus Craig was not responsible for the disappearance of the certificates that you—sold yourself.”

“I didn’t sell them; they were stolen—”

“After you had signed them? How considerate you were of the thief!”

Haven quivered with rage, and insanely rattled the handle of the door as if he expected anger to defeat locksmiths, or some servant to come to his aid. But nothing happened except the continuance of Philip’s cold and pitiless words of sentence.

“This statement, you will observe, is addressed to the President of the Metropolitan Bank Note Engraving Company. It simply says that you know the identity of the thief and regret your error in regard to my father. Sign it.”

“I—1 will have the—” stammered Haven, with one last implied threat of despair.

“Sign it, or I shall send for the police and prefer charges against you. You know what they will be.”

The little man tottered to the desk, seized a pen, and dashed it across the foot of the paper. Then he rose without a word and went to the door, which Angus had unlocked and at which he stood with elaborate courtesy.

“Gude evening, Maister Haven,” he said, bowing. ‘‘A verra delightful and profitable call ye hae made us, tae be sure. Some time again—” But his words were lost on the retreating figure that trotted down the corridor with more haste than it had known since boyhood.

Angus turned to his son with a glorified smile of love, of pride and of perfect confidence, and grasped his hand with tender warmth.

‘‘Aye, lad,” he said with moist eyes. “For the warrk o’ this nicht I—I thank ye. Thegither we’ll defy a’ the power o’ the plutocrats, an’ great’ll be the victory.”

But Philip sighed, and went back to his desk.

CHAPTER XXXVI

MANOEUVRES IN FORCE.

JT was the clear and rosy dawn of a morning in mid-April over the city of Washington. A white mist stole up from its bed on the Potomac, wavered gently in spiral wreaths about the higher banks, and then melted away in the pink glow that suffused the warmer air. Around the great Coliseum chosen by the United Men of America for the theatre of their strange Congress, silence reigned, scarcely broken by the twitter of the half-awakened birds that made their nest under its protecting eaves. No sentinel paced before its broad, low entrance; no human being had guarded it during the night. There it stood in its simple strength, a silent factor, no man knew how potent, for good or ill.

As the sun touched the roof of the long structure with momentary gold, the thin song of a bugle was wafted from the green heights across the murky river. A lone policeman who had just turned a corner rubbed his sleepy eyes at what he saw. A great, white tented city had sprung up during the night, and in front of it frowned a long line of machine guns, trained, it would seem, on the very spot he occupied. After a little the officer remembered that the Army of the East had been ordered to concentrate at the capital to take part in the great national celebration of the Nineteenth of April, during which a colossal statue of the Minute Man was to be unveiled by the President. He smiled sarcastically as his glance shifted from the bristling rows of guns to the silent white Coliseum; then he walked slowly on over his beat.

Sudden life sprang into the tented field across the way. Figures emerged from the little canvas houses like rabbits from a warren, and ran about in the orderly haste of a camp. Thin lines of smoke mounted into the still air like shafts of fleecy cotton suspended by some invisible power. The polished utensils of the open-air kitchen caught the light of the sun and sent its glittering rays flashing abroad. The men in blouses and slouch hats could be seen lined up in their company streets for roll-call, and then marching to the great ovens with their plates and mugs, whence they returned to discuss breakfast, squatting before their tents in luxurious disorder.

Before the great city was fairly astir the troops answered to the surgeon’s call, little knots of men appearing at the end of company streets to give the doctors a description of their real or fancied ailments. Soon after, the brilliant strains of military bands rose on the air for guard mount, and the swift evolutions, so mysterious and meaningless to the citizenry, were in full swing. By this time the people of Washington had waked to the presence of the great army opposite, and hundreds of early sightseers thronged the river streets and watched each movement on the heights with greedy eyes. For years the capital had seen no army mobilization, and the fascination of the soldiery was more powerful for its novelty.

Around the Coliseum knots of men began to collect for the first session of the People’s Congress to which they were delegates. Earnest, sturdy fellows they seemed to be for the most part, many bearing the marks of toil peculiar to their respective callings. Here and there were faces telling of intellectuality and high spiritual purposes; again were the features that spoke of violent and disorderly souls, but both were enormously outnumbered by the men of ordinary calibre and an honest desire to get simple justice by simple means. But the presence of the military across the Potomac embittered them all, and they answered the frown of each gun by frowns of tenfold intensity.

The esplanade before the Coliseum filled rapidly; all sections might be seen in representation, from the trig mechanic of the north to the lank and bony man of the far south-west. Many made their way into the building, but the great majority lingered outside, their eyes fixed with indignant curiosity on the show of force over against them.

“Hullo, Fax,” cried a shock-headed man who looked like a boy in arrested development, “I supposed I’d find you here. The last time I saw you was at the St. Louis convention, wasn’t it?” The two shook hands warmly.

“Yes,” replied the studious appearing little individual addressed, “but political conventions long ago ceased to interest me, Howard.”

“All promises and we-view-with-alarms, and no deeds, eh? Let’s see, you belong here in Washington now, don’t you? Delegate?”

The other nodded.

“Nice reception Washington gives us,” growled Howard, pointing to the muzzles of the machine guns that seemed to be peering with brazen curiosity at the doings about the building.

“The soldiers?” said the other deprecatingly. “Well, it does look queer,! but the celebration of the anniversary of Lexington and Concord was determined upon long before the date fixed for the People’s Congress, you know.”

“Are you sure of that, friend?”

The new voice was nasal and incisive, and its owner a tall, spare man carefully dressed in ministerial black. A crowd at once encircled the group, for Luke Ford was known to hundreds by sight and to practically every delegate by reputation. As the leader of the party of action he was enthusiastically revered and followed.

“I thought so,” replied little Fax pacifically. “Well, the fact is,” said Ford oratorically, “that the date was known—to certain people here in Washington—as far back as January.”

“Oho,” exclaimed Howard, “that’s it, is it?” There could be no questioning the accuracy of Luke Ford’s assertions, he felt.

“And, anyway,” continued the tall oracle, “it wasn’t necessary to mobilize the entire army east of the Rockies to celebrate a battle.”

“Perhaps they expect one,” spoke up a man in the crowd, and his neighbors growled approval.

“They say Gen. MacMalTon opposed the mobilization,” ventured Fax, bound to speak well of somebody.

“Sensible man,” replied Ford, “but we all know lie’s no more commander-in-chief than I am— wears more gold lace, that’s all. The war department runs things.”

“And a tallow-chandler runs the war department,” observed Howard, whereat there was a general laugh of desirion. The facts were patent. The Hon. Peleg Chamberlain had derived all of his military experience in the campaigns of his soap factory, where he had amassed so much money that his claims for a cabinet position could not be overlooked.

“Well, the soldiers are there, and we—are here,” said Ford significantly.

“Yes, we are here,” piped a youthful man of that class who delight in saying irrelevant things for the mere sake of speaking. “We are here, but for how long?”

“Until our work is done, young man,” answered Ford sternly, and the questioner subsided meekly enough.

“The queerest thing about it is,” said Howard, “that the plans, I’m told, include military manoeuvres in the line of what would be done should the capital be threatened with invasion.”

“As if Washington could be invaded!” exclaimed Fax scornfully.

“Why not?” asked Ford. “It’s been done before. Who knows—?” The old habit asserted its strength once more, and he bit a huge piece from his plug of tobacco and rolled it into one cheek with great appreciation.

“At any rate,” exclaimed Floward with rising anger, as the note of a bugle came over the water, to be followed by some manoeuvre which could not be made out clearly, “at any rate it’s a devilish shame that this could not have been avoided.”

“Cautious, my friend,” observed Ford, quietly, “their guns are pointed this way.” There was no mirth in his remark, hut the crowd thought otherwise, and the laugh went round.

The delegates, who, by this time were pouring into the Coliseum in ever-increasing numbers, eager for the new excitement of the day, whatever that might turn out to be, were men of prominence in their respective homes, and for the most part ready to do their duty m this hour of stress; yet to most of them the trip to the capital took on the form of a holiday’s diversion, a relief from toil, a journey into the world so few of them had seen before. Active, stalwart, and easily impressionable. they were ready to be swayed this way or that by some man born to command. Whether their Moses was to be for peace or war they thought little; what they desired above all else was that someone should arise who could lead them because he had the might. “Under which King, Bezonian?” was not in their reckoning; they wanted a king, and his standard would they follow.

Philip Craig felt this to a certain degree when, on the following day, he sat upon the platform and watched the long rows of chairs grow black with the hosts of the men he had sworn to aid. No band, he thought with a smile as he recalled other great conventions, no decorations, no flags so often travestied and insulted by dishonorable proceedings—only men, representing the “complaining millions’’ of other men. When the seats were filled there would be over two thousand delegates and alternates chosen on a basis of representation analogous to that of the national Congress, and Craig felt a tightening of the throat that he knew to be pride—pride that this great massing of the best of the toilers was the offspring of his own brain and heart. Here at last was a true congress of the people, not representatives of labor organizations merely, for many were outside the unions, but of all who worked for wage—clerks, salesmen, tillers of the soil and workers on the sea. It was what he had hoped to make it, an organization of “Weakerdom.”

Philip was here to keep his promise to address the delegates if all went well. He was now sitting in the extreme rear of the platform and behind a pillar, so that he was seen by few. He had again insisted that there should be no movement to create a demonstration for him until he was ready to speak. Whether his words would be called forth this day or the next, he did not know; he had decided to be guided by events.

He had not fully given his heart to the present congress, proud as he felt of its expression of a people’s power. He believed that President Burlingame could be relied upon at the right moment and in the right way, to bring about the reforms needed to lift the burden from the shoulders of the masses. But he realized that the desire to display moral strength by an assembling in numerical force, was so insistent in the organization that the meeting had become a spontaneous necessity. The only hope of making it harmless lay in Congress, which had been summoned in extra session and had met on the fourth of the preceding March. The House, with its leaven of new men elected on the issue of the distressed condition of the country, had done much, but the Senate still defiantly continued to block all measures of relief.

And so Philip Craig found himself face to face with what might turn out to he a great crisis in the people’s history, or merely an adoption of resounding phrases that should be a mock for the wealth-ridden upper branch of Congress, and a fresh incentive for the wrath of the great common people at home. Either alternative was enough to sober any thinking man, and Craig, as he watched the excited faces of the men as they crowded into the auditorium, felt that now, of all times in his career, he needed the gift of wisdom joined to the gift of eloquence.

A salute of some sort was being fired over on the heights, and as the sullen booming quivered through the hall, men’s faces grew grave with forebodings, or flushed with anger. No one could have shaken their belief that this army had been called to the capital for the sole purpose of intimidation, and with the belief, called into fresh activity by the sound of the cannon, came a spirit of defiance that would make the task of conciliation doubly hard.

CHAPTER XXXVII

PHILIP CRAIG’S PROMISE.

THE session of the People’s Congress was now in full swing, and a tense excitement marked the carrying out of each step in the proceedings. The first day’s sitting had been uneventful, being devoted merely to the routine of organization. But to-day the situation was far different. There was a feeling in the very air that great things were afoot, and that before the sun should go down on the congress some great policy would be outlined.

The chairman, a tall ponderous man with a resonant voice, but an air of timidity that bespoke his nervousness, had been calling for reports from the senators of each state (such was the title of the chairman of each delegation) as to the conditions of the section he represented, and the special needs of his constituency. Several had spoken, presenting pictures of wretchedness that differed only in detail.

“The senator from New York,” called out the chairman sonorously. Then arose the compact, commanding figure of a man whom Craig recognized as Henry Brandt, the German who had acknowledged his authority and wisdom of judgment at the Labor Day dinner long ago. For a moment he stood motionless, a beam of sunlight touching his fair, curling- hair, the very picture of a stalwart philosopher of old Greece. A great stillness came over the gathering, for beauty of form and face has its victories no less than beauty of speech.

“Men,” he began quietly, “you have heard the reports from Massachusetts, from Connecticut, from other states. New York has no report that I can make. You know the conditions in your own homes. New York has no right to claim heavier burdens than yours. As spokesman of the people of a great state, I should not do my duty were I to tell you what they need. The appeal that I should make is for the needs of all whom this congress represents. I—”

Down fell the gavel of the chairman with a sharp clatter, and Brandt ceased in surprise.

“The delegate from New York is out of order,” said the presiding officer. “The matter is—”

“I crave the convention’s pardon,” exclaimed Brandt resolutely, as a brief ripple of applause went round. “I have a message from New York to this congress, but it is not a recital of her woes. It cannot be spoken in a few words and in the time allotted. Does this convention wish to hear the message?” he shouted, with an intensity of earnestness that sent a thrill of anticipation into every heart. “Yes, or no?”

Amid cries of “Yes, yes,” “Let’s hear him,” “Hurrah for Brandt,” a dozen delegates sprang to their feet. The tall form of Luke Ford, with its distinguishing dress, caught the chairman’s eye by sheer physical necessity.

“Mr. Ford, of New York.”

“Mr. Chairman,”—the high-pitched voice pierced the chattering tumult like a clarion call— “I move that Senator Brandt be allowed to deliver his message in his own way.”

“That’s the stuff!” yelled a gaunt Texan, with a falsetto that set the crowd roaring with laughter. The chairman fumbled nervously with his gavel. He did not know whether merriment was or was not parliamentary, and while trying to decide lost sight of the point at issue.

“Question, question,” was shouted by a hundred voices; the presiding officer was recalled to his nearest duty.

“Is it the will of this convention that—” “Aye,” was the one thunderous shout. “Platform, platform!”

Then Brandt’s fine figure walked down the aisle and up to the broad dias. Pie turned and faced the heaving waves of humanity with a calm that brought order in an instant. He began as quietly as he had begun before:

“They tell us now as they told us last fall, as they told us the spring before, that we must have patience—that we must wait. Wait? For what? To see the poor grow poorer, the rich richer? To see the crops we need sold to feed hired soldiers in a foreign war? To see women die of want, with babes they have no strength to suckle clamoring weakly at their breasts? Shall we wait till the oppression of wealth has made us serfs, to be fed when the master pleases, and only then?

“I tell you, men, that the message of the people of New York is that we must not wait. It has been hinted that this congress should draw up a petition to the national Congress and send it to the capitol by a committee. If this committee were even admitted to the Senate it would only be laughed at. The House we have won to us, for it is close to the people, and, thank God, the people have a vote when they choose to use it. But they did not begin soon enough, and a Senate of moneyed arrogants stands between us and the reforms that would save human lives and suffering!

“Why do I bring this message from New York? Why should New York send it rather than another? Because a senator from New York, a man high in the councils at the capital, has said in public within five days that Congress will not interfere with the transaction of private business, that if people are poor and suffer it is to be regretted, but it cannot be helped. This man calls this congress which I now address, ‘Cry babies.’ Let us show him that we can cry to some purpose.

Hisses followed by cheers made the speaker pause for a moment.

“Let us send a message to Congress,” he continued. “Let it be short in the reading, so that they need not be detained. Let the message read:

“ ‘The delegates of thirty million men, the wage earners of America, demand that Congress place an embargo upon the further shipment from American ports of the foodstuffs needed by the American people. If this demand is not heeded, this convention, by vote passed this day, and by the authority vested in it by the people, will order a general suspension of labor throughout the country.’

“Send this message, mean it, and strike if the worst comes, and you will win.”

Brandt sat down amid a perfect pandemonium of cheers, handclappings and the clamorous shouts of delegates from every part of the hall frantically striving for recognition, all anxious for the honor of making a motion to adopt the German’s resolution. The ladies in the gallery shrieked and waved their handkerchiefs with feminine enthusiasm. It was the outburst of a human tempest and the chairman was powerless before the blast.

He turned helplessly to the men seated behind him, as if seeking aid. Then he saw Philip Craig rise from his place behind the pillar, and walk forward slowly. A great inspiration came to the president. He raised one hand as if beseeching silence, while with the other he pointed to the slim, erect figure that the people knew so well.

For an instant the tumult was hushed, and then there burst forth a full-throat shout from the impassioned delegates.

“Craig, Craig, Craig!” they roared, till the rafters quivered with the staccato cry. fit penetrated to the crowd outside which had been unable to get into the Coliseum, and was flung into the balmy air with a fervor that amazed the more sedate citizens who chanced to be passing.

The delegates respected and loved their former leader and present representative in the cabinet. That he had thus far been able to accomplish nothing for them they knew was due to the fact that he was prevented by circumstances. They long ago realized that he had been duped as well as they by the empty honor of the secretaryship of industry. Now that he was standing before them, was to speak with his well-remembered eloquence, they awaited his utterance with feverish expectancy.

“Delegates from ‘Weakerdom,’ I welcome you to Washington,” he began, in calm, incisive tones when the tumult ceased. “It is fitting that you have official welcome in this city consecrated to liberty by years of political association. Would that the welcome had come from a higher source. They have told me that my presence here would be a stain upon my office. But I am here.”

A chorus of cheers rose to the roof.

“Shall I tell you why I am here? I, too, have a message for this assembly. I am here because I feel—because I know that you as men and as delegates from the men who have thus honored you, are first, last, and all the time, honest God-fearing American citizens, who wish only that right may prevail. Your wrongs are many. They should be, they must be righted. I believe they will be and that you have not long to wait.

“You have been urged to show your strength in threats. Sometimes threats show only weakness. You think, some of you, with Mr. Brandt, that a general strike, the complete paralysis of industry, would wrest the boon you seek from the men who now say you nay. Perhaps it would, but when and at what cost? But you have the undoubted right to try. The only question is, is it the wisest thing to do. is it even necessary? I think not. Listen closely, for what I say I believe. What I shall say, l mean, without reservation. I believe—and I am wronging no one to say that the President of these United States is responsible for my belief—that the measures for the relief which is your right will be begun within three days. If they are not, I pledge you my word of honor that I will resign my portfolio, and, becoming one among many, abide by your decision, whatever it may be. Will you wait three days?”

Over the vast assemblage came the swift reversal of opinion caused by the earnestness, the deep conviction of one man. The transition had been effected with but few words, yet they were the right ones, and as Craig resumed his seat a tremendous burst of approval drowned the fugitive signs of dissent, and showed that the victory had been won. The Brandt resolution was heard from no more that day.

“How glorious it is,” mused Philip in his place of retirement, “to turn and twist men’s minds! This is the only real power.”

Craig left the Coliseum at dusk, confident that he had saved the People’s Congress from an act of bravado that would have rendered impossible the reform action which President Burlingame had promised, and which seemed likely to bring the obdurate Senate to terms.

The three days of grace granted him by the convention seemed to stretch away into eternity, so full were they of vital possibilities.

After a brief conference with some of the state leaders, he went to his hotel wearied, but happy. He would read a little before going to bed, he thought, and he stopped at the news-stand to purchase a few magazines.

Having made himself comfortable in his room in regulation masculine fashion, he took up his periodicals. The title of one, “The People’s,” attracting his attention, he turned the leaves idly to find something that would seem to be of especial interest, when a very black page-heading met his eye and held it. “A Millionaire Nurse,” it read, and then in sub-title more modest in size, ‘‘The Daughter of a United States Senator an Angel of Mercy at the Bentley-on-Hudson Home for Crippled Children.”

He read Flemming’s vivid, adjective-laden article with a greedy desire to lose no single word. When he had finished, he sat for a long time gazing absently at the picture of Helen Norton that filled one of the pages. Then he went to his dream-troubled sleep.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

MEMORY PLAYS AN OLD TUNE.

IN John Norton’s study sat the master of the house at his great table, his right elbow resting upon its broad surface and his head pressed to the palm of his upturned hand. Even in the mellow glow of the lamp-light his face looked wan and drawn, and his eyes were half closed in a listless fashion. On the other side of the desk stood his wife, regarding him with tender solicitude. As he raised his glance to her, she feigned a smile to hide a sigh.

“Really, Harriet, you must not interfere,” he said querulously. “My affairs are—well, my affairs are the nation’s. As for my health—that is a matter about which you need not give yourself concern. In a week or two—when the present excitement blows over—we’ll go away for a long cruise, and—and then I’ll be a boy again.

“Go away? Ah, John, if you only would!”

“I will, I tell you, I will. Now please,—please leave me; I have much to do. And, Harriet, will you please tell one of the servants that when Mr. Haven calls he is to be shown here at once. I am home to nobody else.”

“Yes, John.”

The grave-faced woman did not move, but stood irresolute, as if something were yet to be done. Her gentle glance spoke of sympathy, love. anxiety and pity, all the attributes of the maternal spirit that colors the affection of a true wife. She saw her husband haggard, nervous, distrait— more so to-night than ever—and she longed to play the part of comforter, though she hardly knew how to begin.

For several years she had watched the steady multiplication of signs that sounded a loud alarum in her heart. To the world John Norton might be the same invincible character as ever, but to her, the guardian of his home secrets, the mask was thrown off, and the petulant, weak, pitiful real man stood revealed in all his increasing degeneration.

All this came crowding into her mind as she stood silently in her place. Of a sudden the face that had been bent toward a document was raised toward her own, and the deep lines of something more serious than care brought the tears to her eyes.

“Why don’t you go?” said her husband. “I must be alone.”

There was no command, not even vexation in his voice. It was rather the petty impatience of a spoiled child,

“Very well, John,” she replied gently, and left the room.

To but one person in all the world had this woman told aught of the mental turmoil and physical deterioration of John Norton during the past winter and spring in Washington; to that one person she had described the sleepless nights when, without her husband’s knowledge, she had lain awake listening to the terrible monotony of his pacing footsteps up and down their chamber; to him she had spoken of the disconnected, half-mumbled soliloquies from which she had tried in vain to gather sequence. That man was a physician, a famous specialist on mental diseases, and when he attempted to reassure her with graceful phrases, she knew he lied, diplomatically and out of kindness of heart, but nevertheless lied.

The doctor felt that Norton would live out his life as it pleased him, and that advice of a really helpful nature would be futile. So he prescribed a stimulating drug to be used for a short time only.

But Norton, soothed and refreshed by the potions, clung to them with the desperation of hope until they had become his master instead of his servant. His wife was soon shocked to find that the drug, taken to excess, had begun to show a reaction that threatened the worst.

Only a few nights before, in the dim light of their chamber, she had seen her husband take three doses in rapid succession, and not until the light of dawn shimmered upon the window panes had she parted with the fear that she might be compelled to summon aid.

Only one hope now remained to her, and to it she clung with the energy of love. In one of his recent nocturnal vagaries, perhaps in a dream, her husband had muttered something that she understood and which filled her with a great joy. The plan it suggested she put into effect at once, and she was even now anxiously expecting a reply to a letter she had written.

As she came into the hall to summon a servant she saw the younger Bayles coming up the stairs.

He carried something in his hand which he extended towards his mistress.

“Telegram fer you, Mum,” he said with his queer, jerky little bow.

“When did it come?”

“Jest a minute ago. Me and Doc was at the gate a-smokin’—”

“Very well; thank you,” interrupted the lady. “As you go please tell the door man that if Mr. Haven calls, he is to show him at once to Mr. Norton’s study, and that Mr. Norton is not at home to an) one else.”

“Yes’ra,” returned “Muggsy” with his old-time parsimony of words. To himself he was more communicative, however, and as he went down stairs he thus reflected: “Mr. Haven! Humph! He’s a rank outsider an’ his gait’s bad. ’F I was ‘John Peter’ he’d never be hitched inter my sulky.”

Mrs. Norton read her telegram with feverish haste. “Thank God, she will come,” she exclaimed fervently, and then, woman-like, wept at the joy-giving message. After a little time she rang for a servant and ordered the carriage to be ready in an hour.

Andrew Haven came and was admitted in due form. He found his chief pacing the library floor, and the look upon his face increased the alarm he had felt when he had been summoned from New York ten days before. He tried to assure himself by the thought that the tremendous strain and the natural anxiety were having but a temporary effect upon the senator, and that “John Peter” was but mortal after all. But he was not quite prepared for the vehemence with which he was greeted.

“Well, man, you’re here at last, are you?” cried

Norton petulantly. ‘‘I thought you’d never come. Sit down and tell me all that’s happened.”

“Why—why,” ventured Haven, glancing at the table, “you have the papers.”

“Papers! What do they know?’’ said Norton, seeming angry at the mere suggestion. “I want information at first hand. You were at the Coliseum, weren’t you?”

As a matter of fact Haven had not been inside the big building, but he was too much of a coward, under the present circumstances, to admit that he had failed to obey instructions.

“Well—that is—yes,” he stammered.

“Well, well!”

Haven concocted a plausible story, with a bit of invented color, made up from the newspaper accounts and street gossip—how the People’s Congress had been stampeded by the eloquent Brandt, and then turned right-about-face by the earnestness of Craig.

The senator frowned deeply at the mention of the name.

“Craig, Craig—always Craig!” he ejaculated.

“But,” urged Haven, with an impulse of rare fair-mindedness, “if it hadn’t been for him, they certainly would have voted a general strike, unless the Senate—”

“Gave ’em pensions, I suppose. Bah! Well, how did this Craig demigod—gogue, I mean— stop them?”

“With assurances that Congress would grant them relief within three days, or if not—”

“If not—well, go on, man. Don’t be so infernally slow.”

“He would resign his portfolio’,” said Haven, badly scared at Norton’s ferocity.

“And strike and starve and rot with them, I suppose. Have vou seen the men I told you to?” “All but Cartwright.”

“He’s safe. I had a letter to-day. And the others?”

“They agreed to take no step without your consent—”

“Good.”

“All except Senator Burpee.”

“Ah, I was afraid of him—Haven, hand me that glass of water on the secretary, there. Thanks.” He took the tumbler with trembling hands, and poured into it the colorless contents of a little phial he had drawn from his waistcoat pocket. As by magic, the draught brought color to his face and a bright light to his eyes.

“But he was persuaded,” continued Haven. “The argument that brought him—Lord and Pratt made it at my request—was that now above all times it is imperative to the salvation of capital that labor shall not be given knowledge of its power; that compromise spells revolution; that an inch of yielding on our part means an ell of grasping on theirs.”

“Very good, Andrew,” said his chief, with a touch of his old sardonic manner of speech to his sycophant, “you put it aptly. What do you think; will they strike?”

“Yes, if nothing is done.”

“Something will be done,” exclaimed Norton rising to his feet with a feebly triumphant air. “Something will be done, but it will not be what they expect. If that strike is voted, blood will flow before this mock congress adjourns.”

“Oh, I hope not—indeed, I trust not,” quavered Haven with genuine agitation. In case of a serious storm he felt that the lightning might be expected to strike uncomfortably close to himself.

“It will, I tell you, Haven,” almost shrieked Norton. “I know what I am talking about.

I——”

All at once the tall figure sank into a chair, collapsing pitiably after the false excitement of the moment before. The drug had already become but a transitory stimulus, and the reaction came sooner and sooner with each day’s use. Norton’s head hung forward over his chest, and his eyes stared vacantly at the figures in the carpet.

“Mr. Norton, Mr. Norton!” exclaimed Haven.

The voice of alarm raised the financier somewhat, and he roused from his stupor.

“Here are some letters your page gave me when I went to the Senate-chamber in the hope of finding you.”

Norton took the packet mechanically, and held it in both hands as if it were some great weight. He thanked Haven and bade him good-night, a sufficient hint that the interview was ended. The little man backed slowly out, his glance fixed on his chief’s face. Once he seemed on the point of checking his retreat, but shrugged his shoulders and disappeared.

John Norton stared vacantly at the pile of letters, still clutched in his two hands. Then, in the manner that color appeals to childhood or the unskilled mind, a large, garish yellow envelope fixed his attention. He let the others fall in a mass on the table, keeping only this one in his grasp. In a large, sprawling hand it was addressed:

JOHN PETER NORTON,

U. S. SENATE.

Slowly, with a vague apprehension that every strange superscription now aroused in him, he opened the envelope and unfolded its contents. In blood-red, clumsily printed letters he saw this:

“You and yours can give the people life. Will you do it, or shall it be death for death?”

The actual threat had less power to move him than had its foreboding. He laughed softly and tore the paper into a hundred bits that fluttered down about his feet.

“Fools, fools/’ he said, as he sank back into his chair. An unusual sense of drowsiness was creeping over him, and he closed his eyes, glad that he might steal a few minutes’ sleep from the night that was coming on.

There was no answer to repeated knocking on the library door. In the hall stood Mrs. Norton and beside her a beautiful, fair woman with a proud poise of the head and a face whose gentle loveliness was becoming more and more a counterpart of her mother’s. Just beyond was a man so low in stature that he seemed dwarfed by the two women. But the eyes that shone from his pudgy face were like no others.

“lie is probably asleep, Helen,” said the. elder woman softly. “Let us go in quietly.”

Indeed, it seemed like sleep to the three who entered the room. Mrs. Norton touched her husband gently on the shoulder, but he did not wake. A quick glance at his breast reassured her, for he was breathing quietly. She kissed him on the forehead.

“John, dear, wake. Here is Helen.”

The figure quivered, the head was raised feebly, and a smile flitted over the thin lips.

“I—I—see—there.” He raised his left hand with a slowness like that of great age, the fingers gripped tightly over the thumb. Then the arm dropped nervelessly upon the chair, the fingers relaxed, and a broad, white welt shone in the lamplight.

“Helen, you say? Why, yes, my little Helen, my pretty, wilful girl—no more of it, Bayles, do you hear?—my horses shan’t be branded—it burns her tender little heart—blue ribbons, ha, ha— Merciful God, how did she escape?” With a deep sigh the once powerful man fell back unconscious.

Out of the tender memories of her childhood came a flood of tears for Helen Norton, tears of love, of contrition, of deep solicitude. The Rev. Mr. Bentley stole softly from the room, the light of a great compassion glorifying his face.

The doctor whom he summoned with the utmost haste told them that there had been a paralytic stroke. There was no cause for alarm, he said; a day or two would find the patient quite himself again, except that he might never regain the full use of his left hand. Being wise in his generation, he advised silence so far as the outside world was concerned. He knew that it would never do to upset the stock-market at this juncture by the news of a great financier’s illness.

CHAPTER XXXIX

IN CABINET MEETING.

CLEAR sunlight and the crisp air that often adds its tonic to the Washington springtime marked the morning of the 18th of April. Everything, the weather bureau included, promised fine conditions for the celebration of the following day.

The city was thronged with thousands of strangers drawn by the attractions of the unveiling of the monument; the presence of the army and the assembling of the People’s Congress; hotels and lodging houses struggled under the burden of providing room for the multitude and gave it up in despair. The Coliseum was turned into a dormitory, and, as that was woefully insufficient, hundreds of men were camping in tents on the outskirts of the city. The bands, the troops, the heterogeneous crowds, swelled by a small army of malcontents and disturbers from other cities, made of Washington the most conglomerate theatre of human activity since the far-off days of the great Civil War.

Early on this morning a message came to Philip Craig notifying him that a special cabinet meeting was to be held at noon. Most of his time up to that hour he occupied with official correspondence. He was preparing to leave his hotel for the White House when a hall-boy came rushing up to his room with a card.

“Berry important, Massa Craig,” exclaimed the breathless darky who brought it. “De gemman’s jest crazy to see you, sah.”

On the bit of paste-board was engraved the name of John Wesley Landor, and in ink were written the words, “Urgent. Few minutes only.”

“Show him up, Sam,” said Philip. He knew that Landor was now manager of the Washington bureau of the Associated Press, and he felt that it was no idle errand that had dictated his call.

Landor arrived, fatter, rosier and apparently as impassive as ever. But Craig knew from the strained look about his mouth that something was exciting him.

“Good morning, Landor,” he said cordially. “Good morning, Mr. Secretary. I know you are in haste, and I—”

“ ‘Mr. Secretary’! why not ‘Craig’?”

“Well then, Craig. It is because you are Craig that I am here. Are we absolutely alone?” He looked about half-distrustfully.

“Why, yes,” returned Philip smiling, “I think I can assure you that these walls have no ears. There is my father’s room, and he is out. There is my bed-room, empty.”

But Landor was not satisfied. He opened the hall door and looked up and down the corridor.

“Excuse me, Philip, but it would ruin me if it were known that I warned you of this, and I can’t afford to take any chances.”

“Warned me? Of what?”

The newspaper man came close to the secretary, and he spoke low.

“A cabinet meeting is called for to-day.”

“Why, I know that already.”

“Yes, but you don’t know that a cabinet meeting was held last night without you.”

Craig’s face grew grave at once.

“No, I didn’t know that.”

“Fact, though. Some of the party bosses knew this meeting was to be called. There’s a leak at the White House somewhere.”

“I have thought so.”

“It is also known that the President is to take a decisive step, of what nature I can only guess. You probably—”

“Yes, I have reason to believe I know its purport,” interrupted Philip, with confidence, “but how—?”

“Plow does it concern you? Simply that forewarned is forearmed. I have it straight that the cabinet will oppose the plan of compromise. Urged on by Pratt and Stuyvesant Lord and several other senators, they have agreed to resist to the last extremity to keep the President firm to the party policy.”

Philip’s eyes sparkled, and his face shone with the hope founded on complete trust.

“Let me tell you, Landor,” he exclaimed, “that threats will be of little avail, if—as I suspect,—Mr. Burlingame has made up his mind to take definite action.”

“What they will do I don’t know,” pursued the other, “but the most extreme of the senators are very jubilant this morning.”

“Norton, I presume—”

“No, he was not present.”

“Well, there’s nothing significant about that. He prefers agents.”

“At any rate,” said Landor, putting on his hat, “you are prepared, and that’s something.”

“And I thank you, John. I shall better know what to do.”

The men left the hotel by different exits, and Philip was soon swinging along Pennsylvania Avenue toward the Executive Mansion. A great exaltation urged him on, and the fine spring air gave him more of the joy of living than he had known for some time. He felt that to-day his promise to the people was to be fulfilled, for he was sure that President Burlingame was ready to make good his word to him that should speedy relief not be given, he would throw the enormous weight of his own official position into the balance, and face the issue. In all this he, Craig, would gain new laurels, which no sane man could afford to despise, and more than ever would he be known as the champion of the oppressed. The power of wealth that he was to oppose—he scorned it. The only real power was that over the minds and hearts of mankind, and that seemed to be his birthright.

When he entered the cabinet chamber, with its massive furnishings and dark, rich walls, something of his spiritual elevation left him, and there came the old determination to fight injustice, the stubborn sense of having a duty to perform at all costs. He found that the majority of the members had already assembled.

Craig was received with the usual difference of greeting. Some of the cabinet officers showed ill-disguised condescension, and others as evident cordiality, for in spite of the fact that most of them regarded his office as a useless appendage to the body politic and himself as an interloper, they felt that he was a man, and honestly devoted to the cause for which he labored. The rascal has often the sincerest respect for his opposite.

As Craig took his seat and waited with the others for the arrival of the President, he realized how true were the slurs of the opposite party on the calibre of the cabinet. It was a pitifully weak aggregation, save for the two men who dominated it. They were David Baker Pratt, the secretary of state, who had been a western lawyer of great acumen and adroitness in the handling of others, and Stuyvesant Lord, the railroad magnate, now postmaster general. These two, the one by his well-lubricated shrewdness and the other by his hard-headed domineering force, ruled the rest completely, and things had reached that point where the majority were entirely willing to be so held, so long as a fair division of the accrued spoils were made.

Craig plainly noted an undercurrent of excitement around the long table. He saw Lord and Pratt whisper together, then separate to whisper with the lesser figures; he saw nods and smiles and meaning glances at himself, but he sat unconcerned. All such things had long since lost their power to annoy him, and now he knew that his ally was coming.

At the sound of the President’s voice outside all rose until he had entered and taken his seat. Craig looked with admiration at his massive frame and his fine head, with its frank blue eyes and thick brown beard streaked with gray. He looked what he was, a “safe” man. With no great intellectuality, and few oratorical graces, he inspired the confidence that when once roused he would follow his convictions to the utmost.

“Gentlemen,” he said, wasting no time after bowing to his cabinet, “I have called you together to-day because of a duty that I consider imperative. I had hoped that Congress—or, more correctly, the Senate—would render action on the part of the executive unnecessary, but I am assured that the present deadlock between the Senate and the House will continue. I feel that something must be done to restore public confidence and to encourage the people with the prospect of better things. Before I go further, I should like an expression from you as to what, in your opinion, the necessities of the case demand.”

He looked toward his secretary of state, who sat at his right, and the eyes of all the others were bent on Mr. Pratt, a tall, exceedingly thin man, with a broad forehead, narrow eyes set far apart, a prominent nose, and a thin, straggling growth of beard, nearly white. He bore an appearance of senility that was entirely misleading. Now he pushed back his chair a little, cleared his throat and inquired in his thin, high-pitched voice:

“It appears, Mr. President, that you wish an expression as to what shall be done to placate the element that professes to see danger in present business methods?”

The chief executive bowed gravely. He did not like the secretary’s presentation of the case, but this was no time for splitting hairs.

“On this point,” resumed Mr. Pratt, “I can say only that whatever it may be wise to do in the future, I can see nothing that can be done now.

Yesterday’s public threat by the labor convention, whose presence in the capital at this time I regard as an insult to the Congress of the United States, makes impossible any sign of wavering on the part of the government.”

He looked across the table for the approving nod of Lord, and then both glanced up and down the row of cabinet officers.

“It’s all right,” he thought, as he swiftly noted their faces. “They’ll stand firm, all except that Craig there, and he doesn’t count.”

“I feel,” continued Pratt, “that to abandon in the least degree the position of the majority of Congress would impair public confidence instead of strengthen it, and would be giving carte-blanche to anarchy. We must be firm, if the rule of agitators is not to replace that of conservative interests. That is the feeling I have in the matter; more words would be useless.”

“I thank you, Mr. Secretary,” said the President briefly. “And you, Mr. Post-master General?” he queried, turning to the round-headed, red-faced man on his left.

“I can’t say’s I can add anything to what the secretary of state has been remarkin’,” said Lord, brusquely. “It sums up the situation jest about right, and I guess we all agree on the points.” As he read acquiescence in each face save that of Craig, to whom he gave no attention, he smiled blandly as if to say: “You see about how it is, Mr. President.”

Secretary Pratt was somewhat taken aback at the frank revelation of the postmaster-general. It had not been a part of his scheme that previous agreement should stand quite so conspicuously before the President. He opened his mouth to utter some smooth, quieting phrase, but the President forestalled him.

“It appears, gentlemen,” he said with an unwonted touch of sarcasm and a deeper flush on his cheeks, “that this is not a meeting for discussion, but for the announcement of a previously determined decision. Perhaps I am mistaken. Mr. Chamberlain, have you any opinion to offer?” The secretary of war, whose smooth, pink, infantile face gave the wags ample opportunity for saying that he was a walking advertisement for his own successful toilet soap, had long ago learned that silence was his only salvation in Washington, and he shook his head sagely. He had built a great reputation for himself by merely looking wise. The rest followed his example, and simply expressed acquiescence in the words of the secretary of state.

“Mr. Craig, what have you to say?”

Philip started as if roused from a dream. He had been wondering what would happen if the President should, after all, show the white feather before this almost perfect unanimity of His cabinet; when the awful stagnation of the country’s industry would begin, and what his own share in the movement would be.

“Mr. Craig,” said the President again, “is there anything you wish to say?”

Philip knew that the eloquence of a Webster would scarce suffice for what he wished to say, and knew, too, that it would avail nothing against the concerted decision of the others. But he rose slowly, feeling that he must be on his feet in such a crisis.

“Mr. President,” he began with intense solemnity, “I feel almost too deeply on this subject to risk words which must here be futile. That my associates care little for my views is evident from the fact that they did not see fit to include me in their meeting of last night,’ at which this policy was determined upon.”

The smothered ejaculation that came to Lord’s lips told Craig that his aim was true. The President’s blue eyes blazed with sudden anger, and it was evident that he, too, had known nothing of the midnight conference.

“But I should not do my duty to the people of this nation,” Craig continued steadily, “if I kept silence. My opinions as to the rights and wrongs of this matter are too well-known to require recital. The present situation, however, is not theoretical. Whatever the cause, the predicament of the common people, the middle classes, the men without assured income, is desperate. Rightly or wrongly, they have spoken through accredited representatives, and have declared that if the wished-for relief is not granted by Congress—and when Congress is said the Senate is meant—they will order a strike that will bring industry to an absolute standstill throughout the country. They can do this, and I believe they will. This may be a threat, but have there been no threats against them?

“God knows that I, as much if not more than any one of you here, would deplore such an outcome. But, Mr. President, if the people are not listened to, they will make themselves heard. They spoke at the ballot-box last November, but your Senate is deaf. First it was appeal; then, in the r-\ voting, it was warning; now it is demand. The nation trembles for your answer.”

His voice quivered with emotion as he concluded and resumed his seat. He could see that he had affected the weaker ones, but he knew that the influence was but transitory. One look from Lord would bring them back to their allegiance.

“Has anyone anything to say in reply to Mr. Craig?” asked the President. The secretary of state responded icily:

“The cry of the demagogue is too familiar. It is its own answer.”

Furious with anger, Craig would have leaped to his feet, but that he saw the President’s hand raised and noted a new look of supreme determination on his face. No, he would make no personal squabble of the affair; the issue must fight itself out on broader principles. The President was speaking, and he listened eagerly for the words that he felt were to bring the matter to a climax.

“Nothing has been said, gentlemen, to change my views,” exclaimed Mr. Burlingame, earnestly. “The nation is in suffering and peril, and it is my duty to relieve, if I can, the stress that is crippling the people. I have here a message”—and he lifted a folded paper from the table—“which I shall send to Congress after to-morrow’s holiday. It will do more than urge, it will demand the passage of a bill prohibiting the further exportation of grain and foodstuffs. The House, I am assured, will pass this, as it has passed similar measures of relief of the situation.”

He paused for a moment and looked steadfastly at the sneering Pratt and the bullying Lord, as if to hammer the words deep into their consciousness. Then he went on, with a gravity of which no one would have previously believed him capable:

“If the Senate continues in its role of obstruction, and also refuses to agree with the House as to the time of adjournment, I shall, under the right given me by the constitution, adjourn Congress, and, as executive head of this nation, take such measures as I can to restore confidence and prosperity.”

Craig’s astonishment at this radical and uncompromising step was no greater than that which he felt as he saw that the members of the cabinet exhibited no emotion at the bold words. Then he remembered his information of the morning; there was a “leak at the White House.”

First of all the heads of departments to reply to the President’s gage of battle was the adroit secretary of state. With words of apparent courtesy he deprecated the proposed move as very undesirable. He appealed to the President to do nothing that would put the administration in the role of retreating under fire, especially when conditions were so unsettled. Under his smooth speech were the hooks of steel, and none knew this better than Mr. Burlingame.

Pratt called upon the attorney-general for an opinion as to the legal and constitutional right of the President to do as he had threatened, and that functionary obediently said that the thing was without warrant or precedent.

“I am obliged to the attorney-general for his opinion,” replied the President, “but I have faith in the people and in the right. I must proceed as conscience and long and anxious study dictate. I shall take the action I have outlined.”

Pale with suppressed anger, the secretary of state rose slowly to his feet. He had his trump card to play, and neither he nor his associates doubted its efficacy.

“Should you insist upon this course, Mr. President,” he said, “I would be forced in self-respect to tender you the resignation of my portfolio.”

Mr. Burlingame’s eyes again flashed fire, but he answered calmly.

“Bigger man than we thought,” reflected Lord, with a growing admiration for the strength that was cousin to his own, “but he must be licked.”

“I had feared this,” replied the President. “I presume, Mr. Attorney-General, that you could not support my position by your continued presence at the head of your department?”

“No, Air. President, I could not.”

“Then you, too, resign?”

“I do.”

“And you, Air. Postmaster-General? You are determined to follow the example of the secretary of state?”

“Quite correct,” replied Lord, curtly. He never liked the President so much as now, but principle was principle.

One by one the others signified their intention of quitting the cabinet should the obnoxious message be sent to Congress.

“And Secretary Craig?” said the President at last. Philip rose with the respect he had always shown the chief executive.

“A’ly duty, as I understand it,” he said, “is not only to advise but to support the President. I remain in the cabinet.”

“Gentlemen,” said Mr. Burlingame quietly, “you have offered your resignations from the cabinet and from your departments. That there may be no misunderstanding, will you kindly tender them in writing for my consideration. Unless there is further business, I shall adjourn this meeting.”

No one of the dazed gentlemen of the cabinet offering a word, Mr. Burlingame rose and left the room. Of the discomfited and disappointed members Secretary Pratt was the first to recover his self-possession. Hie signaled Lord and the rest to follow him, and in a corner the men held a whispered consultation apart from Craig. He no longer felt the slightest resentment; he could afford to smile at the situation and did smile, so that the bullet-headed Lord caught the look of amusement and barely stopped a round imprecation from escaping between his clenched teeth. With a pleasant “Good afternoon, gentlemen,” Philip parted from his associates.

They decided that the course of wisdom, indeed the only course, lay in sending their written resignations as requested by the President. Possibly the very gravity of the act might so impress Mr. Burlingame that he would abandon his position.

Meantime the most urgent messages were rushed to the party leaders informing them of the seriousness of the situation. They, in turn, called upon the President to urge him not to cause the disruption of the administration by an act that seemed ill-considered. The chief executive received them graciously enough, but declined to discuss the matter in any of its phases.

The newspapers of the following morning startled the country and the world with the announcement that the President had accepted individually the written resignations of the members of his official family—all save that of Secretary Craig, who would stand by the administration. They also printed a statement from the President that he would send the names of his new cabinet to the Senate on the day after the holiday.

That night, Philip Craig, the sole remaining officer of President Burlingame’s cabinet, spent three hours with his chief in a secret conference that not even the ambassador of the greatest nation in Europe was allowed to interrupt.

CHAPTER XL

THE NINETEENTH OF APRIL.

PATRIOT’S Day beautifully fulfilled the predictions made for it by the experts, and furnished the perfection of sky and air for the great celebration. Physically the city was a marvel of color and brilliancy. From end to end the avenues of the states were edged with flags, streamers and bunting, and at the approaches to the most beautiful capitol in the world were arches of superb design and richest decoration planned by the great artists of the country. It seemed as if all the latent patriotism of the land had suddenly burst into sight with the colossal flare of flags, the cacophony of myriad bands, the steady tramping of troops, the wild rush of the multitude hither and thither in search of a new sensation and the dull apprehensiveness that somehow lay beneath the surface of all this resounding excitement.

The People’s Congress had, it is true, adjourned over the holiday, but it had at the same moment denounced the celebration, with its tremendous military display, as “another case of fiddling while Rome was burning.” It was an outrage, the convention declared, that this money, wrung from the sufferings of a people, should be frittered away upon extravagant show, bombastic noise, and the flaunting of gold lace. The day sacred to the heroism of the fathers was desecrated beyond measure, it asserted.

Craig and the leaders of Congress noted with much concern the horde of the unruly that had followed in the train of the delegates and the legitimate sight-seers, like vultures after a caravan. Never in the history of Washington, the secret service men said, had a celebration brought to the capital such an army of the “powers that prey;” never had there been such a wholesale deportation of known rascals. The thousands who were not known stayed, and threatened to infect the excited mass of better men with the base leaven of their love of disorder.

The people were dominated by unrest, nor was the morning’s news of the political situation calculated to calm them. The sensational resignation of the entire cabinet, save one man, proved, although the papers were singularly silent as to the facts, that there must have been a bitter quarrel between the President and his advisers, and that the cause of the break must have been the question of policy as to answering the demands of the nation for relief. Black chaos seemed to loom before many, nor could the solution be foreseen. The day had not far advanced when an inkling of the true state of affairs filtered down from high places to the ears of the common people, but it failed to reassure them.

Of one thing they felt certain, however: that President Burlingame had shown himself their friend. What he could do was problematical, but for what he would do they honored him.

And so it happened that when the President, on the great black horse whose every mood he knew so well, rode through the living lanes of excited humanity, under festoons of gorgeous drapery, to the stand where he was to review the troops, a mighty roar of approval kept pace with his horse’s hoofs, smothering the booming of cannon and drowning the bray of military bands. Head uncovered, he bowed to right and left with never-ceasing regularity, wondering somewhat at his sudden popularity, but glowing with the knowledge that adherence to duty had for once brought its reward in the shape of public applause.

The feelings of the secretary of war, who at the same moment was the recipient of public attention on a side street off Pennsylvania Avenue, were never made known, but those who saw him during the episode were willing to swear that he at least appeared uncomfortable. He was being driven to the railroad station in an open carriage, and was recognized by some of the crowd. Epithets not savory were followed by a few vegetables not quite fresh, and it took a squad of mounted police to rescue the ex-cabinet officer from the wrath of the mob.

Rumor magnified this sporadic outburst into a great rising, and the city’s uneasiness increased. Of course, there was the army, but its actual employment meant bloodshed. Good citizens prayed that no spark should strike the tow of the people’s anger.

The procession, the review, and the unveiling of the colossal statue of the Minute Man passed off with no marring episodes. The President broke the cords that let the great silken flags from the heroic bronze; a poem was read by California’s illustrious son, Markham Miller; a profound and eloquent oration was delivered by the Hon. Phillips Lloyd, of Massachusetts; a hymn to the forefathers was sung by a chorus made up of singers from every state in the Union, and, amid a mighty salvo of artillery, the crowds spread themselves out once more over all Washington, and prepared to forage for their midday meals. For some the process was a glutted weariness, for more an assured matter of fact, and for others a desperate search. But somehow or other all were fed, and in readiness for the afternoon’s manoeuvres of the troops.

Craig spent the morning in his new apartments, to which he had removed for greater quiet, and with his father was arranging his library in place, when a deputation from the People’s Congress called and requested an interview. After an hour’s earnest conversation, the committee withdrew, and a little later reported to their associates that the secretary of industry was firm in the belief that President Burlingame would inaugurate measures of relief with the reassembling of Congress next day.

Philip did not witness the afternoon’s evolutions of the soldiers, for he found that the strain of the past few days had begun to tell on his nerves. He knew that he needed a respite from the turmoil of the city, and he was surfeited with bands and shouts and cannonading. So he and his father, who was glad enough to go anywhere away from the uproar, took a car for Mount Vernon.

There in the noble home of George Washington, the secretary fell under the spell of sublime peace that comes to every true American who visits that beautiful shrine. The broad green acres, the superb trees, the classically simple mansion seemed to carry him away from the world of strife and suffering and fill his heart with a happiness he had not known for years.

In the plain chamber where the First President had died, where even now were the furnishings upon which his eyes had rested until the film of dissolution had shut out all mortal light, father and son stood in reverent silence for many minutes. It was Angus who first spoke.

“Aye, Philip, there was a mon. An aristocrat, if ye will, an’ rich, too. But the gowd never tarnished his soul, an’ power never blinded him tae the richts o’ the people. Oh, the deeference, the deeference. I wad we had ane like him this day.”

“Would to God we had!” said Philip solemnly. The hallowed room faded from his view, and he saw again the wealth-ridden, merciless Senate, the mercenary cabinet that had just ceased to be, and the princes of finance who were draining the country of the bread of life to aid a foreign war. The need of some great and masterful man was pressing, but whence and how would he arise? The President? He was honest and sincere, but was he strong enough to win the fight?

Before the tomb of him whom the nation calls “Father,” Philip renewed his vow to battle for the down-trodden, to defend “Weakerdom” always, no matter what the cost, or whether ignominy or fame became his portion.

Over in the city the din of mimic battle smote the ear at every turn. A sham attack on the capital was under way, and great guns roared and bellowed at the outlying ends of all the main avenues. Behind them were barricades of cotton-bales, bags of sand, and cumbersome upturned drays. Then came the soldiers, grimy and perspiring from their work of hurried fortification, hundreds of them on the house-tops firing rattling volleys into space.

Near the capitol stood General Felix MacMahon, the commander-in-chief of the defending army, and to him incessantly dashed mounted orderlies and then dashed off again. The cry of bugles pierced the deeper sound of the guns with a shrill soprano.

Thronging the central streets were the thousands of sight-seers, frenzied with the wild delight that comes with the sound of exploding gunpowder. Only some of the negroes who did not understand groveled in terror, convinced that Washington was being assailed by some foreign foe who would give no quarter. Dusky preachers shouted of the wrath of God for the sins of the great. Thieves plied their profession under cover of the din and excitement, and relieved the populace of their purses with perfect impartiality.

With a long semi-circle outside the city, stretching from the Potomac to East Branch, the thin line of the attacking army was gradually closing in. Under command of the Adjutant-General, the forces were at last ordered to charge.

President Burlingame was riding up and down along the defense He had not thoroughly approved of the military mock-heroics, but since they had been decreed by the war department, he had not cared to oppose them actively. And now that the clash of arms was in simulation he thought it best to show himself as much as possible in public. So his firm figure, knitted to his superb horse, became a familiar sight during the afternoon. And ever he was greeted with wild cheers.

As the advance of the assaulting force became plainly evident, an officer pulled his horse up sharply by the side of the President.

“We must get behind the guns, Mr. President,” he exclaimed hurriedly. “Of course they’re only blank charges but horses are very apt to object. If you will follow me I can show you an opening into the lines.”

Mr. Burlingame smiled and shook his head.

“Why take trouble to go so far around?” he said, pointing to the barricaded end of a street, “I’ll take this way.”

He spoke to his horse sharply, and the great animal broke into a swinging gallop, heading straight for the high barrier of cotton-bales. The soldiers behind parted in swift surprise.

One touch of the spur and the splendid horse vaulted into the air and over the obstruction without grazing a heel. A shout of applause burst from the men, and then they turned at the word of command to receive the enemy.

With furious volleyings and cannonadings, charges and counter-charges, retreats and advances, the sham attack on Washington was at last technically repulsed, and comparative quiet reigned once more.

There now remained in the day’s celebration only the trial of a new electric field gun invented by M. Deschapelles. the world-famous deviser of new mechanisms. The gun was stationed on Arlington Heights, and thither the President rode with his aides and the army officers who were to witness the test.

The affair was simplicity itself. A huge cartridge of peculiar circular construction, with a small orifice for the escape of the steel slug, and filled with the most powerful explosive known, was set into the breech and the gun closed. The President, who stood on a slight elevation behind the cannon with a group of army officers, held his finger on a tiny button ready to give the pressure that should detonate the charge.

A word from Gen. MacMahon, a downward movement of the finger, a terrific roar, the sharp hiss of a piece of metal hurtling through the air, and in the place where the President had stood was a horrible, significant void. Other figures beside his had also disappeared.

After an instant’s dazed helplessness, many officers and a surgeon gathered about the group of the fallen. Then, with blanched face and staring eye-balls, the doctor looked up at the Lieutenant-General, and shook his head, pointing with mute eloquence to the shimmering dome of the capitol across the river.

Gen. MacMahon’s plan was made in an instant. He commanded absolute silence on the part of all the immediate witnesses of the dreadful catastrophe, while to the onlookers, who had been kept at a distance by lines of soldiers, it was given out that one of the army officers had been killed. The bluff old general believed that falsehood was justified by the excited condition of the people.

But some of the more observant noticed that the magnificent black horse that had brought the President to Arlington was ridden back to Washington by another man!

Consternation and wild amazement ruled among the party leaders and high officials to whom the news was secretly carried with the utmost dispatch. A conference was at once held at the White House between Gen. MacMahon, the late President’s private secretary, Edward Trent, and a few subordinates of departments. It was decided to send for the Chief Justice at once, and to move heaven and earth to find Philip Craig, who, it was reported, was not at his apartments.

With his customary acumen, ex-Secretary of State Pratt smelt out the meeting, and within an hour of the President’s death appeared at the White House to protest against the swearing in of Philip Craig on the ground that the law of succession did not specify the office of secretary of industry in so many words. Gen. MacMahon was furious with anger.

“The man is President of the United States, sir,” he shouted, “and neither you nor your coterie can change that great fact. Here and now I recognize him, and it only needs the presence of the Chief Justice and himself to make that recognition lawful.”

‘‘Calm yourself, General,” sneered Pratt. “You are over-zealous now that there is no secretary of war to keep you in check. It was not always thus.”

“Sir,” raged the honest old soldier, “sir,—you—”

“The Chief Justice of the United States,” called out a messenger, and all rose in respect for the venerable head of the Supreme Court, who entered the room leaning heavily on a cane.

His decision was prompt. The amendment to the law which read ‘‘and thence to the heads of all other departments of the government that shall hereafter be created,” was sufficient, he said. He would administer the oath of office to Mr. Craig at once.

But the man of all men who was wanted could not be found. Messengers, secret service men and labor delegates scoured the city in vain. The hours dragged on in heart-breaking suspense until nightfall, and still there were no tidings of Craig. His enemies said that he had stolen away in cowardly flight, while his friends hinted that he had been done to death by the tools of the plutocracy.

Shortly before eleven, as Philip and his father approached the entrance of their apartment house, the younger man was surprised to see the tall form of Luke Ford, and another man whom he knew to be a secret service officer, pacing regularly before the door. An instant more and Ford had grasped him by the hand and was wringing it frantically.

“For God’s sake, where have you been, man?” he almost screamed. “Absenting yourself this way when they are half crazy to get you to take the oath. It’s terrible!”

“Oath? What oath?” repeated Philip vacantly. Ford’s voice dropped to a hoarse whisper, as he comprehended all.

“You are President of the United States, Philip; the accident to Mr. Burlingame—”

He stopped as he saw Craig reel in his tracks and grasp the iron fence, clinging like a drunken man to the pickets for support. A deathly pallor overspread his face, and his lips moved spasmodically, but no sound came from behind them. Ford drew out a flask and forced a few drops of brandy between his teeth, and that and his own strength of will brought him to himself again.

“President!” he said slowly, as if he had never pronounced the word before. “President! But tell me—”

“In a moment, Philip,” replied Ford, as a closed carriage came around a corner in answer to the secret service man’s whistle. “Get in here, quick, and I’ll explain on the way.”

Ten minutes later the carriage, drawn by a pair of furiously galloping horses, came to a halt at the White House entrance. The three men who alighted found Private Secretary Trent awaiting them in his private office. Immediately the Chief Justice, who had gone to one of the chambers for a little rest, was summoned, and with the simple formula that had long been the wonder of the world, invested Philip Craig with the title and powers of President of the United States.

CHAPTER XLI

GENERAL MACMAHON’S PLEDGE.

THE shock of President Burlingame’s death was followed by the awe that invariably attends the passing of a chief executive in office. That the end was tragic still more intensified public sentiment, and for the moment a deep hush fell upon Washington. So well had the secret been kept that the first general news of the calamity was spread abroad by the morning papers, cried about long before the city was awake. The details were most exhaustive, including the feverish search for Secretary Craig, the quarrel between Pratt and Gen. MacMahon, and the taking of the oath at night. Incidentally it was noted that Deschapelles, the inventor of the gun that had wrought such havoc, had disappeared and was believed to have committed suicide; but few gave much heed to that in the deeper significance of the news.

The first solemnity over, there came a great, an overwhelming exultation among the people that the dispensation of death had raised one of their own to the Presidency; a profound gratitude that Philip Craig had been far from the scene and not standing beside Mr. Burlingame, as might well have been the case. Some great power, they said, had called him to the tomb of Washington when the destroying angel stalked abroad.

Slowly the members of the People’s Congress began to come out from the Coliseum, where they had been in session but a brief time. No man knew now what an hour would bring forth, or what the convention itself could find to do. The brilliant leader whose dramatic promise had thrilled their Congress into acquiescence, was now the head of the nation, with all the powers of that exalted station. Surely something must come of the wonderful train of circumstances.

No other topic of conversation than this was to be heard among the knots of men who lingered in front of the great building.

“But I don’t understand, Bruce. How can he be President?”

The speaker was a queer old fellow with a little, wrinkled face, a long wisp of hair on his chin, and the garb of nearly half a century before. He smoked an ancient clay pipe with spasmodic puffs, and seemed to justify the jocose title of the “Oldest Inhabitant” which some brother delegates had bestowed upon him.

“By law, Jerry, by law,” answered Bruce—the very Bruce with whom Philip Craig had so nearly come into collision on a rainy night some years before. He had gained polish since then, and expressed himself better.

“But in my time—” quavered the “Oldest Inhabitant.”

“In your time, Jerry,” interrupted Bruce, “there were lots of things that were no good. But now, thank God, the American workingman is as good as his betters.” With which truly oracular statement, Bruce shrugged his broad shoulders and elevated his shaggy eyebrows, with the conviction of having said something that would make the day memorable.

“But how/’ continued the pertinacious old man, “did this—what’s this his name is?—this Craig, how’d he, a newcomer, jump into the Presidency?”

Bruce surveyed his inquisitor pityingly. Much as he valued his own rights of self-assertion, it was his custom to bully all others for the expression of theirs, at least when he felt that he could do so safely.

“He doesn’t tell, old friend,” interposed the clear-cut voice of Brandt, the German, who had overheard the conversation, “because he doesn’t know himself.”

Bruce scowled at the speaker, but as his shoulders were higher than his own, and fully as powerful, he forebore to interrupt.

“It’s simple enough,” continued Brandt. “With no vice-president the secretary of state would have succeeded President Burlingame. But he, with all the others of the cabinet, except Mr. Craig, resigned day before yesterday. Their resignations had been accepted, but Burlingame, poor fellow, did not live to appoint their successors. You see the new law—”

The wild laugh and shrill, eerie voice of a woman broke in upon the German’s measured tones. Hisses and cries interrupted, but the voice struggled on in screaming cadence.

“Burlingame, and now Craig. The King is dead; long live the King!”

They turned and saw an extraordinary spectacle. A large, florid woman, bedecked in tawdry finery rather the worse for wear, was standing on an iron bench haranguing the crowd, which was alternately denouncing and laughing at her.

“Craig is President and you adjourn,” she shrieked, shaking a large fist at her hearers. “You do no more than the false Congress up there in the capitol. They adjourn. You were sent here to act. Now’s the time. Will Craig, President, be any better to you than another? Why don’t you find out? I—”

At this point a man sprang to the bench and whispered something in her ear. She smiled vacantly and followed him down and away with the docility of a child. Another man, who had accompanied him, remained behind.

“What’s the matter, Langmaid?” asked a bystander who knew the little shoe-operator.

“Poor Geoffrey Fairbrother’s wife slipped out of their boarding-house this morning, and got over here somehow. She’s not well, and the excitement—”

“Oh, it was Mrs. Fairbrother, was it?” exclaimed Bruce. “I know all about her. Used to make lots of money, wasn’t satisfied and lost everything speculating, even her mind.”

But the question screamed at the crowd by a deranged woman was asked many times that day by men of cool good-sense. What would Craig do, what could he do toward the fulfilment of his pledge?

The People’s Congress, before its adjournment out of respect for the late President, had appointed a committee to wait upon President Craig, and had voted to meet from day to day until there should be something to report. They were not wholly averse to delay, for their expenses were paid and Washington was a pleasant place in springtime.

The conservative element declared that President Craig could scarcely be expected to do more than he had already done. They pointed out the fact that he had made official announcement of the death of President Burlingame to both branches of Congress, and had suggested an adjournment to the following day, when he would call to their attention some matters that were close to the heart of the dead executive.

The radicals saw no certainty of action in this.

“What does he mean by that?” asked Luke Ford, voicing well enough the opinions of his set. “It may be much, but more likely it’s little.”

The new President’s intent puzzled others in higher places. The leaders of the Senate held a conference that lasted far into the night, and rumor had it that Andrew Haven had been present, at least during a portion of the meeting.

Next day both branches of Congress met at the usual hour. Again there seemed to be a holiday in Washington, subdued by grave events, yet full of the undercurrent of deep feeling. Great crowds assembled around the capitol, for here, it was assumed, would be the theatre of momentous acts. Perfect order was voluntary, and the police had little to do.

As the members of Congress assembled they were compelled to run the gauntlet of tens of thousands of eyes, lighted either with hostility or approval. A popular member of the lower House would be saluted by the raising of hats by many; a senator known to be hostile to the people would be received with dull murmurs as he passed. It was well for the peace of mind of some of them that they could not catch the drift of the sotto voce remarks.

At last an auto-car rolled up to the capitol steps bearing two passengers, one a tall, big-framed man, with his left arm in a sling, the other a short individual wearing large, round spectacles. Someone recognized the big man and shouted his name to his neighbors.

“It can’t be him,” replied somebody else. “The papers say he’s sick.”

“Papers! H’mph. It’s Norton fast enough.”

“What Norton? John Peter Norton?”

“Yes,” roared a tremendous voice. “John Peter Norton, the man who’s brought misery to the people. Down with him!”

With the speed of an electric current the name passed from lip to lip, and as the strong-faced man was seen slowly ascending the capitol steps, leaning on the arm of his smaller companion, a deep long-drawn hiss, like the escape of surcharged steam, arose on the air and reached the ears of the two.

Half way up in his ascent, Norton paused, withdrew his arm from Haven’s and stretched it toward the crowd. As suddenly it dropped to his side, but the upturning of his prominent chin and his defiant pose spoke his contempt. He turned and walked slowly, firmly up the remaining steps unaided. He could hear the hisses until he passed into the lobby of the great building.

Haven quaked with terror and stumbled along after his chief, with many reproaches for his foolhardiness. He had used his utmost endeavor to keep Norton at home on the ground of his health, and had been strongly seconded by the family and the physician.

“No more of this nonsense,” Norton had exclaimed sternly. “You, doctor, feel my pulse—my arm—does it shake? I am as much myself today as ever—more so, they will find, more so.”

Earlier in the day one of the newspapers, recognizing the unprecedented chance for exploiting itself, had obtained permission to erect an enormous blackboard in the plaza before the capitol, and had made telegraphic connections between it and its representatives in the reporters’ galleries of both houses. Now, as the clicking of the instruments began to be heard, there was a great surging of thousands toward the stand.

“Both houses are appointing committees to arrange for the late President’s funeral,” was the first bulletin chalked up in huge letters on the blackboard.

“A message from the President reaches the House. It is now being read.”

Then there was a long wait, and the applause that had started feebly on the announcement of the news died away in the tense impatience that followed.

“The President declares that an embargo must be placed on exportation of foodstuffs.”

A resounding cheer swelled out over the sea of heads, and shouts for the new ruler who had dared to act filled the air.

“The message is not President Craig’s, but one which he says President Burlingame had prepared,” announced the board.

The crowd, easily turned from joy to dejection, read this with apprehensive silence. Bruce, Brandt,

Ford and a few others of the New Yorkers, who were in a little group near the stand, looked serious at the information.

“Always harking back to Burlingame—who’s dead,” commented Brandt. “I fear, friends, we shall wait in vain for initiative on the part of Craig.”

Ford’s gaunt, sallow face grew darker with displeasure.

“By God, if he fails us now—”

Another tremendous outburst of cheers drowned the threat completely. The men turned to the bulletin.

“The message was President Burlingame’s,” they read, “but it declares that it is the duty of Congress as sworn representatives of the people, to grant relief to the country. President Craig endorses and reinforces it.”

Now came in rapid succession the bulletins of events within the splendid building, awaited with breathless interest by the swaying multitude outside, and greeted with hurrahs or hisses, as the case might be. The people learned that the Senate had laid the President’s message on the table; that the House had passed a relief bill under suspension of the rules; that the Senate had received the House bill and was now discussing the measure.

Groans and vituperative yells greeted the information that Senator Norton was speaking on the measure—against it, everyone knew. Thereafter came no bulletins for an hour.

Someone in the vast crowd started a patriotic song, and the music swept over the throng and swelled at last from ten thousand throats. One by one the old time hymns of the fathers, rarely sung of late, came from out the treasure-house of years and rose triumphant, powerful, thrilling, on the soft air. The mighty music penetrated even to the senate-chamber and caused John Norton a moment’s pause in his speech of tremendous invective against the ‘‘lawless element that surrounds this capitol.”

At last came an announcement that stopped the music and turned the voices of the throng into curses and revilements. “The Senate rejects the relief bill by a vote of So to 18, and adjourns until to-morrow/’ it read.

The crowd dispersed slowly, surrounding the few who had been able to get into the senate-chamber, in the feverish desire to obtain its news at first hand. From all came the same reports: John Norton’s speech was the overwhelming feature of the Senate’s session. It had been masterly in its invective, powerful in its rugged eloquence, skilful in its appeal to the spirit of conservatism. It had, all acknowledged, put fresh spirit into the Senate and caused the defeat of the House bill by the great majority announced.

The afternoon papers blazoned the speech with overgrown headings and at full length. The peroration, which the Spy described as “the final reply of law and order to anarchy,” was printed in blackfaced type of the most aggressive description.

“The issue is clear [Senator Norton had said]. Is a so-called congress of idle vagabonds to awe the Senate of the United States into an act which will destroy the rights of the business men of this nation to sell in the open markets of the world what they have honestly bought? There is no other interpretation, and no amount of hysterical prating about the rights of the people can disguise the fact that tyranny, masquerading as liberty, is jeopardizing the security of the nation and seeking to trample upon the prerogatives of Congress.

“An accidental President, posing as a new savior of his country, and acting as the mouthpiece of the rabble, commands the Senate. This honorable body, respected both by tradition and by the opinion of the conservative elements of our country, will show such men their rightful place. The Senate of the United States will do justice, but it cannot be coerced.”

That evening, in answer to his request, several of the leaders of the Senate met the President at the White House. Senator Norton did not come, word being sent that he was again ill and under the doctor’s orders, a plea that did not impress Craig very much.

Long and earnestly he labored with the senators, pointing out to them as eloquently as he was able the splendor of the opportunity to set themselves right before the people, who, after all, must be the real rulers of the nation. But he soon saw that nothing could change their determination, and the interview ended with the deadlock as unshaken as before.

Then came the delegation from the United Men of America, which Craig had purposely kept in waiting until after the conference with the senators.

“Who is your chairman, gentlemen?” asked the President when the men had filed into the room.

“I am, Mr. President,” said Luke Ford, stepping forward.

“What are you instructed to ask?”

“The fulfilment of your promise,” was the uncompromising reply. The others nodded approval.

“Gentlemen, I have—you know what I have done to-day.”

“Yes, but—”

“But it has failed, you would say. I have but this to reply: to-day I have implored; to-morrow I shall act. Good-night, gentlemen, and remember that public sympathy, which alone supports extreme measures, is easily forfeited. See to it that good sense and good order prevail in these trying times. Good night.”

For some time Craig sat in thought, rapidly reviewing the events of the day. Suddenly he arose and touched a button. The clean-cut, frank-faced Trent, President Burlingame’s secretary, who had shown a disposition to serve the new executive faithfully and well, answered the summons.

“Oh, it’s you, is it, Mr. Trent,” said Philip kindly, “I thought you had retired.”

“No, Mr. President; I believed you might need me,” was the reply.

“I shall need every honest man, Mr. Trent . . . My message to Gen. MacMahon—was it delivered?”

“He is already in waiting.”

“I will see him at once.”

The Lieutenant-General of the army was a short, thickset man with a florid face and large snow-white moustachios and imperial. As Craig gazed earnestly at his frank Celtic countenance he thought he saw a man he could trust to the uttermost. But he must be absolutely certain of his ground, and the best way, he knew, was to dispense with circumlocution.

“Be seated, General,” he said. “Not there— nearer me, please. I have sent for you because I need you. To-morrow, if the Senate again refuses to concur with the House on the embargo bill, and also persists in refusing to agree with the House to end the present session of Congress I shall adjourn the session myself.”

He paused a moment to note the effect of this radical statement on the bluff old soldier.

“You do not seem surprised,” he added.

“No. I expected this would come. President Burlingame—”

“Pardon me, I see you were in his confidence.” “‘Yes, sir.”

“And he—and I—are right?”

The General’s gray eyes sparkled, and he pulled his white imperial vigorously. “Indubitably, sir.” he replied. “The constitution is quite clear that the President may adjourn Congress to such time as he sees fit in case of disagreement between the two houses as to time of adjournment.”

“I shall adjourn the Congress to-morrow,” said the President, solemnly.

“And act meanwhile?”

“And act meanwhile. I have reason to expect resistance—forcible resistance—together with attempted impeachment. I have sent for you to ask your position—the position of the army.”

The General rose and took the President’s hand in his with a hearty warmth that was as reassuring as his words. Simply, quietly, untheatrically he gave his pledge, and Craig’s mind was at rest on one point, at least.

“The army, sir, is now, as ever, at the command of the President of the United States.”

CHAPTER XLII

THE AROUSING OF THE TIGER.

SECRETARY TRENT was startled and amazed when he arrived at the President’s private office early next morning to find Craig bent over his desk in the study of a great pile of books and papers. He was still more concerned when he saw the haggard face and sunken eyes that were turned toward him.

“You—you have had no sleep?” he stammered. “No, Mr. Trent, I have been busy with the authorities, as you see,” he replied with a wan smile. Then, picking up a newspaper before him: “I have also just been reading Senator Norton’s speech again. It was very bitter, Mr. Trent.” “Exceedingly so, sir.”

“But,” exclaimed the President, angrily, rising and crushing the offensive print in his hand, “but false! The people rule in this country, as he shall know.”

The secretary shook his head as he watched the retreating figure of the executive out of sight.

“A terrible strain—terrible,” he said, pityingly. “And what will come of it?”

During the first hour of the session of the Senate that day came a message from the President declaring that if that branch could not concur on the embargo bill originating in the House, or upon the adjournment desired by the representatives, the President, by the power vested in him by the Constitution, would adjourn Congress to the autumn.

Stony silence marked the reception of this state paper, a silence broken only by a hyena-like laugh from one of the rear seats. The pickle-senator had opened his mouth in the chamber at last.

The Senate as a body treated the message with equal, if less demonstrative, contempt.’ It promptly defeated reconsideration of the House bill, refused to fix a time for adjournment, and impeachment proceedings against the President of the United States for “high crimes and misdemeanors” were begun.

The President heard the news without a sign of emotion of any sort. His answer was a message declaring Congress adjourned sine die.

The members of the House of Representatives promptly dispersed after the singing of the old-time traditional doxology started by the press men in the gallery. The shouts of the people outside told them of the popularity of their act. The Senate, to intensify its spirit of bravado, voted at four o’clock to take a recess until eight. They reckoned without their host.

When the hour of reconvening arrived the senators found a vast, noisy, jubilating throng packed about the capitol. Jibes and hisses and even threats there were in abundance, but no acts of violence, and the hated law-makers made their way to the building with no great difficulty.

But their amazement and anger knew no bounds when they found that every entrance to the capitol was guarded by double files of United States troops, and that no man was allowed to pass without a permit. And as Gen. MacMahon had taken care that no permits should be granted, there was no session of the Senate that night.

Already the newspaper extras were being sold by tens of thousands on the crowded streets. They all contained a proclamation by the President issued at seven o’clock.

“This is not martial law,” it read, “but the protection of the rights of the people against usurpation by a Senate that respects nothing save the greed of wealth. The people, in this trying hour, must support the executive loyally and quietly.”

The effect of this warning against possible disorder would have been most salutary, for the masses already honored and respected their new President. But, unfortunately, the same papers contained a statement, in the form of an interview, from Senator John P. Norton, which, by its arrogance and studied insults, stirred the dark pools of hatred and discontent anew.

The crowds that surged and flowed in ever-increasing density through the streets began to show signs of turbulance. A hostile demonstration was made before the office of the most bitter of the newspaper organs of the senatorial clique, and only the hurried arrival of a strong detachment of police saved the establishment from wreckage.

The chief of the district police, although he had every available man on duty, early foresaw that lie could not control the crowds that were invading every part of the city in great detached bands, and he sent a message to President Craig asking for troops to ensure order. The President declined to act.

“That would be martial law,” he sent back word. “It would incite tumult, and its effect on the nation at large would be disastrous. It must be done, if at all, only as a last resource.”

No sooner had the messenger departed than a card was brought to Philip bearing the name of Stuyvesant Lord, to be followed a moment later by the ex-postmaster general in a state of trepidation and humility marvelously unlike his usual almost brutal brusqueness.

“I am here, Mr. President,” he began, “to see what can be done—to see what we can do—to avert the calamity that threatens the established order of things. Government is subverted; business will be staggered, and the whole nation will receive a terrible blow unless a halt is called to this unfortunate strife.”

“Ah,” replied Craig, with a touch of bitterness, “you are alive now to the effects of stagnation. When it affected only the people, you did not care. Well, what do you propose to do?”

“I can assure you that the Senate will reverse its action,” said Lord, flushing deeply, as if in shame for his own weakness and defeat. He had put his neck beneath the feet of the once-despised Philip Craig, and he felt certain that the obeisance would win the day, distasteful as the action was.

“There is no Senate,” replied the President.

“We will pass the embargo bill.”

“Who is ‘we’?”

“The—the Senate,” stammered the dumbfounded suppliant.

“There is no Senate, sir,” replied the President, coldly. “Your mission is a day late. You expected, I assume, that I would meet your groveling with as weak a surrender, and that I would convene Congress in extraordinary session. I shall do nothing of the kind. The real representative of the people is here”—he drew himself up proudly as he spoke and covered Lord with a gaze of contempt. “Fate has willed in miraculous way that I should act for the people. Rest assured I shall not neglect my duty. To reassemble Congress now would be pitiable weakness before which I and the people would be forced to the wall. Tell those who sent you that as they have crossed their Rubicon, so have I mine. There can be no retreat.”

As the man who had so often covertly sneered at and insulted him left his presence, with bowed head and dejected step, Philip Craig threw back his head and laughed aloud.

“It is destiny—destiny,” he exclaimed, “and how dare I thwart it?”

“What is it, Mr. Trent?” he asked, as his private secretary entered the room and stood before his desk.

“The chief of police wishes to see you on a matter of great moment, Mr. President.”

“Very well.”

The chief had come to plead for soldiers.

“I appeal to you, Mr. President, because the need is urgent,” he said. “Already incendiary placards have been posted up by some anarchistic scoundrels, and they have hanged Senator Norton in effigy in front of the War building. There’s going to be great trouble before the night is over, as sure as we both live. I need, I must have troops.”

“I think you overestimate the seriousness of the situation, Chief,” replied the President confidently.

“However, in order that there may be no mistake, I am going out to see for myself.”

“You!” exclaimed the officer, aghast. “You mix in all this disorder? Think of the danger, Mr. President.”

“Danger? From my own people?” returned Philip scornfully.

“Ah, Mr. President, there are many here in Washington to-night who are, unfortunately, not your people. They are firebrands who may have power to set the whole citizenry ablaze.”

“Nevertheless, I am going. I shall take care that I am not recognized. There need be no fear whatever.”

“Shall I detail a guard—”

“What, and make a real danger? No, sir, I go alone. If troops are needed, I will see that they are furnished. Good night.”

In a long coat and slouch hat the President went forth a few minutes later. Not far from the White House he found a crowd on the street, harangued by a roaring orator who urged his hearers to “action” of some sort against the aristocrats.

The few all at once grew to many by the magic accretions of the night, and the speaker was forgotten as the combined force swept along, shouting, surging, threatening, bound for some unknown point to wreak some unknown vengeance for their wrongs. As yet there was no guiding spirit to unify the fiery elements of unrest; as yet the crowd was as likely to be disrupted by a laugh or a rough and tumble between two of its component parts, as to become that senseless engine of destruction, a mob, sympathizing without thought, condemning without reason.

The President was borne along by the tremendous momentum of excited humanity, in spite of his attempts to fall back, that he might observe, without participating in, the uproar. As well try to stem an avalanche with a plough. On he went into the centre of a struggling, swaying, cursing, jeering mass of men, using every endeavor to preserve his incognito, fearing lest an accidental up-flaring of his hat brim might show his face to someone who would know it.

As the human stream debouched into an open square, it struck fairly into the middle of another immense phalanx and was quickly swallowed up in its black maw. Here, the President noted, many of the shops had erected heavy plank barricades in front of their windows, while broken glass and disordered goods showed that others had already been the innocent victims of violence.

Squads of police lined the curbstones and kept the crowd in the street by the sheer force of locust-wood, as many a bruised and battered head bore witness.

But this new aggregation of unrest, the President saw, differed from the old in that it seemed to be moved and directed by a master. Somewhere in the swirling throng there was a leader strong enough to be obeyed, magnetic enough to be followed, for all at once the mass began to start forward, and Craig found that the head of what was now a howling and riotous procession was not far from himself.

In the lead strode a tall man with flowing black coat, long dark hair and a broad soft hat. Beside him ran a screaming, red-faced woman waving a red silk handkerchief that had been tied to a slim umbrella.

“Luke Ford!”

The name came from the President’s mouth involuntarily. In the shock and horror of the discovery that his old associate was the guiding-spirit of a mob that might become a band of criminals before the night was over, he forgot all caution and strove with all his might to force his way to the front. But he was met by sturdy shoulders and angry growls, and he made no progress whatever, save that of keeping step perforce to the steady tramp of heavy feet.

All at once the virago in the lead turned and shouted to those just behind:

“Norton! he’s the real villain. Let’s go and see him!”

The rest took up the savage cry.

“To Norton’s!’’

“He’s hiding; let’s smoke him out.’’

“To the Norton palace!”

“We’ll have no palaces!”

And so throughout the whole of the mob. The tiger was awakened, and there was a definite prey on which to spring. On, with ever-increasing speed, went the throng, stones, sticks and pistols appearing as by sudden understanding.

On the way was an oil warehouse, overwhelmingly tempting in its suggestion and its weakness. With a mighty crash its door was burst open, and Ford and a few others rushed in and rolled many barrels into the streets. In an instant they were on the shoulders of strong men and the terrible march was resumed.

Sick at heart as he realized the intent of the crowd, Craig made one desperate effort to clear himself. Using every ounce of strength there was in him, and heedless of the curses and blows that fell upon him, he managed to reach the outer edge of the procession at a side street and escape into obscurity.

With but one impulse in his breast, he rushed on by a roundabout way to the Norton stables, which he knew were in the rear of the house. He knew, too, that Norton was a very sick man, for he had been told that there had been a complete collapse resulting from the strain of the Senate speech. It was an old man, ill almost unto death, that the rage of the mob desired as a sacrifice. It was but common humanity to wish to save him.

At the stables he found old Bayles and “Muggsy” just preparing to retire for the night. These worthies were astonished beyond measure at the apparition of the President, pale and breathing hard from his great exertions. They were still more astounded at his greeting.

“Do you value your master’s life?” he exclaimed.

Already the cries of the avenging host were heard in the street before the house.

“Me an’ Doc’—” began “Muggsy,” whom no excitement could quite shake from his accustomed formula, but his words were cut off in a twinkling.

“Harness your best horses in a carriage, then, without an instant’s delay. You, Bayles, go and get the Nortons; tell them they must fly for their lives, that a conveyance is waiting for them here.”

The old man hobbled off with surprising rapidity, while Craig helped “Muggsy” hitch the horses to the pole.

Now a terrific crashing of stone and wood on iron was heard as the mob began battering at the gates; then came the dull sound of their fall. A flare of light cast its evil pallor on the stable roof; cries of a thousand men mingled in one ominous yell and still no one came from the house, save the servants, who, one by one, rushed past panic-stricken and disappeared into the by-street.

After what seemed an eternity to Philip’s overwrought nerves, he saw Norton, helped by the Rev. Mr. Bentley and Mrs. Norton, totter down the steps and into the courtyard. A second feminine figure, the nurse, he presumed, came with them, and as he stepped into an angle of the wall, all entered the carriage. “Muggsy” Bayles seized the reins and sprang to the box. “Doc” followed in laborious fashion, cursing himself for his own rheumatic slowness.

“Where shall we drive to, sir?” asked the junior stableman.

“To—to—the White House,” replied Craig. “They will be safe enough there” he added below his breath. There was a smart chirrup from “Muggsy,” a clattering of hoofs on the smooth asphalt, a grinding of wheels as they turned a corner sharply, and the party dashed to safety.

Philip Craig walked slowly away from the scene of riot and destruction; there was no need for hurry now, and the reaction was great. As he neared Pennsylvania Avenue, he turned and looked back. The rich glow of mounting flames illumined the sky, paling all other lights into insignificance. He almost fancied he could hear the crackling of John Norton’s treasures of luxury and art, as they were sent to their destruction. All his hope, his courage, his faith left him for the moment, as he thought of the work of those who had once listened to and obeyed his words of counsel.

“And they will say that I—I am responsible,” he cried, in the agony of despair.

CHAPTER XLIII

DESPOT OR MARTYR?

THE President returned to the White House soon after midnight, his incognito preserved, but his peace of mind shattered and his physical being wearied beyond expression. The servant who admitted him at a side entrance nudged the secret service man on guard significantly.

“Looks as if he’d aged ten years in two hours,” was his remark.

“No wonder, man,” said the officer. “I don’t believe any President since good old Abe Lincoln has had such a time of it. It’s a wonder he’s sane, that’s what.”

Philip was met in the ante-room of his private office by Secretary Trent; even that usually cool and common-sense functionary seemed nervous and depressed.

“Several are waiting to see you, Mr. President,” he said. “Gen. MacMahon and—others.”

“Oh, I can’t—well, in five minutes I will see the General.”

With his hand pressed to his forehead, which throbbed and ached strangely, he went to a window, drew aside the curtain and looked out into the night. The ruddy glare in the sky only intensified his wretchedness.

“Oh, God, that they—they could do this,” he muttered. He sank into a chair and bowed his head upon the window-sill.

So General MacMahon found him, an object eloquent of sorrow and disappointment.

‘‘Pardon me, Mr. President,’’ he began at last very gently. “But Mr. Trent said—”

Craig raised himself wearily and faced the old soldier with a faint smile.

“Yes, General. Pray sit down.”

“Is there time for that?” asked the other significantly, raising an arm toward the reddened sky.

The President felt the kindly rebuke he could not resent.

“You wish?” he asked.

“Your orders, sir.”

“Troops will be needed?”

“I think so. The—the tumult is spreading.” It had been upon his tongue to say “riot,” but a glance at the sorrowful face before him changed the word. “The people are much excited.”

“How soon can you act?”

“At once. The Third Cavalry and two regiments of infantry are on this side of the river, and I am in constant telephonic communication.”

“Act, then, General,” said the President with a sigh. “I rely upon you that order be restored without the spilling of a drop of blood, if that be possible.”

The soldier’s face grew very grave. But whatever his personal opinion, he could not find it in his heart to do otherwise than lighten the burden of the executive.

“I hope, nay, I trust, that it is possible,” he said calmly.

“Heaven grant it. Now go, General, go.”

MacMahon saluted, turned on his heel and walked with alert step from the room. With him fled the respite of better cheer that his fine personality had brought into the room. With feet that seemed leaden clogs, Philip began to pace the apartment, talking aloud the while, as to another presence.

“The pity of it,” he exclaimed, “that my first show of force must be directed at—at my own people. No, not my own people,” he corrected himself fiercely. “Ford? Yes, and some other hotheads, but for the most part the dregs of humanity. The cause must not, shall not suffer for the turbulence of a few.”

A tap at the door, and Mr. Trent entered.

“Will you see the Secretary—I mean Mr. Pratt?” he asked.

“On what business?” said the President almost querulously. He was sick unto death of the eternal breaking in upon him. Would he never again have a moment’s rest? Or any sleep to-night? Sleep! He and that gracious gift of nature had parted company of late. Some day—but Trent’s voice broke in.

“He asked me to say to you that his errand was of the highest possible import to the nation.”

“Well, then, I will see him, but in your presence, Trent, if you please. You spoke of others. Who are they?

The Secretary consulted a little card.

“Rev. Mr. Bentley and a lady—of the party that came in a carriage an hour ago with a message from you.”

Wondering dully why he had not thought of them before, Philip replied: “Ah, yes. When you return, bring Mr. Bentley and the lady with you; it is Norton’s wife, Trent. Think of me giving sanctuary to the mob-hated John Peter.”

He laughed, and the sound jarred on the secretary. He had conceived a warm liking for his chief.

“By the way, where is Norton?” asked Craig, surprised to find himself caring even for the whereabouts of the man.

“In the blue suite, and I thought you would wish me to notify his physician.”

“He is ill, then?”

“In mind, yes. There was a second stroke of paralysis on his way home after the speech in the Senate. And I thought his own physician, who had just left him before this last excitement, should—”

“You acted wisely. Now admit Mr. Pratt. You and the others come with him and remain there.” He pointed to an alcove partially screened by a curtain of magnificent tapestry. There must be witnesses to this interview.

The President sat down at his table, ready for what might come. He knew the wonderful craft of the ex-secretary of state, and were it to be a match of wits against wits he would have expected defeat. But this was to be a different contest. Power of conviction, sense of right would prevail against all the arts in the world, he felt.

In the dim shadows that engulfed the room outside the narrow circle of his green-shaded reading lamp, Craig saw three figures enter and pass into the alcove: Trent’s and that of a short, ungainly man were two. The third was that of a woman. The fourth, following just behind, was tall, slender, cat-like in its gliding footsteps. It stopped on the opposite side of the table. There were no formalities.

“I have come, Mr. Craig,” said Pratt, “in the name of our common country.”

“To what end, sir?”

“To the end,” replied the ex-secretary, curling his lean forefinger around the edge of the desk, “to the end that the liberties of this nation may not be imperiled; to avert bloodshed and a reign of terror; to make impossible such scenes as tonight pollute the streets of Washington.”

“I will gladly join hands with you, although I fear you exaggerate somewhat.”

“Exaggerate?” Pratt rose and strode to the window, holding back the curtain. Still that damning glow, although growing fainter with every moment. “Is that exaggeration?”

The President dashed his hand across his forehead as if in pain.

“I know,” he said bitterly, “I was there.”

The lean politician looked at Craig with intense curiosity. What was this strange man—fanatic, fool, or hero? So lost in speculation was he that for once he forgot to pick up the thread of conversation.

“Well?”

The President’s voice recalled him to the matter in hand.

“Washington is not alone,” he said earnestly. “New York is on the verge of noting. That has been averted to-night only by prompt work by the police. The militia has been ordered out, and martial law proclaimed. In Chicago—”

“Enough, sir,” broke in the President sternly.

“If neglect of the people has bred disorder, it is not the fault of the cause I represented before destiny, fate, mischance—call it what you will—made me the representative of all the people.”

“Fanatic, surely,” thought Pratt, “and very likely all the rest besides.”

“You say,” continued Craig, “that you come to prevent such perils as you foresee. What is your mission to me?”

“It is simple. Public confidence and quiet will return only when Congress resumes its sessions peaceably. We ask that it be called in extraordinary session to-morrow.”

“With what understanding?”

The ex-secretary fixed his cold and penetrating eyes on the pale face across the table, and spoke with immense deliberation.

“That the Senate will pass the foodstuffs embargo bill.”

“I have that assurance? ”

“Yes, on one condition.”

“Ah, a condition.” Craig raised his head with a quick gesture of expectancy. “And the condition is?”

“Well,” said Pratt, suavely, “of course it will be —well, impossible for a President created under such circumstances to—”

“Come to the point, sir,” exclaimed Craig, with a sarcastic smile. “It ought not to be so very difficult. You demand my resignation.”

“Well, I suppose that is—”

“And your alternative?”

“If you do not call the session?”

The President bowed.

“We shall meet in another city—the House as well, for the disorder has shown the majority of its members their mistake—and the Senate will—”

‘‘Impeach me?”

Pratt signified an affirmative.

“And what if I prevent your session—disperse the Congress by force?”

“Then, sir,” returned the ex-secretary, his voice quivering with suppressed anger, “it will be force against force, and you will be proceeded against as a dictator.”

“A dictator!” Craig repeated the words in a profound whisper, as of a man communing with his own nature. The portrait of another president, whom his enemies had accused of seeking for absolute power, caught his gaze, and he stared at the rugged face with a strange smile. “Well, why not?” he thought. “If I agreed to this proposal, I would have failed, the cause would be lost, and Weakerdom would be—Weakerdom still. Shall it be defeat, or—”

“Mr. Pratt,” he burst forth suddenly, in a voice that made his visitor start involuntarily, skilled old diplomat that he was, “this is my answer. Congress shall not meet, in Washington or elsewhere, if the army—the army that is in sympathy with, that belongs to the cause, that belongs to me as the representative of the cause—can prevent it. If you proceed with the impeachment farce, I shall order the arrest of its advocates as traitors.”

Pratt rose to his full height, impressive from its very gauntness, and shook his bony hand at Philip’s face.

“That is anarchy, sir.”

“Perhaps,” exclaimed the President, rising in turn and confronting his accuser without flinching, “but there is sometimes more anarchy in law than in its overriding. Up to now I have tried to guide the law to secure the rights of the people. As you and your associates act, so shall I. I shall prevail as President, if I can, as a man of the peQple, for the people—as dictator, if I must.”

The eloquence that sincerity lent his voice and the imperious gesture toward the door moved Pratt more than he would have liked to confess. And he, whose boast it was that no man could sway his sentiment, turned as he went and bowed with respect.

“Revolution, perhaps,” he muttered on his way to the street, “but it will not endure long, and he will be buried in the ruins of his good intent.”

The President sat down, and leaned back his head, his eyes closed in forgetfulness that others were in the room. Only the great thrilling fact of his decision, of his avowed willingness to wield the sceptre of unlimited might, held any reality for him. The golden glory of a future of vast usefulness. unmatched, perhaps, by that of any man the world had yet seen, seemed to irradiate his mental horizon and bear him far from the black visions of the night.

“Philip.”

Back from the region of phantasy came the soul of the President at the sound of that tender voice, thrilling with pity in the old-remembered way. Yes, there stood Adoniram Bentley before him, bending upon him that strange gaze of half mysticism, half compassion that so often had been given to others.

“Does he think me innocent or guilty?” thought Philip.

There was no answer in the warm hand-clasp from the little clergyman, for that would have been vouchsafed to the worst of criminals. Philip would have spoken, but that Mr. Bentley released his hand and pointed toward the alcove.

“She—is waiting—to see and thank you,” he said, and stole quietly from the room.

Craig went to the alcove and clutched the costly tapestry with a strong grip. Here was to come the most intimate, the most painful part of the night’s experiences.

“Mrs. Norton,” he said, as firmly as he was able.

The heavy curtain rustled and a figure came forth, not—not the form of one to whom age is already beckoning, but that of a lithe and splendid creature in the rich flush of womanhood. Across the sea of the years, brought together by the waves of destiny, Philip Craig and Helen Norton were once more near enough to touch one another.

The man was the first to speak.

“Helen! You? I—thought you were at the hospital.”

“You knew, then?” with a sad little smile.

“And you—” disregarding her question—“yon were—you lived through that—horror?” He turned his head toward the window, where now only a faint radiance could be seen. Helen inclined her head ever so gently.

“I thank you for your kindness to—to my mother,” she said. It was the only word possible, although he knew that another, a broken, helpless man was in her thought.

“I only did what a man should,” he answered gravely. No taint of heroics could he endure for a moment. A long silence brooded over them. Again Philip’s voice was the one to break the pause.

“Helen?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

“Strange fate, to bring us together again,—like this. It must be for a purpose.” Another lapse into stillness. Then, with almost startling suddenness, he exclaimed:—

“You have heard all, of course?”

She nodded assent.

“Was I—am I—right?”

“Your conscience must answer that,” she replied gently.

“Is conscience a safe guide, I wonder?” he said musinglv. “Years ago I thought so, Helen, when 1—”

“When you left my father,” she finished for him. “When you wrote the explanation I did not read.”

“Yes, but how—”

“I read it years after.”

“And then?”

“Then I knew how you had been wronged.”

“Helen!” There was a note of tremulous joy in his voice, a tone that had been a stranger to him since the long buried past.

“Then the victory was with the man—my father —who now lies stricken as a guest under this, your roof. Now the triumph is yours. I was proud of you in after years when I knew of your defeat.”

“Are you proud of me in victory?” he asked wistfully. “Not over your father,” as he saw a shadow over the beautiful face, “no, not that. I have no fight with him, but only with the cause he, with others, represents. Helen, are you proud of me now?”

He stepped forward to receive her answer, a great light of hope upon his careworn face, but before she could speak, Trent, the secretary, was in the room, with a murmured apology.

“I thought you were alone, Mr. President,” he said. ‘T have a message from Gen. MacMahon marked ‘urgent’. ” And he handed Craig a sealed envelope.

As Helen walked toward the door, Philip followed with a look of enquiry. It seemed impossible that she should leave him until she had given him either encouragement or—. Well, better condemnation than uncertainty on such a night as this.

“I must go to my mother,” she said simply. He opened the door, but took her hand for a moment and detained her with gentle clasp.

“One word, Helen,” he implored. “Do you approve?”

Once more she turned on him her strange, sadly sweet smile.

“When your conscience approves, I shall approve, now—as always.”

Her parting look haunted him. In it he read the whole enigma of life, the unanswered and the unanswerable problems of heart and soul. Yet were they unanswerable? There was one solution. Dared he—? A rustle from the envelope he held tightly in his hand brought back his wandering mind.

“Gen. MacMahon reports the city quiet everywhere, and no lives sacrificed,” he said to Trent, as he read the message.

“Thank God for that,” replied the secretary fervently, and the earnestness of the man who had hitherto seemed almost an automaton, surprised the President greatly.

“The General asks my orders for the day, Trent. Is there a messenger waiting?”

“Yes, an orderly.”

“Send a request that the General come to me at daybreak,” said the President wearily. “No, I shall not need you again. You must be worn out. Good night.”

“Good night, Mr. President.”

“One moment, Mr. Trent. Has my father retired?”

“I think not. He was in the private library a half hour ago.”

“Very well, I will go to him there.”

Trent saw the President shiver slightly, and noted, with some apprehension, that his face had suddenly become flushed as with fever. “A bad combination,” he thought.

“You are cold,” he said. “It’s raining, and Pm afraid you’ll find the library damp. Had I not better order a fire made?”

“Thank you, no. Good night.”

As the President ascended the stairs slowly, Trent looked after him, his brows knitted with deep thought. What was this strange character, he wondered, despot or martyr? Champion of the people, or a victim of colossal self-esteem? He fell into fitful sleep with the question still unanswered.

CHAPTER XLIV

“ON SATAN’S MOUNT.”

AS the President entered the library, which was in a sad state of disorder by reason of the half-emptied boxes of papers and books he had sent over from his apartments, he found his father reading and half nodding in a great leathern chair.

The old man rose with a start, and the volume fell from his hands to the floor. He came forward and grasped Philip affectionately by the shoulders. Then he held him at arm’s length and gazed earnestly at the anxious face.

“My son, my son,” he exclaimed. “An’ is a weel wi’ ye in these sair trooblous times?”

“Yes, father, as well as I could expect.” Again Philip shivered. He felt a curious sense of coldness which surprised and annoyed him.

“Ye’re cauld,” exclaimed Angus.

“It’s chilly here. The window is open. No, sit down, please. I’ll close it.”

He went to the casement and looked out, as if for tidings of the night.

“The sky is dark again,” he said to himself. “The flames have been quenched by the rain, to break forth again—when? Where?”

“It is cold here,” he said again, turning to his father. Then, for the first time, he noted the littered appearance of the room. “Why, father, what have yon been doing?”

“Putting the bukes in poseetion, that’s a’; the dear bukes,” replied Angus, bending over his treasures and stroking their backs as tenderly as if they were sentient things.

“You never could bear to have anyone else touch them,” said Philip, with a smile at the old-time jealousy, “not even me. Now you’d better bundle off to bed, like a good father.”

Angus shook his gray head decisively.

“Na, Philip, not yet. I want tae—tae talk wi’ ye, tae hear—” His voice quivered with anxiety, and his tongue refused to conclude the sentence. To hide his emotion he made a great ado about wiping his spectacles and replacing them in exact position.

“Well, have your own way,” returned the son kindly. “You always were masterful, you know. I’ll make a little fire with these box covers and paper.”

He busied himself for a minute or two collecting the rubbish and placing it in the grate, while the keen eyes of old Angus watched every movement and noted, too, the worn and harassed air of his son. Tenderness welled up from the heart that had been sealed so long, and with it came pity and a great fear for the future. This was no longer the President of the United States, but his boy, the boy whose youth he had, perhaps, not made as bright as he should. He came over to where Philip stood gazing at the fast rising flames, and touched him gently on the arm.

“Philip.” he said very softly.

“Yes, father.”

“I maun tell ye summat.”

“Yes.”

“These bukes—ye ken they were aye meant for you, and ye ken I made ye pay for ye’er board when that ye were a lad? Ye ken that?”

“Of course, and I was often very much scared when pay day came and I was a few pennies behind.”

“Weel, I meant it for ye’er gude, Philip.”

“I do not doubt it.”

“For ye’er gude, lad,” the old man repeated earnestly. “Ilka cent ye paid me went intae the library—ye’er library. That ye most like didna ken, Philip.”

Tears filled the President’s eyes and words were choked in his throat. To conceal the emotion for which he felt that species of shame common to men of a strong race, he stooped and picked up one of the boxes from which the books had been taken, and carried it to the fireplace, where he emptied its contents of paper and bits of broken wood on the flames. Having mastered himself, he turned to see his father’s head nodding in a chair.

“Poor old man,” he said to himself. “Worn out, and so am I—so am I.”

He leaned against the mantel-piece and gazed down into the fire, whose curling tongues were licking with the savagery of a wild animal the food he had just provided. Again he thought with shame of that other and larger conflagration in which the passions of men had played their part. And, as the flames died down and left a red and glowing mass behind, he wondered if so would the excitement of a half-crazed people.

Then something that surely was not meant for fire caught his eye. Among the ruddy embers were the dark covers of a book, stretched out as if in mute appeal for rescue. With the inborn and highly trained love for the printed page, he stooped and dashed his hand into the grate, pulling the volume, a charred and blackened mass, upon the hearthstone.

To seize a vase from the mantel, and pour its contents, flowers and all, upon the object he had saved was but the work of an instant. He glanced toward his father with almost child-like perturbation.

“Fast asleep,” he murmured thankfully. “If he knew it, he’d almost want to chastise me. It must have been in the box I emptied into the fire. I wonder what book it is.”

He picked up the warm, moist volume and carried it to the shaded lamp. The ruin was pathetic and complete—no, not quite complete, he saw, for one poor, flame-seared page still remained in part, and on it he read these words:

“ And the devil, taking Him up into an high mountain, shewed unto Him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time.

“ And the devil said unto Him, All this power will I give thee, and the glory of them: for that is delivered unto me; and to whomsoever I will I give it.

“If thou therefore wilt worship me, all shall be thine.

“ And Jesus answered and said unto him, Get thee behind me, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt—”

His trembling Angers turned over the blackened cover. There, in a hand of almost ghostly delicacy, were the faint words: “Mary Craig, Her Bible.” Like a voice from the tomb of the buried years the words seemed to sound afar off.

Again he read the fragment of the page slowly, and 3s slowly repeated aloud:

“ ‘And said unto him, Get thee behind me, Satan.’ ”

With staring eyeballs he stood there, holding the sacred relic before him. Like a man condemned to die, he seemed to hear the minutes rush past with actual sound. Could nothing stop them, these inexorable masters of human destiny? Would no power grant him a reprieve, just a little space of time for thought, for the putting of himself right with his own soul and the demands of heaven? He groaned aloud in his agony.

“Eh—Philip, lad, what’s the matter?” muttered his father, awakened by the sound. He started up in affright as he saw the rigid face of his son.

“Philips” he said sharply.

“Yes,” was the reply, but the voice was that of a man held by a trance.

“What ails ye, Philip? What—”

“I have been away, far away,—on Satan’s mount.” The solemn words and the still, drawn face struck a chill to the old man’s heart. Was his son, his strong, splendid Philip, going mad?

But presently the younger man came to him and gently put the remains of the book in his lap.

“Look, father,” he said gently.

Horrified, Angus saw the pitiful wreck of the familiar Bible, the most intimate and precious memento of his idolized wife. His face grew stern with the shocking discovery.

“Ye’er mither’s gude book, Philip,—in the fire!” he said.

“I saved it from the fire; perhaps it will—oh, father, father!”

The long strain of the bitter conflict, the terrible disappointment, the message from the flames, broke the man down utterly, and like a boy—yet as he had never done in boyhood days—Philip Craig, the President, knelt at his father’s knees and sobbed aloud. Here, and for the first time, he made a shrine for his bruised and wearied soul and felt no restraint.

Old Angus stroked his son’s head with womanly gentleness and crooned over him as over a child.

“My poor bairn, my bonny Philip,” he said. “Dinna ye grieve so sair. There is no fau’t in ye; the ithers hae done the harm.”

But Philip refused to be comforted, at least till he had poured out his story of struggle, of expected triumphs for his “people,” of grief at their violence and the sudden new light that had shone in upon his mind. Nor did his wise old confessor break in upon him until the whole had been told.

“I did what I thought best for the people, for the country,” he concluded in abject self-abasement, “but do two wrongs ever make a right? Have I not played the part of a sophist? How am I better than John Norton when I proclaim myself the arbiter of the destiny of others, when, by rousing men’s passions by appealing to their self-interest, I jeopardize the future peace and prosperity of the nation? Like Norton I have been borne headlong by a self-created torrent of ambition. I exulted in power, I thought, because it would benefit others. I would destroy in the effort to create.”

He paused for a moment, overcome by the bitterness of his own denunciation, and again felt his father’s soft hands resting upon his head as with a blessing.

“Oh, father, father,” he burst forth passionately, “I have been tempted, and to-night I yielded at the vision of the ‘kingdoms of the world.’ I have said in my heart: ‘I am the law; I shall rule; I shall be obeyed.’ I, who have preached for years of the rights of the people, would have taken their rights away. And now—now I am brought low.”

And thus the father and the son sat, until the cold and feeble light of dawn stole in at the window and gave an unearthly pallor to the lamp, and an added wanness to both their faces. In those hours of supreme self-contempt and attempted consolation and encouragement, the two found at last the holiness of kinship.

At sunrise Gen. MacMahon, in full uniform, and with a countenance as fresh and rosy as if loss of sleep were a tonic, arrived at the White House, accompanied by a mounted staff.

‘‘The President wishes to see you in his library,” he was told.

When he entered the room in response to a low reply to his knock, he saw that which, hardened soldier as he was, brought mist across his eyes. There in a chair, asleep, was Angus Craig, deep peace upon his face, while the President, seated by his side, held his father’s hand in his own.

“Speak softly, please, General,” he said, “my father is an old man—and wearied, and I do not want to wake him.”

To MacMahon the son looked the older and more wearied of the two, but it was not for him to speak his thoughts. In a whisper he asked:

“Your orders, Mr. President?”

‘‘You will remove your soldiers from the Capitol and disperse the Army of the East to its usual stations. Congress will meet in extraordinary session this afternoon.”

All the case-hardened old warrior’s ingrained homage for discipline could not prevent a start at this astounding information. He opened his mouth to speak, but the President raised a warning hand, and looked tenderly at the slumbering figure before him.

“Very well, Mr. President,” the General said in a low tone; then he bowed and went out to execute the orders he had received in such surprising* fashion.

“Curious, curious,” he muttered as he descended the stairs. “I could have sworn that when he raised his hand I saw in it the charred remains of a book. In heaven’s name what does it all mean?”

CHAPTER XLV

THE NEW CABINET.

Have the newspapers arrived, Mr. Trent?”

“I believe so, Mr. President. I will bring them in.”

Philip Craig sat at the great table in the Cabinet Room engrossed in labor, and the sun was not yet an hour high. If his face was pinched and gray it was from physical causes now, for on it was a look of spiritual calm that had long been a stranger there.

Philip seized the papers eagerly and ran his eye over the black headlines on their first pages. A great sigh of relief, in which there was surprise, too, came from his lips as he saw that every journal had treated the matter of the “Embargo Riots,” as they were long known, with unlooked-for conservatism, dwarfing rather than magnifying their importance.

In their editorial utterances they gave still more comfort to the President, absolving entirely the People’s Congress and the class it represented from any responsibility for the outbreak, holding that it was a sporadic and natural manifestation of the effect of public feeling on the ruffianly element of the several cities where trouble had occurred.

“Thank God for the press, after all,” exclaimed Philip, fervently. “And yet how little they know of the facts. But it is better so—much better.”

Before long his work was interrupted by the cards of a perfect host of reporters and correspondents, who swarmed about the White House as if they could wring information from its very walls and doors. The gentlemen of the press certainly had much visual food for reflection and guesswork, for messengers were ever coming and going throughout the early forenoon, and men whose very names meant importance were seen entering the building, to emerge with events writ large upon their faces.

Among these callers were several of the senators who had been most bitter in their hostility to the President, and from this fact the newspaper men argued a compromise of some sort. But they refrained from sending out conjectures, for the most unthinking of them felt that at so critical a time there must be facts or nothing.

For a rime the President firmly declined to receive any of the journalists or to give them word as to what was happening. But, shortly before noon, he sent Mr. Trent to the correspondent’s ante-room with the announcement that he had a statement for the press, and requested them to choose one of their number to receive it. Landor, the agent of the Associated Press, was unanimously selected, as being in the best position to forward the plain statement to the papers they served; this they could embellish later as seemed individually fitting.

The President was alone when Landor entered the Cabinet Room, and he rose cordially to greet the man whom he had always liked and trusted.

“I am glad you have been chosen, Mr. Landor,” he said, “for I wish through you and the press to take the people into my confidence. For the sake of restoring public tranquillity as speedily as possible I propose that the newspapers shall anticipate, semi-officially, so to speak, my policy. To issue a personal and formal statement of intent might result, in this time of excitement, in misapprehension. I prefer, at all events, that you gentlemen should tell the facts as if gathered by you and not dictated by me. You comprehend?”

Landor bowed his understanding of the affair, and his face was instinct with sympathy and interest as he prepared to transcribe for the world the most important news he had ever gathered.

“I can state the case in very few words,” the President went on. “I shall call—in fact, have already called by personal messages to each member—an immediate extraordinary session of Congress. The embargo bill will be enacted at once, and I have absolute assurances that all the legislation affecting the interests of the wage-earners of the nation that has been introduced at this year’s session, will be adopted, with the possible exception of the arbitration bill. Even that may be passed in a modified form.”

“A victory, a tremendous victory,” thought Landor, as he worked array at his notes with the utmost care. And yet the calm voice, in which there was even a touch of listlessness, of dull unconcern, was not that of a man who had triumphed over his enemies, and wdiose dearest hopes were about to be realized. But perhaps it was but another phase of this strange character, and not to be taken for what would be its face value in another.

“I have been criticised, Mr. Landor,” said Craig, “I have even been accused of potential tyranny because I have not named a cabinet. I have not done so tor very simple reasons. The men I could have had two days ago my enemies would have denounced as demagogues; others whom I would have liked would not have served in my cabinet—as matters stood then.”

Landor looked up with keen appreciation in his eyes; he understood, and understanding, honored the President more than evef.

“To-day it is different. I have appealed to men, not to partisans. The cabinet I have selected is composed of citizens whose public service in the past has entitled them to the honors of retirement. But each is a Cincinnatus, and I believe that none of them will refuse to take up the burden again for the sake of the country. In fact, the replies I have already received to my duplicate telegrams prove that I am not over-confident.”

He pointed with a certain glow of pride to a little pile of yellow sheets that lay upon the desk. Here at least were the fruits of a work in which there could be no blemish of regret, no taint of any interest save the nation’s.

“I shall announce my cabinet through you,” said the President. “These are the names.”

Notwithstanding his long training in the profession that seeks to know no possible shock to the nerves, Landor heard the reading of the names with more excitement than he had known since the salad days of his first assignment.

The list was. indeed, extraordinary. It contained the names of former cabinet officers of both parties; of a great senator whose learning and uprightness had made him known all over the world; of two retired congressmen with unstained records of long service; of a noble philanthropist who was still a man of affairs; of a famous sociologist who had studied the masses to effective purpose.

Great as was the personnel of this new official family for the President, eminently fitting as were the men for the tasks to which they were called, it was evident that they had been chosen chiefly because of the confidence they would inspire in the minds of all good citizens throughout the land. As a general is sometimes appointed for the effect of his mere personality on the morale of the army, so were these great commanders of peace named by the chief executive. If the move were sensational, it had, at least, the sanction of splendid precedent.

Landor ran his pencil down the list, and stopped suddenly.

‘‘You have not mentioned—”

“The secretary of industry and the secretary of state,” interrupted the President. “They are important, are they not, for one will be my successor while the other”—he smiled with a sadness that somehow affected Landor like a strain of mournful music—“the other may be. The secretary of industry will be Adoniram Bentley. You, who know him and his works, know why he is chosen. The identity of the secretary of state will not be known until—well, until he has accepted.”

The newspaper man, his sense of professional duty again aroused, rose to leave with his wonderfully rich “copy.” To him came the President, and, placing both arms on his shoulders, gazed into his face with a sad smile that Landor never forgot.

“Is it—a good ‘story,’ Landor? A pity, isn’t it, that it’s not an ‘exclusive.’ Tell me, Landor,”— and the grip on the newspaper man’s shoulders tightened—“not as journalist to President, but as one man to another: have I done well? Will America be at rest? Will the people be satisfied?” “They will, Philip, they will; they cannot be otherwise,” replied the other with intense earnestness, grasping the President’s hand with an admiration and a depth of respect he had felt for few men.

As he passed into the ante-room Landor saw Luke Ford’s spare form standing near a window, as if the mind inside it were engaged in deep thought. Ford could scarcely be said to have come unscathed through the warfare of the night before, for his ecclesiastical coat was disfigured by stains and scorches, and his hat-brim sagged mournfully, as if it had borne weight never intended for such an article. One eye had a suggestion of puffiness, and altogether the leader of the men of “action” looked distinctly seedy.

Landor shook his head dubiously at the sight of the visitor.

“I had forgotten—the People’s Congress,” he said to himself. “How will he deal with that?”

In course of time came Ford’s turn to reach the President. Pie limped in with a shame-faced air which did not accord with the attempted good-fellowship with which he extended his hand.

“Good morning, Philip—”

“ Air. President,’ Mr. Ford, “said the executive, gravely. His caller, -abashed, looked about for a chair. “No, you need not sit. What I have to say is better said—and heard—standing. The People’s Congress is still in session?”

“Yes, when I left. I don’t know—”

“But you do know. You know that it awaits the report of your interview with me. Your report must be that the congress adjourn and its delegates proceed peaceably and immediately to their homes.”

• “I—I—wnv should I take such a message?” “You must take it, and you must add that you, and those who, with you, have been the extremists among the delegates, realize at last your fatal error: that force is a necessity in this republic.” Ford shifted his long legs nervously, and plunged his hand into his pocket, whence it emerged with a plug of his black tobacco. He raised it to his mouth.

“You must do this—at once, sir,” continued the President more sternly than Ford had ever heard him speak. Anger convulsed his dark face, and the hand that bore the tobacco fell to his side like lead.

“By God, Craig!” he shouted, “I see what it is. It’s as I feared. You’re a quitter.”

“No,” replied Craig, calmly. “I have just begun —just begun to know the truth: that power, to its last particle, is duty.”

“Tell the congress yourself!” blustered Ford, gaining courage from the President’s serenity. “Tell them you have broken your pledge.”

“I have not broken it, but they have broken theirs to me. Mine will be fulfilled.”

The lank agitator turned to go, and on the way to the door flung his last defiance over his shoulder.

“I won’t bear your message, Craig,” he burst forth. “You can’t bulldoze me! I—”

“Stop there, Ford,” rang out the President’s voice with a tone of authority that cowed his caller into silence. “I will give you one hour. If at the end of that time the delegates are not dispersing, I shall order your arrest.”

“Arrest!” sneered Luke. “Me? You don’t dare to! On what charge, pray?” His insolent laugh was of short life.

“On the charge of arson.”

“Arson? I?”

“Yes, you. I was within twenty feet of you last night when you seized a torch and cried: ‘On to Norton’s; smoke out the plutocrat!’ ”

Ford’s sallow face grew white as marble, and he almost staggered against the wall. Clutching his battered hat in both hands, he went slowly out without another word.

This episode had scarcely faded from the day’s doing;s, when Secretary Trent brought the President a telegram. He read it twice, folded it carefully and placed it in an inside pocket, then turned to his secretary with a smile of content.

“My cabinet is complete,” he said. “The secretary of state that is to be accepts. You wished to ask me something, Mr. Trent?”

“The Nortons are about to leave, and Mrs. Norton wishes to see you.”

Mrs. Norton! Then what of Helen? Would she, could she go away with last night’s enigmatical words for her farewell? He could pursue the thought no further.

“I will see her at once,” he said to Trent. “Is Mr. Norton able to travel?”

“Physically he seems quite himself, Dr. Lewis says, but he will never be able to undertake business cares again.”

During the few moments of waiting, Philip sat at his desk, his forehead resting on his upturned palm, and thought moodily of the parting that was so near. And as they say a drowning man’s life is flashed in incredibly swift but orderly panorama before his mental sight, so did the great salient features of Craig’s existence roll by in exact sequence. His boyhood, his shifting for himself, his first awed glimpse of Norton, his engagement in a humble place, his climbing as with seven-leagued boots to the heights of power, his love for Plelen, his breaking with the cold financial king, his air-castle’s fall, his long helplessness, his rise to a new strength, his astounding elevation to the Presidency, his struggle for a principle, his grief and shame at the riot, his supreme temptation and his victory—all these things trooped past in the twinkling of an eye. And now—

“Have I been all wrong?” he murmured with passionate self-questioning. “Was Bentley right? Would I have benefited the world more to have stood between Norton and—”

A door opened gently, and Mrs. Norton’s sweet face appeared, pale and pathetic, but full of friendly light. And behind her was another.

“She has come, after all,” Philip thought with a great throb of joy. Parting? Perhaps; but that might mean another meeting. Even tears are sometimes lovers’ rainbows.

“I could not go,” began Mrs. Norton, “without expressing our deep gratitude, Mr. Pre—”

“Don’t, don’t, Mrs. Norton,” broke in Philip vehemently, “I have borne much of late, but I am human. Gratitude—from you—is more than I can endure.”

“We arc going out west,” she continued without apparent notice of his words, although her own sufferings had made her acute to the troubles of others, “to the farm we have always kept— where we first met. Perhaps there—”

The thought of the silent, nerveless, beclouded man in another room choked her utterance and she turned her head. Philip felt inexpressible pity for this kindly woman, who, after all, had borne the heaviest burden. He stepped to her side and encircled her shoulder with a caressing arm. She turned her brimming eyes to his.

“I never knew my mother,” he said, “may I—”

The eloquent face was raised to his, and he kissed the trembling lips as one kisses some sacred thing. She bowed her head on his shoulder, and wept softly without restraint. Thus he led her to the door, and paused. Helen was close behind.

“You are going, too—Helen?” he asked, in a voice so low that he did not know if she had heard.

“Yes, Philip.”

“I shall—see you again?”

“Yes, if you wish—when my duty is—is ended.”

He looked at her pure, beautiful profile with dimmed eyes, and understood. But of a sudden, with the swiftness of an alighting bird, her lips brushed the hand that lay upon her mother’s shoulder and he felt the thrill of a kiss.

Then mother and daughter went silently down the heavily carpeted stairs and were gone.

5*« He 5j«

That day the People’s Congress, following the advice contained in an especially earnest speech by Luke Ford, adjourned sine die. The Congress of the United States assembled in extraordinary session, and before the majority of the United Men of America’s delegates reached their homes, had passed the embargo bill and several other measures calculated to relieve the pressure upon the masses.

There were not wanting the customary cynical gentlemen to assert that the Senate acquiesced in all these things because its backbone had departed with the retirement of John Peter Norton. However, the popular belief and joy were so great that few cared to look for motives beneath the blessings of fact.

The removal of the palsied hand of Norton from the lever of his colossal financial machine caused its inevitable flurry in the market. Values were swept away in a day, and an enormous depreciation of everything with which he had been connected followed most naturally. Rumor said that the man who had built the fallen house of cards had been ruined in the crash. At any rate, the shaking down of the market resulted in ultimate good, and the “Norton era” of inflation and over-capitalization passed away unhonored, if not unsung.

President Craig’s new cabinet appointments were promptly confirmed by the Senate, and this action was followed by the nomination of a secretary of state. At the announcement of his name the country and the world applauded. He was a man who had twice served the nation in its highest place with the utmost honor to himself and it, and who, in his semi-retirement, had come to be looked upon as the wise counsellor, the unpartisan Nestor who knew how to point out, as he had known how to tread, the path of truth and righteousness.

On the day following, Philip Craig resigned from the Presidency of the United States. The proclamation he issued to the people closed with these words:

“While I feel that my brief term in an authority which fell to me by chance has not been without benefit to the nation, I believe that I should resign my office into the keeping of a man who has twice been honored by the people through their ballot-box, and whom it has since honored still more in his retirement. … In my endeavors for the people I loved, in my battle for ‘Weakerdom/ I have made mistakes, but no error of mine was so great as that committed when, for a time, I forgot that I was only a man face to face with that most Satanic and insidious of tempters—Power.”

CHAPTER XLVI

’NEATH THE EVENING STAR.

THE evening sun was painting a rosy flush upon the white minarets of the Sierras, as a little group of three sat upon the low veranda of the plain farmhouse of a California ranch. One, a large featured, dull-eyed man, was half reclining in a great easy chair, staring vacantly at the far off mountains whence had sprung his wealth. Once or twice he nodded his head gently as if in communion with the snowy summits, but he spoke no word. He lived in the silence of memory and his own thoughts.

Near him sat a gray-haired, placid-faced woman working some beautiful embroidery, and just beyond a fair-haired girl, in the prime of loveliness, was bending over a book. Only the call of belated birds and the sighing of a gentle breeze disturbed the silence.

‘‘Come, John,” said the older lady at length, “the night air is getting chilly. You had better go in.”

Like a child the man allowed himself to be helped to his feet, and into the house. As his shuffling-footsteps were lost to sound, the girl threw down her book and looked dreamily into the empurpled west, where fantastic clouds were building their enchanted city.

The steady beating of hoofs, coming nearer and nearer, roused her from her reverie, Soon two horsemen came into view and drew rein before the veranda.

“A letter for yer, Miss Helen,” cried the younger rider, waving something white in his right hand.

“Why Muggsy,” said the girl, “I didn’t know—”

“Yes; me an’ Doc thought there might be somethin’, so we rode over to Alario—just a kind of constitut’nal gallop, ye know.”

The elder Bavles dismounted with infinite caution, assisted by his dutiful son, and hobbled upon the veranda, consigning his “rheumatics” to various sorts of perdition the while.

“Miss Helen,” he said, “is your mother around handy? I—I—that is—I want ter say somethin’ to her, if she’s no objection.”

“Why, of course, Doc,” returned Helen, smiling. “She went into the house with my father. I think she’ll be out presently.”

“Thankee, Miss,” said the old trainer, settling himself stiffD in a chair, “I’ll set, if ye don’t mind.” While Helen was reading her letter, Mrs. Norton came from the house, and “Doc’s” opportunity arrived. But he seemed ill at ease and curiously abashed. At length he pulled an envelope desperately from an inside pocket and held it toward his mistress.

“It’s somethin’ we wants yer to see,” he blurted. “Me and Muggsy writ to New York a while ago an’ we’ve jest got the answer.”

Mrs. Norton took the missive and drew from the envelope a pink slip of paper. Her mild eyes opened wide with astonishment as she saw its import.

“Why—a certified check, and for a large amount. And made out to me?”

“Yes’m—that is—to you, yes’m.”

“To you—yes’m,” chimed in “Muggsy,” who had just returned from the stables.

“But the envelope is addressed to you. I—don’t understand.”

“Well, Ma’am,” explained “Doc” with glowing face, “it’s the American Handicap stakes—”

“That Mr. Norton give us,” put in the younger Bayles.

“An’ we read how Mr. Norton’s money was— ‘gone, so we—we—”

“We never had no right to the stakes anyway,” exclaimed “Muggsy.”

“An’ we kep’ ’em in case he should want ’em back,” concluded “Doc,” with the air of having settled a grave question.

Mrs. Norton looked into the old man’s face with an expression that made him shift his position and fumble his hat nervously. She glanced at her daughter, who was still reading her letter, and then turned again towards the father and son.

“You are dear, good souls, both of you,” she said with a radiant smile, “but really the money is not needed.”

“Then ye hain’t lost yer money,” exclaimed “Doc” almost incredulously, as he took the extended check mechanically.

“Oh, no, not in the sense you mean. Of course there was a great depreciation, but we have far more than we shall ever need.”

“But—Mr. Haven?” persisted old Bayles.

“Mr. Haven betrayed his trust and was an embezzler,” she replied, “but he is a fugitive and can never return to America. Nor did he ruin us, by any means.”

“‘She ain’t lost it, Muggsy,” exclaimed Bayles, senior, shaking his head slowly. “Ain’t it too bad?”

“Too bad,” echoed the son, thereupon lapsing into speechlessness, and as the two turned towards the stables Mrs. Norton followed them with eyes which shone with suspicious moisture.

The glow of sunset had faded to a dull, tremulous suggestion of color in the west, but its glory was bequeathed to earth in the sparkling silver of an evening star. Helen Norton looked up from her letter and to the resplendent planet, her face lighted by something that neither sun nor star could call into being. Her mother noted the beauty of the new look, and saw, too, the bit of paper in her hand.

“Is it from—him?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“What does he say, my dear?”

“He and his father are going to Australia.”

“To Australia?”

“Yes,” said the girl gently, “to study the conditions there, he says, as well as for complete change of scene. He will be gone about a year.”

“And then?”

“He asks if he may come to—to me.”

“Helen!”

Night spread its dusky wings over the farmhouse and blotted out the world from the two women who were gently sobbing in one another’s arms. But each knew that smiles were mingled with the tears.

The End.