CHAPTER I

Transcriber’s Notes:

Underscores “_” before and after a word or phrase indicate _italics_

in the original text.

Equal signs “=” before and after a word or phrase indicate =bold=

in the original text.

Small capitals have been converted to SOLID capitals.

Antiquated spellings have been preserved.

Typographical errors have been silently corrected.

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=April, 1905=

_Politics and Economics_ _Thomas E. Watson_ 129

_In Russia—“Give Them Free Passes and They Will Become

as Servants”—Two Outlaws—Building on Sand, Again—Look

at England—Editorial Comments—How Private Ownership

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_The Patriot_ 142

_The Atonement of Hustler Joe_ _Eleanor H. Porter_ 145

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_The Gray Weed_ _Owen Oliver_ 187

_With Caste Against Him_ _Hugh Pendexter_ 196

_Corrupt Practices in Elections_ _Hon. Lucius F. C. Garvin_ 203

_Ex-Governor of Rhode Island_

_Pole Baker_ _Will N. Harben_ 208

_How I Dined With President Grant_ _B. F. Riley_ 221

_The New York Children’s Court_ _Hon. Joseph M. Deuel_ 225

_What Buzz-Saw Morgan Thinks_ _W. S. Morgan_ 234

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_The Say of Reform Editors_ 245

_News Record_ 248

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=_TOM WATSON’S MAGAZINE_=

VOL. I APRIL, 1905 No. 2

_Politics and Economics_

BY THOMAS E. WATSON

_In Russia_

“A Tale of Two Cities,” written by the great novelist, Charles Dickens,

contains a vivid picture, which shows the relation existing between a

nobleman of the Old Order in France and one of the common people.

In that day the streets were narrow. Sidewalks did not separate the

space used by those who went on foot from that used by those who went in

vehicles. From the houses on the one side to the houses on the other,

travel was free to all: those on the ground were ever in danger from

those who were in vehicles.

Dickens describes the progress of the carriage of one of the French

aristocrats, driven at headlong speed along these narrow streets. It

whirled around the corners with a wild rattle and clatter, and with

an utter lack of consideration for pedestrians. Women and children

scattered, screaming, to get out of its way, and men clutched at one

another to escape the danger.

At last, whirling round a corner, by a fountain, one of the wheels of

this furiously driven carriage strikes a little child and kills it. Amid

the loud cries of those who behold the sickening spectacle the horses

rear and plunge and the carriage comes to a standstill. The nobleman

looks out and calmly inquires what has gone wrong. He is told that a

child has been run over.

A man is bending over the lifeless form, screaming with grief.

“Why does he make that abominable noise?” asks the nobleman.

“Pardon me, Monsieur le Marquis, it was his child,” explains one of the

crowd humbly.

“Killed!” screams the father, lifting and extending his arms. “Dead!” he

cries.

The Marquis runs his eye over all the rabble, as though they were so many

rats come out of their holes. He draws out his purse.

“I do not see why it is that you people won’t take care of yourselves and

children? One or the other of you are always in the way. HOW DO I KNOW

THAT YOU HAVE NOT INJURED ONE OF MY HORSES?”

With this he throws a gold coin on the ground beside the father of the

child.

The crazed parent continues to scream: “Dead! Dead!”

As the Marquis is driving away, the gold coin which he had thrown to the

ground is flung back into the carriage, and falls rattling at his feet.

“Hold!” says the Marquis. “Hold the horses! Who threw that coin?”

The crowd makes no answer. No blouse-clad man dare look him in the eye.

“You dogs!” says the Marquis smoothly; “I would ride over any of you very

willingly and exterminate you from the earth. If I knew who it was that

threw that coin I would have the brigand crushed under the wheels.”

So cowed were they, so long and hard had been their experience of what

such a man could do to them, that not a voice or a hand or an eye was

raised.

Such was the condition of the French before the great Revolution of 1789;

and while the picture is drawn by a novelist, it is the picture of a

novelist who painted human life and human conditions as they were never

painted before. His pictures were photographs.

In another book, not a novel but a history, (the title and the author of

which shall not be mentioned here), there is another description of human

relations under the _Ancien Régime_, and that description claims to be

literally true. I quote the author’s own words:

“Was it not in this same year, 1788, that the Duke of Béthune’s carriage,

dashing through the narrow streets, as was the aristocratic custom, ran

over a little girl in the rue de la Ferronnerie and killed her?

“Did not the mother see it all? Did not she rush wildly to the scene,

snatch up the poor crushed form, gaze distractedly into the eyes for

light _and see none_, lay her cheek to that of the child to feel the

warmth of life _and feel none_?

“Still was the little heart, gone the breath, blanched the cheeks, frozen

the tiny hands.

“What sound does the ear ever hear like that of the voice that was heard

of old in Ramah?

“Shriek after shriek split the air, piercing every heart in the crowd

that gathered as the frantic mother, holding her dead child in her arms,

gave voice to her grief.

“_And the Duke, what said he?_ ‘LET THE WOMAN COME TO MY HOUSE, AND SHE

SHALL BE PAID FOR HER LOSS.’

“He had not even left the carriage; _he had not spoken a word of sympathy

or regret_.

“In his view of the case he had done some damage to this woman, and,

being a man of honor, he was ready to settle the bill.

“That was all. ‘Drive on, coachman!’—and never a thought more did the

Duke waste on the mother or child. _They were not of his world, but of

another and a lower._”

This was more than one hundred years ago. Ever since that time we have

supposed that the human race has been advancing onward and upward toward

a higher and a better civilization.

The philosopher has reflected and advised. The statesman has studied and

planned. The reformer has made his battle-axe ring at the door of every

abuse.

Learning has spoken from all our schools. Religion has preached from all

our temples; and yet in one of the nations of Europe, where the king and

the priest have had absolute control of the minds and the bodies of the

people for hundreds of years, the point of view of the aristocrat is

precisely the same that it was in France in the year 1788. And the man of

the common people submits humbly in 1905 just as he did in 1788.

In Russia no man’s conscience is his own; it belongs to the Church. In

Russia no man’s action is free; he belongs to the State. The Czar rules

by “_Divine Right_.” He is the earthly representative of _the Most High

God_; the common people of the land are mere dirt under his feet, being

of a different world and a lower.

A few Sundays ago his people, in the belief that his heart—the heart of

their “Little Father”—was accessible to pity and to the plea for justice,

were coming in peaceful procession, accompanied by their wives and

their children, to kneel at his feet, lift up their supplicating hands,

and, with their own tongues, reach his ear with the true story of their

grievances.

Their Little Father refused to see them or hear them.

Their Little Father threw a glittering line of steel between himself and

his “children.” The Little Father ordered, “_Fire!_” and his children

fell before the storm of lead.

They were shot down like dogs; women and children were sabered or

crushed under the iron-shod feet of horses; they were scourged back to

their hovels, their cellars, their sweltering dens.

And the hundreds of dead bodies which littered the streets were thrown

into the river like so much carrion.

A few days afterward it was considered good politics by the Grand Dukes

who control this contemptible little Czar to grant a hearing to a

deputation representing these same laborers.

The whole world had been aroused to anger and indignation at the manner

in which the Cossacks had massacred the people.

Public sentiment had made itself felt even in the inner circles of the

heartless oligarchy which controls the Russian Empire.

Therefore the Czar was told to receive the deputation, and he did so. The

deputation bowed down to the earth before the Czar, who said: “_Good day,

my children._ I have summoned you to hear my words, and to communicate

them to your companions. The recent unfortunate events were _the

inevitable results of your own lawless actions_. Those who induced you

to address this petition to me desire to see you revolt against me and

my government.” After a few more words of the same complacent character,

this representative of God on earth said to the delegation:

“I am convinced of _the innocence of the workingmen_, and believe that

_they_ are well disposed toward me. I WILL PARDON THOSE TRANSGRESSORS.

RETURN AGAIN TO YOUR WORK. MAY GOD ASSIST YOU.”

The history of the world has so many revolting passages that I cannot

say that this Russian episode surpasses others, but when the head of a

great Christian government tunes his tongue to the formula of Divine

Right which was current during the Dark Ages, and gives us a dash of

medievalism, to be reported by a special correspondent in the daily

newspapers, there is something so anomalous about the situation that it

makes a peculiar impression of its own.

At least 2,000 of this emperor’s “children” had been butchered in cold

blood for the high crime of wishing to present a petition to him for

shorter hours of labor and a more liberal recognition of their status as

human beings.

“May God assist you,” says the Czar—leaving it to the benighted minds

of these untutored workmen to find out how it is that God is going to

assist them, when the representative of God on earth shoots them down by

the thousand, tramples them beneath the hoofs of Cossack horses, slashes

them with Cossack sabers, pierces them with Cossack lances, lashes them

with Cossack scourges, and sends them bleeding and howling back to their

hopeless homes and miserable lives, for no offense other than the wish to

kneel at his feet and pray for better treatment.

* * * * *

“I FORGIVE YOU!” says the Czar.

_Forgives them for what?_

For being denied the right to petition the throne, for being driven

back into serfdom, for being hacked and slashed and trampled and

bullet-riddled by the hireling savages of a barbarian government!

“_As the Great Father above forgives, so I, your Little Father,

forgives._”

Amen. Let the whimpering wretch who nurses a saber-slashed head recover

in peace. _He is pardoned for having been Cossacked._

Let the father who drags his lifeless daughter from under the hoofs of

the warhorse go weep over her in comfort—he and she are _forgiven for

having dared to hope for mercy from the Czar_.

And the nameless dead who went forth that Sabbath morning, following the

heroic priest whose baton was the Cross of Christ—went forth in the glow

of lofty purpose and pathetic hope, and whose bodies are now feeding the

fishes of the Neva—let them also rest in peace—_their Little Father has

forgiven them_.

“How do I know that you have not injured my horses?” asked Dickens’s

Marquis, while the frantic peasant was lamenting his crushed child.

“Let the woman come to my house; she shall be paid. Drive on, coachman,”

said the Duke of Béthune.

“Served you right!” says the Czar.

“Served you right!” say the Grand Dukes, speaking through the individual

called Vladimir.

“You should not have quit work. You should not have asked a hearing. You

got crushed by my troops. I forgive you for it. Go back to your work. Be

content with your lot. May God assist you.”

Thus the voice of class-rule speaks in Russia today as it spoke in France

on the eve of the Revolution, and as it always has spoken in every part

of the world _since man learned the trick of enslaving his brother_.

* * * * *

As everybody knows, the real governors of the vast empire of Russia are

the Grand Dukes. The Czar is a mere puppet in their hands. When he is

obedient they control him. When he is disobedient they murder him. Thus

they killed Paul, the father of Alexander the First, because he favored

an alliance with Napoleon Bonaparte, while the Grand Dukes favored an

alliance with Great Britain. They would “remove” the present emperor if

he were to pit his will against theirs.

The spokesman of the present cabal of Grand Dukes is Vladimir, as perfect

a type of the cruel, obstinate, narrow-minded aristocrat as Europe ever

saw in its worst days.

Speaking to Michael Davitt, the Irish member of the British Parliament,

this Grand Duke declared that the reason why representation could not

be given to the common people of Russia was that _they were not fit to

exercise it_.

He regarded and intended this to be an indictment against the common

people. On the contrary, it is a tremendous indictment against the

government.

The Russian people, as distinguished from the Russian aristocracy, have

been completely under the control of the laws and the administration

which the ruling class saw fit to establish. The altar and the throne

have supported each other. Church and State have been firm and fast

allies. Ever since the days of Peter the Great the minds and the

consciences of the common people of Russia have been absolutely dominated

by the ruling class.

The shepherds have had full control of the flock. The guardians have had

no interference with the education of their wards.

If after so many hundreds of years the mass of the Russian people are so

steeped in ignorance and superstition that they are unfit to exercise the

common rights of manhood, _that fact_, if it be fact, _damns the Russian

aristocracy with the deep guilt of having debased the nation committed to

its care and guidance_.

* * * * *

No substantial reform has ever been conceded within a state governed by

king or aristocracy until the blood of sacrifice has first been shed.

Spain would grant no concessions to those who claimed freedom of

conscience in the Netherlands, until years of warfare had drenched the

soil of Holland with the blood of heroes, who fought and died for those

principles which we carelessly and unappreciatively enjoy today.

France would loosen none of the chains which galled the peasant, until

that peasant rose in his desperation and paid with his life for the

liberty his descendants inherit. The king was deaf to all prayers.

The aristocracy drove from power with insults and persecution every

enlightened minister who proposed to better the condition of the common

people by conceding moderate reforms. It was only when the desperation of

despair roused the people to a furious attack upon time-honored abuses

and vested wrongs of every conceivable kind, that “_privilege_” would

harken to reason, and Right could find a place on the statute-book.

In England the story has been the same. In the long procession of the

ages in which the common people have wrung, one by one, from the grip

of aristocracy those liberties upon which we now pride ourselves, the

price of blood has been always demanded, and invariably paid. Never has

king or aristocrat conceded a single demand of the reformers until those

reformers had either won it in battle or had made such a demonstration as

_struck fear into the hearts of the ruling class_.

In Russia precisely the same state of affairs exists, and if ever liberal

institutions are to take the place of grand ducal tyranny and class-rule

in that empire the soil will once more drink the blood of sacrifice. It

was so in the beginning, is now, and ever will be, perhaps, for human

nature is the same “yesterday, today and forever.”

The man who believes that the autocratic class in Russia will give up its

advantages without a fight is a superficial student of history, just as

the man who believes that the dominating trusts and corporations in these

United States can be made, by moral suasion, to turn loose, is an idle

dreamer who knows nothing of the greed of class-rule. No matter under

what name it exploits the people, or under what form it exerts its power,

or under what particular system of legislation it usurps control and

veils its rascalities, to make it _turn loose_ you must beat it in battle

OR MAKE IT AFRAID.

“_Give Them Free Passes and They Will Become as Servants_”

The manner in which the railway pass can make honest men steal was never

illustrated more clearly than when the Southern Railroad of J. P. Morgan,

a few days ago, filched $142,000 from the taxpayers of this country.

It was a shameless, impudent, vulgarly common steal—nothing else. The

Congressmen who stole this money for the Wall Street King, J. P. Morgan,

were led by the well-known statesman of Alabama, John H. Bedstead.

Many and many a year ago a stupid Post-Office Department adopted the

policy of paying subsidies to certain railroads for the carriage of mails

which they had already contracted to carry.

It is doubtful whether a single dollar of this money was well spent. To

secure the ridiculously high prices which the government pays for the

carriage of the mail, the railroads could always have been induced to

contract for as speedy a delivery as was possible.

Subsidies could not make them do more. Even a stupid P. O. Department

woke up to this fact, at last, and quit paying the subsidies.

Mails were carried just as fast after that as before.

The rate of payment is so high—the plum so very luscious—that the

corporation could not refuse the contracts, _especially when they could

borrow a rascally congressman’s frank, stuff the bags with bogus mail,

and thus secure a false average of weight upon which they were paid for

the whole year_.

(Congressman Livingston of Georgia can tell you how this is done.)

But the Southern Railroad clung to the subsidy.

_It needed the money_, as Meredith of Virginia once plaintively stated in

the House.

The P. O. Department no longer asked it or advised it—but certain

congressmen from the South who are ravenously fond of free passes stood

by the hungry corporation, and at every session of Congress this subsidy

is voted.

The false pretense, used as an excuse, is that it secures _fast mail for

the South_.

There is no truth in the statement. Under an ordinary contract for mail

carriage, the government can secure precisely the same service as the

railroad gives in return for the subsidy. In other words, the $142,000

is _a gift to the Wall Street Monarch, J. P. Morgan_.

Hon. James H. Blount of Georgia was for many years Chairman of the

Committee on Post-Offices and Post Roads.

He understood every detail of that service. He bitterly opposed this

subsidy. I myself heard him denounce it in the most wrathful manner;

and he declared on the floor of the House that the people got nothing

whatever for it.

It was a donation—nothing more.

Blount’s place in Congress is now partially filled by a different kind of

man—and the indignant protest of the South against the contemplated steal

was not voiced by him or by any other member from Georgia.

That honor was won by Tennessee.

When Hon. John A. Moon and John Wesley Gaines denounced this subsidy as

it deserved, they earned the applause and the grateful remembrance of

every honest man in the South.

The Hon. R. B. Macon of Arkansas also deserves the highest credit for his

opposition to the theft.

Of course, “Slippery Jim” Richardson of Tennessee rushed to the relief of

the corporation, _as “Slippery Jim” always does_, and the robbers, led by

the Bedstead statesman of Alabama, prevailed.

The Congressman from Georgia, or Alabama or any other Southern state who

helps Samuel Spencer and J. P. Morgan steal the taxes of the people upon

the plea that it is done for the benefit of the South, merits the scorn

and contempt of every decent Southern man.

But those who excuse their votes upon that pretense are hypocrites, or

dupes.

They know, or should know, that the subsidy gives no benefit to the South

which she would not be entitled to under an ordinary mail contract.

The Congressmen who stole this money from the treasury for Morgan’s

Railroad were seduced _by the indirect bribery of railway favors_—JUST

THAT, and NOTHING ELSE.

_Two Outlaws_

Once upon a time there was a great lawyer, orator, financier and

statesman who was honest. He bore himself among men with the port of a

king, and even strangers, when they passed him on the streets, would stop

and look back at that majestic figure with involuntary admiration. To

see him was to get a new idea of the natural impressiveness of a great

man. To hear him talk was to learn more than you had ever dreamed of the

infinite variety of creative intellect.

I knew him well. And I looked up to him as I have since looked up to the

higher summits of the Rocky Mountains—with wondering awe for height which

I might never hope to reach.

Royal as this man was in all his ways, his heart was warm and true. Pure

as the woman he called wife in his loyalty to the marriage tie, his

morality recognized the double-life nowhere, and he scorned all that was

mean and false and cruel and oppressive.

Always and everywhere he was for the under-dog.

A more stalwart soldier of Right never stood up in defense of the weak.

In a murder case he was able to command a fee of ten thousand dollars;

but he was proudest of that triumph he won in the court-house when he

volunteered to defend a penniless negro, and saved the life of the

accused by tearing open his shirt and showing the scars which the black

man had received on a battlefield in Virginia while defending the life of

his young master.

Having incurred the displeasure of the Federal authorities prior to

the Civil War and by certain conduct of his during that war, the best

Government the world ever saw told him to “git up and git”—and he did it.

In his native land he was outlawed.

He went to Europe for his health.

While waiting for the wrath of Thaddeus Stevens to cool, he studied

conditions abroad—particularly the railroad systems and the public

schools.

Upon his return home he created a demand for a new Constitution for his

State, and in the convention which framed it he was the undisputed leader.

The legislative appropriations for the convention were spent before

the Constitution was finished, and the patriots were about to disband.

Average patriotism moves on its belly, as an army does.

The Georgia outlaw of whom I have been writing borrowed $25,000 from his

Cotton Factors, and financed the convention until the Constitution was

finished.

On two occasions only was this Outlaw ever seen to weep in public—once

when the Constitutional Convention of Georgia thanked him for his

princely generosity, and once when he stood at the coffin of Alexander H.

Stephens to deliver the memorial address.

In the new Constitution of Georgia the Outlaw believed he had embodied

three grand provisions:

(1) He had made the looting of the treasury a difficult job.

(2) He had established a system of public schools to educate at public

expense the children of the poor as well as the rich.

(3) He had put a curb on corporation tyranny; made it illegal for

competitive lines of railways to combine, and had created a commission to

regulate and control the transportation companies.

This was the Georgia Outlaw’s proudest work. He exulted over it; he

regarded it as his monument: he relied on it to benefit his people for

generations to come.

In this belief he lived out the remnant of his days, and in this belief

he died.

Where are now the competing railroads in Georgia?

We have none. Mergers, leases, allied interests have swallowed them all.

Monopoly rules from border to border. Constitutional provisions are dead

letters.

The corporations who nullify our law and plunder our people keep paid

corruptionists busy all the year round to defeat investigation and

reform.

When the legislature meets, these professional corruptionists all flock

to the Capitol. They remain throughout the session.

If any member seeks to vindicate the outraged Constitution, these

lobbyists employ every weapon known to the armory of corruptionists to

kill the measure.

The campaign fund with which the present Governor beat his competitor was

furnished by the railroads.

The notorious Hamp McWorter, State lobbyist for the Southern Railroad,

was tendered a place on the Supreme Bench by this Governor, who owed his

election to railroad money.

The Railroad Commission has been reduced to a state bordering on

imbecility. If they pass orders which the corporations dislike the orders

are ignored. They no more control the railroads than the saddle on a

horse controls the horse.

Three excellent gentlemen draw comfortable salaries for acting as

commissioners; the railroad lawyers have something to play with; the

corporations are sometimes annoyed by having to evade direct answers to

troublesome questions, and by having to get a Federal Judge to discipline

the Commission; but that is about all.

_J. P. Morgan is the absolute king of the railroads of Georgia._

He makes the Governor, controls the Legislature, overrides the Commission

and tramples the Constitution of the State under his feet.

The Georgia Outlaw made the Constitution for the good of the people; the

Wall Street Outlaw violates it for the good of Wall Street plutocrats.

In making the Constitution, the Georgia Outlaw had the help of the best

people of the State, and his work was sanctioned by a popular vote after

it was finished.

In violating the Constitution, J. P. Morgan has the aid of the worst men

in Georgia, and they dare not submit their work to a free vote of the

people.

The party machinery of the Democratic party is prostituted to the vile

uses of the corporation lobbyists, and the negro vote is held in reserve

to be used as a club to beat down any organized opposition.

The Georgia Outlaw who made our Constitution was a Democrat; the Wall

Street Outlaw who violates it is a Republican.

Georgia is a Democratic state. The Democratic party is in full control of

every branch of the Government.

Thus we have an amazing spectacle. A Republican Wall Street outlaw uses

the machinery of the Democratic party in Georgia to trample upon the

Constitution and plunder the people.

What is the secret of this astonishing situation?

Bribery—direct and indirect BRIBERY.

Daily and weekly newspapers subsidized; rebates given to certain

shippers; favors granted where they will do the most good; campaign

funds supplied to needy candidates; free passes dealt out by the bushel;

princely salaries paid to plausible lobbyists.

Bribery, _bribery_, BRIBERY!

In no other way can you account for such a shocking state of affairs.

When Democrats hold down a Democratic State while a Wall Street

Republican robs it, there is just one explanation—only one—BRIBERY.

_Building on Sand, Again_

With a strenuous rush and clang and clatter, President Roosevelt has set

out to solve the Railroad Problem.

All honor to him for the motive. To his everlasting credit be it

remembered that he recognized the abuses of the present system and

shouldered the task of reform.

But Mr. Roosevelt’s remedy will never reach the seat of the disease.

In a case of blood poison, shin-plasters for surface abrasions never yet

saved the patient; and Mr. Roosevelt’s plans for another tribunal _to

control the railroads_ are mere shin-plasters.

The trouble is that _the corporations will control the new tribunals_,

just as they have controlled the old ones.

The tremendous pressure which combined capital can bring to bear upon any

tribunal which Congress creates will be irresistible in the future, as

it has been in the past. Poor human nature is simply unable to withstand

temptations which assume so many seductive forms, and intimidations which

assail natural weakness in such a variety of ways. So vast is the power

of the corporations to reward or punish, enrich or impoverish, that

individuals sink into nothingness by comparison. No man is beyond their

reach. If they cannot act upon the official himself, they can strike him

through his family, or relatives, or friends, or business connections.

Somewhere, within the little world in which he lives, they will find

someone who will yield to their temptations or surrender to their power

to hurt.

Railroads have been known to do great things for the son of a Judge who

was about to try an important case.

Governors, Senators, Judges, Railroad Commissioners sometimes have

relatives who are more or less willing to get hold of a good thing.

The wives of the same sometimes have approachable kinsmen who, for a

consideration, are willing to speak superciliously of the “demagogues”

who assail corporations.

Then, again, the newspapers—those busy bees!—can be so trained by

corporation cunning that they will give us their sting instead of their

honey.

If Sir Statesman votes with a serene disregard for Sir Demagogue, giving

the railroads what they want, Editorial prowess will take care of him.

His praises will resound, until his sublime head bumps against the stars.

But should he be his own master, obeying no orders save those of his

conscience, the corporation organs can so belittle him, slander him, and

manufacture lies about him, that he almost grows ashamed of having been

honest.

In short, the corporation can make “a good time” for those who serve it,

and “a bad time” for those who defy it.

_Do not all men know this?_

The more necessary any official is to combined capital, the more they

will do for him, or against him.

Create any tribunal which becomes an absolute necessity to the

corporations—a matter of life and death to them—and they will either

tempt it with bribes which no virtue can resist, or assail it with

intimidations which no courage can defy.

Mr. President, have you studied the history of “The Granger Cases” of

thirty years ago? If not, study it. Then you will know better how the

corporations control human tribunals and get rid of laws which are

obstacles.

Have you studied the recent decisions of the Federal Judges on the

question of fixing “reasonable rates”? If not, study them.

You will then know better what a monkey a railroad lawyer can make of a

Federal Judge.

To create another tribunal for the purpose of controlling the railroads,

is simply the building of another house upon sand.

The only solution of the Railroad Problem is national ownership, _which

takes away the motive to do wrong_.

In no other way can you cure the disease.

Instead of establishing another Court, or Commission, for the

corporations to play with, assert the principle of Eminent Domain, assess

the railroads at a fair valuation, pay for them partly in treasury

notes and partly in twenty-year two per cent. bonds, place the general

management of the property under the Interior Department—and _then_ the

railroads will no more think of free passes, rebates and discriminations

than the Post-Office service does of free stamps, or privileged patrons

who must be enriched at the expense of the other patrons.

_Look at England_

_Collier’s Weekly_ thinks that the United States should pay higher

salaries. Ambassadors do not get enough. Neither do cabinet officers. The

President also is underpaid. How lamentable!

“Look at England,” says _Collier’s_, in effect.

England pays $100,000 to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, $35,000 to the

Speaker of the House of Commons, and so forth and so on.

Well, let us accept the invitation, and _look at England_.

_Who pays the taxes in England?_ We know who pays them here. With us the

poor man pays the tax.

When he covers his nakedness, when he satisfies his hunger, when

he builds his house, when he buys tools to work with, he pays an

outrageously oppressive Tariff tax.

Rockefeller pays no more Federal tax than is paid by many a one-horse

negro farmer in the South.

Morgan pays less Federal tax than many a Western corn-grower who fed his

stove on ear corn in 1891, because it was cheaper than coal.

Blessed are our millionaires! Those of them who are neglected by Congress

are tenderly cared for by the Federal judiciary.

Blessed are the rich!—they run the government, and the common man pays

the bill.

LOOK AT ENGLAND!

All right, we now look. This is what we see:

_She compels her railway corporations to pay an Income Tax_ upon the

assessed valuation of $190,000,000.

_She compels the Coal Barons and the marble quarry owners to pay Income

Tax_ upon an assessed valuation of $95,000,000.

_She compels the landlords, bankers and merchant princes to pay Income

Tax_ upon an assessed valuation of $900,000,000.

In this manner _she forces her wealthy classes_ to pay on property and

income nearly _two hundred million dollars annually_ toward the support

of the government!

_Her tariff duties are levied exclusively upon articles which are NOT

necessaries of life._

Not a dollar of Tariff need the poor man pay to live in perfect comfort.

This tariff upon the non-necessaries amounts to $170,000,000.

From intoxicating liquors the revenue is $150,000,000.

Thus it will be seen, by a look at England, that _the poor man can feed

himself, clothe himself, build a house to live in, and supply it with

necessary furniture without having to pay one dollar of national tax_.

In this land of the free _he must pay the Tariff tax, or go naked, eat

grass, and live in a hole in the ground_.

But let us “look at England” again.

We see her operating her Post-Office, carrying parcels as well as

letters. She does not allow express companies to amass fortunes by

robbing the people in the carrying of light freight.

Thus she makes $70,000,000 instead of letting the corporations make five

times that amount.

She owns and operates the telegraph lines, and makes $18,000,000 per year

instead of letting the corporations make it.

What, therefore, is the net result of the “Look at England”?

We discover that _the government supports itself upon the possessions of

the people rather than upon their necessities_.

Give us the same system of taxation—compel _those who possess the wealth

to pay the_ expenses of government—and I, for one, will say, “_Make the

salaries what you will so long as you, who make them, have to pay them_.”

_Editorial Comments_

NOTORIOUSLY, you cannot convict a cow-thief when eleven of the jury got

part of the beef. Judge Swayne owes his escape to similar conditions. He

was acquitted by the United States Senate not because he was innocent,

but because he was regular. He had not done anything which the

Senatorial Jury does not constantly do.

* * * * *

A railroad fell into the Federal Court of which Swayne happened to be

the presiding judge. Swayne possesses and controls this railroad through

the medium of a receiver. In law and in morals Swayne is the trustee

of the property, administering it for the benefit of the owners—the

stockholders. Had he put his fingers into the cash-drawer at the ticket

office and stolen five dollars, his crime would have been clear,

indefensible. Proof of such an act would have compelled a unanimous

verdict of guilty—even in the United States Senate—for Senators do not do

it that way.

* * * * *

But Swayne knows how the game is played, and he played according to rule.

That is to say, he made use of the trust funds which were in his

possession and control, to fit himself up a palace car and stock it

with the best eatables and drinkables. He then took on, as a retinue

of servants, the employees who were paid to work for the stockholders,

and appropriated car, provisions, employees and all to his own private

purposes.

* * * * *

With this luxurious car, upon which he had spent the trust funds

committed to his care, he took himself and family on long pleasure trips

to his native place in Delaware. In this rolling palace he and his family

enjoyed a tour of the West.

The sum total of the trust funds which he thus converted to his own use

could not have been less than thousands of dollars, for the car and its

equipment would have been worth hundreds of dollars per day had it been

used by its owners, the stockholders.

* * * * *

These facts were not denied.

In law and morals, Judge Swayne misappropriated trust funds.

He did not go to the cash-drawer at the ticket office and steal

five dollars, but he took charge of the car, the supplies and the

employees whose services would have put thousands of dollars into the

cash-drawers, and thus converted to his own private use the property

which was in his Court for management and final disposition.

Here was a plain case of dishonest use of power and opportunity.

Here was a plain case of robbery—the Federal Judge taking that which

belonged to the stockholders and which should have earned them thousands

of dollars.

In morals and sound law, the crime is the same as it would have been had

he embezzled the same sum in dollars and cents.

* * * * *

The Washington _Post_ argues that the President should have a salary of

$100,000.

All right. Let us levy a tax or two on the rich, and raise the salaries

which the organs of the rich say are too small.

* * * * *

If the President is discontented with his pay, why doesn’t he throw up

his job?

I know several fellows who will take it at the present price.

There is W. J. B., for instance.

I haven’t the faintest doubt that he would be willing to quit editing

_The Commoner_ and assume Presidential burdens at $50,000 per year. It

would be easier work, don’t you know, than making twenty-two speeches a

day for a candidate like Parker, a platform like that of St. Louis 1904,

and a National Chairman like Tom Taggart—the gambling-hell man of Indiana.

* * * * *

Governor Folk, of Missouri, was elected to stop boodling, banish bribery

and otherwise purify the political atmosphere.

A bill was promptly introduced into the Legislature to make it possible

to convict and punish bribery.

The Senate promptly killed the bill.

Folk is still Governor, however.

* * * * *

Populists throughout the country regard with demure interest the modest

strides which Kansas is taking in State-Socialism.

That Republican State is to own and operate oil refineries to the end

that Rockefeller’s Trust may not swallow the earth.

* * * * *

Besides the Kansas State refinery, the Republican legislature favors

other things which are _almost_ new under the sun.

No trust, corporation or private partnership shall be allowed to sell

cheaper in one place than in another in Kansas—freight being deducted.

All over that State the price must be the same.

Maximum freight rates have been established, oil pipe lines have been

made common carriers, and the pumping of Kansas gas out of Kansas

forbidden.

Is it possible that we Populists are to find ourselves reduced to a state

of mere “eminent respectability” by such thoroughgoing revolutionists as

the Republicans of Kansas?

* * * * *

The Washington _Post_ says:

“After Kansas gets her oil refinery in operation she may find that Mr.

Rockefeller will not allow his railroads to carry its product.”

When Rockefeller refuses to haul Kansas oil because Kansas operates a

refinery he will probably discover that Kansas can do a thing or two

against his railroads.

* * * * *

When Theodore Roosevelt was a very, very young man, he wrote a “Life of

Gouverneur Morris” in which the youthful author sweepingly classified Tom

Paine as “a filthy little atheist.”

Now that Teddy has grown great upon the meat which Cæsar fed on, the

University of Pennsylvania has conferred an Honorary Degree upon him.

This is the same institution which conferred an Honorary Degree upon Tom

Paine.

So there you are.

To the extent that the University of Pennsylvania can equalize the

eminence of Teddy and Tom, equality has been established.

So far as the University of Pennsylvania can link the two names together,

they are linked.

Whether he likes it or not, Teddy must promenade down the corridors of

time and fame arm in arm with the “filthy little atheist.”

Here is a case where that one of the Grecian philosophers who laughed at

everything would weep: and where that one who wept at everything would

laugh.

* * * * *

Tom Paine being dead cannot resent the honors paid Roosevelt by any act

of renunciation aimed at the University of Pennsylvania; but Teddy lives

and can defend his virtue from contaminating contact.

Will he tamely submit to wear the Academic honor tainted by the touch

of Tom Paine, or will he spurn it with that disdain which condensed the

career of a much-enduring, much-achieving patriot and democrat in the

cruelly scornful words, “a dirty little atheist”?

* * * * *

Whenever, in the hour of gloom and doubt, we call upon the presidents of

our world-famous colleges for guidance we get it. Which is one of the

reasons why we are still in the dark.

A couple of years since, the chief sage of one of these world-famous

institutions told us that Social Ostracism was the medicine for the Trust

evil which would prove a cure-all.

The chief sage neglected to inform us how and when we should or could

dose the wicked corporations with this medicine: hence we have not as yet

socially ostracized J. P. Morgan, Ogden Armour or John D. Rockefeller.

* * * * *

Woodrow Wilson, chief sage of Princeton University, is the latest of the

academic guides who offers to pilot us out of the gloom.

“Trusts,” remarks Woodrow (who, just between you and me, is something of

a prig), “Trusts can never be abolished.”

“_We must moralize them._”

“The thing that keeps water in stocks is secrecy.”

“_Publicity is the remedy._”

When we hear the chief sage of Princeton droning and driveling this sort

of nonsense we wonder whether his mind is fixed upon the actual men,

methods and standards of today, or whether he gropes in some Arcadia of

the past.

“_Moralize the Trusts?_”

How will you do it, impractical prig?

Mr. Rockefeller is moral, isn’t he? Goes to church every Sunday, endows

Baptist colleges, sends young John to teach Sabbath school and attend

English revivals, prates of morality and the Bible to equal any Pecksniff

that ever stole the livery of the Lord to shear the sheep in.

Yet where was there ever a more ruthless criminal on the face of the

earth than Rockefeller’s Oil Trust?

“The thing that keeps water in stocks is secrecy.”

No, it isn’t, impractical prig.

It’s water that keeps the water in the stocks.

Secrecy has nothing to do with it.

_The public always knows when the watering is done!_

It was so with the Steel Combine; it has been so with every railroad

reorganization which Morgan has managed; it was so with Amalgamated

Copper.

* * * * *

“_Publicity is the remedy!_” says Woodrow, the Sage.

How can that be?

Does the knowledge that we are being robbed stop the robbery?

There is no secrecy about the Beef Trust. Publicity there has run riot.

We know all about the Refrigerator car, the rebate, the discriminations,

the Big Stick methods, the colossal, un-Godly profits.

We know how the cattle owner is robbed when the Trust buys, and how the

consumer of dressed meat is robbed when he buys.

What good does the Publicity do us?

None at all.

It makes us rage and rant, but the Trust gets our money just the same.

Have not Lawson and Russell and Ida Tarbell and Lincoln Steffens and

a dozen others put the flashlight upon all these monstrous piratical

combinations until the very children are familiar with the details?

_Publicity?_

Why, if there is anything that we have got a lavish supply of, just now,

_it is Publicity_.

What we haven’t got is RELIEF.

If _Publicity_ were a cure for the disease, we’d have been well long ago.

As it is, the evil grows worse, day by day, in spite of all the

_Publicity_.

Go back to thy gerund-grinding, Woodrow—thou insufferable, impractical

prig. Among the dead Greeks and the extinct Romans thy labors may, haply,

be useful; but when thou comest among the practical men of today seeking

to master actual conditions and to take part in the great battle of

thought, motive and purpose which rages around us, thou art but “a babby,

and a gal babby at that.”

* * * * *

Mr. Bryan says, in his _Commoner_, that “the movement begun in 1896

would have succeeded in 1900 had it not been for the Spanish War and the

increase of the gold supply.”

What a superficial view!

First of all, the “movement” did not begin in 1896.

It began when the West and South were brought together by the Farmers’

Alliance in 1890. It was in full swing when it gave General Weaver

1,200,000 votes in 1892. It was running like a millrace when it polled

1,800,000 in the local elections of 1894. It would have scored a triumph

in 1896 had the Democratic leaders acted honestly with the Populists.

After 1896 the “movement” lost strength every day.

In 1900 it was doomed to defeat before the campaign opened.

* * * * *

Yes; the reform “movement” was in full swing in 1890, and one of the good

things it did was to float into Congress a promising young lawyer named

Bryan.

To the Populist movement W. J. B. owes his rise, for there were then no

Democrats to speak of in Nebraska.

Populist votes carried his home State for him in 1896, when he ran for

President against McKinley.

In 1900 Nebraska went Republican, although the same Bryan was running

against the same McKinley.

* * * * *

They are hunting, in Paris, for the bones of John Paul Jones, the first

and greatest sea captain who ever flew the Stars and Stripes from the

masthead of a battleship, and “held the ocean lists against the world in

mail.”

Congress gives $35,000 to find the bones, and of course they will be

found—not those of the original Jones, perhaps, but a good enough lot of

bones for that amount of money.

* * * * *

Had Gouverneur Morris, the American Minister to France, done his duty at

the time of Paul Jones’s death, by giving him a respectable funeral and

a modest tombstone, the people of this country would not now be taxed

$35,000 to find the hero’s grave.

* * * * *

When John Paul Jones—old, broken and poor—lay dying in Paris, our

high-toned Minister to France, Gouverneur Morris, sat feasting with

aristocratic company, and that high-toned Minister failed to mark the

grave of a man who with Nelson’s chances might have done even more than

Nelson on the sea.

His grave was made in an obscure churchyard, his resting-place neglected

and forgotten, covered with accumulated deposits, and built over with

houses.

Those who seek the bones are sinking holes seventeen feet deep, in the

search.

Of course, they will find the body of Commodore Jones. That is what they

are hunting for. Therefore, they will find it.

But whether the dust they bring back to America will be that of _our_

Paul Jones no mortal will ever know.

* * * * *

In his Diary, Gouverneur Morris relates:

“A message from Paul Jones that he is dying.

“I go thither and make his will.... Send for a Notary, _and leave him

struggling with his enemy_.”

The American Minister to France left Paul Jones struggling with death!

Left him alone with a French Notary, and went away.

To do what?

To “dine with Lord Gower and Lady Sutherland”!

The American Minister knew that Paul Jones was dying, for he says so.

After the dinner with the English Lord and Lady, does the American

Minister hasten back to the bedside of the fellow-countryman whom he had

left “struggling with his enemy”?

By no means.

He goes to the Louvre to look at the paintings; and then takes

Talleyrand’s mistress with him to Jones’s lodging.

“But he is dead—_not yet cold_.”

And this is all that Gouverneur Morris’s Diary records of Paul Jones’s

death, until the indignation aroused in America by his shocking lack of

attention to the dying hero had thrown him upon the defensive.

* * * * *

Who paid the burial expenses of Paul Jones?

A Frenchman claims that he did it.

Morris, in his Diary, certainly seeks to make the impression that he paid

them out of Jones’s estate.

The hero left sufficient property for the purpose, as can easily be

shown. Further than that we are left in doubt.

But Morris was requested to authorize a public funeral, in which fitting

honors should be paid to the dead. Morris refused. He states that he

(Morris) desired “a private and economical funeral.”

He got it. The funeral was so economical and so private that neither the

tongue of repute, identifying the grave from generation to generation,

nor the more unerring evidence of shaft or vault guides the footsteps of

those who come so late, so late! to repair the neglect of a hundred years.

_How Private Ownership Breaks Down_

In the great city of New York there is a Subway, an underground street,

which was opened at the expense of the taxpayers. Every dollar of the

enormous expenditure came out of the pockets of the citizens of New York.

After this Subway had been completed and paid for by the people, it was

turned over to a private corporation to be used for private profit. It

is unnecessary to say that such a stupendous piece of folly could never

have been committed by wise men or honest men. On the face of it, the

transaction reeks with rascality.

Let us, however, contemplate actual results. The men to whom the property

was given operate the Subway to make all the money that is possible

out of the franchise. In doing so they have come into collision with

their employees. The disagreement results in a strike. The experienced

operators of the cars leave them. Inexperienced men take hold. The

necessary consequence is danger to life and limb, which only the careless

or reckless would incur.

The thousands of people in New York, to whom the Subway is a daily

necessity, are incommoded and injured. The entire city suffers because of

the dispute between the corporation and its employees.

I will not enter into the question as to who is to blame for the strike.

It is sufficient to say that under private ownership of this public

thoroughfare the strike does occur and all of its evil consequences

naturally follow. No matter whether Belmont is right or wrong; no matter

whether his employees are right or wrong, the effect upon the public is

precisely the same. The public gets hurt. The public suffers and the

public is helpless. Such a situation is surely sufficient to arouse

thought and investigation.

Ever since we have allowed private corporations to take charge of public

utilities we have had the strike, the riot, the loss of money, the loss

of life. As long as private ownership continues to exploit these things

which belong to the public, we will continue to have the strike, the

riot, loss of money and the loss of life.

I say nothing about the amount of which the traveling public is robbed

by these corporations which own the public utilities. I confine myself

simply and solely to this thought, namely, that under private ownership

the situation, which now confronts the traveling public of New York City,

is liable to happen at any time and at any place throughout the Union

where public franchises are used for selfish and private gain.

That is the fruit of the tree. It always has been; it always will be.

That kind of tree will _never_ bear any other sort of fruit.

Then why not cut it down?

Public ownership removes the _motive_ for misuse of public utilities, and

when the motive goes the evil will go. As long as selfishness and greed

get _the chance_ to gratify themselves at the public expense, just so

long will they do it.

In every conflict between Capital and Labor the public loses—no matter

whether Capital wins or Labor wins.

Public ownership would do for the railroads what it does for the

Post-Office, the Police Department or the Fire Department. Who ever heard

of a strike among the Post-Office employees? Or in the police force? Or

among the firemen?

In Germany the railroads are owned and operated by the Government, and

nobody ever heard of traffic being blocked by a strike. In Austria the

story is the same. In Australia it is the same. In New Zealand it is the

same. Nowhere on earth, so far as I know, has there ever been a strike

when the principle of government ownership was in operation. Take those

cities of England where the street cars are owned and operated by the

city government. Who has ever heard of a strike on those lines? From

Liverpool to Birmingham and from Birmingham to Glasgow you will find the

principle of public ownership applied with perfect success, and nowhere

has the operation of public utilities by the public been stopped by a

strike.

It seems almost impossible for the people of our great cities to learn

the lesson taught by our own troubles, and taught further by the

object-lessons furnished us by nationalities which are not such cowardly

slaves of the corporations as we seem to be. The most amazing feature in

American life today is the audacity with which predatory corporations

ride forth, like the feudal barons of olden times, to strike down the

average citizen and rob him of what he makes as fast as he makes it.

Individually, we have plenty of courage, but, collectively, we are the

most cowardly creatures on earth. The communal spirit seems to be dead

within us. Public opinion is in its infancy. The strength which lies

dormant within us because of our numbers seems to be a fact of which the

masses are totally ignorant.

Acting swiftly, acting with unity of purpose, acting with the keenest

intelligence, acting with a magnificent courage, the outlaws of modern

commercialism dash at their object with superb confidence in their

prowess, and they have seized and ridden away with the spoils before the

drowsy, ignorant and timid public have awakened to the fact that they

have been raided, stricken down and plundered.

If the city government of New York had at its head a man “with a beard

on his chin,” he could find a way to solve this Subway problem and

all kindred problems within a few weeks, and in such a manner that it

would never be presented again. He would have to be intelligent, he

would have to be honest, he would have to be brave, but if he had these

qualities and were, besides, a patriot wishing to do what is best for

the entire community, he could win a victory which would repeat itself

in all the centres of our population, and which would terminate the

reign of rascality which now exploits, for personal ends, the powers and

the opportunities of public office in almost every great city of this

Republic.

* * * * *

You ask me _how_ could the Mayor do anything, when the Subway is legally

in the hands of a Commission created by the Legislature?

I answer that the city has the right to use its streets. One of its

sovereign powers, inherent and absolute, is that of keeping its streets

open for the safe and free use of every citizen. Nobody has the right to

block travel or traffic, nor can the Legislature grant such a privilege.

As to the Subway, it is a street under the ground. True, the _methods_

which he would have to employ differ from those which he would apply to

a surface street, but the _principle_ would be precisely the same in the

one case as in the other.

He could say to Belmont and his employees: “You are blocking the streets.

You are interfering with the rights of the people who paid for the

Subway and who want to use it. You and your disputes are as nothing to

me in comparison with the duty which I owe to the city. _Arbitrate your

difference_, or I will exert the full sovereign power of the municipality

to seize the Subway and to open it to travel.

“And you needn’t run to any judge for an injunction, either. In the

exercise of supreme executive authority policing the city and keeping

open its streets, I shall tolerate no interference whatever from

corporation lawyers or corporation judges. I give you fair warning:

_Arbitrate_, and do it quickly—else the city takes what is hers, and

operates the cars which you have tied up!”

Who doubts that a threat like this, made by the right kind of Mayor,

would bring Belmont to his senses in a couple of minutes? Arbitrate! Of

course he would arbitrate—quickly and gladly.

And the Mayor would have the enthusiastic support of ninety-nine men out

of every hundred in New York.

_The Patriot_

His eyes ashine with ancient memories,

His blood aglow with subtle racial fire,

For him are quenched the stirrings of desire.

The pageant of the world has ceased to please;

Hushed are the evening songs—the lutes of ease;

In the war flame, that old ancestral pyre,

He casts his hopes of home, wife, child or sire;

Instinct of race, a passion more than these,

The spirit of his country, holds him thrall;

In him forgotten heroes, forbears, rise,

Strengthening his heart to common sacrifice;

Out of the darkness generations call

And martyr hosts, that unrecorded fall,

Salute him from the void with joyful cries.

LONDON DAILY NEWS.

_The Atonement of Hustler Joe_

(COMPLETE NOVELETTE)

BY ELEANOR H. PORTER

PROLOGUE

A toy horse or a raspberry-tart is not often responsible for the loss of

a life, but a succession of toy horses, raspberry-tarts, and whatever

else the heart of a small boy craved, given in a reckless abandonment

of superfluity, was certainly responsible for the wilfulness in the

character of Paul Weston; and the wilfulness, in turn, was responsible

for the quarrel.

At twenty he was a restless, impulsive, good-hearted, broad-chested,

strong-limbed young fellow, the adored of his mother and the pride of his

father. And yet it was over the prostrate form of this same father that

he now stood—the crack of the revolver still ringing in his ears, the

weapon itself still clutched in his hand.

Was the man dead? But a minute before he had been speaking; now there was

a fast-growing pool of something dark and horrible on the floor at his

side.

Paul Weston brushed the back of his left hand across his eyes and looked

down at the still smoking revolver. Had his miserable temper brought him

to this? His features worked convulsively and his eyes widened in horror.

Throwing the revolver from him to the farthermost corner of the room, he

turned and fled.

Out the door, through the gate, and down the long street of the little

New England village he ran. It was dusk, but he stumbled as though it

were the darkness of midnight.

The neighbors looked and wondered at the fleeing figure, but only their

eyes spoke disapproval. If Paul Weston chose to use the main street of

the village as a race-course, it was not for them to interfere—they knew

him too well. The town fool alone ventured to accost him.

“Hi, there—go it! What’s after ye?” he shouted; but the jeering words and

the vacant smile died on his lips at sight of the face Paul turned upon

him.

Down the street, across the open field, and over the fence at a

bound—surely the friendly shelter of the woods receded as he ran! But his

pace did not slacken even in the dense shadows of the forest. On and on,

stumbling, falling, tearing his flesh and his clothing on the thorns and

brambles until, exhausted, he dropped on a grassy mound, miles away from

that dread thing he had left behind him.

The wind sighed and whispered over his head. Weston had always loved

the sound, but tonight it was only an accusing moan in his ears. Even

the stars that peeped through the leaves above were like menacing eyes

seeking out his hiding-place.

An owl hooted; Weston raised his head and held his breath. Then through

the forest came the baying of a distant hound. The man was on his feet in

an instant. Something tightened in his throat and his heart-beats came in

slow, suffocating throbs. He knew that sound! They sought for—murderers

with creatures like that! With a bound he was away on his wild race

again. Hours later, the gray dawn and his nearness to a small village

warned him to move more cautiously.

All that day he tramped, without rest, without food, reaching at night

the seaport town that had been his goal. Skulking through the back

streets he came to a cheap eating-house down by the wharves.

The odor of greasily fried meats and bad coffee floated out the open

door, causing Weston to sniff hungrily. In a moment he had thrown caution

to the winds, entered the restaurant and slunk into the nearest seat.

By his side lay a discarded newspaper. He reached for it with a shaking

hand, then snatched his fingers back as though the printed sheet had

scorched them. No, oh, no—he dared not look at it! His mind’s eye

pictured the headlines, black with horror:

“MURDER! PARRICIDE! THE

FIEND STILL AT LARGE!”

He pushed back his chair and rushed from the room. An hour later he had

shipped as a sailor on a vessel bound for San Francisco around Cape Horn.

I

The cracker-barrels and packing-boxes that usually served for seats in

Pedler Jim’s store were, strange to say, unoccupied. Bill Somers, sole

representative of “the boys,” sat cross-legged on the end of the counter,

meditatively eying a dozen flies that were buzzing happily around a drop

of molasses nearby. Pedler Jim himself occupied his customary stool

behind the counter.

It was ten years now since the little hunchback pedler first appeared in

Skinner Valley. He came from no one knew where, driving a battered and

worn horse attached to a yet more battered and worn pedler’s cart. The

horse had promptly taken advantage of the stop in the village, and by

dying had made sure of never leaving the place for the wearisome trail

again. The miners say that the night the old horse died, its master

patted and stroked the poor dead head until it was cold and stiff, and

that the morning found him fondling the useless reins with his shriveled,

misshapen fingers.

The next day he bartered for a tiny piece of land fronting the main

street. When he had wheeled his old cart into proper position upon it,

he busied himself some time with a bit of board and a paint pot, finally

producing a rough sign bearing the single word “Store.” This creation he

nailed with much satisfaction upon the front of the dashboard, then sat

down on one of the thills to wait for a customer.

Perhaps it was the oddity of the thing; or perhaps there was something

in the deformed little body that appealed to the strong-limbed,

straight-backed miners; or perhaps it was the wonderful knowledge of

healing herbs and soothing lotions that Pedler Jim possessed—perhaps

it was a little of all three. At all events, the new store prospered

amazingly so that in a year its owner bought more land, trundled the

old cart to the rear, and erected a small cabin on his lot. This, in

turn, gave place to a good-sized frame building bearing the imposing

gilt-lettered sign:

JAMES A. POWERS,

_Skinner Valley Emporium_.

The hunchback rolled this high-sounding title under his tongue with keen

relish, but it was still “the store” to the boys, and its owner was only

“Pedler Jim.”

Bill Somers shifted his position on the end of the counter and poked a

teasing finger at the agitated mass of wings and legs around the molasses

drop. The storekeeper grinned appreciatively and broke the silence:

“Say, who’s yer new man?”

“Blest if I know.”

“Well, he’s got a name, hain’t he?”

“Mebbe he has—then again, mebbe he hain’t.”

“But don’t ye call him nothin’?”

“Oh, we _call_ him ‘Hustler Joe’; but that ain’t no name to hitch a

grocery bill on to—eh, Jim?”

The little hunchback slid from his stool and brought his fist down hard

on the counter.

“That’s jest the point! He don’t git much, but what he does git he pays

fur—spot cash. An’ that’s more’n I can say of some of the rest of ye,” he

added, with a reproachful look.

Bill laughed and stretched his long legs.

“I s’pose, now, that’s a dig at me, Jim.”

“I didn’t call no names.”

“I know yer lips didn’t, but yer eyes did. Say, how much do I owe,

anyhow?”

With manifest alacrity Jim darted over to the pine box that served for a

desk.

“There ain’t no hurry, Jim,” drawled Somers, with a slow smile. “I

wouldn’t put ye out fur nothin’!”

The storekeeper did not hear. He was rapidly turning the greasy,

well-thumbed pages of the account-book before him.

“It’s jest twenty dollars and fourteen cents, now, Bill,” he said, his

brown forefinger pausing after a run down one of the pages. “Ye hain’t

paid nothin’ since Christmas, ye know,” he added significantly.

“Well,” sighed Bill, with another slow smile, “mebbe ’twouldn’t do no

harm if I ponied up a bit!” And he plunged both hands into his trousers

pockets.

Pedler Jim smiled and edged nearer, while Bill drew out a handful of

change and laboriously picked out a dime and four pennies.

“There!” he said, slapping the fourteen cents on the counter, “now it’s

even dollars!”

“Well, I’ll be jiggered!” cried Pedler Jim, turning his back and walking

over to the window.

Somers looked after the retreating figure, and a broad smile lighted up

his round red face. Slipping his hand inside his coat he pulled out a

roll of greenbacks. In another minute the fourteen cents lay neatly piled

on top of two ten-dollar bills. The man hastily slipped into his old

position and coughed meaningly.

“Ye don’t seem pleased,” he began.

The hunchback did not stir.

“Mebbe ye don’t want my money,” hazarded the miner.

No answer.

“Oh, well, I can take it back,” and Somers shuffled noisily off his seat.

Pedler Jim wheeled about and came down the store with his small black

eyes blazing.

“Jiminy Christmas, man! If you ain’t enough ter try a saint! I’m

blest if I can git mad at ye, though, fur all yer pesterin’ ways. Now

what in thunder—” The storekeeper’s jaw dropped, and his mouth fell

open idiotically as his eyes rested on the greenbacks. “Well, I’ll be

jiggered!” he murmured again, and clutched the money in his claw-like

fingers.

At that moment the outer door opened to admit a tall, broad-shouldered

miner wearing a slouch hat well over his eyes. In a trice Pedler Jim was

the obsequious merchant behind the counter.

The newcomer gave his order in a low voice and stood motionless while the

hunchback busied himself in filling it.

“Anything else?” suggested Jim wistfully, as he pushed a small package

toward him.

“Oh, I guess that’ll do for this time,” returned the man, picking up his

purchase and motioning toward a dollar bill on the counter.

Pedler Jim looked up quickly and something like tenderness came into his

eyes.

“I—guess you’re from Yankee-land, stranger; shake, won’t ye?” he said,

thrusting his hand across the counter. “Gorry! but it’s prime ter see a

good old New Englander among all these dagos and Dutchmen and the Lord

only knows what else here. Bill an’ me was gittin’ lonesome—I’m glad ye

come!”

At Jim’s first words the stranger had stepped back, but the outstretched

hand had brought him to the counter again, and he gave the brown fingers

a grip that made the little hunchback wince with pain. But Pedler Jim’s

welcome was scarcely spoken before the man had turned and disappeared

through the door.

“Well, I snum! I should think he was ‘Hustler Joe’!” murmured Jim. “If

he didn’t even hustle off and leave his change,” he added, looking

helplessly at the dollar bill on the counter.

Somers laughed.

“Hustle!—you’d oughter see him at the mines! why, that man works like

all possessed. He don’t speak nor look at a soul of us ’nless he has to.

If there’s a chance ter work extry—he gits it; an’ he acts abused ’cause

he can’t work every night and Sundays to boot. Gosh! I can’t understand

him,” finished Bill, with a yawn and a long stretch.

“That ain’t ter be wondered at—’tain’t ‘Hustler Bill’ that the boys call

you,” replied Jim, a sly twinkle in his beady little eyes.

Somers sprang to his feet and towered over the hunchback, his fist raised

in pretended wrath.

“Why don’t ye take a feller yer own size?” he demanded.

The hunchback chuckled, dove under the upraised arm, and skipped around

the room like a boy. An encounter like this was meat and drink to him,

and the miners good-naturedly saw to it that he did not go hungry.

Somers shook his fist at the curious little creature perched on the

farthermost cracker-barrel and slouched out the door.

II

Skinner Valley did not know very much about Hustler Joe. Six weeks ago he

had appeared at the Candria coal mine and asked for work. Since that time

he had occupied an old shanty on the hillside—a shanty so hopeless in its

decrepitude that it had long been abandoned to bats and owls. Hustler

Joe, however, had accomplished wonders in the short time he had lived

there.

It was a popular belief in the town that the man never slept. Stray

wanderers by the shanty had reported hearing the sound of the hammer and

saw at all hours of the night. Outside the shanty loose timbers, tin

cans, rags and refuse had given way to a spaded, raked and seeded lawn.

The cabin itself, no longer broken-roofed and windowless, straightened

its back and held up its head as if aware of its new surroundings.

This much the villagers could see; but inside it was still a mystery, for

Hustler Joe did not seem to be hospitably inclined, and even the children

dared not venture too near the cabin door.

It was vaguely known that the man had come over the mountains from San

Francisco, and with that the most were content. Keen eyes and ears like

Pedler Jim’s were not common in the community, and the little hunchback’s

welcome to the man because he came from “Yankee-land” was not duplicated.

Hustler Joe had not been in the habit of frequenting the store. His

dollar bill was in Pedler Jim’s hands a week before the disturbed

storekeeper had an opportunity of handing back the change. The miner had

forgotten all about the money and had wandered into the store simply

because each stick and stone and dish and chair at home was in its place

and there was absolutely nothing for his nervous fingers to put in order.

Joe pushed open the door of the “emporium,” then halted in evident

indecision. A dozen miners were jabbering in half as many languages over

by the stove, huddled around it as though the month were January instead

of June, and the stove full of needed heat instead of last winter’s

ashes. Bill Somers lolled on the counter, and Pedler Jim was bowing and

scraping to a well-dressed stranger whose face Joe could not see.

The miner had half turned to go when Pedler Jim’s sharp eyes fell upon

him. In another moment the hunchback was by his side thrusting some

change into his fingers.

“You forgot it, ye know—when ye bought them nails,” he said hurriedly;

then added, “why don’t ye come in and set down?”

For a second Joe hesitated; then he raised his head with a peculiarly

defiant up-tilting of his chin, and strolled across the room to an

unoccupied cracker-barrel behind the gesticulating miners. Pedler Jim

went back to his customer.

“You won’t find a better smoke within fifty miles!” he said pompously,

giving the box of cigars on the counter a suggestive push.

The well-dressed man gave a disagreeable laugh.

“Well, that’s hardly saying very much, is it?” he questioned.

At the stranger’s first words Hustler Joe glanced up sharply. His fingers

twitched and a gray look crept around the corners of his mouth. The room,

the miners, and Pedler Jim seemed to fade and change like the dissolving

pictures he used to see when a boy. A New England village street drifted

across his vision with this well-dressed stranger in the foreground. He

could even see a yellow-lettered sign out one of the windows:

GEORGE L. MARTIN,

_Counselor at Law_.

Then it all faded into nothingness again—all save the well-dressed

stranger in the tall black hat. In another minute the jabbering miners,

Bill Somers, and the obsequious hunchback were in their old places, and

Pedler Jim was saying:

“Jest try ’em, an’ see fur yerself.”

“All right, I’ll take you at your word,” laughed the stranger, picking

out a cigar and leisurely striking a match. “It’s a pity you can’t have

a few more languages going in here,” he added, throwing the dead match

on the floor and glancing at the group around the stove. “I suppose

Barrington employs mostly foreigners in the mines, eh?”

The hunchback thrust his brown fingers through his hair and made a wry

face.

“Foreigners!” he exclaimed. “I was born and raised in the state of Maine,

an’ if it wa’n’t fur Bill Somers—he’s from York State—to talk God’s own

language to me once in awhile, I’d ’a’ gone daft long ago!”

The stranger chuckled softly.

“You hav’n’t anyone here at the works from New England, then, I take it,

eh?” he asked, with studied carelessness.

A smile crept up from Pedler Jim’s mouth and looked out of his twinkling

eyes.

“Well, we have—” he began, then his eyes suddenly lost their twinkle as

they encountered the despairing appeal from beneath Hustler Joe’s slouch

hat. “We have—been wishin’ there would be some,” he finished after the

slightest of hesitations. “We’ve got everythin’ else under the sun!”

Bill Somers’s long legs came down from the counter abruptly.

“Why, Jim, there’s Hustler Joe—ain’t he from New England?”

The hunchback’s little beany eyes turned upon Somers and looked him

through and through without winking.

“Hustler Joe came over the mountains from San Francisco, I have heard,”

he said blandly.

“Oh, so he did—so he did!” murmured Somers, and sauntered out the door.

The man on the cracker-barrel over in the corner pulled his hat down over

his eyes and sank back into the shadows.

“Well,” said the stranger, tossing a bill and a small white card on the

counter, “put me up a dozen of those cigars of yours, and there’s my

card—if you happen to know of any New Englanders coming to these parts,

just let me know at that address, will you? I’ll make it worth your

while.”

“Very good, sir, very good,” murmured Pedler Jim, making a neat package

of the cigars. “Thank you, sir,” he said suavely, holding out the change

and glancing down at the card; “thank you, Mr.—er—Martin.” And he bowed

him out of the store.

One by one the miners went away; still the figure on the cracker-barrel

remained motionless. When the last jabbering foreigner had passed through

the door, Hustler Joe rose and walked across the room to the pine box

where the storekeeper was bending over his account-book.

“See here, little chap,” he began huskily, “that was a mighty good turn

you did me a bit ago—just how good it was, I hope to God you’ll never

know. What you did it for is a mystery to me; but you did it—and that’s

enough. I sha’n’t forget it!”

Something splashed down in front of Pedler Jim, then the outer door

slammed. When the hunchback turned to his accounts again a blot and a

blister disfigured the page before him.

III

John Barrington, the principal owner of the Candria mine, did not

spend much of his time in Skinner Valley. Still, such time as he did

spend there he intended to be comfortable. Indeed, the comfort of John

Barrington—and incidentally of those nearest and dearest to him—was the

one thing in life worth striving for in the eyes of John Barrington

himself, and to this end all his energies were bent.

In pursuance of this physical comfort, John Barrington had built for his

occasional use a large, richly fitted house just beyond the unpleasant

smoke and sounds of the town. A tiny lake and a glorious view had added

so materially to its charms that the great man’s wife and daughter had

unconsciously fallen into the way of passing a week now and then through

the summer at The Maples, as it came to be called in the family—“Skinner

Valley” being a name to which Miss Ethel’s red lips did not take kindly.

Mr. Barrington’s factotum-in-chief at the mines, Mark Hemenway, lived

at the house the year round. He was a man who took every possible

responsibility from his chief’s shoulders and was assiduous in

respectful attentions and deferential homage whenever the ladies graced

the place with their presence.

To Ethel this was of little consequence, as she paid no more attention to

him than she did to the obsequious servant behind her chair; but to Mrs.

Barrington he was the one drawback to complete enjoyment of the place.

Mark Hemenway was a man of limited means, but of unlimited ambitions.

Every day saw him more and more indispensable to his comfort-loving

employer, and every day saw him more and more determined to attain to his

latest desire—nothing less than the hand of this same employer’s daughter

in marriage.

In a vague way Mrs. Barrington was aware of this, though Hemenway was,

as yet, most circumspect in his actions. Mrs. Barrington was greatly

disturbed, otherwise she would not have ventured to remonstrate with her

husband that Sunday afternoon.

“My dear,” she began timidly, “isn’t there any other—couldn’t Mr.

Hemenway live somewhere else—rather than here?”

Her husband turned in his chair, and a frown that Mrs. Barrington always

dreaded appeared between his eyebrows.

“Now, Bess, why can’t you leave things all comfortable as they are? I

like to have you and Ethel here first rate, but I don’t see why you think

you must upset things when you stay only five minutes, so to speak.”

“I—I don’t mean to upset things, John, but—I don’t like him!” she

finished in sudden asperity.

“Like him! My dear, who expected you to? Nobody supposes he is one

of your palavering, tea-drinking members of the upper ten! He isn’t

polished, of course.”

“Polished! He’s polished enough, in a way, but—I don’t like the metal to

begin with,” laughed Mrs. Barrington, timidly essaying a joke.

Her husband’s frown deepened.

“But, Bess, don’t you see? I must have him here—it’s easier for me, lots

easier. Why can’t you let things be as they are, and not bother?” he

urged in the tone of a fretful boy.

Mrs. Barrington knew the tone, and she knew, too, the meaning of the

nervous twitching of her husband’s fingers.

“Well, well, John,” she said, hastily rising, “I won’t say anything

more,” and the door closed softly behind her.

As she passed through the hall she caught a glimpse of Ethel and her

friend starting for a walk, and the strange unlikeness of the two girls

struck her anew. Just why Ethel should have chosen Dorothy Fenno for a

week’s visit to The Maples, Mrs. Barrington could not understand. Perhaps

it would have puzzled Ethel herself to have given a satisfactory reason.

Ethel Barrington had met Dorothy Fenno the winter before on a committee

connected with a fashionable charity, and had contrived to keep in touch

with the girl ever since, though the paths of their daily lives lay wide

apart.

“She is mixed up with ‘settlement work’ and ‘relief bands,’ and

everything of that sort,” Ethel had told her mother; “but she’s

wonderfully interesting and—I like her!” she had finished almost

defiantly.

The girls leisurely followed a winding path that skirted the lake and

lost itself in the woods beyond. They had walked half an hour when they

came to the clearing that commanded the finest view in the vicinity.

Ethel dropped wearily to the ground and, with her chin resting in her

hand, watched her friend curiously.

“Well, my dear girl, you——”

“Don’t—don’t speak to me!” interrupted Dorothy.

Ethel Barrington bit her lips; then she laughed softly and continued

to watch the absorbed face of her companion—this time in the desired

silence. By and bye Dorothy drew a long breath and turned to her.

“Isn’t it beautiful!” she murmured reverently.

Miss Barrington gave a short laugh and sat up.

“Yes, very beautiful, I suppose; but, do you know, I’ve seen so much I’m

spoiled—absolutely spoiled for a scene like that? I’d rather look at

you—you are wonderfully refreshing. I don’t know another girl that would

have snapped me up as you did a minute ago.”

“Indeed, I beg your pardon,” began Dorothy in distress.

“Don’t!” interrupted her friend, with a petulant gesture; “you’ll be like

all the rest if you do.”

“But it was very rude,” insisted Dorothy earnestly. “A view like this

always seems to me like a glorious piece of music, and I want everything

quiet as I would if I were hearing a Beethoven symphony, you know. That

is why I couldn’t bear even the tones of your voice—but it was rude of

me, very.”

Ethel sighed, and fell to picking a daisy to pieces.

“I used to feel that way, once,” she said; “I did, really.”

“I haven’t a doubt of it,” replied Dorothy, with a smile.

“But I don’t any more!”—the daisy was tossed aside.

“No?”

“No; I’m like a five-year-old that’s had too much candy, I suppose. I’ve

seen the Alps and the Rockies, the Rhine and the St. Lawrence; and yet,

the first time I looked at that view I felt just as you did. But now——!”

“You need something outside yourself to give zest to your life, my dear,”

said Dorothy, her eyes on the town below.

Ethel looked at her narrowly.

“Now see here, my dear, I love you—and you know it, but I just can’t

stand any of that settlement talk!”

“I never said settlement,” laughed Dorothy, her eyes still on the

straggling cottages.

“I know, but—well, I just simply can’t! How in the world you stand those

dismal sounds and sights and—and smells,” she added, with a grimace, “I

don’t understand.”

“I suppose the miners live in those cottages,” mused Dorothy aloud, as

though she had not heard.

“I suppose so,” acquiesced Ethel indifferently. “Others live over the

hill in Westmont.”

“They don’t look as though they’d be very comfortable,” continued Dorothy

softly.

“Oh, I don’t know; people like that don’t mind such things, I fancy.”

“Did you ever ask them?”

Ethel looked up in quick suspicion, but Dorothy’s face was placid.

“Of course not! How silly!”

“Suppose you do, sometimes,” suggested Dorothy, quite as a matter of

course.

“I thought that was what you were coming to!” flashed Ethel. “My dear

girl, you have no idea what those miners are,” she continued in a

superior tone. “In the first place, I don’t think there is one of them

that understands a word of English, and I’d be afraid to trust my life

anywhere near them.”

“But the women and the little children—they wouldn’t hurt you. Isn’t

there something you could do for them, dear?” urged Dorothy.

A rumble of thunder brought the girls to their feet before Ethel could

reply, and a big storm-cloud coming rapidly out of the west drove the

whole thing from her mind.

“Quick—we must run!” she exclaimed. “We can’t reach home, but there’s an

old shanty just behind those trees over there. No one lives in it, but

’twill give us a little shelter, maybe,” and in another minute the girls

were hurrying down the hill. Big drops of rain and a sharp gust of wind

quickened their steps to a run.

Had Ethel not been running with her head bent to the wind she would

have noticed the changed appearance of the shanty to which they were

hastening. But as it was, she rushed blindly forward, up the steps,

and pushed open the door, Dorothy close by her side. Once across the

threshold she stopped in amazement, while Dorothy dropped breathlessly

into the nearest chair.

IV

The tiny room was exquisite in its orderly neatness. The furniture was of

the plainest, but bore an air of individuality. On one side was a case

of books, and the mantel above the fireplace was decorated with quaint

curios and beautiful shells.

A shadow fell across the floor.

“A nearer view might the better satisfy your curiosity, madam,” said a

voice from behind Ethel.

Ethel turned sharply to find herself face to face with a man in the

rough garb of a miner. The man’s eyes looked straight into hers without

flinching.

“I said that a nearer view might the better satisfy your curiosity in

regard to my poor possessions,” he repeated.

“Yours?” she stammered, a look of repulsion coming into her eyes.

The look and the shrinking gesture were not lost on Hustler Joe. His eyes

darkened. His broad shoulders bent in a mocking bow and his right hand

made a sweeping flourish.

“Mine, madam; but consider them yours until the storm is over. I’ll not

intrude”—and he was gone.

A flare of lightning and a deafening report made his exit wonderfully

dramatic to Dorothy. The rain was falling in torrents, too—a fact which

suddenly occurred to Ethel. For a moment she hesitated; then she sped

through the door, overtook and confronted the miner.

“Go back instantly!” she commanded. “If—if you don’t, I shall start for

home in all this rain!”

The words were scarcely spoken before the man had turned and was hurrying

her back to the house. Once inside there was an uncomfortable silence.

Dorothy came to the rescue.

“I’m afraid you thought we were unpardonably rude,” she began pleasantly.

“You see we were caught by the shower and my friend thought no one was

living here; otherwise, we would not have so unceremoniously taken

possession.”

“No, of course not,” murmured Miss Barrington constrainedly, going over

to the window and looking out at the swaying trees.

Hustler Joe made a dissenting gesture.

“Say no more: you are quite welcome,” he replied, going over to the

fireplace and touching a match to the light wood ready placed for a fire.

“It will take the dampness out of the air, and—of your garments,” he

added, with a furtive glance at the tall figure in the window.

“Thank you, you are very kind,” said Dorothy, drawing nearer. The

movement brought her close to the mantel, and she picked up one of the

shells. “Did you gather these yourself?” she asked, wondering at the

light that leaped into his eyes at the question.

Ethel, turning round a minute later, found them talking like old friends

together. She even caught herself listening breathlessly to a story he

was telling of an Indian arrow he held in his hand. A sudden glance in

her direction from the man’s dark eyes sent her back to her old position

with an abruptness that surprised as well as displeased her.

The storm was not a long one. The clouds were already lifting in the west

and the rain was less flood-like in its descent. Finally the sun peeped

out and flashed for a moment in Ethel’s eyes.

Dorothy and their host were over at the bookcase deep in a discussion of

the respective merits of Scott and Dickens, when Ethel crossed the room

and came toward them.

“I think,” she said, with the slightest of inclinations in Hustler Joe’s

direction, “that the storm is over. We can go now.”

“So it is,” said Dorothy; then turning to the man at her side she held

out a cordial hand. “Thank you very much. You have been very kind.”

“Yes, very kind—thank you,” murmured Ethel, bowing slightly and turning

toward the door. “We shall have to go home by the road,” she announced

regretfully a moment later, as she stood outside looking longingly at

the hillside path where the wet grass sparkled in the sun.

For a time the two girls walked on in silence, then Dorothy murmured

softly:

“Not a word of English—not a word!”

Ethel gave a sidelong look from her lowered lids.

“Well, I didn’t suppose they could!” she said petulantly.

“I wouldn’t trust my life near one of them,” continued Dorothy in the

same low voice.

Ethel shrugged her shoulders and a faint pink showed on her forehead.

“Don’t!” she protested. “How could you talk with him so?—what dreadful

boots he wore!”

Dorothy laughed outright.

“My dear, his boots do not cover his head. Would you have a man dig coal

in patent-leathers?”

Ethel made a wry face and was silent.

“Seriously, dear,” Dorothy went on, “he was very interesting to me.

His knowledge of books was most amazing. What he is doing here I can’t

imagine—he’s no common miner!”

“Oh, of course not,” laughed Ethel mockingly. “No doubt he’s a college

president in disguise! But really, I’m not in the least interested. Let’s

talk of something else.” And she changed the subject.

And yet it was Ethel who, at dinner that night, turned to Mr. Barrington

with the abrupt question:

“Father, who is living in the old shanty just beyond the Deerfield woods?”

“I’m sure I haven’t the least idea, my daughter,” replied the man, mildly

indifferent.

“Perhaps I can assist Miss Barrington in the matter,” interposed the

smooth voice of Mark Hemenway. “It has lately been taken in hand by a

curious creature known as ‘Hustler Joe.’”

“‘Hustler Joe’?” murmured John Barrington.

“Yes, sir, one of the men. A queer, silent sort—the kind that no good

comes of. I’m keeping my eye on him, however.”

“Indeed,” observed Ethel calmly, “I thought him quite the gentleman.”

The effect of her words was like that of an electric shock around the

table; in fact, Ethel herself felt it to some extent, for her remark was

almost as much of a surprise to herself as to the others.

“Why, my daughter!” murmured Mrs. Barrington faintly, and even Dorothy

started. There was an ugly narrowing of Mark Hemenway’s eyes, but it was

John Barrington who spoke.

“Well, you seem to have the advantage,” he drawled. “Would you mind

telling where the rest of us could meet—this gentleman?”

His daughter laughed and lapsed into her old bantering tone.

V

That portion of the Candria mine known as the “Bonanza” had been on the

black-list of the miners for some time. It was more than two months since

Henry Rotalick, a fire boss, had reported that an extra amount of gas

seemed to be collecting in the district. The mine officials had begun at

once to take the utmost precautions.

The Bonanza was one of the wealthiest portions of the mine, but, the coal

being deep and of very fine quality and the slate being particularly

thick, it necessitated considerable blasting to get down to the finest

parts. Owing to this and to the growing accumulations of gases, the

miners had for some time past been repeatedly warned to use the greatest

care.

On the day after the thunderstorm, Hustler Joe was passing through this

district when he came upon some miners drilling holes twelve feet or more

in depth and preparing for an exceptionally heavy charge.

“You’d better look out or you’ll bring the whole thing tumbling about

your ears!” he said, with a sharp glance at one of the men who seemed

much the worse for liquor.

A snarl of oaths in various tongues followed him as he turned his back

and walked away.

Thirty minutes later every door in the Bonanza fell with a crash, and

solid walls of masonry three feet through were torn down as though they

were but barriers of paper, so terrible was the explosion that shook the

earth.

Hustler Joe was half a mile away. The shock threw him on his face, and

for a minute he was too dazed to think. Then he staggered to his feet

and rushed blindly forward straight toward the place where he thought

the explosion had occurred. At every turn he met fleeing men, coatless,

hatless and crazed with terror. Suddenly he came face to face with Bill

Somers.

“Good God, man! Where ye goin’? Are ye gone clean crazy?” demanded Bill,

clutching Joe’s arm and trying to turn him about.

For answer Hustler Joe wrenched himself free, picked up a

half-unconscious miner and set him on his feet; then he dashed forward

and attempted to raise a fallen door that had pinned another miner fast.

“Jiminy Christmas! Ye ain’t goin’ ter stay in this hell of a place alone,

anyhow,” muttered Bill, bringing his broad shoulder and huge strength to

bear on the door. In another moment the imprisoned man was free and in

broken English was calling on heaven to reward his rescuers.

The two men did not falter for an instant, though all the while the

deadly damp was closing around them. From gallery to gallery they went,

warning, helping, dragging a comrade into a possible place of safety,

until human endurance could stand it no longer. Exhausted, they staggered

into a chamber which the fire damp had not entered.

“We—we’d better git out—if we’re goin’ to,” panted Somers weakly.

Joe was dizzy and faint. For himself he did not care. He had long ago

given up all thought of escape; but a sudden vision came to him of the

little blue-eyed woman that he had so often seen clinging to this man’s

arm and looking fondly into his face.

“Your wife and babies, Somers—” murmured Joe, his hand to his head as he

tried to think. “Yes, we must get out somehow. There’s the fanhouse—we

might try that,” he added, groping blindly forward.

The fanhouse, now out of use, stood at the top of the airshaft heading

that led up through the Deerfield hill from the mine. And by this way

the two men finally reached the open air, and there, blinking in the

sunshine, they sank exhausted on the hillside.

It was some time before Somers found strength to move, but his companion

was up and away very soon.

The Candria mine had two openings about four miles apart, that went by

the names Silver Creek and Beachmont. The Bonanza section was a mile and

a half from the surface, and was nearer to the Silver Creek opening than

to the Beachmont. It was to the former entrance, therefore, that Hustler

Joe turned his steps as soon as he could stand upon his feet.

The news of the disaster was before him. Men running from the mine,

barely escaping with their lives, had told fearful tales of crawling

over the dead bodies of their companions in their flight. The story flew

from lip to lip and quickly spread through the entire town. Mothers,

wives, daughters, sons and sweethearts rushed to the mine entrances and

frantically sought for news of their dear ones.

When Hustler Joe reached the Silver Creek entrance, a bit of a woman with

a tiny babe in her arms darted from the sobbing multitude and clutched

his arm.

“Bill—my Bill—did you see him?” she cried.

Hustler Joe’s voice shook as it had not done that day.

“On Deerfield hill, by the fanhouse—he’s all right, Mrs. Somers,” he said

huskily; and the little woman sped with joyful feet back by the way she

had come.

It was Hustler Joe who was at the head of the first rescue party that

attempted to enter the mine; but the deadly gases increased with every

step. First one, then another of the heroic men succumbed, until the

rest were obliged to stagger back to the outer air, half carrying, half

dragging their unconscious companions.

Again and again was this repeated, until they were forced to abandon all

hope of reaching the entombed miners from that direction; then hasty

preparations were made to attempt the rescue from the Beachmont opening.

Here, as at Silver Creek, Hustler Joe was untiring—directing, helping,

encouraging. The man seemed to work in almost a frenzy, yet every

movement counted and his hand and head were steady.

Slowly, so slowly they worked their way into the mine, fighting the damp

at every turn. By using canvas screens to wall the side entrances and

rooms, a direct current of pure air was forced ahead of the rescuers, and

by night their first load of maimed and blackened forms was sent back to

the mine entrance to be cared for by tender hands.

All night Hustler Joe worked, and it was his strong arms that oftenest

bore some suffering miner to air and safety. Once, far down a gallery, he

heard a shrill laugh. A sound so strange brought the first tingle like

fear to his heart. Another moment and a blackened form rushed upon him

out of the darkness, angrily brandishing a pickaxe. Crazed with wandering

for hours in that horrid charnel-house of the earth’s interior, the miner

was ready to kill even his rescuers. He was quickly overpowered and his

hands and feet were securely bound; then on Hustler Joe’s back he made

the journey of a quarter of a mile to the cars that were waiting to bear

him, and others like him, to the aid so sadly needed.

Toward morning Hustler Joe was accosted by one of the doctors who had

been working at his side half the night.

“See here, my man, you’ve done enough. No human being can stand this

sort of thing forever. I don’t like the look of your eye—go outside and

get some rest. There are fifty men now that owe their lives to you alone.

Come—you’d really better quit, for awhile, at least.”

“Fifty? Fifty, did you say?” cried the miner eagerly. Then a look came

into his face that haunted the doctor for long days after. “Would fifty

count against—one?” he muttered as if to himself, then fell to work with

a feverishness that laughed at the doctor’s warning.

From dusk to dawn, and again from dawn to dusk, flying ambulances,

hastily improvised from every sort of vehicle, coursed the streets with

their gruesome burdens. Weeping throngs surged about the Beachmont

entrance and about the stricken homes of the dead. Sleepless wives and

mothers waited all night for news of their missing dear ones, and peeped

fearfully through closed blinds as the dead and injured were borne

through the streets.

But everywhere the name of Hustler Joe was breathed in gratitude and

love. Tales of his bravery and of his rescues were on every lip, and when

the man walked out of the mine that day, he walked straight into the

hearts of every man, woman and child of the place.

His fellow-workmen tried to show their love and appreciation by going in

a body to his lonely cabin on the hillside. They found him muttering half

crazily to himself: “Fifty lives for one—fifty for one!” And on the table

before him he had placed fifty matches in a row and below them one other

alone.

They looked at him half fearfully, wholly pitifully, thinking the past

horror had turned his brain. But he listened with brilliant eyes and

flushed cheeks to their hearty words of thanks and seemed strangely eager

to hear all that they had come to say.

Yet the next morning his eyes were heavy with misery, and someone said

that the matches lay strewn all over the floor where an impatient hand

had cast them—all save one, left alone in the middle of the table.

VI

On the day of the explosion in the Candria mine John Barrington sat on

the broad piazza of The Maples reading his morning paper. Occasionally

he glanced up to admire the charming picture his daughter and her friend

made playing tennis on the lawn nearby.

His night’s rest had been good and his morning’s beefsteak tender;

moreover, a certain paragraph in the newspaper before him had warmed his

heart and, in prospect, his pocketbook. He leaned back in his chair and

sighed contentedly.

After a time he spied Hemenway’s tall form at the far end of the winding

walk leading to the house. There was a languid curiosity in his mind as

to why Hemenway was walking so fast; but when he caught his first glimpse

of his general superintendent’s face, his head came upright with a jerk,

and he waited in some apprehension for the man to speak.

The girls on the lawn heard an exclamation of dismay from the piazza,

then saw the two men pass rapidly down the walk and disappear in

the direction of the town. Fifteen minutes later Jennie Somers, the

parlor-maid, crossed the lawn and approached Miss Barrington. All her

pretty rose color had fled, and her eyes were wide and frightened.

“I beg your pardon—but would you please let me go to town? There has been

an explosion in the mine, and my brother—he may be hurt! May I please go?”

“An explosion? How terrible! Yes, yes, child—run right along. Don’t hurry

back if you’re needed there,” said Miss Barrington. “I hope you’ll find

your brother uninjured,” she added as the girl hurried away. When she

turned to speak to Dorothy she found herself alone.

Miss Fenno appeared a few minutes later dressed in a short walking-suit.

“Why, Dorothy!”

“Has Jennie gone? If you don’t mind, dear, I’ll go with her. I might be

able to do something,” explained Dorothy hastily.

“Mercy!” shuddered Ethel, “how can you go, dear? They’ll be all maimed

and bleeding! There’ll be doctors and—and others to do everything

needful. I wouldn’t go—really, dear.”

“I know—but there’ll be something else to do. I might help

someone—Jennie, for instance, if she found her brother injured. I really

want to go—Oh—there she is!” And Miss Fenno hurried after Jennie’s

swiftly moving figure.

Ethel was restless when her friend had gone. She wandered aimlessly

around the grounds, then went indoors and began to play a waltz on the

piano. The piece was scarcely half through, however, before her fingers

moved more and more slowly, finally straying into a minor wail that ended

abruptly in a discordant crash as the player rose from the piano-stool.

Miss Barrington’s next move was to take the field-glass from the library

and go upstairs to the tower. From there she could see the village and

catch occasional glimpses of hurrying forms. She could see the Silver

Creek entrance to the mine, too, and she shuddered at the crowds her

glasses showed her there. Twice she turned her eyes away and started

down the winding stairs, but each time she returned to her old position

and gazed in a fascination quite unaccountable to herself at the moving

figures in the distance.

By and bye she saw the head-gardener coming rapidly up the road from the

town. As he entered the driveway she hurried down the stairs and out into

the kitchen.

“Were there many injured, Peter?” she asked anxiously as the man came

into the room.

“They don’t know yet, ma’am; they can’t get into the mine. They’re goin’

to try the Beachmont openin’ now.”

“Perhaps they won’t find things so bad as they think,” she suggested.

“Mebbe not; but them that has come out, ma’am, tell sorry tales of

creepin’ over dead men’s bodies—there ain’t much hope for the poor

fellers inside now, I’m ’fraid.”

“Is—is there anything one can do?”

Peter shook his head.

“Not much, ma’am. They can’t get in to get ’em out. The young lady from

the house here has got her hands full with the women and children. They

are takin’ on awful, of course, but she kinder calms ’em down—she and

that feller they call Hustler Joe.”

Miss Barrington turned away. As she opened the door she stopped abruptly

and looked back into the kitchen.

“If they need anything, Peter—anything at all—come to me at once,” she

said hurriedly, and closed the door behind her.

* * * * *

It was at dinner the next night that Mr. Barrington said to his general

superintendent:

“What was the matter with Rotalick today? I heard you laying down the law

pretty sharp to him this noon.”

“Oh, he wanted a prima donna, that’s all.”

“A what?”

Hemenway laughed.

“Yes, I thought so, too. It was simply this. There isn’t anyone to sing

at the funerals Thursday. The choir that usually sings at funerals

hereabouts is incapacitated through injuries to the bass and loss of

a husband to the soprano. Rotalick wanted a day off to go hunting for

singers over in Westmont.”

“Humph!” commented Mr. Barrington.

“I rather think our departed friends will excuse the lack of music,”

laughed the general superintendent coarsely; but the laugh ceased at a

flash from Miss Barrington’s eyes.

“Will you be so kind, Mr. Hemenway, as to tell the man that I will sing

Thursday?” Once more the electric shock ran around that table, and once

more Mrs. Barrington murmured faintly, “Why, my daughter!”

This time Mark Hemenway rose promptly to the occasion.

“How very kind!” he said suavely. “Indeed, Miss Barrington, one could

almost _afford_ to die for so great an honor. I will tell Rotalick. The

miners will be overjoyed—they have bitterly bemoaned the probable lack of

music tomorrow. Funny they should care so much!”

“Oh, I don’t know—they are human beings, I suppose,” Miss Barrington

suggested.

“Yes—of course—certainly—but then——”

“You seem troubled to find a solution,” she remarked, with slightly

uplifted eyebrows; “suppose you give it up?”

“Suppose I do,” he acquiesced with ready grace, glad of the way of escape

she had opened.

VII

Many of the victims of the explosion had lived in Westmont, but for

those whose homes had been in Skinner Valley a succession of funeral

services had been arranged to take place in the Slovak Catholic Church,

the largest audience-room in the town. It was here that Miss Barrington

had offered to sing, and as one sad service followed another in rapid

succession the task she had undertaken was no light one.

But her heart did not lose its courage nor her voice its sweetness all

through those long hours. She did grow sick and faint, though, as the

throngs of weeping women and children filed in and out of the church, and

her voice trembled and nearly broke when a young girl fainted and sank to

the floor.

Hustler Joe had not been known to step inside a church since he came to

Skinner Valley. On the day of the funerals he had lapsed into his old

unapproachableness. He left his cabin early in the morning and joined the

crowds moving toward the church, but, once there, he lost himself in the

throngs outside instead of entering the doors.

Hustler Joe had long since made up his mind that a church was no place

for him. He had the reverence, born of a New England boyhood’s training,

for all things sacred, and he had come to feel that his own presence was

an unpardonable insult to any holy place.

The windows of the church were open and the chanting tones of the priest

floated out to his ears. He imagined himself as one of those still,

silent forms before the chancel, and he bitterly envied the dead.

“’Twould have been the easiest way out of it!” he muttered under his

breath. “By Jove, what a voice!” he added aloud a moment later as the

priest’s droning gave way to the flute-like tones of a singer.

“It’s old Barrington’s daughter—ain’t she great?” said Bill Somers at his

elbow. The man had been there several minutes furtively watching for a

chance to speak.

Hustler Joe did not answer until the last note quivered into silence.

Then he drew a long breath and turned around.

“Barrington’s daughter? What is she doing here?”

“Singin’—didn’t ye hear her?”

“But why? How happens it?” Joe demanded.

“Rotalick said she heard how that the choir couldn’t sing and that the

Slavs and Poles were makin’ a terrible touse ’cause there wa’n’t no

music. So she jest stepped up as pleasant as ye please an’ said she’d

sing for ’em. She’s a daisy, an’ as purty as a picture. Have ye seen her?”

“Yes,” replied Hustler Joe shortly, moving away.

Ethel Barrington’s singing won her many sincere, if humble, admirers that

day, but perhaps no one inside the building listened quite so hungrily

for every tone that fell from her lips as did a tall, sad-eyed man who

stood outside—just beneath an open window.

When the last sombre procession had moved away from the doors, and

Miss Barrington herself, white and faint with weariness, stepped into

her carriage, Hustler Joe left his position under the window and walked

slowly toward his home.

“Yes, I’ll go back,” he muttered. “There’s nothing but hell upon earth to

be gained by running away in this cowardly fashion. I’ll give myself up

and take the consequences—which will be hell somewhere else, I suppose,”

he added grimly. “Good God—it can’t be worse than this!”

He pushed open his cabin door and looked about him with troubled eyes.

For the first time he was conscious of a fondness for the place.

“I’ll give them to Jim,” he said aloud, his eyes lingering on the books

and on the shells and curios over the mantel.

With feverish haste he began collecting a few necessaries into a

traveling-bag. It was packed and strapped when there came a knock at the

door. At so unusual an occurrence Hustler Joe started guiltily. Then he

crossed the room and threw wide the door.

The bent form of an old woman with two frightened eyes peering out from

beneath a worn shawl confronted him.

“Has he been here?” she whispered, stepping into the room and glancing

furtively around her.

“He! Who?”

“Then he hasn’t, or you’d know it,” she answered in a relieved tone; but

her expression changed almost instantly, and her frail form shook with

terror. “But he may come! You wouldn’t give him up—you’re Hustler Joe,

ain’t ye? They say you’re good an’ kind. Oh, you wouldn’t give him up!”

A strange look came into the miner’s eyes.

“No, I wouldn’t give him up,” he said, after a moment. “But who is he?

And who are you?”

“I’m his mother, sir. He didn’t know anyone was livin’ here,” she

apologized, “an’ he sent me a bit of paper sayin’ he’d meet me here

tonight. Oh, sir, they’d hang him if they got him! Hang him!” she

shuddered.

Hustler Joe’s lips twitched, then settled into stern lines.

“Ye see,” continued the woman, her voice husky with feeling, “his daddy

was—was one of them that was killed, an’ my boy came back to look once

more on his poor dead face today. He said he’d colored his hair an’

changed his looks so no one would know him; but oh, they’d hang him—hang

my boy!” she finished in a frenzy, wringing her hands and swaying her

body from side to side.

Through the window Hustler Joe saw the figure of a man moving among the

shadows of the trees near the house. The miner stepped close to the old

woman and laid a light hand on her shoulder.

“Listen! I am going away for an hour. When I am out of sight, go out to

the trees behind the house and call your boy in. I shall be gone and

shall know nothing of it—you can trust me. Do you understand?”

A heartfelt “God bless you!” rang in his ears as he left the house and

hurried away.

When he returned an hour later he found these words scrawled on a bit of

brown wrapping-paper:

You treated me white. Thanks. You don’t know what

you saved my mother. It would have broke her heart

if they had strung me up. Thanks.

Hustler Joe stared fixedly at the note long after he had read it; then he

tore the paper into tiny bits and dropped them into the fireplace. Very

slowly he opened the traveling-bag and unpacked one by one the articles

therein. When the bag was empty and the room restored to its spotless

order, he drew a long breath.

“Yes, ’twould break her heart; she’s less miserable if I stay where I

am,” he murmured. “Poor dear mother, she’s suffered enough through me

already!”

VIII

The days that followed were busy ones for Ethel. Company made The Maples

gay with fun and laughter; but Ethel did not drop her newly awakened

interest in the miners. By her earnest persuasion Miss Fenno had agreed

to lengthen her visit, the need of these same miners having been held up

by the wary Ethel as good and sufficient reason for her remaining.

A maid, laden with the best the house afforded, always accompanied

Dorothy on her frequent visits to the town, and sometimes Ethel

herself went. It was after her first trip of this sort that she burst

unceremoniously into the library.

“Father, do you do anything for them?” she demanded breathlessly.

“My dear, not being aware of the antecedent of that pronoun, I may not be

able to give a very satisfactory answer to your question.”

“What? Oh—sure enough!” laughed Ethel. “I mean the miners, of course.”

“Since when—this philanthropic spirit, my dear?”

“Do you, father?” persisted Ethel, ignoring the question.

“Well,” Mr. Barrington began, putting the tips of his forefingers

together impressively, “we think we do considerable. We are not

overbearing; we force no ‘company store’ on them, but allow that curious

little Pedler Jim full sway. We—However, have you anything to suggest?”

he suddenly demanded in mild sarcasm.

Somewhat to his surprise Miss Barrington did have something to suggest,

and that something was not particularly to his mind. However, when Miss

Barrington set out to have her own way she usually had it, even with her

comfort-loving father—perhaps it was because he was a comfort-loving

father that he always succumbed in the end.

At all events, the Candria Mining Company, after the explosion in the

Bonanza section, organized a system of relief to which they ever after

adhered. The family of each miner killed in the disaster, or dying from

its effects, received one thousand dollars cash over and above all

medical and burial expenses. The maimed were dealt with according to the

extent of their injuries.

The mine was a great source of interest to all of Miss Barrington’s

friends, and it was accounted a great day among them when a party under

careful escort were allowed to “do the mines,” as they enthusiastically

termed a glimpse of the mine buildings and a short trip through a few

underground passages.

Two weeks after the explosion Ethel, with a merry party of ladies and

gentlemen led by Mark Hemenway, and duly chaperoned, started for the

Beachmont entrance to the mine. The general superintendent was in his

element. He explained and exhibited all through the outer buildings, and

was about to take his charges into the mine itself when an unavoidable

something intervened and claimed his immediate attention. It was with

evident reluctance that he therefore handed his party over to Bill

Somers, who, having proved himself careful and attentive, had often

before been intrusted with the escort of sightseers over the mines.

To Ethel the change was a relief. A vague unrest had lately assailed her

whenever in Hemenway’s presence and she had almost unconsciously begun

to avoid him. Her old indifference to his existence had given way to a

growing realization that there was such a being, and the realization was

bringing with it an intangible something not quite pleasant.

The feminine portion of the party followed Bill Somers through the

strange underground chambers with daintily lifted skirts and with many a

shudder and half-smothered shriek. And though they laughed and chatted at

times, they cast sidelong glances of mingled curiosity and aversion at

the stalwart forms of the begrimed miners.

“Is—is this anywhere near the—accident?” asked Miss Barrington, looking

behind her fearfully.

“No, ma’am—oh, no!” reassured Bill Somers quickly. “The Bonanza is a long

ways off. We don’t go nowheres near there today, ma’am.”

“Oh, was there an accident?” chimed in a pretty girl with rose-pink

cheeks.

“Sure; this was the mine, wasn’t it?” interposed a fussy little man with

eyeglasses through which he was peering right and left with his small,

near-sighted eyes.

“Tell us about it, please,” begged three or four voices at once; and Bill

needed no second bidding.

When they passed Hustler Joe, Somers pointed him out, and as they walked

on into the next gallery he told with unconscious power the story of the

heroic rescue of the imprisoned men. The shifting shadows and twinkling

lights made the telling more impressive, and the dusky forms flitting

in and out of the mysterious openings on either side, added a realistic

touch to the tale that sobered the gay crowd not a little. Their interest

in the earth’s interior waned perceptibly.

“Are—are we on the way out, now?” asked the pretty girl, her cheeks

showing white in the gloom.

“No, ma’am; we’re goin’ in deeper. Wa’n’t that what ye wanted?” returned

Bill.

“Yes, of course,” murmured the girl, without enthusiasm.

The man with glasses coughed.

“Really, Miss Barrington, this is beastly air. It might be well enough to

go back before long.”

Bill Somers took the hint. He knew the type to which the fussy little

man belonged. The party turned about, and the pretty girl’s eyes flashed

with a grateful glance—a glance which the near-sighted-glassed saw and

promptly appropriated.

As they repassed Hustler Joe, Ethel Barrington dropped behind the others

and came close to the miner’s side.

“I want to thank you myself,” she said, the crimson staining her cheeks

as she impulsively held out a slim, ungloved hand. “I want to tell you

how much I appreciate your courage and bravery at the explosion.”

The man flushed painfully. As he reluctantly touched her finger-tips, she

added:

“You must be so happy to have saved so many lives. I knew you were a

good man the minute I saw your face!”

Hustler Joe grew white to the lips, dropped her hand rudely and turned

away without a word.

Hemenway met the party at the entrance of the mine. He was profuse in

apologies for his enforced absence and in offerings of further service,

but Miss Barrington dismissed him with a cool “Thank you; nothing more,”

and led the way to The Maples.

Miss Barrington was vexed—worse than that, she was vexed because she was

vexed. Her pulse quickened and her nostrils dilated as she thought of

Hustler Joe and of the way he had met her impulsive greeting.

“The—the rude—boor!” she said to herself, at loss for words to express

fittingly that to which she was so little accustomed. A lingering touch

or a gentle pressure was the usual fare of Miss Barrington’s graciously

extended hand—never this wordless touching of her finger-tips and hasty,

rude release. “Not that I care,” she thought, with a disdainful tilt

of her head. “But he might have been decently civil!” she added, with

a scornful smile as she thought of how differently a score of pampered

youths of her acquaintance would have received so signal a mark of favor

as she had that afternoon bestowed on an all too unappreciative miner.

* * * * *

When Hustler Joe had left Miss Barrington so abruptly he had attacked his

work with a fierceness that even the miners had never seen him show. “A

good man—a good man—‘I knew you were a good man’!” he muttered between

his teeth. “A ‘good’ man indeed—bah!” he snarled aloud, wielding his

pick with long, sweeping strokes. Then he suddenly stood upright. “Great

God—am I not a good man? Have fifty lives not a feather’s weight?”

The pick dropped from his relaxed fingers, and his hands went up to his

head.

“Ah, no,” he moaned; “father—father—fifty, a hundred—a thousand times a

hundred could not tip the scale with your dear, dead self on the other

side!”

IX

Exciting days came to Skinner Valley. Gold was discovered far up the

creek. A man furnished with funds by Mark Hemenway, who long had

expressed faith in the locality, had “struck it rich,” and the general

superintendent awoke one day to find himself wealthy.

The effect of this awakening was as immediate as it was startling. His

commanding tones took on an added imperiousness, his clothing a new

flashiness, and his whole demeanor an importance likely to impress the

most casual of beholders. His veiled attentions to Miss Barrington gave

way to a devoted homage that was apparent to all men, and so thick was

his armor of self-conceit that her daily snubs fell pointless at his feet.

Miss Barrington had never before spent so long a time at The Maples, and

Mr. Hemenway’s sudden accession to wealth resulted, as far as she was

concerned, in hasty preparations to leave. Her guests were already gone.

On the day before her intended departure she started off by herself to

enjoy one more sunset from the clearing beyond the Deerfield woods,

the place where she and Dorothy were overtaken by that memorable

thunder-shower.

Mark Hemenway did not confine himself so strictly to business these days

as had heretofore been his custom, and he was upstairs in his room when

he spied Miss Barrington’s lithe figure disappearing in the grove that

skirted the grounds on the west.

The general superintendent had lately invested in a tall silk hat, and it

was this impressive bit of headgear that he donned as he left the house

and followed, at a discreet distance, the form of the woman he meant to

marry.

Since Hemenway had become rich this idea of marriage had strengthened

wonderfully. In a certain coarse way the man was handsome, and the

only class of women with which he had ever come in contact had readily

welcomed his attentions. He had supposed the lack of money would be the

only drawback in the eyes of this his latest love, and now that the lack

no longer existed he was confident of success.

Miss Barrington followed the path very leisurely, picking a flower or

a fern here and there, and softly humming a tune. Upon reaching the

clearing she settled herself comfortably under her favorite tree and

opened her book to read. It was then that Hemenway approached from the

shadows of the path she had just left.

At the snapping of a dry twig Miss Barrington glanced up. Her first

impulse was to laugh, so absurd did the checkered trousers, flaming

watch-charm and silk hat look to her against the background of the cool

green woods. But the laugh was killed at birth by an angry objection that

the man should be there at all. Even then she supposed him to be merely

passing by and that he might stop for a word or two.

“Ah, good afternoon, Miss Barrington. What a surprise to find you here,”

fibbed Hemenway, advancing with easy confidence.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Hemenway.” Miss Barrington moved her book

suggestively and lowered her eyes.

“Charming view you have here!” said the man.

No reply.

“You have an interesting book there, Miss Barrington?”

“I don’t know—I’m trying to find out,” replied Miss Barrington, with calm

but ineffectual rudeness.

“Um—delightful place to read! Nice day, too.”

No answer.

Mr. Hemenway looked down approvingly at the lowered lids of the girl’s

eyes and, blinded by his vast conceit, mistook the flush of annoyance for

the blush of maidenly shyness. “I never did like a girl to fling herself

in my face,” he mused, coming a little nearer.

“Well,” he said aloud, “if you have no objections, Miss Barrington, I’ll

just stop a bit with you and enjoy this breeze,” and he cast himself at

her feet in careful imitation of the attitude he had seen the fussy man

with glasses assume only the week before.

Miss Barrington was speechless with indignation. Her first instinct was

to spring to her feet, but the paralysis of amazement that had struck

her dumb had also rendered her, for the moment, incapable of motion. A

sudden determination to “teach the man a lesson and stop once for all

this insufferable persecution”—as her mind expressed it—followed, and she

remained passively quiet.

There was an uncomfortable silence that to any man but Hemenway would

have proved embarrassing.

“Er—I believe I haven’t told you,” he finally began, “how kind I thought

it was of you to interest yourself as you have in the miners.”

“It is not necessary that you should,” said Ethel icily.

“Very becoming modesty!” thought Hemenway. Aloud he said: “Oh, no, not

necessary, perhaps, but I want to do it. It is a pleasure to me.”

“It is not one to me.”

Hemenway frowned. There was such a thing as carrying this modesty too far.

“Your singing, too—it was delightful!” he continued smoothly. “And so

kind of you to do it!”

Miss Barrington turned a leaf of her book with an unnecessary rustling of

the paper.

“Feigning indifference,” commented Hemenway to himself. “I’ve seen ’em do

that before.”

“You looked so tired that night after the funerals. I actually worried

about you—you looked sick,” he said next, in what was meant for tender

tones.

Miss Barrington’s eyes narrowed ominously as she replied:

“Mr. Hemenway, my actions and my looks can have no possible interest for

you. I should be obliged if you would cease to consider them.”

To Hemenway’s perverted fancy this was but a bit of shy bait. He

promptly took advantage of it.

“On the contrary, I have the very greatest interest, my dear Miss

Barrington—the very warmest interest. I—I—Miss Barrington, as you may be

aware, I am a rich man now.”

“That does not concern me in the least,” retorted Ethel sharply.

A strange expression came over Hemenway’s face. For the first time a

doubt shook his egotistical content. His eyes grew hard. No maidenly

shyness prompted that speech. Still—possibly she had not understood.

“Miss Barrington, it has long been in my mind to ask you to be my wife. I

love you, and now I am rich I am confident I can make you——”

“Stop! I won’t even listen to you!” Miss Barrington was on her feet, her

eyes blazing.

Hemenway rose and faced her. All his polish dropped like a mask, and the

real man looked out from beneath angrily frowning brows.

“You won’t listen, my fine lady? And why not, pray? Ain’t I good enough

to speak to you?”

“I hate you—I despise you—oh, I loathe the very sight of you!” shuddered

Ethel, losing all control of herself. “Now will you leave me in peace—or

must I say more before you quite understand me?”

Hate—despise—loathe; these words Hemenway knew. The delicate shafts of

society sarcasm fell powerless against his shield of self-conceit, but

these heavier darts struck home and reached a vital point—his pride. His

face grew livid.

“Will you go?” repeated Ethel impatiently, not a quiver of fear in the

scorn of her eyes—“or shall I?” she added.

“Neither one!” he retorted insolently.

For answer Ethel wheeled and took two steps toward the path. Hemenway was

at her side in an instant with a clutch on her wrist that hurt her.

“Coward!” she cried. “Would you force me to scream for protection?”

“Do so, if you like—there’s not a house within earshot, and the

inhabitants of this region are not given to walking for pleasure!” He

released her wrist and stepped again in front of her.

The sharp throb of terror that paled Ethel’s cheek was followed by one of

joy that sent the color back in surging waves—Hustler Joe’s shanty just

behind those trees! It was after six—he must be there. If worst came to

worst——!

“Mr. Hemenway, this is altogether too theatrical. I ask you again—will

you let me pass?”

“If you think I am a man to be loathed and hated and despised with

impunity, young lady, you are much mistaken. No, I won’t let you

pass—you’ll listen to me. I want none of your airs!” he finished sourly.

Ethel’s head bent in a scornful bow.

“Very well, suppose we walk on, then,” she said. “I’m tired of standing.”

And she turned about and began walking in the opposite direction from the

path that led toward home.

Mark Hemenway was suspicious of this sudden acquiescence. He hurried to

her side and looked sharply into her face.

“None of your tricks, young lady! I mean business,” he snarled. “If you

ain’t willing to hear what I’ve got to say by fair means, you shall by

foul!” he added, bringing a small revolver into view, then slipping it

back into his pocket.

Ethel was thoroughly frightened. She thought Hemenway must be mad.

“I should think you had stepped out of a dime novel, Mr. Hemenway,” she

began, trying to steady her shaking lips. “Nobody wins a bride at the

point of a pistol nowadays!” The trees that hid Hustler Joe’s shanty from

view were very near now.

“Then you needn’t treat me as if I was nothing but the dirt under your

feet,” he muttered sullenly, already regretting his absurd threat of a

moment before.

Ethel suddenly darted forward and around the edge of the trees, ran

across the lawn and sprang up the steps of the shanty. Hemenway was

close at her heels when she flung the door open with a bang and stood

face to face with Hustler Joe.

“Will you please take me home?” she asked, trying to speak as though she

considered it a customary thing to invade a man’s house and demand his

escort in this unceremonious fashion. “Mr. Hemenway is—busy and cannot

go,” she added, with a cheerful assurance due to the presence of the

big-bodied miner at her side.

Hustler Joe instantly accepted the part she had given him to play.

“I shall be glad to be of any service,” he said respectfully, with ready

tact, but with a sharp glance at Hemenway.

The general superintendent bowed to Miss Barrington with uplifted hat,

then turned and walked away.

“Please do not ask me any questions,” said Miss Barrington hurriedly to

Hustler Joe as they left the house. “You had better take me by the path

through the woods—it is the nearer way, and will be less embarrassing

than the main road would be for—both of us. I know you think my conduct

extraordinary, but, believe me, I had good reason for asking your escort.

You—you always seem to be around when I need someone!” she concluded,

with an hysterical little laugh—the tension to which she had been keyed

was beginning to tell on her.

“No apology is needed,” demurred the man gravely. “I think I understand.”

That walk was a strange one. The sun had set and the woods were full

of shadows, and of sounds unheard in the daytime. Ethel was faint and

nervous. The miner was silent. Once or twice Ethel spoke perfunctorily.

His answers were civil but short. At the edge of the private grounds the

girl paused.

“Thank you very much; I shall not forget your courtesy,” she said,

hesitating a moment, then resolutely offering her hand.

It was not the finger-tips the man touched this time—it was the hand

from nail to wrist; and his clasp quite hurt her with its fierceness.

“Miss Barrington, you thought me a brute the other day when you spoke so

kindly to me, and no wonder. I can only beg your pardon—your words cut

deep. I am going to the mines tomorrow—the gold mines, I mean. I’m glad

I had this chance to speak to you. You were wrong, Miss Barrington—I—I’m

not the good man you think!” He dropped her hand and turned away.

“I—I don’t believe it!” she called softly, and fled, swift-footed, across

the lawn.

* * * * *

Mark Hemenway did not appear at The Maples that night. A message from him

received by Mr. Barrington in the evening said that he had been suddenly

called away on business connected with his gold mine; that he would

return soon, however, and would like immediately to make arrangements

whereby he could sever his connection with the Candria Mining Company, as

his new interests needed all his attention.

“Humph!” commented Mr. Barrington. “I never saw a little money make such

a dam fool of a man as it has of Hemenway!”

Ethel’s lips parted, then closed with sudden determination. Twelve hours

later she left for Dalton without mentioning to her father her experience

of the day before, and within a week she had sailed from New York on a

steamer bound for Liverpool.

X

The discovery of gold had made all the miners at Skinner Valley restless,

and Hustler Joe was among the first to take his wages and start for the

promised bonanza.

Hustler Joe of the coal mines was still “Hustler Joe” of the gold mines.

The same ceaseless, untiring energy spurred the man on to constant labor.

The claim he staked out proved to be the richest in the place and wealth

sought him out and knocked at his cabin door.

Strange to say, Hustler Joe was surprised. He had come to the mines

simply because they promised excitement and change. He had thought, too,

that possibly they harbored the peace and forgetfulness for which he so

longed.

But peace had fled at his approach and wealth had come unasked. Man-like,

he regarded the unsought with indifference and gazed only at the

unattainable; whereupon wealth rustled her golden garments to charm his

ears and flashed her bright beauty to dazzle his eyes. Still failing to

win his heart, she whispered that she—even she—was peace in disguise, and

that he had but to embrace her to find what he sought.

It was then that Hustler Joe yielded. In a year he had sold half his

claim for a fabulous sum. The other half he retained, and leaving it to

be developed under the charge of expert engineers, he left for Skinner

Valley.

Hustler Joe had never forgotten the little hunchback pedler, nor the debt

of gratitude he owed him. Many a time in the old days at the coal mines

he had tried to pay this debt, but always, in his own estimation, he had

failed. So it was of Pedler Jim that he first thought when this new power

of wealth came into his hands.

The news of Hustler Joe’s good luck had not reached Skinner Valley,

and the man was in the same rough miner’s garb when he pushed open the

familiar door of the “Emporium” in search of Pedler Jim.

“Well, if it ain’t Hustler Joe!” exclaimed the hunchback delightedly.

“You’re a sight good fur sore eyes. Come back ter stay?”

“Well, awhile, maybe. How’s the world using you these days, Jim?”

“Oh, fair—fair; ’tain’t quite ’s good as I’d like—but I ain’t

complainin’.”

“I wonder if anything would make you complain—I never heard you,”

remarked Joe, helping himself to a seat on the counter.

“Well, now that ye mention it, mebbe I don’t much—I hain’t no need to. My

appetite’s good an’ my conscience is clear; an’ a clear conscience is——”

“Jim,” interrupted the miner sharply, “did you ever hear of Aladdin and

his lamp?”

“Huh? Oh, the feller that rubbed it an’ got what he wanted?”

“That’s the chap.”

“Well—s’posin’ I have?”

“Oh, I only wondered what you’d ask for if you had one to rub.”

“Gorry—I wish’t I had!”

“Well, what would you?” persisted Joe, his face alight.

“What would I? Well, I’ll tell ye. I’d buy the big house on the hill——”

“What—Barrington’s?” interrupted Joe.

“Gee whiz, no! I mean the empty one that Rotalick lived in; an’ I’d make

it over into a hospital, an’ I’d add to it as I was able.”

“A hospital? Why, there is one.”

“Yes, I know—the company’s; but the boys always have ter quit there

long ’fore they’re able. They can’t work, an’ if they laze ’round home

it takes furever to git well—what with the noise an’ the children an’

all. They crawl down here to the store, an’ my heart jest aches fur ’em,

they’re so peaked-lookin’. I’d have it all fixed up with trees an’ posies

an’ places ter set, ye know, where they could take some comfort while

they was gittin’ well.”

A moisture came into Joe’s eyes.

“But how about yourself?” he asked. “You haven’t rubbed out anything for

yourself, Jim.”

“Fur me? Gorry—if I jest had that lamp, you’d see me rubbin’ out

somethin’ fur me, all right. I’ve been wantin’ ter send home a box ter

the old folks—’way back in Maine, ye know. Jiminy Christmas, man, there’d

be no end ter the black silk dresses and gold-headed canes an’ fixin’s

an’ fur-belows that I’d rub out an’ send to ’em!”

Hustler Joe laughed; then something came into his throat and choked the

laugh back.

“But all this isn’t for you, Jim,” he remonstrated.

“Huh? Not fur me? Fur heaven’s sake, man, who is it fur, then?”

The miner laughed again and slid off the counter.

“You’ve got quite a store, Jim. Ever wish you had more room?” he asked

abruptly.

Pedler Jim not only nibbled at the bait, but swallowed it.

“Well, ye see, I’m goin’ ter have the place next door when I git money

enough and then I’ll jine ’em together. That’ll be somethin’ worth

while,” he continued.

Hustler Joe easily kept him talking on this fascinating theme a full ten

minutes, then he prepared to take his leave.

“Let’s see,” he mused aloud, “you came from Maine, you say. About

where—the town, I mean?”

Jim named it.

“You say the old folks are living there yet?”

Jim nodded.

“Name is Powers, I suppose, same as yours; maybe you were named for your

father, eh?”

“No; father’s name was Ebenezer, an’ mother objected—so it’s ‘Jim’ I am.

Why? Goin’ ter dig up my family tree by the roots?” asked the little man

whimsically.

“Not a bit of it!” laughed the miner, looking strangely embarrassed as he

hurried out the door.

“Monte Cristo” had been Hustler Joe’s favorite tale in his boyhood days.

He thought of it now, as he left the “Emporium,” and the thought brought

a smile to his lips.

A few days later Pedler Jim was dumfounded to receive a call from a

Westmont lawyer.

“Well, my friend,” the man began, “I have a few little documents here

that demand your attention.”

Pedler Jim eyed the formidable-looking papers with some apprehension.

“Now see here, sir,” he demurred, “my conscience is perfectly clear. I

don’t want nothin’ to do with sech devilish-lookin’ things as that!”—his

eyes on the big red seal. “I hain’t never harmed no one—’tain’t an

arres’, is it?” he added, his voice suddenly failing him.

“Well, hardly!” returned the lawyer, chuckling to himself. “This, my

friend, is the deed, filled out in your name, to the Rotalick property

on the hill back here; and this,” he continued, taking up another paper

and paying no attention to the little hunchback, who had dropped in limp

stupefaction on to a packing-box, “this is the deed—also made out in your

name—to the building adjoining this store on the south. Mr. Balch, the

present occupant, has a lease which expires in two months. After that the

property is at your disposal.”

“But where in thunder did I git it?” demanded Pedler Jim.

“That is not my business, sir,” said the lawyer, with a bow.

“Well, I’ll be jiggered!” murmured the hunchback, gingerly picking up one

of the deeds and peering at it.

Pedler Jim was still further astounded to find that to his tiny bank

account had been added a sum so large that he scarcely believed his eyes.

It was entered under the name “Hospital Fund.”

Following close upon all this came a letter from the folks at home:

_Dear Jimmie_: What a good, good son we have, and how can

we ever thank you! (“Dear Jimmie” looked blank.) The black

silk, so soft and rich, will make up into such a beautiful

gown—much too fine for your old mother, Jimmie, but I shall

be proud of it. Father is already quite puffed up with his

lovely gold-topped cane. Nellie and Mary and Tom and John

have divided up the pretty ribbons and books and sweetmeats

to suit themselves, as long as you didn’t single them out

by name. (“No—I’m blest if I did!” murmured Jim.) We were

proud and pleased to get the box, Jimmie, both because the

things were so beautiful and because you thought to send

them. (“I’ll be hanged if I did!” muttered the hunchback,

scratching his head in his perplexity.) Why don’t you come

on East and see us, dear? We wish you would.

Then followed bits of neighborhood gossip and family news, ending with

another burst of thanks which left Pedler Jim helpless with bewilderment.

It was that night that Somers was talking in the store.

“Yes, he’s rich—rich as mud, they say, an’ I ain’t sorry, neither. There

ain’t anyone I know that I’d as soon would have a streak o’ luck as

Hustler Joe.”

Pedler Jim was across the room, but he heard.

“Rich! Hustler Joe rich!” he demanded, springing to his feet.

“That’s what he is!”

“Jiminy Christmas!” shouted the hunchback. “I’ve found him—he was the

lamp himself!”

XI

It was in Dalton, the nearest large city to Skinner Valley, that Hustler

Joe began his career as a rich man.

He built him a house—a house so rare and costly that people came from

miles around to stare and wonder. Society not only opened its doors to

him, but reached out persuasive hands and displayed its most alluring

charms. She demanded but one thing—a new name: “Hustler Joe” could

scarcely be tolerated in the aristocratic drawing-rooms of the inner

circle! He gave her “Westbrook,” and thenceforth “Mr. Joseph Westbrook”

was a power in the city.

He was petted by maneuvering mamas, flattered by doting papas, and beamed

upon by aspiring daughters; yet the firm lips seldom relaxed in a smile,

and his groom told of long night rides when the master would come home

in the gray of the morning with his horse covered with mud and foam. But

society cared not. Society loves a Mystery—if the Mystery be rich.

When Joseph Westbrook’s mansion was finished and furnished from cellar to

garret and placed in the hands of a dignified, black-robed housekeeper at

the head of a corps of servants, and when his stables were filled with

thoroughbreds and equipped with all things needful, from a gold-tipped

whip to a liveried coachman, Mr. Joseph Westbrook himself was as restless

and ill at ease as Hustler Joe had been in the renovated shanty on the

hillside.

The balls and the dinners—invitations to which poured in upon him—he

attended in much the same spirit that Hustler Joe had displayed in

loitering in Pedler Jim’s “Emporium”—anywhere to get rid of himself.

But if the inner man was the same, the outer certainly was not; and the

well-groomed gentleman of leisure bore little resemblance to the miner of

a year before.

On the night of the Charity Ball Westbrook had been almost rude in his

evasion of various unwelcome advances, and he now stood in the solitude

for which he had striven, watching the dancers with sombre eyes. Suddenly

his face lighted up; but the flame that leaped to his eyes was instantly

quenched by the look of indifference he threw into his countenance.

Coming toward him was Ethel Barrington, leaning on the arm of her father.

“Mr. Westbrook,” said the old gentleman genially, “my little girl says

she is sure she has seen your face somewhere, so I have brought her over

to renew old acquaintance.”

Someone spoke to John Barrington then, and he turned aside, while

Westbrook found himself once more clasping a slim firm hand, and looking

into a well-remembered pair of blue eyes.

“You are——?”

“Hustler Joe,” he supplied quietly, his eyes never leaving her face.

“I knew it!” she exclaimed, her pleasure frankly shown. “I never could

forget your face,” she added impulsively, then colored in confusion as

she realized the force of her words.

But his tactful reply put her immediately at ease and they were soon

chatting merrily together, closely watched by many curious eyes. Society

never had seen Mr. Joseph Westbrook in just this mood before.

“Father did not recognize you,” said Ethel, after a time.

“No; I was introduced to Mr. Barrington at the Essex Club a week ago. I

hardly thought he would remember Hustler Joe. You have just returned,

Miss Barrington?”

“A month ago—from Europe, I mean; mother is there yet. America looks

wonderfully good to me—I have been away from it the greater part of the

last two years, you know. When I came home to Dalton I found the name

of Mr. Joseph Westbrook on every lip. You seem to be a very important

personage, sir,” she laughed.

“A little gilding goes a long way, sometimes,” he replied, with a bitter

smile.

“But there must have been something to gild!” she challenged. “Mr.

Westbrook, for the last two weeks I have been at The Maples—have you been

down to Skinner Valley lately?” she asked, with peculiar abruptness.

“Not for some months.”

“There are some changes in the village.”

“Yes?”

“That poor little deformed storekeeper has bought the Rotalick house and

has turned it into the dearest little convalescents’ home imaginable.”

“Is that so?” murmured Westbrook, meeting Miss Barrington’s gaze with a

face that was innocently noncommittal. “Pedler Jim always was kind to the

boys.”

“So it would seem; still—someone must have helped him in this,” she

suggested, her eyes on his again.

“Do you think so? Possibly! I am wondering, Miss Barrington, if we might

not find it cooler over there by the window. Will you allow me to escort

you?”

“Perhaps we might,” she smilingly assented. “Perhaps we could find some

subject of conversation other than Hustler Joe’s generosity to Pedler

Jim, too—we might try!” She threw him a merry glance, which he answered

with a shrug of his shoulders.

“Indeed, Miss Barrington, you quite overestimate anything I may have had

to do in the matter. It was entirely Pedler Jim’s idea. How about the

reading-room?” he suddenly asked, mentioning Miss Barrington’s latest

gift to the miners, “and the kindergarten class, and the——”

“Ah—please!” interrupted the girl, with hand upraised in laughing

protest. “I acknowledge myself vanquished at my own game. I’ll talk

about—the weather, now, if you like,” she finished dutifully.

Westbrook laughed, but before he could reply Miss Barrington was claimed

by a tall young fellow for the next dance.

“I wonder,” he mused as he saw them glide gracefully into the waltz—“I

wonder if dancing belongs to those things one never forgets. I’ll have to

brush up my old steps—and learn some new ones,” he added, after a pause.

From the night of the Charity Ball the world appeared in new colors for

Westbrook. He did not stop to question the cause of all this change. If

wealth were lifting her disguise and showing a glimpse of peace, he was

too rejoiced to care to ask the reason.

“I wish you’d come up to the house some time,” said John Barrington to

Westbrook one evening soon after the Charity Ball. “I’d like to talk with

you—we can’t make any headway in this infernal racket!”—the “infernal

racket” in question being the high C’s and low G’s of some world-famous

singers at a particularly exclusive musical.

Westbrook smiled.

“Thank you; I should be only too happy.”

“Then call it tomorrow night—to dinner. Seven o’clock.”

“I will—and thank you,” said Westbrook after a momentary hesitation.

To his daughter John Barrington said a little later:

“Oh, I’ve invited Mr. Westbrook up to dinner tomorrow night.”

“Mr. Westbrook!”

“Why, yes—why not? You seem surprised.”

“Gilding does count, doesn’t it, father dear?”

“Eh? Gilding? My dear, I don’t know what you mean. I know he’s rich

as mud—if that’s what you’re talking about; but he’s got more than

money—he’s got brains. He knows as much about mines as I do! I like

him—he’s worth a dozen of the youths that usually flutter about you.”

“Perhaps he is,” laughed Ethel, the color in her cheeks deepening.

That was but the first of many visits. Barrington was urgent, Ethel

charmingly cordial—and Westbrook, nothing loth.

XII

“I’m in search of a good lawyer,” said Westbrook to John Barrington one

day. “Can you recommend one to me?”

“Indeed I can. I have in mind the very man—he’s been doing a little work

for me, and he is very highly spoken of.”

“That sounds about O. K. Who is he?”

“That’s just the point,” laughed the older man; “the name’s escaped me.

He’s from the East—hasn’t been here very long. I’ll tell you what—I’ll

bring him into your office tomorrow. Will that do?”

“It will—and thank you.”

Westbrook’s “office” was something new. A life of leisure was becoming

wearisome; consequently he invested in various bits of real estate,

opened an office, put a man in charge, and of late had himself tended

strictly to business, such time as he could spare from his social

engagements.

It was into this office that Mr. Barrington came one morning accompanied

by a short, smooth-faced man whose garments were irreproachable in style

and cut.

“Ah, Westbrook,” began Barrington, “let me introduce Mr. Martin, of

Martin & Gray, the lawyer of whom I was telling you yesterday.”

Again the room and all it contained—save the figure of Martin

himself—faded from Westbrook’s sight, and he saw the New England street

with the lawyer’s sign in the foreground. The next moment the vision was

gone, and he had extended a cordial hand.

“I’m very glad to meet Mr. Martin,” he said, looking the lawyer straight

in the eye.

“Mr. Westbrook—delighted, I’m sure,” murmured the little man suavely;

then, in a puzzled tone, “have I had the honor of meeting you before, Mr.

Westbrook? There is something familiar about you.”

“Is there?” began Westbrook, but John Barrington interrupted.

“There, Martin, you’ve hit my case exactly! He’s puzzled me a thousand

times with a little turn or twist that’s like someone I’ve seen. Dash

it—who is it?”

“My features must be cast in a common mold,” laughed Westbrook, “to

remind so many of one they know.”

“Um—ah—well—I shouldn’t want to say quite that!” retorted Barrington.

“Well, gentlemen,” he resumed after a pause, “I’ll leave you to your own

devices. I’m off—good morning.”

“Good morning, and thank you,” replied Westbrook, rising. “I’ve no doubt

Mr. Martin will prove a credit to your introduction,” he concluded as he

bowed the elder gentleman out. Then he turned to the lawyer and began the

business at hand.

* * * * *

In his own room that night Westbrook carried a small mirror close to the

light and scrutinized himself for some minutes.

“H’m,” he mused, “hair rather gray for a man not yet thirty; still—it

looks less like that of a youth of twenty.”

He stroked his carefully trimmed beard meditatively.

“Hides the telltale mouth and chin pretty well,” he murmured. “Mr. Joseph

Westbrook can stay where he is for the present, I think.”

The next evening Westbrook called at the Barringtons’. He found Ethel

and Mr. Martin at the piano singing a duet which they continued at

his solicitation. Then the two musicians drifted into a discussion

of Martin’s favorite composer, which was like a foreign language to

Westbrook.

After a half-hour of this the lawyer took his leave. Westbrook drew a

long breath, but it was caught and stifled in half completion by Miss

Barrington’s first remark.

“What a fine voice he has!”

“Er—yes, very.”

“And his knowledge of musical matters is most unusual, too.”

“That so?”

“Yes. He says he wanted to make music his profession, but his parents

objected; so he took up law.”

“Indeed,” murmured Westbrook without enthusiasm.

“Yes, but he talks of musicians as glibly as though he had read Grove

as much as Blackstone. I haven’t had so good a time discussing my pet

composers for many a day.”

Westbrook stirred restlessly, and his hostess suddenly became aware of

the hopelessly lost look in his eyes. She promptly changed the subject.

* * * * *

It was the very next day that Mr. Joseph Westbrook appeared in the

leading book-store of the city.

“I want some lives of musicians,” he announced.

“I beg pardon?”

“Books, I mean—lives of musicians.”

“Oh, certainly, of course,” apologized the clerk. “Which ones?”

“Why—er—the best ones, to be sure.” Westbrook’s voice faltered at first,

but it vibrated with the courage of his convictions at the last.

The clerk suddenly turned his back, and when Westbrook next saw his face

it was an apoplectic shade of reddish purple.

“Certainly, sir. Bach, Beethoven, Handel, Haydn, Mendelssohn, Mozart,

Chopin——”

“Yes, yes, put me up one of each,” interrupted Westbrook hastily; he was

growing suspicious of the clerk. He left the store with more dignity than

he usually displayed.

The real estate business would have suffered in the next few days had it

depended entirely upon Westbrook, for the greater share of his time was

spent in poring over the recent addition to his library. At the end of a

month he was sadly entangled in a bewildering maze of fugues, sonatas,

concertos and symphonies, in which the names of Bach, Beethoven, Haydn,

Handel, Mendelssohn, Mozart and Chopin were hopelessly lost.

XIII

Westbrook often met the lawyer at the Barringtons’ after that first

visit. Martin’s music and Martin’s voice seemed to be unfailing

attractions in the eyes of Miss Barrington. Westbrook studied his “lives”

assiduously, but only once did he venture to take any part in the

discussions of composers which were so frequent between Miss Barrington

and the lawyer. That once was sufficient to show him how hopeless was the

task he had set for himself; and ever after he kept a discreet silence on

the subject of music and all that pertained thereto.

As the winter passed, Westbrook was seen more and more frequently in the

company of Miss Barrington. His eye had lost its gloom and his step had

gained a new springiness. Just why, Westbrook did not stop to consider.

Indeed, the considering of anything was what the man most wished to avoid.

It was on a beautiful morning in May that he asked Miss Barrington

to drive with him. The air that brushed his cheek was laden with the

fragrance of green-growing things, and the girl at his side had never

seemed so altogether lovely. He let the reins loosen in his hands as he

settled back for an hour of unalloyed enjoyment.

“I am particularly glad to take this drive today,” remarked Miss

Barrington, smiling into his eyes, “for, as I go away tomorrow, I may not

have another opportunity of enjoying one at present.”

“What?” demanded Westbrook, suddenly sitting upright.

“I merely said I was going away tomorrow,” she returned merrily, picking

out with intuitive skill that portion of her remark which had so startled

him. Then something in his face made her add—“for the summer, you know.”

Westbrook pulled the reins taut and snapped the whip sharply. Going

away! Of course; why not? What of it? Yes, what of it, indeed! Long days

fraught with sudden emptiness loomed up before him and stretched on into

weeks devoid of charm. He understood it all now—and he a felon! He could

hear a girl’s voice saying, “I knew you were a good man the minute I saw

your face!” Unconsciously he shrank into the corner of the carriage, and

was only brought to a realization of his action by a voice—amused, yet

slightly piqued—saying:

“Really, Mr. Westbrook, I hardly expected so simple a statement would

render you speechless!”

“Speechless? No, oh, no—certainly not! I beg your pardon, I’m sure,” he

said, talking very fast. “You’re going away, you tell me. It is needless

to assure you that we shall all miss you very much. Where do you go, if I

may ask—and how long are you to remain?” And he turned to her with eyes

so full of misery that she could scarcely believe she had heard his words

aright.

Before she could answer there came the wild, irregular clattering of

unguided horses’ feet. Westbrook turned quickly to see two frightened

animals rushing toward them dragging a swaying empty carriage. By a swift

and skilful turn he just escaped the collision, but Ethel Barrington felt

the hot breath of the beasts as they flew past. In another moment their

own startled horse had dashed after the runaways with speed scarcely less

than their own.

Westbrook brought all his great strength to bear, then—the right rein

snapped. The horse swerved sharply, throwing the man to his knees. The

next moment he was crawling cautiously, but rapidly, over the dashboard

on to the thill, then to the back of the frightened animal, where he

could grasp the dangling broken reins. One strong pull, and the horse

stopped so suddenly that the man shot over her head to the ground; but

he did not relax his hold, and the trembling animal stood conquered.

Westbrook turned to look into the shining eyes of the girl, who had

leaped from the carriage and come close to his side.

“Oh, that was wonderful! But—my God! I thought you’d be killed,” she

cried, holding out two trembling hands, then sinking to the ground and

sobbing out her nervousness and relief.

The man looked down at her with yearningly tender eyes. Involuntarily he

extended his hand as though to caress the bowed head; but he drew back

shuddering—that hand had forfeited all right to such a touch. The look in

her eyes had thrilled him to his finger-tips, but it as quickly stabbed

him with the revelation that not he alone would suffer.

“Miss Barrington, don’t, I beg of you,” he said finally, in a voice that

was stem with self-control. “You are completely unnerved—and no wonder.”

Then he continued more gently, “But see—Firefly is quiet now. Will you

dare to drive home behind her if I can manage somehow to mend the reins?”

A vivid color flamed into the girl’s cheeks and she rose unsteadily to

her feet.

“Yes, indeed,” she asserted, forcing her trembling lips to speak

firmly. “I am ashamed of myself. I hope you will pay no attention to my

babyishness, Mr. Westbrook.”

“You were not babyish, Miss Barrington,” objected Westbrook gravely; “on

the contrary you were very brave.” But as he helped her into the carriage

he averted his eyes and refused to meet her questioning gaze.

All the way home Ethel Barrington talked with a nervous volubility quite

unlike herself. Westbrook made an effort to meet her brilliant sallies

with something like an adequate return, but after two or three dismal

failures he gave it up and lapsed into a gloomy silence broken only by an

occasional short reply.

“I expect my friends will come this evening to say good-bye—I shall see

you, shall I not?” she asked gaily as she gave him her hand in alighting

at her own door.

Before Westbrook fully realized what the question was, he had murmured,

“Yes, certainly”; but when he drove away he was muttering, “Fool, what

possible good can it be to you now? Just suppose she knew you for what

you are?”

Ethel entered her door and slowly climbed the stairs to her room.

“He cares; I know he does!” she exclaimed under her breath. “But why—why

couldn’t he—?” Then the conscious red, that was yet half in pique, flamed

into her cheeks and she shrugged her shoulders disdainfully.

When Westbrook called that night she gave him a gracious hand and looked

frankly into his eyes with the inward determination to “have no more

nonsense”; but her eyelids quickly fell before his level gaze and she

felt the telltale color burning in her cheeks. She was relieved when her

father broke the awkward silence.

“Well, Westbrook, we shall miss you—we’ve got so we depend upon seeing

you about once in so often. We shall be in Skinner Valley in August. You

must plan to run down to The Maples then and make us a visit. I should

like to show you the mines.”

“Thank you,” replied Westbrook, glancing toward the door and, for the

first time in his life, welcoming the appearance of Martin.

Martin advanced, smilingly sure of his welcome, nor did he notice that

Miss Barrington’s greeting was a shade less cordial than usual. His

coming was the signal for an adjournment to the music-room, and there

Westbrook sat with clouded eyes and unheeding ears while the air about

him rang with melody. After a time he was conscious that the music had

stopped and that Ethel was speaking.

“I think I never heard of anything so horrible!” she said.

From Martin’s next words Westbrook gathered that they were talking of

a particularly atrocious murder that had been committed in the city the

night before. Then the girl spoke again, her voice vibrating with feeling.

“Oh, but Mr. Martin—only think of a human being fiendish enough to attack

his own son!”

Westbrook tried to rouse himself, to speak, to move; but he seemed bound

by invisible cords. His head was turned away from the speakers, but he

saw their reflection in the mirror facing him, and he noticed that the

lawyer’s gaze was fixed across the room upon himself with a peculiar

intentness as he said:

“Yes, incredible, I grant, Miss Barrington; and yet, in a little New

England town of my acquaintance a boy of twenty shot down his own father

in cold blood at their own fireside.”

“Oh, don’t, Mr. Martin—the human fiend!” shuddered Ethel.

The lawyer’s eyes did not waver; a strange light was coming into them.

“A human fiend, indeed,” he repeated softly, half rising from his chair.

Something seemed to snap in Westbrook’s brain, and he forced himself to

his feet.

“Your music set me to day-dreaming,” he began, with a smile as he

crossed the room, “and your creepy murder stories awoke me to a

realization that the sweet sounds had stopped. Come”—he looked straight

into Martin’s eyes—“some time you may tell me more of this gruesome

tale—I am interested in studies of human nature. No doubt you meet with

many strange experiences in your business; but now I want you to sing

‘Calvary’ for me. Will you, please? Then I must go.”

Martin rose to his feet with a puzzled frown on his face and picked up a

sheet of music from the piano.

“Thank you,” said Westbrook, when the song was finished. Then he turned

to Ethel with extended hand. “I hope you will have a pleasant summer,” he

said in stilted politeness.

“You are very kind. Shall I wish you the same?”

Her voice and her fingers were icy. Her pride was touched, and she

expressed no hope as to their future meeting, and certainly Westbrook

dared not. He left the house with a heart that was bitterly rebellious,

and the blackness outside seemed to him symbolical of his own despair.

That night, and for long nights afterward, he rode over the hills outside

the city. Little by little his life dropped back into the old rut. All

the new warmth and brightness faded with the going of Miss Barrington,

and he threw himself into business with a zeal that quickly brought

“Westbrook & Company” into the front rank and filled his purse with yet

greater wealth—wealth which he had come to hate, and for which he had no

use.

XIV

One morning, long after sunrise, Westbrook entered the outskirts of

the city and allowed his tired beast to slow to a walk. In one of the

poorest streets of the tenement district he saw a white-faced woman, a

group of half a dozen puny children and a forlorn heap of clothing and

furniture. He was off his horse in a moment, and a few kindly questions

brought out the information that they had been evicted for arrears in

rent amounting to thirty dollars because the woman had been too ill to

work. He straightway paid the sleek little agent not only the amount due,

but also a year’s rent in advance and rode away, followed by a volley of

thanks and blessings from the woman. He did not know that Martin was the

landlord and that he came out of the tenement in time to hear the details

of the incident fresh from his agent.

As Westbrook turned the corner of the dingy street a curious elation took

possession of him. How the sun shone—how exhilarating the air was! How

his heart beat in tune with it all! What was this new joy that seemed

almost to choke and suffocate him? Was this the shadow of peace at last?

He threw the reins to the groom with so beaming a smile that the man

scratched his head meditatively for a full half-minute.

“Faith, an’ what’s got into the master?” he muttered as he led the horse

to the stable.

In the days that followed society was treated to a new sensation—the

Mystery turned into a Philanthropist. A school, a library and a hospital

were under way in a wonderfully short time. Did Westbrook hear of anyone

wanting anything—from a toy to a piano or a dinner to an education—he

promptly bought and presented it. The result was disastrous. There came

a constant stream of beggars to his door, varying from those in rags

asking a nickel to bank presidents demanding a million—for “investment,”

of course; furthermore, he was obliged to hire two private secretaries to

attend to his mail.

In August came a cordial note from Mr. Barrington inviting him to The

Maples for a two weeks’ visit. The stiffly worded refusal which Westbrook

despatched by return mail threw John Barrington into a state of puzzled

dissatisfaction, and John Barrington’s daughter into a feeling of

unreasoning anger against the world in general and Joseph Westbrook in

particular. The anger was not less when, two months later, Westbrook

called on the Barringtons just four weeks after they had come up to their

town residence in Dalton.

It was not a pleasant call. Westbrook was stilted, Mr. Barrington plainly

ill at ease, and Ethel the personification of chill politeness; yet she

became cordiality itself when Martin appeared a little later. She chatted

and laughed with the lawyer and sent merry shafts of wit across the room

to Westbrook and her father. But when Westbrook had gone she lapsed into

bored indifference and monosyllables.

Mr. Barrington was called from the room after a time, leaving his

daughter and Martin alone. The lawyer broached subject after subject with

unvarying ill success, even music itself failing to awaken more than a

passing interest. At last he said abruptly:

“Queer chap—that Westbrook!”

“Queer? Why?” almost snapped Miss Barrington.

Martin raised his eyebrows.

“How can you ask?” he returned. “You’ve seen him—you know him!”

Miss Barrington gave the lawyer a swift glance. Just what did he mean?

Had he noticed the change in Westbrook’s manner—his indifference—his

coldness? Did he think that she——?

Miss Barrington laughed softly.

“Indeed, yes, Mr. Martin, I do know him—slightly, perhaps; but ‘queer’ is

not the adjective I would have applied to him.”

The lawyer leaned forward.

“Miss Barrington, _what_ do you know of him? Did it ever occur to you how

very little any of us know of this man?”

The lady stirred uneasily.

“Really, Mr. Martin, I know him for a gentleman, as you do—I might

also add that he is quite a noted philanthropist, of late,” she added

teasingly.

“‘Philanthropist!’” scorned the lawyer.

Miss Barrington’s manner instantly changed.

“Mr. Westbrook is doing a world of good with his money; I admire him for

it,” she said with decision.

“Oh, of course,” returned the man smoothly. “Still, I wonder why—this

sudden generosity!”

“Sudden? It’s a long time since I first heard of Mr. Westbrook’s good

deeds, Mr. Martin,” replied Miss Barrington, a vision of Pedler Jim and

his hospital rising before her eyes.

“H’m-m,” murmured the lawyer, his level gaze on her face, “you knew him

before, perhaps—this man they—er—call ‘Westbrook.’”

The lady sprang to her feet and crossed the room to the piano.

“Oh, fie, Mr. Lawyer!” she laughed nervously. “I’m no poor victim on the

witness stand. Come—let’s try this duet.”

The man followed her and leaned his elbow on the piano, but he did not

pick up the music nor take his eyes from her face.

“You have known him before, then—under his other name, of course,” he

hazarded.

A swift red came into Ethel’s cheeks.

“Perhaps—perhaps not! I really do not care to discuss it.” And she

wheeled around upon the piano-stool and dashed into the prelude of the

duet.

Martin waited until her hands glided into the soft ripple of the

accompaniment.

“Then you, of all people, Miss Barrington,” he began again, “should

know that this philanthropic mummery is nothing but a salve for his

conscience. Admirable, I’m sure!”

The music stopped with a crash.

“What do you mean?” she demanded. “I don’t know what you are talking

about, with your miserable innuendoes.”

Martin’s face paled.

“Innuendoes!” he burst out, losing his temper; “then I’ll speak plainly,

since you demand it! Since when, Miss Barrington, have you made a

practice of shielding—murderers?”

He regretted the word the instant it had left his lips, but he forced

himself to meet Miss Barrington’s horrified gaze unflinchingly.

“Murderer!” she gasped. “Hustler Joe was no murderer!”

At that moment Mr. Barrington re-entered the room and Martin turned to

him in relief. Five minutes later he had made his adieus and left the

house.

XV

Murderer!

Ethel fled to her room and locked the door, but the word laughed at bolts

and bars. It looked from the walls and the pictures and peeped at her

from the pages of the book she tried to read. She opened the window and

gazed up at the stars, but they, too, knew the hated word and spelled it

out in twinkling points of light.

Murderer?

Ah, no, it could not be—and yet——

Away back in Ethel’s memory was a picture of the Deerfield woods that

skirted the lawn at The Maples. She saw the tall, grave-faced miner and

the imperious girl, and even now the words rang in her ears—“I’m not the

good man you think, Miss Barrington!” Half-forgotten tales of “Hustler

Joe’s queerness” came to her, too, and assumed an appearance of evil.

And was this to be the explanation of that ride—that ride on which

she had almost betrayed herself only to be met by stern words of

conventionality? Was this the meaning of the infrequent calls, the

averted face, the eyes so misery-laden if by chance they met her own?

A murderer?

Ah, no, no! He was so good—so kind—so brave! There were Pedler Jim, the

miners whose lives he had saved, and the multitudes of the city’s poor to

give the lie to so base a charge; and yet—Martin had said that these very

benefactions were but a lullaby to a guilty conscience.

The night brought Ethel no relief. The dark was peopled with horrid

shapes; and sleep, when it came, was dream-haunted and unrefreshing.

In the morning, weary and heavy-eyed, she awoke to a day of restless

wandering from room to room. Twenty-four hours later her trunk was packed

and she was on her way to The Maples.

It was at about this time that Westbrook’s philanthropy took a new turn.

He began to spend long hours in the city prison while society looked on

and shrugged disdainful shoulders. The striped-garbed creatures behind

the bars seemed to possess a peculiar fascination for him. He haunted

their habitation daily, yet he never failed to shudder at every clang of

the iron doors.

Particularly was he kind to those outcasts from human sympathy—the

murderers. So far did he carry this branch of his charity that the

authorities ventured to remonstrate with the great man one day, telling

him that he was putting a premium on the horrible crime. They never

forgot the look that came over the beneficent Mr. Joseph Westbrook’s

face as he turned and walked away.

It was on that night that the servants said he sat up until morning in

his library, raging around the room like some mad creature, so that they

were all afraid, and one came and listened at the door. There he heard

his master cry out:

“My God—is it not enough? Is there no atonement—no peace?” Then there was

a long, quivering sigh, and a noise as of a clinched hand striking the

desk, and a low muttered, “Oh, the pitiless God of Justice!”

In the morning Westbrook left the house before breakfast and boarded the

eight o’clock train for Skinner Valley.

XVI

Westbrook had gone back to Skinner Valley for a talk with Pedler Joe,

having it in his mind to tell the little hunchback his life story as that

of a friend of his and so get the benefit of sound advice without quite

betraying his secret. But the door opened suddenly and Bill Somers burst

into the store.

“There’s another blow-up at the mine!” he gasped thickly. “An’ the old

man’s daughter—she——”

“What old man’s daughter?” demanded Westbrook, his lips white.

“She—Barrington’s girl—is down there in that hell! She went in with her

friends at two o’clock. They——”

“Which entrance?” thundered Westbrook, with his hand on the door.

“Beachmont! They——”

Westbrook dashed down the steps and across the sidewalk, whipped out his

knife and cut loose a horse from the shafts of a wagon in front of the

store. The next moment he had mounted the animal and was urging it into a

mad run toward the Beachmont entrance of the Candria mine.

Again did he face a crowd of weeping women and children crazed with

terror; but this time there stood among them the bowed form of the great

mine-king himself. John Barrington’s lips were stern and set, and only

his eyes spoke as he grasped Westbrook’s hand.

Once more did a band of heroic men work their way bit by bit into the

mine, fighting the damp at every turn under Westbrook’s directions.

Barrington had looked at the preparations in amazement.

“How comes it that this Westbrook, this millionaire, knows the mine so

well?” he stammered.

A woman standing near—Bill Somers’s wife—answered him.

“That’s Hustler Joe, sir,” she said softly.

Hustler Joe! John Barrington drew a deep breath as the memories of the

Bonanza catastrophe came to him.

“Thank God for Hustler Joe!” he breathed fervently. “If anyone can save

my little girl, ’tis he!”

“You’re right, sir—an’ he’ll do it, too,” returned the little woman, her

eyes full of unshed tears.

XVII

Slowly, so slowly, the rescuers worked their way into the mine. One by

one the unconscious forms of the miners were borne back to fresh air and

safety. But no trace could be found of Miss Barrington and her band of

sightseers.

At last, far down a gallery, Westbrook heard a faint cry. With an

answering shout of reassurance he dashed ahead of the others and came

face to face with Ethel Barrington.

“You!” she cried.

“Yes, yes; you’re not hurt?”

She shook her head and leaned heavily against the wall. The reaction was

making her head swim.

“And your friends?”

“Here”—she pointed to the ground almost at her feet. “They’re not

hurt—they fainted.”

Stalwart miners poured into the narrow chamber and lifted the prostrate

forms, leaving Westbrook to follow with Miss Barrington. That young lady

still leaned against the wall.

“I—we should be going; can you—let me help you,” stammered Westbrook.

“Oh, I can walk,” she laughed nervously, making a vain attempt to steady

her limbs as she moved slowly away from her support.

Westbrook caught her outstretched hand and passed his disengaged arm

around her waist.

“Miss Barrington, you’re quite unnerved,” he said, his voice suddenly

firm. “Pardon me, but you must accept my assistance.” And he half

carried, half led her down the long gallery, at the end of which they

could hear the steps and voices of their companions.

All the misery of the last few days fled from Ethel’s mind. She was

conscious only of the strength and bravery and tenderness of the man at

her side. Martin’s hated words became as phantoms of a past existence.

“You—you haven’t told me how you came to be here today, Mr. Westbrook,”

she began again, a little hysterically. “I thought you were in Dalton.”

“I came down this morning,” he said. Then added softly, “Thank God!”

Ethel was silent for a moment. When she spoke again her voice shook.

“As usual, Mr. Westbrook—you are near when I need you! If I am ever in

danger again, I shall promptly look for you. Now see that you do not

disappoint me!” she added with assumed playfulness, trying to hide her

depth of feeling.

They had almost reached the turn when a distant rumble and vibrating

crash shook the walls about them, throwing Westbrook and Miss Barrington

to the ground. It was some time before the man could stagger to his feet

and help his companion to stand upright.

“What—what was it?” she gasped.

Westbrook advanced two steps only to come sharply against a wall of earth

and timbers.

“My God—the roof is fallen!” he cried.

She came close to his side.

“Then there was another explosion?”

“Yes.”

“But they will find us?”

“That wall may be—” he stopped abruptly.

“Many feet in thickness, I know,” she supplied.

“And the damp—if it should enter the gallery from the rear—” his voice

choked into silence.

“I know—I understand. But—we are together!” She laid her hand on his arm.

He caught the hand and held it in both his own, then slowly raised it and

laid the soft palm against his lips.

“Ethel—Ethel—may God forgive me!” he whispered brokenly.

She swayed dizzily, and he caught and held her close.

“I—I think I am going to faint,” she murmured. “I——”

His arms tightened their clasp and her head drooped until it lay in the

hollow of his shoulder.

“Ethel, darling—only one little word! Ah, sweetheart—I’ve loved you so!”

She raised her hand and just touched his cheek with her fingers, then let

her arm fall about his neck. His head bent low and his lips closed over

hers as she drew a long, quivering sigh.

“May God forgive me,” he breathed, “but ’tis the end—the end!”

XVIII

When Ethel Barrington regained consciousness she was in her own bed at

The Maples, but it was a full two days after that before they let her

ask the questions that so often came to her lips. It was her father who

finally answered her.

“Yes, dear, you were unconscious when the miners found you. Westbrook

could barely speak. Why, girlie, when that second crash came and the

miners realized that Hustler Joe—as they insist upon calling that

remarkable man—was himself imprisoned, they swarmed into that mine like

ants and attacked the fallen wall like madmen! Those that had no pickaxe

clawed at the dirt and stones with their naked fingers.”

“And—Mr. Westbrook?”

“Is all right and has been here every day to inquire for you and to bring

you these,” replied Mr. Barrington, with a wave of his hand toward the

sumptuous red roses on the table.

The girl’s eyes lingered on the flowers and her cheeks suddenly glowed

with a reflection of their vivid color.

“He is very kind,” she murmured as she turned her face away.

For a week Westbrook and his roses made daily calls. At the end of that

time it was reported to him that Miss Barrington was feeling quite like

herself. The next morning Westbrook did not appear, but his roses came in

charge of a boy together with a note for Miss Barrington.

The missive bore no date, no salutation, but plunged at once into its

message.

That I should address you at all is an insult, but my

cowardly weakness when we were last together makes it a

greater insult for me to keep silence now. I have waited

until you were quite recovered before giving you this, for

I know that it will give you pain—and that it _will_ give

you pain is at once my greatest curse and my greatest joy.

That I should have dared to love you is despicable, but

that I should have allowed you to give me even one tender

thought in return is dastardly—and yet, nothing in heaven

or hell can take from me the ecstasy of that one moment

when your dear lips met mine!

Forgive me—think kindly of me if you can, for—God help

me—I am going away, never to look on your face again.

I was a boy of twenty when I committed the sin against

God and man that has made my life a thing of horror. For

years I have sought for peace; adventure, work, wealth,

philanthropy—each alike has failed to bring it. I am going

now to my boyhood’s home to receive my just punishment.

Ah, Ethel, Ethel, my lost love—what can I say to you? I

have but words—words—empty words! I can see the horror in

your dear eyes. I am not worthy of even the thought of you,

and yet, my darling, oh, my darling, were it not for this

dread shadow on my life, I swear I would win you for my

darling in very truth!

But now—God help me—farewell!

There was no name signed, but this Ethel did not notice until she had

read the note three times with her tear-dimmed eyes; then she whispered:

“Poor fellow! He could not sign ‘Westbrook’ and he would not sign—the

other.”

Much to John Barrington’s amazement, his daughter insisted upon going to

town on the noon train that day. In response to his persistent objections

she assured him that she felt “perfectly well and quite equal to a

journey around the world, if necessary.”

At four o’clock Lawyer Martin was surprised by an urgent note summoning

him to the Barringtons’ Dalton residence on Howard Avenue. Half an hour

afterward he was ushered into the presence of Miss Barrington herself.

The interview was short, sharp and straight to the point. A few hours

later Miss Barrington and her maid boarded the eight o’clock express for

the East.

XIX

Twenty-four hours passed after Westbrook had sent his letter to Miss

Barrington before he could so arrange his affairs as to start for the

little New England village of his boyhood. All day and all night he had

worked with feverish haste, and the time had flown on wings of the wind;

now, when he was at last on the morning “Limited,” the hours seemed to

drag as though weighted with lead.

He could see it all—the proud new name he had made for himself

dragged low in the dust. He knew just how society would wonder and

surmise; just how the maneuvering mamas would shake their skirts in

virtuous indignation and how the doting papas would nod their heads in

congratulation over a miraculous escape.

He knew how the poor and friendless in the great city would first deny

the charge, then weep over the truth. He knew, too, the look that would

come to the faces of the miners, and he winced at even the thought of

this—Hustler Joe had prized his place in the hearts of his miner friends.

There was one on whom he dared not let his thoughts rest for a moment;

yet it was that one’s face which seemed ever before his eyes, and it was

that one’s voice which constantly rang in his ears.

* * * * *

Again the sun had set and it was twilight in the little New England

village. The street had not changed much—the houses were grayer and the

trees taller, perhaps.

As he neared the familiar gate, he saw in the window the face of a

silver-haired woman. Was that his mother—his dearly beloved mother of

long ago? She turned her head and he was answered.

After all, would it not be better to pass on and away again, rather than

to bow that gray head once more in grief and shame?

His steps lagged and he almost passed the gate. Then he drew a long

breath, turned sharply, strode up the path and pulled the bell.

The sweet-faced woman opened the door. The man’s dry lips parted, but

no sound came, for from an inner room advanced Ethel Barrington with a

gray-haired man whose kindly face wore a strangely familiar smile.

“What is it, wife? Is it—Paul?” he asked in tremulous tones.

EPILOGUE

It was long hours afterward that Paul Joseph Weston sat with Ethel alone

in the library.

“But yourself, dear—you have not told me yet how you came to be here,” he

said.

She laughed softly.

“Rash boy! Was there not need of someone’s preparing your father and

mother for so wonderful a home-coming? I found out by judicious inquiry

that you had not yet left the city, so I knew, when I took the train,

that I had at least a few hours’ start of you.”

“But how—what—how could you, dear? Surely I didn’t tell——”

Again she laughed, but this time she dimpled into a rosy blush.

“When your very disquieting letter came, sir, I remembered something

Mr. Martin had once said to me. I went to town, sent for Mr. Martin and

insisted upon his telling me all that he knew of—your youth.”

“And that was?”

“That he believed you to be Paul Weston, who had quarreled with his

father and run away after apparently killing the poor gentleman. Mr.

Martin said that the father did not die, but slowly recovered from his

wound and made every possible effort to find his son, even sending Martin

himself to seek for him. Once Martin traced the boy to a mining camp, but

there he lost the trail and never regained it until he thought he saw

Paul Weston’s features in Joseph Westbrook’s face.”

“Ethel, what did Martin first tell you of me that caused you to go to him

for aid?”

“He hinted that you were a—ah, don’t make me say it, please!”

The man’s face grew stern.

“And he knew all the time it was false!” he cried.

She put a soft finger on his tense lips.

“We just won’t think of him—and really, I’ve forgiven him long ago, for

it was he that helped me in the end, you know. Besides, he acknowledged

that he didn’t really suppose you were Paul Weston. I—I fancy he didn’t

want me to think too highly of this interesting Mr. Joseph Westbrook!”

she added saucily.

The arm that held her tightened its clasp.

“He needn’t have worried,” she continued, with uptilted chin. “I shall

never, never marry Mr. Joseph Westbrook!”

“Ethel!”

“But if Hustler Joe or Paul Weston should ask——”

Her lips were silenced by a kiss and a fervent, “You little fraud of a

sweetheart!”

_Interludes_

The rich man speaks about how he spends his money, while his friends

speak about how he made it.

* * * * *

You could tell the old-time hero by his medals; the modern one is known

by his collection of loving-cups.

* * * * *

The spendthrift sometimes does more good with his money than the

philanthropist.

* * * * *

The fact that figures won’t lie probably accounts for the invention of

statistics.

* * * * *

A political job differs from any other kind, inasmuch as you work before

you get it, instead of afterward.

* * * * *

The miser holds on to his own money; the millionaire to other people’s.

* * * * *

_His Cogitation_

“Well, then, amongst others, there’s the man who habitually talks to

himself,” ruminatingly said the Pruntytown Philosopher the other evening.

“If he does it in order to listen to himself, he is a fool; if he does

it to avoid listening to his friends, he is a sage; and if he does it to

save his friends from listening to him, he is a philanthropist.”

* * * * *

_The Safe Side_

REPORTER—Were you quoted correctly in that interview in the morning

papers?

SENATOR—Come around the day after tomorrow. How can I tell until I see

how the interview is going to be taken?

* * * * *

_An Inference_

“My wife and I have lived happily together for twenty-five years.”

“Now, tell me, old fellow—in confidence, of course—which one of you has

had the other bluffed all this time?”

_The Constitution_

BY FREDERICK UPHAM ADAMS

_Author of “The Kidnapped Millionaires,” “Colonel Monroe’s Doctrine,”

“President John Smith,” “Shades of the Fathers,” etc._

The practical man values a house not by its antiquity, but by its

conformability to modern standards of construction and equipment. If he

purchases an ancient structure he is not required to pay an added price

because of its lack of plumbing, its absence of gas and electric lighting

fixtures, and he is not entranced that its roof leaks and that its cellar

is damp and moldy.

This same man, if he gives the subject a passing thought, will likely

assure you that the Constitution of the United States is a perfect

document because it is more than one hundred years old. It also is

likely that this is the extent of his information concerning that famous

document.

The average lack of knowledge concerning our National Constitution is

astounding. Like children who have been drilled to repeat the Lord’s

Prayer without the faintest conception of what the petition means, we

have mentally drilled ourselves to believe that our Constitution is

perfect, that it was inspired by a superhuman wisdom, and that it is

treason to criticize or even discuss its infallible precepts.

In this respect we are the most narrow, bigoted and prejudiced people who

pretend to keep in alignment with progress. For more than one hundred

years we have been proclaiming the perfection of our free governmental

institutions, and calling on other nations to admire us and to follow our

example.

Within the past few years the truth has been forced home on us that

the officialdom of our townships, villages, cities, counties, states

and of the nation is maggoty with corruption; that our local, state

and national legislatures are openly controlled by mercenary private

interests; that the scandals concerning our judiciary can no longer

be smothered or concealed; that our citizens are powerless to pass

laws demanded by the majority, or to defeat those aimed to despoil the

majority; that the burdens of taxation are spurned by those who have

amassed wealth by means of unfair and ofttimes purchased legislation, and

that the domination of corporations and vested interests is so complete

as to be apparent to the dullest of the plundered.

This language is not exaggerated. It is impossible to overstate the

enormity of the depth to which we have descended in the scale of

political morals. Ten years ago any one of the disclosures which now

are made from week to week would have aroused the nation; today the

repetition of these horrors dazes those who attempt to keep track of

them. Not one crime in a hundred ever sees the light in printer’s ink.

The bigger thieves are so buttressed and protected by the fortifications

of wealth, and so secure behind the barbed wire entanglements woven by

the courts, that their enraged dupes cannot reach them.

Great Britain is a republic in all save name, yet no such conditions

prevail under its government. France is a republic, yet its people are

not despoiled by official brigands, neither is the free expression of its

electorate crushed beneath the massed weight of its moneyed interests.

I count it a disgrace to be an American so long as these degrading

conditions prevail. It is a dishonor to live in a city, community, state

or nation where thievery is condoned or tolerated, and it is cowardly

weakness for the honest majority to assume that the problem of corruption

is past their solving.

The most formidable barrier in the way of permanent redress has been

erected and is maintained by those who are checked by it. It consists

of the absurd assumption that our material prosperity has been the

consequence of the perfect provisions of our National Constitution.

It is manifested in the senseless worship of the forefathers, and the

ignorant deification of the founders of the document, which for more than

a hundred years has served as a model for our state, municipal and local

governments.

We have come to recognize the hopelessness of honest majorities when

pitted against the machinery of our municipal governments; we no longer

deny that the cumbersome machinery of our state governments lends itself

to the manipulation of corrupt private interests; the suspicion has

dawned on us that our National Congress is more concerned with thwarting

public sentiment than in conforming to it; and despite all this knowledge

we steadfastly refuse to direct our gaze to the prime cause of these

abuses.

With a hundred monopolies filching from us that which we have created—and

doing it under the guise of law and by sanction of the Constitution;

with legislatures, executives and courts scorning to put into operation

those remedies for which we have legally voted—and declining to do so

under the authority of the Constitution; with a system of taxation which

places all the burdens on those who are poor because they are producers

of wealth, and releasing from taxation those who have become rich

because of their exploitation of labor and through the debauching of its

representatives—this system being founded on constitutional decisions—we

yet cling to the childish delusion that ours is the only perfect

government ever bequeathed to mankind.

Compared with the governments of England and France we have only the

semblance of self-rule, while they possess the substance. The people of

Germany have more direct influence over legislation than have those of

the United States. Despite an autocratic emperor, surrounded as he is

by a nobility and protected by the most powerful standing army in the

world, the people of Germany have made greater progress along the road of

democracy within the last twenty years than we have.

If in England there is valid reason to believe that the majority of the

people hold an opinion counter to that of the administration in power,

Parliament is dissolved and a direct appeal is made to the voters for a

new body of representatives. The new Parliament meets and proceeds to

pass the laws demanded by the electorate. There is a House of Lords, but

it does not dare reject a measure known to be popular. There is a king,

but he has not exercised his veto power for more than a century and a

half, and one need not be a prophet to hazard that he never will exercise

it again. There is no supreme court in England. In that benighted

monarchy when the people pass a law it is a law, and not a guess.

To all intents and purposes the same procedure obtains in France and in a

score of other countries which might be named. Ours is the only country

on earth where the vote of a citizen has no direct significance.

We are not permitted to vote for a President, but are allowed to help

choose electors who represent not us, but the state. There is no such

thing as a citizen of the United States, so far as the franchise is

concerned. If you have a vote it is by grace of the state in which you

reside. The Constitution does not recognize your individual sovereignty

in any way. If you doubt this assertion read that document.

The state fixes your qualifications as a voter. It might debar you

because of your sex, because of your height, because you were not worth

$100,000, and you would have no redress under the Constitution of the

United States. Possibly you did not know this.

In practice you are privileged to vote for members of the Lower House

of Congress. That is the beginning and the end of your influence so far

as your national government is concerned. You have nothing to do with

the selection of senators, and I doubt if you are consulted as to the

composition of the Supreme Court.

As I have explained, if the Lower House of the Legislature in England

passes a law, it at once becomes a law. Under our Constitution the

Senate has the power to amend or defeat it. This is supposed by us to

be the quintessence of all earthly legislative wisdom. This is Check

Number One on the mandate of the foolish people. In passing, I desire to

repeat that this is the only alleged republic or constitutional monarchy

yet remaining on earth which assumes that its majorities are unfit to

influence legislation.

If the measure demanded by the people be so fortunate as to pass the

House and Senate, the President may veto it. This is Check Number Two on

the mandate of the foolish people. If the President sign the measure the

Supreme Court may declare it unconstitutional, and that is the end of it,

unless a subsequent infallible Supreme Court should overrule the decision

of the first infallible Supreme Court. This is Check Number Three on

the mandate of a free and enlightened people. In the event that the

Supreme Court should decide that a law is a law, the financial interests

adversely affected may and do defeat its enforcement by legal quibbles as

to details, or may and do resort to the bribery of the officials charged

with the execution of the law. These are Checks Numbers Four and Five

on the will of the people in this, the one perfect system of popular

government ever designed in all history.

We are the most corrupt nation on earth because of “our peculiar

form of Government”; because of the exactions and limitations of a

Constitution which was designed to protect and conserve the interests

of property rather than of citizenship. Those who are astounded or

offended at this statement need only read the record of the convention

which drafted the Constitution in order to satisfy themselves as to its

moderation. I do not mean to insinuate that the fifty-five delegates

who met in Philadelphia in 1787 had any idea of establishing a system

which would foster corruption, but the records absolutely prove that

they deliberately planned to suppress the rule of the majority in order

that popular clamor might not menace property interests. The train of

abuses from which we now suffer flow logically from the checks they then

provided; checks which place selfish and corrupt wealth beyond the reach

of public redress.

Those foolish persons who have been taught in school and in the public

prints that the founders of our Constitution were sincerely desirous

of establishing a system of government in which the will of the people

should find free expression, will be shocked and undeceived when they

read its debates and proceedings as recorded by James Madison, one of

the delegates from Virginia. When one comes to learn of these fifty-five

delegates that not more than ten are on record as voicing the slightest

degree of confidence in the wisdom of the people or their fitness to

rule, he is likely to take a new view of the Constitution framed by them,

and he is able to account for the innumerable ills which we are compelled

to suffer.

I will quote a few expressions of opinion from delegates who wielded the

greater influence in the construction of the Constitution:

_Roger Sherman_—“The people should have as little to do as may be about

the Government.”

_Elbridge Gerry_—“The evils we experience flow from an excess of

democracy, the worst of all possible evils.”

_John Dickinson_—“A limited monarchy is one of the best governments in

the world.”

_Rufus King_—“It is immaterial to the people by what government they are

possessed, provided they be well employed.”

_Alexander Hamilton_—“The British monarchy is the best government in

the world,” and he doubted if anything short of it would do in America.

“Their House of Lords is a most noble institution.”

_Alexander Hamilton_—He acknowledged himself not to think favorably of

republican government. “Inequality in property constitutes the great and

fundamental distinction in society.”

_Gunning Bedford_—“Are we to act with greater purity than the rest of

mankind? Our votes are actuated by interest and ambition.”

_Gouverneur Morris_—“The Senate must have great personal property; it

must have the aristocratic spirit; it must love to lord it through pride.

To make it independent it should be for life. Property is the main object

of society.”

_John Rutledge_—“Property certainly is the principal object of society.”

_Pierce Butler_—“Slaves should have an equal representation in a

government which is instituted principally for the protection of

property, and is of itself to be supported by property.”

_Charles C. Pinckney_—“Property in slaves should not be exposed to danger

in a government instituted for the protection of property.”

_George Mason_—“It would be as unnatural to refer the choice of a proper

character for President to the people as to refer a test of colors to a

blind man.”

_James Madison_—“In future times a great majority of the people will not

only be without landed but any sort of property. If they combine, the

rights of property will not be safe in their hands.”

_James Ellsworth_—“As population grows, poor laborers will be so plenty

as to render slaves useless.”

The thirteen delegates, from whom I have quoted were the dominating

characters in that convention, and it is possible to cite innumerable

passages expressing the same distrust and contempt for the people.

It should be understood that the great mass of the people had no

representation in that secret conclave, and that half a century passed

before its proceedings were made public by Act of Congress.

I have touched on these facts for the purpose of indicating clearly that

the right to ignore the majority is inherent in the Constitution. The

Senate was provided for the special benefit of property interests, and

at one time a clause was adopted, decreeing that no one could be elected

a Senator of the United States unless he was worth $50,000 or more.

This cautious provision was abandoned because there were states which

had no men with that amount of property. Having provided a Senate they

continued to pile up checks against the people, until such aristocrats as

Gerry, Randolph and Mason attempted to call a halt, declaring that the

people would be so stripped of power that the last of their rights would

disappear. Their warnings were disregarded, and they absolutely refused

to sign their names to the document.

With these facts within access of every citizen of the United States, the

vast majority of us still adhere to the myths and falsehoods contained in

our school books and uttered by ignorant demagogues and editors.

It is likely that the aristocratic delegates who framed the Constitution

had just reason to fear the people it was intended to hold in check. The

average citizen of 1787 was a savage compared with the average voter of

today. He knew of no world beyond the narrow limit of his horizon. He

was ignorant, prejudiced, suspicious and envious. The builders of the

Constitution regretted that it was necessary to grant him even the shadow

of political power and were consumed by the dread that the Lower House of

Congress would overawe all other branches of the new government.

In that day wealth had little influence as a mass, but it was strong

in its instinct of self-preservation. It trembled lest the poor should

combine at the polls in a crusade for the legal despoiling of the rich.

Having absolute control of the convention it was free to design a

document which would include every possible check against the aggressions

of the dreaded masses, and it rightly conjectured that the magic of the

name of Washington would induce the people to consent to the provisions

aimed against them.

We of today are caught in the trap set for those who lived more than a

hundred years ago. Not until after the nation had been plunged into a

civil war between two factions—each of which claimed strict allegiance

to the Constitution—did conditions arise which afforded a fair test of

the restrictive features of that document. So long as the wealth of the

nation was so distributed as to prevent the formation of conspiracies in

its behalf, the masses were able to conserve their rights, despite all

of the checks and restrictions in the Constitution. It was this fairly

maintained state of equilibrium which half a century ago gave rise to the

worship of our system of government.

When the first unscrupulous man found himself in possession of millions

of dollars the Constitution became not his master but his tool. When the

officials of our first great corporation found it practical to bribe

legislation, the trap set by the forefathers was sprung. I do not mean

to hint that the founders of the Constitution foresaw any such outcome.

They constructed a device to protect themselves, and their bones had

crumbled into dust before wealth was sufficiently armed and equipped to

take advantage of their mistakes.

Wealth seized upon the senates, state and national. It found in the

judiciary a natural ally, and it did not hesitate to invoke the aid of

partisanship and the unblushing use of corrupt influences, direct and

indirect, in order to subject the courts to its domination. This is a

blunt statement, but the time has arrived when the courts can no longer

be covered with a machine-made robe of sanctity. There are good judges

and bad judges, but the decisions of the latter are as binding as those

of the former. A corporation judge is not a priest; he is a low type of

politician.

Our aristocratic forefathers designed a Constitution intended to protect

themselves against a majority. Our modern corporations and vested

interests have discovered that the same machinery oiled with bribery

can be used by the minority for the purpose of plundering the majority.

Our forefathers invented checks; our trusts have converted them into

bludgeons. Our forefathers constructed constitutional ramparts, behind

which they hoped to be safe from the attacks of the majority; our vested

interests have bristled them with guns, behind which they demand and

receive tribute.

NOTE—In the May number Mr. Adams will treat of the

necessity for the revision of the Constitution, and

consider how it may legally be accomplished.

_In Absence_

BY EUGENE C. DOLSON

With miles between us—miles of land and sea,

However far my wandering footsteps roam,

Still memory ever backward turns to thee—

Queen of my heart and home.

_In Outline_

“Many a man complains that he lost his health in business, although he

was not in business for his health.”

* * * * *

“The quickest way to get to the top in this world is to have someone let

you in on the ground floor.”

* * * * *

“Money often fails to bring happiness, on account of the way it has been

made.”

* * * * *

“The world may owe you a living, but you have to work hard to collect the

debt.”

* * * * *

“One-half the world doesn’t care how the other half lives.”

* * * * *

“The man who courts an investigation has generally been making love to

other people’s money.”

* * * * *

_Not Guilty_

TAVERN LOUNGER—That ’ere smooth-shaved, horse-faced feller jest goin’

into the dinin’-room looks like an actor.

LANDLORD—Yes; but you bet yer life he ain’t one! He came day before

yesterday, paid his bill in advance, and ain’t kicked about anything yet!

* * * * *

_A Discovery_

“I have looked the matter over with reasonable care,” said the Pruntytown

Philosopher, with his usual acridity, “and I have reached the conclusion

that it is not absolutely necessary to send boys to college in order to

have ’em act the fool.”

* * * * *

_A One-Sided Alliance_

JUDSON—Do you think capital and labor will ever work together?

BUDSON—It looks that way. At the present time the landlord and the

tenants seem to be both engaged in raising the rent.

* * * * *

_At the Zoo_

THE PARROT—The eagle says he has been bald ever since he can remember.

THE COCKATOO—Gee-whiz! Those eagles marry very young, don’t they?

_The Gray Weed_

AN EXTRACT FROM THE “LONDON TIMES” OF FEBRUARY 8, 1909

BY OWEN OLIVER

Owing to the lamented death of Professor Newton, to whose wisdom and

courage the world owes its deliverance, I have been asked to contribute

to the first newspaper issued in the new era some account of the terrible

weed which overran the earth, and threatened to stifle out mankind.

The professor had intended dealing with the origin of the weed, its

relations to ordinary plants, the nature of its growth, so far as

this proceeded, and the forms which it would ultimately have assumed.

Unfortunately his notes upon these points are so abbreviated and

technical as to be unintelligible to me; and personally I possess no

qualifications for dealing with the scientific aspects of the case. So

I must confine myself to a plain narrative of the occurrences which I

witnessed.

* * * * *

It was nine o’clock in the evening of November 10, 1908, when I left my

office in Norfolk Street, letting myself out with a duplicate key which

the hall-porter had intrusted to me. I thought at first that it was

snowing; but when I put out my hand and caught a few of the particles, I

found that they were flimsy white seeds, something like those of melons,

only less substantial. Where they lay in heaps—as I thought—in the road,

their color appeared to be gray. At the Embankment end of the street the

“heaps” were larger; and when I came to them I discovered that they were

not seeds, but a growth of gray weed, which fastened round my shoes as I

tried to walk over it.

I stooped and took hold of a piece to examine it; but, when I attempted

to pluck it, it stretched like elastic, without breaking off. The

tendrils were round, and about one-fourth of an inch in diameter when not

stretched. They had, at intervals, spherical bulges which, at a distance,

bore the appearance of small berries. These appeared to be of the same

substance as the tendrils. The latter began twining round my fingers,

and I had some difficulty in releasing them. The road and the Embankment

were deserted by people, but three or four horses at the cab stand were

plunging with fright as the weed wound round their legs. It had grown

perceptibly in the few minutes that I had been observing it, and, feeling

somewhat alarmed, I made my way back along Norfolk Street.

The weed had spread a good deal there also; and I noticed that wherever

a white seed fell a fresh plant sprang up, and grew with marvelous

rapidity. In the Strand the weed was nearly a yard high. The ’bus drivers

were whipping their frightened horses in a vain attempt to drive over it.

The foot-passengers were unable to move, except a big man, who, with a

small axe, hacked a passage through the growth for himself, his wife and

his daughter—a pretty girl of about nineteen.

They were making their way down to the Embankment, but I warned them

that the weed was thick there. The young lady then suggested that they

should try to get into one of the houses, and I invited them to come

to my offices. The tendrils were seizing people and pulling them down

and binding them like flies in a spider’s web. We could hear cries and

screams all along the Strand, and a cab was upset by the struggles of the

horse. The weed had spread over Norfolk Street, while we were talking,

and it clung to our feet as we ran. The lady tripped and fell. The

tendrils seized her immediately, and we had great difficulty in freeing

her. When we had entered the door of the house we could not close it

until we had chopped away the tendrils that followed us.

I turned on the electric light in the halls, and took my new friends to

my rooms, which were on the fifth floor. The elder lady was faint, and I

gave her some brandy and soda and biscuits. I had a good stock of these

fortunately.

The gentleman’s name was George Baker, his wife was Marian Baker, and

the girl was Viva. They had been buying curiosities in the Strand, and

the axe—a roughly engraved Moorish instrument—was fortunately among

their purchases. Some people whom they met in the streets had told them

that the weed was growing all over London, and that the Guards had been

ordered out to cut it away. A learned old gentleman had conjectured that

the seeds were the atoms of some dissipated planet, or the elements of

some world that was to be, and that they contained the raw elements of

life, which set them growing when they came into contact with suitable

matter.

“It’s diabolical!” Mr. Baker said furiously. “The vestries ought to send

round water-carts with weed-killer, or—or something. I don’t know what

they ought to do; but they ought to do something.” He wiped his face

excitedly with his handkerchief. “Diabolical!” he repeated. “It grows

through the flagstones, the wood paving, everything. It—it seizes people!”

“Seizes people!” his wife repeated, wringing her hands. “We saw it.”

“It clings to you,” the girl added tremulously. “_Clings_ to you. If it

goes on growing——!”

Her mother gave a sharp scream, and her father groaned.

“If it goes on growing—!” they said together.

“It won’t,” I assured them, with an indifferent appearance of confidence.

“Those things that grow like—like fungi—never do. It will shrivel up

suddenly, and let people go again. I don’t suppose they’re really

hurt, only frightened. In an hour or so you’ll be on your way home,

and laughing about it; and I shall be thanking the—the fungus—for some

pleasant acquaintances. I look upon this as a little surprise party.”

The girl wiped her eyes and forced a smile.

“A little surprise party,” she agreed. “What are you going to do for our

entertainment, Mr. Adamson?—I saw the name on the door-plate.”

“Henry Adamson,” I said, “and very much at your service, Miss Viva—I have

some cards, but——”

I paused doubtfully. Her mother held up a trembling hand, and her father

shook his head.

“We won’t have any fool’s games,” he said. “Let’s talk.”

Viva and I talked in broken sentences, and her mother and father in

monosyllables. We kept glancing at the window, but no one had the courage

to draw up the blind for nearly an hour. Then we opened the window and

looked out. The weed was fully six feet high in the street, and higher in

the Strand. It had overrun the ’bus that stood at the opening. If there

were people on the ’bus, it had overrun them, too.

“It doesn’t seem to hurt,” I said. “There’s no screaming now.” I

shuddered as soon as I had said it.

“There is no screaming now,” Viva repeated. “I suppose they—they are

all——”

Her voice broke. Her father shut the window sharply and drew her away.

“It will be gone in the morning,” he asserted, “as—as our friend said. We

shall have to impose on your hospitality for the night, I am afraid, Mr.

Adamson.”

“There is no question of imposing,” I assured him. “I cannot say how

glad I am to have your company.”

We made a couch for the ladies by putting several hearth-rugs on the

table in the clerks’ room, and laying two rugs of mine to cover them. Mr.

Baker and I dozed in front of the fire in my room in chairs. Toward the

morning I fell into a sounder sleep. When I woke he had pulled up the

blind.

“It’s fifteen feet high at least,” he told me. “Halfway up the second

windows. God help us!”

I joined him and saw the roadway filled with a sea of gray weeds. They

looked like india-rubber reeds. The largest were as thick as my little

finger, and the bulges were the size of damsons. We opened the window

and listened. Presently a caretaker opened a window nearly opposite and

called to his wife.

“Here’s a rum go, Mary,” he shouted, with a laugh. “Bulrushes growing to

the street! We sha’n’t have any clerks pestering us today.”

The woman joined him, and they laughed together because they would have

a holiday. They treated the matter as a joke, and evidently disbelieved

us when we told them of the terrible events of the preceding night.

So we closed the window and called the ladies. I made some tea on my

ring-burner, and we breakfasted on that and biscuits. The ladies avoided

the window, and so did I, but Mr. Baker went to it every few minutes.

After each visit he whispered to me that it was still growing. Mrs.

Baker seemed in a stupor, but Viva tried hard to cheer us. She sang

little snatches of song under her breath as she washed the tea-cups; and

once she said that it was great “fun.” Her mouth trembled when I looked

reproachfully at her.

“Mother is so nervous,” she whispered. “I have to pretend, to cheer her.

Do you think it will—grow?”

“Heaven knows!” I said. “But you are very brave.”

After this, she and I sat at the window, watching the tendrils growing

and growing, and clutching incessantly at the air. I thought, at first,

that they were swaying in the wind, but there was no breeze. Also there

was an indescribable air of purpose about their movement. A number of

long branches spread themselves over a window opposite. Their swaying

ceased, and they pressed on it steadily, till at last it broke with

a dull crash. Mrs. Baker fainted, and her husband lifted her on to

the sofa. Viva clung to my arm. The malicious tendrils broke down the

window-frame, piece by piece, and spread slowly into the room, winding

themselves round the tables and chairs.

“If anyone had been there,” Viva cried hoarsely. “If—if—” She looked at

me. Her eyes were big with fright.

“They must be doing something to stop it,” I said—“the—the authorities.

If we could find out! I’ll try the telephone.”

After several calls I obtained an answer. It was a girl’s voice. Six

of them had stayed all night in the exchange, she said. They were in

communication with the police and the Government Offices. The soldiers

had been out since the previous evening, and had cut their passage from

Chelsea Barracks to Victoria Street, and along this almost to Westminster

Bridge. They had intended coming on to Whitehall and the Strand; but the

stuff grew almost as quickly as it was cut down, and had overpowered

many of them. Over a hundred had been crushed to death by it, and they

had sent for gun-cotton to try and blow it up, as a last resort. It was

known, through the telegraph, that the weed had appeared all over England

and on the Continent. It was also growing out of the sea. The English

Channel was choked in places, and several vessels had been bound by the

weed in sight of the coast. “It’s alive!” she wailed; “alive! Its eyes

are watching us through the windows!” (The bulges had the appearance of

eyes.)

I was unable to obtain any further answers, although I tried the

telephone several times. By one o’clock the third-story windows were

covered. The thickest tendrils were then nearly the diameter of a

florin, with the bulges the size and shape of exceedingly large plums.

The stems and bulges seemed to be of one homogeneous material. There

were no leaves or fruit or flowers at this time, but branches were

beginning to sprout from the main stems. There did not appear to be

any communication between one stem and another; but, according to

Professor Newton’s notes, this undoubtedly took place at the roots, which

interlaced so as to form a gigantic nervous system or brain.

We made another meal of tea and biscuits. Mrs. Baker seemed stupefied

with horror, and her husband was evidently overcome by his anxiety for

her, and scarcely spoke. Viva and I tried to talk, but our voices broke

off in the middle of words. We listened vainly for any explosions, and

concluded that the attempt at rescue had failed. By four o’clock the

weed was up to the window-sill. Mrs. Baker was in a prolonged faint. Her

husband sat beside her, with his head on his hand. He did not look up

when I suggested carrying her out on the roof.

“The cold would rouse her,” he said. “It is best as it is. You’re a good

chap, I think. Do what you can for my little girl.”

I put on my overcoat, crammed the pockets with biscuits and a flask, and

persuaded Viva to accompany me to the roof to look for a way of escape,

for us and for her parents. We never saw them again.

Some people from neighboring houses were on the adjoining roofs

already, two old caretakers, a man and a lad. We saw about twenty more

on the roofs in other streets. Some of them were raving and singing.

The caretakers who had spoken to us in the morning flung their window

open. They were laughing as if they had been drinking. They brought two

pailfuls of boiling water and emptied it upon the weed. There was a soft

hissing sound. Then two—four—six quivering tendrils reached slowly toward

them. The man and woman seemed fascinated. They did not attempt to move,

only screamed. The tendrils seized them; bound them round and round. Viva

buried her head on my shoulder, and I shut my eyes. It was about half a

minute, I think, before the screams ceased. Then there was crash after

crash as windows were broken in. The weed had its passions, it seemed.

“Take me back to my mother and father,” Viva begged. “We can all die

together—if you would rather die with us?”

“Yes. I would rather die with you, Viva,” I said. “I should have liked

you very much if we had lived.”

We returned to the trap-door, but the staircase was choked with the weed.

As we looked down it seemed to be a pit of twirling gray snakes. We

called to her mother and father, but there was no answer. Viva would have

flung herself among the weed, but I held her and carried her back to the

roof. The weed was beginning to crawl over the gutters. Long rope-like

filaments were surrounding the other people who were on the roofs. They

huddled together and did not attempt to escape. The tendrils overran them

and bound them round and round. I think they had mostly fainted. There

was only one cry.

The tendrils lashed one another and fought over their prey. Their

struggles made a repulsive, “scrooping” noise—a noise like the sound of

stroking silk, only louder. There was also a sound of crunching bones.

I did not notice the weed closing round us till Viva clutched my arm.

“Hold me,” she begged. “Hold me tight! I thought life had only just

begun——”

I supported her on one arm, and backed toward the Strand end of the roof,

where the weed had encroached less. We stumbled against a skylight. The

attic below was empty. I opened the frame, lowered Viva and jumped down

after her. We crouched in a corner watching the window. One—two minutes

passed. Then the gray weed, with the bulges that simulated eyes, pressed

upon it. The glass shivered upon the floor. I lifted Viva in my arms—she

was too faint to walk—and carried her out on the landing.

The light was bad, and I saw no weed till we reached the next landing.

Then it stretched toward us from the broken window-frame. A dozen gray

ropes crept toward us from the stairs when we approached them. The lift

was standing open. I pushed Viva in, jumped after her, slid the steel

railing to and lowered us. A tendril caught at the lift as we started. I

heard it snap.

In my excitement I lowered the lift too fast. We were thrown against the

sides and almost stunned when it stopped. There was barely a glimmer of

light, and we did not know if we had reached the bottom of the shaft or

had been stopped by the weed. We listened for a long while and heard

nothing. Then we let ourselves out and advanced a few inches at a time,

feeling round us with our hands. We seemed to be in the hall of the

basement. We came upon a table and found a tray on it with biscuits and

milk. We drank the milk and Viva stuffed the biscuits in her pockets,

as mine were full. There was a dim, barely perceptible light from an

area window. We peered up through the grating into the forest of huge

weeds. The trunks, which had grown to the size of young elms, only swayed

a little; but the branches above twisted and twined incessantly. Viva

shuddered when she saw them, and I took her away.

“We are safe down here,” I assured her; but she pressed her hand over my

mouth.

“Hush!” she whispered. “Hush! It may hear.”

We wandered about in the darkness till we found a caretaker’s room. We

sat there on a sofa, holding hands. We never lost touch of each other all

the time. I do not know how long it was. It seemed years. The basement

was very quiet, but the sound of the india-rubbery motion came down

to us. Once or twice we thought we heard a human cry. Once a mouse

squeaked, and a spider dropped on the couch beside us with a thud. We

were always listening.

After an unknown time we groped our way into the scullery to get water.

We had just drunk when we heard the sound of india-rubbery tentacles

dragging themselves over the walls. Something clung to my hand. Something

held her skirt. It tore as I pulled her from it. Something was in the way

when we tried to close the door. It followed us across the room and into

the passage. We felt along the walls for the door that we thought led to

the cellars—found it—fastened it after us—groped down the stairs. It was

darker than the darkness of the basement above—darkness that could be

felt. We stumbled over some coals—and a rough, hoarse voice came out of

the darkness.

“Give us your hand, guv’nor,” it said, “just a touch of your hand. I’ve

been alone here for—for a thousand years!”

Something staggered toward us—stumbled against us; and a huge rough hand

gripped my arm.

I put myself between him and Viva and pressed her arm for silence. The

voice and grip were not reassuring, and I hoped he did not know she was

there.

“Here is my hand,” I said.

“And mine,” said Viva eagerly. “You are a friend—of course you are a

friend. God bless you.”

“God bless you, lady.” The rough voice softened strangely. “I—I’m sorry

to intrude.”

He drew back a little way from us and sat down. I could not see him,

but I could hear him breathe. Another unknown time passed. Then Viva

whispered that she was thirsty.

“There’s a pail of water,” the man said, “if I can find it.” He moved

about in the darkness till he kicked it. Then he brought it to us. We

drank from the pail and ate a few biscuits. I offered him some, but he

said that he had a crust left. Viva and I explored the cellar and found

a shovel and a pick. I suggested that we should try to break through

into the next cellar, on the chance of finding food; but Viva and the man

feared that the weed might hear us.

She and I sat on an empty packing-case, and she laid her head on my

shoulder and slept. After a time I slept too. The man woke us.

“There’s something moving, guv’nor,” he said hoarsely. “I think it’s

growing out of the floor. Strike a match, and give me the shovel.”

We found forty or fifty weed plants growing. He beat some down with

the shovel, but others clutched him round the legs. He was a strong,

rough-looking man and he fought furiously, but they pulled him down. I

gave Viva the matches and went to his rescue with the pick. The weeds

seized me too, but he cut us both free with a clasp-knife, and at length

we destroyed them all.

We saw by the matchlight that the wall was cracking in one place. So we

resolved to try to get through it. The man dislodged a few bricks with

the pick, and we pulled others away till our fingers bled and the last

match gave out. At length he managed to crawl through.

“You come next, sir,” he proposed. “The lady would be frightened of me.”

“Dear friend,” Viva said, “I am not in the least afraid of you.”

So he helped her through, and I followed. We discovered a passage, and

along the passage another doorway—and people. I do not remember our words

when we found one another in the dark—only the gladness of it.

There were about twenty of them—men, women and children. They had food

and drink which they had collected before they fled to the cellar.

Professor Newton was among them. He seemed acknowledged as their leader,

and he proposed me as his second. He wanted the aid of an intelligent and

educated man, he whispered, in fighting the weed.

“We _must_ fight it,” he declared, tapping me on the arm with his finger,

“but I don’t know how. I—don’t—know—how!—I can’t even guess what it

is; still less what it is going to be. It may be mere vegetable life—a

man-eating plant. It may be brute animal life—a _carnivorous_ animal!

It may be intelligent—diabolical intelligence. Whatever it is, it will

develop as it grows, develop new organs and new powers, new strength and

new weaknesses. We must strike _there_. What weaknesses? Ah-h! I don’t

know! It may outgrow itself and wither. It may perish from the little

microbes of the earth, like the Martians in Wells’s romance. We thought

that an idle fancy _then_. It may grow into an intelligent—devil! It

may be one now and merely lack the organs to carry out fully its evil

will. On the other hand, its malevolence may be purposeless—a blind

restlessness that it will outgrow—after we have stifled in the darkness

at its feet. We must fight it anyhow. To fight it we must understand it.

To understand it we must study it. Will you risk your life with me?”

“Yes,” I said.

Viva cried softly when I told her I must go; but she did not try to keep

me from my duty. The professor and I crawled up the stairs into the

basement, and finding nothing there went up in the lift in the dark. We

heard the weed moving about on the second landing. I jumped out, turned

on the electric light, and jumped in again. The tendrils followed me and

clutched at the steel curtain, but could not break it. We hacked with

our pen-knives at those that crept through. The juice which ran out from

them had an oily smell. They beat furiously on the curtain. The professor

studied them calmly with a microscope. The bulges were the beginning of

eyes, he thought. He pronounced some feathery sprays sprouting from them

to be the rudiments of organs like hands. I do not know whether he was

right, but he always maintained that they would develop organs of sense.

Anyhow the character of the weed was clearly changing. It had grown

harder and drier, but without losing its flexibility or strength.

After a time the professor decided that I should return to the others.

He went up again in the lift when he had lowered me. Viva was waiting for

me in the dark just inside the door.

I had obtained some candles. We lit one and stuck it in a bottle. I shall

never forget the group in the low, wide cellar, huddled together on boxes

or on the floor. The man we met first was nursing an ailing child. Lady

Evelyn Angell had gathered a young flower-girl under her opera cloak.

A policeman was binding up a wounded hand with his handkerchief. A

shivering old match-seller wore his cape. Viva took a little boy on her

lap and told him about Jack and the Beanstalk. Steel—a card sharper, I

learned afterward—who had been indefatigable in helping everyone, was

chatting to Lady Evelyn. Some ill-clad youths had draped themselves in

sacking. A rouged and gaudily dressed woman was mothering some younger

ones. She had comforted Viva while I was away, I heard, and had offered

to accompany her in a search for me, but the others had persuaded them

that they would only be a hindrance to us.

After a couple of hours—I had wound my watch again—the professor

reappeared. His clothes were torn and his face and hands were bleeding.

“They broke the steel curtain at last,” he explained, “but I got away.

Good heavens, how it grows! I can’t make up my mind about it.”

After a time, when most of us were dozing, a portion of the roof and

the wall fell in. The growth of the roots under the street had pressed

the earth upon it, the professor conjectured. A faint light streamed

down the tall weeds and through the opening. The branches overhead were

still moving, but the lower stems seemed inert. The professor decided to

venture among them in search of knowledge. I went with him. There was

just room enough between the weeds for us to pass.

The houses upon the other side of the street were all down. So were many

in the Strand. In Fleet Street we saw the way it was done. The huge weeds

leaned upon them, till they fell with a crash. The Law Courts went

so. We found the clock among the weeds. Sometimes the branches pushed

themselves through the windows and walls of houses which were still

standing. Once or twice we heard human cries. We found a woman, with a

baby and a dog, walking among the weed-trees, and took them with us.

The light which straggled down through the waving branches overhead was

feeble and patchy, and we lost our way for a time. At length we found

Norfolk Street; but as we were entering it, some of the tendrils, which

seemed to be fighting one another viciously overhead, broke off and

dropped at our feet. They writhed upon the ground like huge gray snakes,

and wound themselves round the weed-trees and lashed out blindly. One of

them caught the woman and dashed her against a trunk. We pulled her away

from the tendril as its violence lessened, but she was dead. The baby was

not hurt and still slept. I carried it in my arms.

A moment later a broken tendril dropped right upon the dog. He howled

loudly, and in his fright bit at an unbroken tendril hanging down among

the trees. (There were a good many such, but we had succeeded in avoiding

them hitherto.) It shook as if with rage and pain, wrapped its extremity

round the dog, and bore him aloft, still howling. Hundreds of tendrils

stretched toward it, and fought with it for the dog. They still fought

after his cries ceased; and other tendrils began reaching downward, in

every direction round us, as if searching for further prey. The professor

watched them intently, oblivious of danger.

“They make a different sound now,” he remarked abstractedly. “It is no

longer the scroop-scroop of clammy india-rubber—they _rustle_. It doesn’t

seem like decay. They are stronger—stronger. There is always weakness in

excess of anything—even strength. Let me think!”

“Quick!” I cried. “Quick! They are falling upon us. Run!”

We dodged rapidly among the weed-trunks. He was slow and I pushed him.

Tendril after tendril rustled downward, and the trunks themselves swayed.

Two almost fixed the professor between them—he was a stout man—but I

dragged him through. The light from above was entirely shut out by the

descending tendrils, and we must have been lost but for an electric lamp

burning in one of the houses. As it was, the descending tendrils must

have caught us but for their struggles among themselves. Broken pieces

dropped and wriggled madly all round us, and we had to dodge them. One

caught at my foot, and dragged my shoe off as I pulled myself away.

Several touched us as we slid down the debris into the cellar. They

followed us there.

A few of the people screamed. A few fainted. The rest backed in a

huddled, wide-eyed crowd toward the farthest wall. Lady Evelyn stood in

front of the children, holding out her arms as if to shelter them. Steel

came and stood in front of her.

“Dear lady,” he said, “these have been the best days of my life—since we

met. I should have been a better man if I had met you before.” She smiled

very sweetly at him.

“I like you greatly, Mr. Steel,” she said.

The rouged woman came and took the baby from me, and I tried to pull the

professor back; but he would not come. Viva ran out from the crowd and

put her arms round me. The tendrils drew nearer and nearer. Some came

along the ceiling, hanging their heads like snakes. Others crawled along

the floor, raising themselves as if to dart at us. I do not know whether

they saw us, heard us or smelt us, or how they knew where we were; but

they knew.

They were within a yard of the professor, and still he did not move; only

took the burning candle from the bottle, and railed at them as if they

could hear. I thought that he had gone mad.

“Do you think man has learned nothing in his thousand generations?” he

shouted. “That you can crush him with the brute strength of a few days?

Come and see! Come and see!”

The foremost tentacle wound round him; began to lift him. He felt it

carefully with his hands. “It is dry,” he shouted—“_dry!_”

_Then he put the candle to it!_

There was a wilderness of white light. Then a purple darkness. I heard

the professor fall. When our eyes recovered from their dazed blindness

the weed was utterly gone. The daylight was streaming into the hole in

the wall, and the professor was picking himself up from the floor. His

hair and beard were badly singed, and his eyebrows were gone.

“It dried too fast,” he told us, with a queer angry chuckle. “That was

its weakness. It dried—dried——”

He kept on repeating the word in a dull, aimless tone. The rest repeated

it vacantly after him. Viva was the first to speak coherently—a faint

whisper in my ear.

“My dear!” she said. “My _dear_!”

Lady Evelyn spoke next—to ex-card sharper Steel.

“The world begins afresh,” she said; “and—you _have_ met me, Mr. Steel.”

The tears rolled down her cheek and his, and they stood smiling at each

other.

“The world begins afresh,” the professor called in a loud voice. “Come

with me and make it a better world.” He strode toward the light, but some

held back.

“The weed!” they cried timorously.

“The weed has gone—burned in an instant, from the end of the world to the

end of the world!” he assured them. “Follow me.”

We followed him out of the darkness into the sunlight. It was a mild,

bright day for November, and a pleasant air.

The weed had disappeared entirely, as the professor predicted; and,

speaking generally, the conflagration had been too sudden to do much

harm; but most of the buildings had subsided upon the sudden destruction

of the weed-roots which had undermined them. Here and there houses,

stones and timber had caught fire; and in many districts the fire spread,

and lasted for days.

The statistics, which are being prepared in the New Department for the

Service of the People, over which I have the honor to preside, are not

yet quite complete; but I may mention that seventeen per cent. of the

buildings on the north of the Thames are found to have been destroyed,

and ninety-three per cent. on the south—the wind having blown mainly in

that direction; and that the destruction of property in Great Britain and

Ireland generally is roughly estimated at fifty-five per cent.

The adventures of our little band, after we came out from our

hiding-place, scarcely belong to this story; but I must set down a few

events which stand out in red letters in our calendar of the world after

the Gray Weed.

Upon the first afternoon we learned that there were other survivors—which

we had not dared to hope—by finding a man, woman and child nearly dead

with hunger and fright, hiding in a basement. We formed ourselves at once

into small parties to go round London, wherever houses yet stood, and

rang the church bells, and blew trumpets, and beat drums, and shouted

to all those who remained to come out. Here and there frightened groups

of white-faced, famished, disheveled people answered the call. As our

numbers increased we sent parties to search the cellars and other

hiding-places, and rescued many at their last gasp. The total number of

survivors in London, where the percentage of deaths was highest, amounts

to some 35,000.

Upon the second day we obtained several replies to our calls by telegraph

to the provinces; and the next day we were in telegraphic communication

with most parts of the United Kingdom and even the Continent. In almost

all towns at least one or two persons had escaped. In some parts

the Gray Weed had left open spaces, or a few houses, to which people

could flee, and only a portion of those who reached them had died from

starvation. In a few instances it was alleged to have refrained from

injuring those with whom it came in contact. Also it failed to crush many

of the ships which it seized at sea—the sea-growths generally being less

virulent than those on land. So far as our statistics go at present, we

hope that nearly one-eighth of the population of Europe has survived.

On the fourth day the first train from the provinces to London was run;

and several ships, which the weed had overgrown without injuring, came

into port. After this, traffic was rapidly re-established.

A fortnight later our present government was provisionally established.

The professor, whom all hailed as their deliverer, refused office

himself; but upon his nomination I was appointed to my present position.

Several of our little band were assigned important posts, including

Steel—now known by another name, and married to Lady Evelyn—and Viva, who

is presiding over the London Homes for Orphans, until our marriage. The

day after tomorrow a newspaper appears.

We have toiled unremittingly to reconstruct the social and commercial

life of the country, and not without success. We have few luxuries, but

no wants; fewer workers, but no drones; fewer to love—but we love more—I

think the world will go well, now, because we love one another so much.

“The Gray Weed has solved the problems of poverty, envy, crime and

strife, which have puzzled mankind for ages,” the professor said, just

before he died. “Don’t cry, little Viva. Ah! But I felt a tear on my

hand! There is nothing to cry about, my child. _They_ have gone; and _I_

am going; but _you_ have learned to love. It is all for the best!”

“All—for—the—best,” he repeated at the last, and smiled. That is his

message to you to whom I write, dear friends.

_With Caste Against Him_

BY HUGH PENDEXTER

Tiberius Smith in love was a spectacle I had never conjured up. Billy

Campbell, the strolling actor and his patron’s Boswell, had pictured the

old showman to me as being arrested for a spy in Russia, for a madman

in France, for a too active Carlist in Spain and for smuggling opium in

China, but he had never hinted at sentiment. I had taken it for granted

that Smith’s many wanderings over the face of the earth with his various

theatrical enterprises and circuses had eliminated any inclination for

love-sickness, and it seems it had until he met the lord’s daughter.

That was like Smith. It was impossible to conceive of him as married and

settled down, and when he did fall in love it was his characteristic

to indulge in a hopeless passion. For all that, the lord’s daughter

was forced to see him at his best, sturdy and resourceful, when others

failed her, and I doubt not but that this knowledge was sadly sweet to

the old showman, and that in after years he enjoyed diagnosing the climax

and realizing it was superbly dramatic. If she ignored his existence at

first, he had the keen pleasure of knowing she had only him to rely on at

a most critical finale and that her world was better, much better, for

his having lived.

Possibly the trick could have been turned without him, turned in a

prosaic manner with some bloodshed and a great waste of gunpowder. But

when a lovely girl is the stake, be she a lord’s daughter or a queen

from the masses, it is sometimes advisable to finesse. And Tiberius, if

slightly melodramatic, solved the problem as he could only do, and as

only he could do—that is, in an unusual manner. Campbell used to style

him the “assassin of adversity,” and his peculiar faculty of rescuing the

weak from undesirable situations was, perhaps, never better demonstrated

than when, with cutter bars down, he restored the English girl to her

people and incidentally introduced the uses and abuses of modern farming

implements to some unsophisticated savages in a lonely Pacific isle.

I had recurred to the time when Tiberius piloted an Uncle Tom’s Cabin

company up and down the land, and Billy, gazing sadly into my open grate,

irrelevantly observed:

“Yes; and that was when Tib ought to have won her and settled down. He

was clear daffy over that girl, and I’ll admit she was a hummer; one,

you know, that would make a man abandon his grandmother in a blinding

snowstorm if it pleased her. But I reckon Fate had other work cut out for

Tiberius besides spooning, love in a cottage and no money for the iceman

and all that sort of stuff. Yes, it was fully ten years ago that the

_Kalanke_ broke her propeller.”

“You are speaking of a boat?” I inquired.

“Lord bless you, yes. The _Kalanke_ was one of Lord Blam’s boats; ran

from the Coast to Australia. You see, Tib got the bee that an Uncle

Thomas show would take in Australia like four squaws in a no-limit

game; and once he had outlined the bill of fare, there were plenty of

us come-ons pushing out our plates and begging for a helping. I suppose

that when it came to the realm of pure “con” there wasn’t a hypnotist

doing a mail order business that could lay it on quite so succulent and

plausible as he. Lord, we _had_ to believe him. He believed in himself.

“‘Why, Harriet,’ he cried, drawing up his dear, fat old form and looking

more honest than any real estate dealer you ever kenned; ‘why, Harriet,

don’t linger over the paltry twelve dollars a week I’m supposed to

pay you. Don’t even hesitate. Forget that part of it. Imagine you are

paying me for the chance to go. Picture, if you please, Opportunity,

clean-shaven and bald-headed, gliding by your door in a seventy-eight

horse-power gasolene romp-about at the mirk hour of midnight with you

chloroformed and locked in your gilded cage. Picture me with a jiu-jitsu

strangle hold on Oppo, detaining him until you can come to, slip into

your Horse Show gown and come down and relieve me. Then you are feasting

your magnetic orbs on truth. Why, the people down there will be so worked

up over your “Papa, dear papa, set Uncle Tom free,” that they’ll wreck

your hotel with showers of gold.’

“She was a slim, ingrowing woman, who always played the Little Eva parts

and was the teariest thing ever between the wings. Clarence, her husband,

booked for Legree, balked a little and said he’d stand a blankety,

blank, all blanks, nice chance of getting his showers in lead after he’d

massacred Thomas. But Tib poured a little balm into his wounds, and that

was how we came to hop the _Kalanke_ for Australia.

“The boat was one of Lord Blam’s new line and was fixed up regardless.

Besides the passengers, she did quite a freight business and carried our

lots of horses and farm implements. Our troupe traveled second class

except Tib, who always went the limit—or walked. Besides the company

there weren’t many passengers aboard, as it was in the dull season; but

we hadn’t cuffed the deep blue for more than two days before Tib met his

fate.

“She was the English girl, all blue eyes, and peaches for complexion;

and Tib haunted her usual promenade like a mosquito. She was the lord’s

only daughter and was making a flying trip to Sydney, where her father

lay ill. She had hurried from Washington to ’Frisco and caught the boat

with her maid. The Captain was the rest of her bodyguard. But Tib had the

Captain solid at the go-in, and through him and his own gall he managed

to speak to Miss Mary.

“She was about as approachable as the Eiffel Tower. She was the first bit

of peerage I had ever seen traveling alone, and I would prefer trying to

get chummy with an iceberg to speaking to her. But a man or a woman had

to be armor plate to withstand Tib when he put himself out, and at the

end of one day he had made her laugh; then she got a bit interested in

him and I knew he was spinning romance.

“When he got to giving his Vermont family an old chateau environment

and spoke of the good old days at ‘The Oaks,’ and his father’s pack of

hounds, aristocracy wanted to crawl into a safe deposit vault and slam

the door or get scalped. He could jam more poetry and _pâté de foie

gras_ breeding into his round form and look more dreamy passion from his

pleading eyes than any man that ever made a house believe a bum show was

a good one. He was all right, I tell you, and if Little Eva hadn’t butted

in when we were doing things to the equator, and asked him to come down

and play stud-poker in the smoking-room, I reckoned he’d have won a few

plighted troths anyway. I shall always believe he had her clinging to the

ropes when Eva made the fatal stab.

“‘Do you know those people in the second cabin?’ demanded Her Lordship

with an eighty-two degrees north voice.

“Tib groaned and tore his brown hair and admitted he owned us. ‘The vase

is broken,’ he cried. ‘I’ve got the bell and it’s back to the barriers.’

“Well, he felt so bad over that girl that he almost wept. It wa’n’t her

titled papa, or the coat of arms; it was just a case of She. When he was

talking to her he forgot he was merely a showman. He believed all about

the old ivy-covered manse and the hounds. Why, I’ve even heard him call

the pups by name. And his father never owned anything more blue-blooded

than a sheepdog.

“‘Billy,’ he said to me as we smoked down aft, ‘I never met a girl yet I

felt so soft over. I know I’m older than she by some years, but I keep my

age locked up in the baggage-room and we might have been happy if not for

Little Eva.’

“And Miss English was mad. She scolded the Captain for presenting Tib,

and told him her father would do things once we’d sighted old earth. And

the Captain was on the anxious seat, for her father was his meal ticket

and had delegated him to fetch out his daughter O. K. But on the next

night we began to forget it, when we steamed into the heart of a flying

wedge of terrific winds.

“I decided that if ever we got ashore it would be to have the folks come

down to the beach and look at us and say, ‘How natural they look.’ Some

of the gingerbread works were carried away the first night of the blow,

and whenever the wind let up a bit the live stock would throw in a few

_ensembles_ that made one pray for more breeze. Yet the boat behaved

well, and if something hadn’t happened to the propeller we’d have come

through in rare form. But when the chief engineer began to parade out his

kit and try to mend things while standing on his head I knew the game was

getting serious. Now we were bumped by every billow, and I heard a petty

officer whisper that we were being driven far from our course.

“At last the kick stopped, or else we’d slipped out of the storm zone,

and at about three o’clock in the morning we dropped anchor near a dear

little island that the Captain couldn’t name with any great degree of

exactness.

“The anchorage was so good and the water so smooth that our engineer said

it would be easy to take the boat to pieces and put it together without

losing even a shingle nail. Well, you can indulge in a small wager that

we were all up and happy when we came near enough to smell the land. The

sky was clear and peppered over with incandescent lights, and Tib felt so

good that he waltzed up to the She Saxon and observed: ‘I regret you have

been inconvenienced by the storm.’

“Say, she just turned and dragged her two sapphires up and down his

anatomy as if he were a seven-leaf clover. Then she stabbed him four

times with as many glances and turned and walked forward to the Captain.

Cap wheeled around with his lips pursed up to say something unwholesome,

but seeing who it was he swallowed it, and it hurt. Then she asked

something in a low voice and he shook his head slowly. Then she stamped

her hoof and he seemed to give way. At last he called a man to him and

gave some orders. The next thing we knew a boat was dropped and she was

being rowed ashore by four sailors.

“‘Isn’t it rather dangerous to let the lady go ashore?’ asked Tib of the

Captain.

“This gave the Captain a fine chance to ease his mind, and he did it by

pouring out his whole heart to Tib in a comprehensive flow of profanity.

He cursed Tib up hill and down, but Tib was so round it all glanced off.

Cap told him that Miss Mary had gone ashore to get rid of his presence.

Tib shuddered. Then the Cap reminded him that a British skipper takes

sass from no one except the owners, and ordered him back with the rest

of us. Another gilt braid sneaked up and told Tib the Cap meant nothing,

that he was only feeling cross at being delayed. As to Miss Mary, he

swore she was as safe when guarded by the four tars as she would be on

her father’s deck. Besides, the island was probably vacant, he added,

and she would take a short stroll on the beach beneath the stars and

then return. But Tib was uneasy. He said no one could ever diagnose the

disposition of the average cut-up residing on an oceanian isle. ‘Billy,’

he concluded, ‘I’m cut to the heart. She won’t even look at the same

ocean with me.’

“In about an hour’s time, just as the sun was lazily crawling out of his

bed of blue—say, old chap, that sounds voluptuous as well as poetic,

doesn’t it?—well, as the sun appeared there came to our ears a loud cry

from the beach, and we could see some dots bobbing up and down trying

to act intelligent. In two jumps the Captain shot off in a boat, and,

without seeming to touch land, was back again on the run.

“The lord’s daughter had been carried off by the natives, was the

startling intelligence he fed out to his officers. It seems she wanted

to walk up a little hill and get a view of the sea, and, although the

sailors protested, she had ordered them to remain behind; and, like

idiots, they obeyed her. Then they heard a smothered scream and ran to

the rescue, only to meet with a shower of spears and clubs and to witness

a large band of barefooted taxpayers making off with the skirts. One of

the sailors had his arm broken, another had a spear through his shoulder,

and all were badly bruised and battered. The Captain was crazy. He

ordered his men to arm and rush to the rescue. At first he was going to

lead them, but some of his officers soothed him down a bit and made him

see his place was with the boat. It was not only necessary to rescue Miss

Mary, but the tub must be in condition to carry her away when she was

recovered.

“But when Tib asked permission to join the posse the Captain broke loose

again and swore he’d have the boss in irons. If it hadn’t been for Tib

it never would have happened, he cried. I chipped in then and reminded

him Her Lordship was too high and mighty to hunt for an exit just to

avoid a mere man, and I closed with the Stars and Stripes and our consul

in Australia. This distracted his attention a bit, for he forgot Tib in

swearing at our consular service.

“‘Billy,’ groaned Tib, ‘I guess the Cap is right, and I’m to blame for

her going ashore. But these volunteers will never get her by hunting the

brownies with a brass band.’

“Well, we put in several long hours of waiting, and then two men returned

and said reinforcements were needed, as the men had discovered a large

village a few miles inland, which they didn’t dare to attack alone.

“‘Guess you’d better let some of the passengers chip into this game now,’

advised Tib.

“The Captain began to rave again, but, seeing that the men left were

needed in making repairs, he had to give in. Just then some more of the

crew came back to the beach and, once aboard, panted that the colored

folk were getting aggressive and wouldn’t even wait to be attacked.

“‘To the boats, men!’ cried the Captain, while the steward served out

howitzers.

“Before the order could be obeyed the officers and the rest of the gang

rushed down to the beach. Their news was worst of all. They said the

heathens had produced Her Lordship in view of all and had threatened to

kill her if her friends didn’t beat a retreat.

“‘If we show violence she’s lost,’ sobbed one of the men.

“The Captain was dazed. He was brave enough and would gladly fight to

the last gasp; but he didn’t want to recover Miss Mary dead. He tried

to mumble something about strategy, and Tib caught it. It was the

psychological moment for him.

“‘If you’ll turn the management of this show over to me I’ll go and get

her,’ he said simply.

“Some jeered him in wild anger, some eyed him in amazement, and others

were ready to grasp at any suggestion.

“‘I mean it,’ he repeated firmly, drawing up his fat form and beginning

to radiate heart waves. ‘Force will avail nothing, except to kill the

lady. Do as I say and let the galleries back me and a few of my men, and

I honestly believe we can turn the riffle.’

“Discipline was lost sight of as all clamored for pointers. ‘Hoist up a

few mowing machines from the hold, drop twice as many horses over into

the surf, while the carpenters are knocking together a float. Then ferry

the grass clippers ashore and have your mechanics put them together.

That’s the scenario.’

“Some said he was crazy, but I believed he could fill his hand if they

let him alone, and the Captain asked if he intended to palm off the

mowers as machine guns.

“‘If they can’t recognize a mowing machine you don’t expect ’em to be

conversant with Maxims, do you?’ groaned Tib. ‘No; I’ll play ’em as

mowing machines and win out at that. I believe they’ll be big medicine

with the natives.’

“Of course the Captain pooh-poohed the scheme. He said the niggers would

kill the lass before the paraphernalia could be thrown together.

“‘And while you’re doing nothing and can think of nothing to do, they

may kill her,’ cried Tib. ‘And her blood be upon your head! Mine is the

only plan that’s been advanced, and it is practical. It’s unusual, but

you can’t impress these folks with shotguns. It’s got to be something

new in the way of scenic effect. If I had an airship I’d use that. But I

haven’t. We can use the mowing machines and stagger the banditti. We can

start in three hours if you’ll only give the word. Besides, I shall want

the full chorus to follow with their batteries. You lose nothing, unless

it be me and some of my friends and the machines.’

“‘Hoist ’em up,’ commanded the Captain, and the gang caught Tib’s

enthusiasm.

“‘Now, who’s game for a little romp?’ asked Tib gently of us actors, his

brown eyes collecting in two needle points. ‘I want my own men for the

leading parts in this deal. Now, who’s game?’

“Of course I said I was, as I owed him poker money. Little Eva’s husband

said if he could have one more drink he’d play tag with the devil, and

Uncle Tom was on if he didn’t have to black up. Tib wanted one more

operator, and a young fellow that was coming out to hold down a stool in

his father’s branch house in Sydney agreed to chip in if he could have

time to write something sad to his parents. Tib reminded him the postman

wouldn’t have time to collect the mail before we returned, and so the

five of us made ready. The Captain ached to go, but Tib reminded him he

must take command of the rear-guard.

“I was for grabbing up a papaw root and dashing blindly into the weeds,

but Tib held us all back as he outlined his scheme more fully. The mowing

machines would dazzle the natives, he contended, and while he and his

men were trifling with the aborigines’ superstitions the Captain and

his bullies were to rush in, surround the captive, or else cover Tib’s

retreat, once he had rescued her. And say! You never saw men work as did

those boys on the _Kalanke_. The donkey engine was mounted in a trice and

the big crates, containing the mowing machines, intended for peaceful

pastoral scenes, were yanked out on deck. By that time the carpenters

had put a raft together and the clippers were soon ashore with a bevy of

mechanics impatiently waiting to get in their work. When the different

parts of the machines had been assembled and joined each to his neighbor,

some half-crazed draft horses came through the surf and were promptly

caught. Then boxes of harness were ripped open, and there we were, as gay

a cluster of charioteers as you would meet with outside a star production

of ‘Ben Hur.’

“Tib, as the head Mazeppa, jumped onto the first auto completed and

tested the gearing. Then with his hat tipped jauntily over his right ear

he reminded the Captain that the crew should loiter not too far in the

rear, but always out of sight of the enemy, until we gave the signal to

advance, three pistol shots. Then he cried, ‘Cutter bars up!’ and away we

clanked around the base of the low hill.

“We had received tips as to the course to take, and it would

have done your heart good, sir, could you have seen us in that

bringing-in-the-sheaves effect. We only needed wide-brimmed straw hats,

with handkerchiefs knotted carelessly about our throats, to be the

village heroes in the average rural melodrama.

“The land, lucky for us, lay flat and hard baked by the sun, once we

were around the hill. Then Tib’s good sense in picking his own men was

demonstrated. Always in the lead as we trundled over the hard ground,

he had only to move his hand to cause us to catch the signal and obey.

Back of us, scuttling through the occasional brush, was our bodyguard,

and the glint of the sun on the gun metal was a wonderful antidote for

homesickness. In advance a fringe of woods told where the English girl

was held captive. We expected to encounter outposts, but I reckon the foe

measured our love for a woman by their own standard and couldn’t conceive

of a man risking his life to save a squaw.

“At last we struck the shade and sure enough found a broad avenue between

the trees, just as the boatswain had mapped out. Then came another level

stretch, only not so long as the first, bounded by a slight rise. It was

just beyond this that the village was located. We approached as slyly

as we could and cautiously gained the top without being interrupted.

Just below us was the encampment, consisting of several scores of low

huts. They were arranged like the spokes of a wheel, with broad streets

radiating from the centre. The voters were having a big powwow, and they

made so much noise that they had failed to catch the sound of our steeds

or wheels.

“‘Now, children, list,’ commanded Tib. ‘I’m going to drive straight

ahead. Billy will wend his way to the right and pick up the first spoor,

followed by Simon Legree, who takes the second trail. Uncle Tom takes

the first left aisle, followed by young Add Six and Carry Two. And we’ll

form a cluster, God willing, in the centre of the exposition, where there

seems to be a commodious green. Attention! Cutter bars down! Forward,

trot!’

“And we five chauffeurs dashed into the hippodrome in the most ridiculous

fashion. Tib bounced up and down like a rubber ball, and to fall

from the seat meant a badly sliced up white man. But the effect was

stupendous. I reckon the brunettes never before gazed on such wags as

we must have appeared to be. Bang! Smash! we rode through their rotten

village, and the machines needed oiling. Of all the rasping, clattering

noises you ever heard, sir! Black nightmares rushed to get out of the way

as we cleaned out the lanes.

“Snip! snip! and Tib had shaved off the corner of a mud villa. Crunch!

and Simon picked up a totem pole. Every tooth in those five cutter bars

was working and the collateral we chewed up didn’t do ’em a bit of good.

But, as Tib said, it was only a one-night stand and our game was to

sell tickets and ramble away. So on we careened, the horses wild with

fright, now and then the shears picking up a brown toe as some devotee

fell prostrate in his flight and babbled a cast-iron prayer to some

burglar-proof god. It simply swept them off their feet, sir. Before they

woke up we had entered the middle square.

“And if there wasn’t Her Lordship, trussed up between two poles, white as

death!

“‘If you’ll pardon the bucolic style of my turnout, dear lady, I should

be felicitated to have you accompany me back to the ship,’ cried Tib

cheerily as he slashed her free and held her so she would not fall. And

during it all he was apparently oblivious to the frescoes of black faces

staring in stupid awe in the background.

“‘Can it be I’m saved!’ she whimpered, brushing back her twenty-two-carat

hair with an uncertain gesture.

“‘Tut, tut,’ cried Tib heartily as he took her hand and tripped a merry

morris toward his chariot. ‘I guess there’s no danger. These people

are simply crude in their deportment and evidently believed you some

wandering goddess and would detain you awhile.’

“‘You are a brave and a good man,’ she choked.

“‘I guess your hosts think me the devil. Excuse me, lady,’ salaamed Tib.

“‘Never a man took greater risk,’ she murmured.

“‘An Uncle Tom’s Cabin company, lady, will take any risk, or anything

outside a church,’ replied Tib. ‘Whoa, Montezuma. Now hop up here on my

knee. These bronze pieces will come to their senses in a second.’

“And when Her Lordship jumped up into his arms the wonder-stricken gang

gave a howl and came out of their trance. We countermarched in those

rigs so that Tib had the lead when we quit the plaza, but not before one

big buck, attired in a war club and a workmanlike spear, gave a grunt of

disapproval and raised his trowel behind Tib’s back. I had been expecting

one of them would draw to that card, and while his arm was pulled back I

pinked him from the hip, and the sunlight was turned off so far as he was

concerned. But they didn’t mind crowding into hell so long as they could

regain the woman, and my shot took the Japanese out of only one of them.

And as we swarmed up the slight rise they came yowling along behind us,

disturbing the peace in a variety of ways. But just as Simon Legree fired

three shots in quick succession a fringe of strained-faced tars popped

over the crest in front, preceded by the busy end of their repeaters.

Under cover of their diversion we gained the top and bounced down on the

other side with the neighbors renewing their pursuit.

“Just as everything began to look cozy and homelike my pair of Jaspers

decided they were afraid of the ocean, and, hang me, if they didn’t

turn about and caper back right in the face of the dancing spearmen. I

couldn’t hold ’em, and so I just dropped the cutter bar and pulled out my

junk, only expecting to muss a few of ’em up before I was registered. My

friends began to howl behind me, and I tossed a glance over my shoulder

and beheld old Tiberius coming along after me like a madman, his machine

jumping and swaying, and he with a big gun in each hand yelling like a

fiend. He had tossed Her Lordship to the sailors and was back to play

in my drama. Then the heat of it got into my blood, and as Tib drew up

beside me I gave a war cry and urged the brutes onward still faster.

“I knew if we tried to turn we were down and out, and that our only show

was to put up a bold front and scare the enemy off the ridge. The sailors

were now popping away merrily, and just as we had gone the limit the foe

threw up the sponge and scampered back down the other side of the rise.

“Maybe we were several hours retreating to the beach! When we got

there the whole bunch fell on Tib’s neck and pawed his round form

affectionately, the Captain leading in the demonstration. Tib drove

them away, but when we got aboard and Her Lordship rushed upon him and

throwing both arms about his neck, pressed her red lips with a resounding

and most plebeian smack on his chin, you could have heard him blush. It

was the first time I had ever known him to lose his nerve. He made a

clean break-away and bowing low said something in a murmur and it was all

over. Of course she thanked us all, but she realized that Tib was the

guiding light.

“To ring off; we left the machines and horses for the natives to get up

guessing parties with, and with our machinery repaired steamed out to

the open water. Tib never made any advances to Her Lordship after once

aboard, although she eyed him with a soft look whenever they met on deck

during the run to port.

“‘My old heart got foolish, boy,’ he remarked to me the night we landed,

‘but it’s beating all right now.’ Yet he always kept a handkerchief she

dropped.

“And wherever the show played Tib coined money by the barrel, for

Her Lordship’s people boomed his game early and late. But Tib got to

believing it was because the show was so good. For, you see, he’d explain

to me as he counted the receipts, ‘Little Eva is dying better every

night.’”

_Corrupt Practices in Elections_

BY HON. LUCIUS F. C. GARVIN

_Ex-Governor of Rhode Island_

Efforts to expose bribery and other corrupt practices in elections are

met with the cry, You are defaming the state! If there are governmental

evils, we are told, prove them to the bottom and correct them quietly.

Such a course may be feasible if applied to a private business, but in

public affairs, in the nature of the case, it cannot be successful.

Certainly none of the persons who directly profit by such practices will

correct them—not the “respectable” men of means who furnish the funds and

who do so with a view to recouping themselves in some way as a result

of the election; not the workers who handle the corruption fund, taking

good care to see that they themselves are rewarded for the trouble and

risk involved; not the individuals who pocket the money disbursed, and

in this way become always morally, and often criminally, confederates;

nor, finally, the few who secure the offices through fraudulent methods.

In fact, nothing has been found effective outside of that strongest of

all influences in a free country, the force of public opinion. The many,

who are made aware of the iniquity by suffering from it, have every

inducement to end it.

Over and over again, in great crises, the American people have shown

themselves to be patriotic, honest and wise. This has happened whenever

the masses have been aroused by serious threats of danger, either

external or internal.

The real danger to our institutions lies, not in great crises, but

rather in a gradual, almost insensible, deterioration of the government,

due either to a lack of vigilance on the part of the people or to a

paralysis of their latent powers.

While it is possible that the immense fund of good will and good sense

possessed by the American people may be expended in private pursuits

and thus diverted from a control of their own government, the far

greater danger is that the mighty influences being put forth at almost

every election will rupture completely the natural dependence of public

officials upon the electorate.

In order to cure any wrongdoing it is needful, first, to ascertain

definitely wherein the wrong consists, and, secondly, to fix with equal

definiteness upon an adequate remedy.

The crudest, the most demoralizing and the most common method of

withholding the hands of the sovereign people from the control of their

government is the direct bribery of voters. This means of thwarting the

wishes of the majority dates back to the early history of the country.

Our system of so-called majority election by districts, placing, as it

often does, the balance of power in a small minority of the electorate,

invites the purchase of the votes of individuals. It has proved easy both

to estimate the number of votes needed to turn the scale and to find out

the particular voters who can be so influenced.

Upon the original plan of buying individual voters at retail, the

improvement has been made of purchasing _en bloc_—the money to be paid

over only in case of delivery of the goods. In this modern bribery

by wholesale the venal voters organize, choose an agent to conduct

negotiations and sell the entire block of votes to the highest bidder.

When success is achieved, as shown by the count of the ballots, hundreds

of dollars are paid to the agent and by him distributed to the members of

the gang.

But, whatever the details of the transaction, a long experience has shown

that, in a multitude of small constituencies a few dollars placed in

the hand of a voter are sufficient to outweigh every consideration of

patriotism or enlightened self-interest. Wherever this habitually occurs,

the rule of a few moneyed men has been substituted for a government by

the people.

In the elections of large cities, of populous states and of the nation at

large, it can seldom happen that bribery of voters, either by retail or

wholesale, is sufficient to alter the result. To supply this deficiency

other means are more and more being resorted to. To assure success,

where the number of voters renders the simpler measure for overcoming

the people’s will unreliable, party managers now make use of finesse and

fraud.

The finesse consists in “packing” the primary meetings and conventions of

the rival party for the purpose of nominating weak opposing candidates.

Nearly every local party may be differentiated into two factions, both

desirous of success, but the one occupying morally a very much higher

plane than the other. The rich party, taking advantage of this division

in the ranks of its opponents, furnishes funds and votes to aid the baser

faction, upon condition, of course, that, having gained control of the

nomination, candidates will be put up of such a character as to drive

away the better element from their support.

In consequence of these manipulations, when election day comes around,

the poorer party is found with a so-called “yellow dog” ticket in the

field—that is to say, a ticket composed of unfit and unknown men,

clearly inferior to the pliant respectabilities who have been placed in

nomination by the richer party.

It sometimes happens that even this political trick fails to assure

success. Either the better faction of the opposing party wins, or,

notwithstanding the inferiority of the ticket named, it may promise to

receive a majority of the votes cast. In this exigency the managers of

the party which is fully supplied with the sinews of war do not hesitate

at direct fraud. That is to say, they expend large sums of money in

hiring election officials to betray their trusts at the risk of going to

jail.

One method adopted, where the law provides an official ballot, is to get

from the officials having charge of the ballots one or more to be marked

for the voter by heelers outside of the polling-room. This furnishes a

sure method of bribery, for the venal voter, after depositing the ballot

thus prepared for him, returns an unmarked ballot to the briber, as a

guarantee of good faith, to be marked by him for the use of the next

person bought. In this way one or more endless chains of purchased votes

may be run all day, through the connivance of some election officer. This

was done in Pawtucket, R. I., and at other places in that state, on the

eighth of last November.

But as the number of venal voters in a polling precinct is limited, so

there is a limit to the effect attainable by giving out to heelers the

official ballots designed for use in the voting booth only.

What more, then, can be done in the way of modern chicanery and

criminality?

Election officers may be bought, and are bought, to defraud their

fellow-citizens in a variety of ways. For instance, there is a very

considerable percentage of illiterate voters in most states, many of

whom desire to give their suffrage to the candidates of one of the

poorer parties. But the richest party has paid the election officials,

who assist the illiterate voters, to mark all such ballots for its

candidates. Evidence exists that this was done systematically at the

recent Presidential and state election in the city of Providence, R. I.,

a sufficient number of voters thus being deceived to turn the scale in

the filling of one or more important offices.

Inasmuch as there is a limit to the number of illiterate voters, even

that base fraud, added to direct bribery, may not effect the desired

reversal of the people’s will. But the moneyed party has other resources.

In order to annul votes already cast for opposing candidates, it may hire

the election officers to make additional marks upon the ballots before

they are counted. In this way in the city of Providence, R. I., at the

last election many votes for Augustus S. Meller, the Democratic candidate

for mayor, were rendered void—fortunately, however, not in sufficient

numbers to prevent his election.

And not even yet has the corrupted election officer reached the full

extent of his ability to defraud. It still is possible for him to

miscount votes; or he may announce the result falsely—for example, by

revising the total number of votes given to the candidates, when the real

majority proves to be adverse to his suborned wishes.

In case there is a Returning Board, whose duty it is to make a second and

final count of the votes cast, as is the law in the city of Providence

and the state of Rhode Island, that board, too, or its controlling

members, may be partisan and corrupt.

At the late election in Rhode Island all the ballots for state officers

and for Presidential electors were in possession of a partisan Returning

Board, of which the chairman of the Republican State Central Committee

was the head, for a period of three full weeks before the counting began.

If there were miscounts in certain voting districts on election day,

it was easily possible for members of that Returning Board to open the

sealed packages of ballots, make such changes as were necessary in order

to have the ballots conform roughly to the previously announced figures,

and then to reseal without the fraud being detected.

But, it may be asked, where are the courts while such frauds are being

perpetrated? Why are not these criminal election officers punished?

Unfortunately, the courts, too, are frequently partisan, especially the

lower courts, before which the cases are first brought.

After the election of last November in Rhode Island, three cases were

brought before the inferior courts—one for bribery, one for posing as

an illiterate voter and one against an election officer in charge of a

ballot-box for allowing the deposit by voters of sham instead of official

ballots. Each of these causes was brought before a different local judge,

and all were thrown out of court. Several days before election it was

known that immunity had been promised to hesitating and apprehensive

election officers. “The Republican Party controls the courts,” they

were told, “and would see that no punishment was meted out to them for

unlawful acts.”

It is needless to say that, if corrupt practices in elections continue

to increase, the end of popular government in this country is in sight.

Already there exists a widespread and deep-seated distrust of the result

of elections. Instances could be given, occurring within the past ten

years, in which a very large proportion of the voters interested, perhaps

a majority of those voting, believe that the wrong candidate was inducted

into office.

Certainly no duty is more pressing than to see to it that in every

election the unbiased and unbought will of the people be recorded.

Is there a remedy? And, if so, what is it? My conviction is, that we only

need to carry out the intent of the founders of this government. They

blazed the way; we must make a clear and beaten track along that way.

By a republican form of government the Revolutionary statesmen meant two

things, which now are not carried out. They meant that every state, and

the nation as well, should possess a legislative body, representative of

the will of the people. Nowhere does this exist, not even where honest

elections assure a free ballot and a fair count. Neither in ability nor

in opinion do state legislatures by their acts represent a majority of

their constituents, except by accident. Nor will they represent the

people until each political party, whether large or small, elects its due

proportion of the members. That is to say, a party which casts forty-five

per cent. of the total vote for representatives must have forty per cent.

of the legislature, and the party which casts five per cent. of the total

vote must have five per cent. of the legislature. Then only will statute

law be framed in accordance with the will of a majority of the people.

The other part of our republican form of government, as understood and

intended by American statesmen of the eighteenth century, was that a

majority of the people should directly control the organic law. To this

end they had the state constitutions framed by the people, acting through

delegates chosen to conventions for that sole purpose, but not in effect

until submitted to the electors and adopted by a majority of the votes

cast for and against. In like manner the referendum was provided for in

case of subsequent amendments.

It was thought, also, that a popular initiative for constitutional

changes was created, in the authority given to legislatures to submit

amendments; but, alas, time has shown that those legislatures, being

unrepresentative of the people, refuse to submit amendments, however

extensively demanded by public sentiment.

Hence the necessity of giving the power to propose constitutional

amendments, as has lately been done in South Dakota, Utah and Oregon, to

a reasonable minority (in those states eight per cent.) of the voters.

When the popular initiative shall thus have been added to the referendum

already existing for making changes in the organic law of our states, all

else will take care of itself.

The amendment pending in the Rhode Island Legislature, and known there

as the constitutional initiative, reads in substance as follows:

Eight per cent. of the legal voters of the state may

propose specific and particular amendments to this

constitution by filing with the Secretary of State, not

less than three months nor more than nine months prior

to any state election, a petition that the electors may,

at such election, cast their ballots for or against such

amendments. Any proposition thus made shall be submitted to

the electors by the Secretary of State at said election,

and, if then approved by a majority of the electors of the

state present and voting thereon, it shall, ninety days

thereafter, become a part of the Constitution of the state.

To elect a legislature in any state committed to such an amendment calls

for not only a widespread but an aggressive public sentiment in its

favor. As a rule the organization of the party dominant in the state will

strenuously oppose the adoption of the amendment.

A party continuously in power, no matter what its name or avowed

principles, is sure to frown upon radical measures. The complete control

of the organic law of a state by a majority of its voters means a future

political situation hitherto unknown. The effect upon present party

leaders and upon partisan organizations cannot be foreseen in full, but

that it will be tremendous no one can doubt.

But if the individuals, who are enjoying the state offices, are opposed

to a political upheaval of any kind, the parties which are permanently in

the minority feel very differently. Their organizations and their members

will welcome any reasonable reform which promises to alter materially

the existing unsatisfactory situation. Also in sympathy with a reform so

meritorious and non-partisan would undoubtedly be found a considerable

portion of the adherents of the dominant party.

Yet even with a clear majority of the voters of any state earnestly in

favor of a given amendment to the constitution, it does not follow that

its adoption would be easy. In every state, with scarcely an exception,

it is the party whose membership comprises nine-tenths of the total

wealth, which, with few brief and partial interruptions, controls every

department of the government. For the past decade this has been the

situation more than ever before, and every year finds the power of money

to determine the results of elections gaining in strength—notwithstanding

a rising public sentiment against abuses which are ignored, if not

encouraged, by the authorities.

The situation seems almost hopeless, as is very near being the case, if

the reforming elements pursue for the future the same course as in the

past.

If the leader of the party in power were permitted to dictate the action

of opponents, his command would be: “Divide your forces.” Its boss would

say: “Split among yourselves into several separate and distinct parties,

attack one another with the same virulence that you attack me. Call

yourselves Democrats, Populists, Socialists, Prohibitionists, Labor, and

have whatever platforms or principles you please. In fact, the stronger

and nobler the men and the issues over which the small parties wave

their banners the better I am pleased, for the more minute will be the

subdivision and the more attractive and combative each fractional part.”

And these hopelessly minor parties offer few inducements to the

dissatisfied members of the major party to change their political

affiliations. Such a transfer is altogether too much like removing one’s

bed on a bitter cold night from a warm room to a vacant lot. Discomforts,

and even hardships, patriotic citizens may be willing to endure, but they

can scarcely be blamed for refusing to embrace them merely for the fun of

being come-outers.

In order to contend successfully against the party in power, however

well known its abuses, there must be a co-operation of the dissatisfied

and antagonistic voters. By co-operation it is not meant that an attempt

should be made to create a single party with a platform composed of

the planks of half a dozen parties. Such a composite is but a rope of

sand; and, in fact, the stringing together of a collection of unrelated

questions, such as prohibition, socialism and labor, is quite as likely

to end in mutual hostilities as in a combined charge upon the common

enemy.

The use of money for carrying a state election by corrupt practices can

only be offset by the exercise of great wisdom on the part of those who

depend upon other agencies. The second party, which in the Northern

states generally means the Democratic, must furnish the nucleus about

which the third, fourth and fifth parties gather. Indeed, it devolves

upon the second party to invite the other minor parties to join forces

with it. And, in order to have such invitation accepted, it must fix upon

one or two paramount issues so fundamental and important as to attract

strongly all who are offended with the doings of the party in power.

If two issues are elected, one of them may well be a constitutional

amendment such as has been outlined in this article, the other might be a

legislative measure—such, for instance, as direct primaries, which serve

excellently the purpose of a corrupt practices act.

Each of the minor parties, besides educational work, wishes to preserve

its organization and to measure its strength at each succeeding election

by the number of votes cast in its support. The wish is natural and

proper; but the objects aimed at can be accomplished in a state election

without putting full tickets into the field. The nomination and support

of a single candidate for a minor state office will fully answer both

purposes.

The means of stopping most surely and speedily corrupt practices by

the party in power, lies in an open and aboveboard fusion of all its

opponents upon a few issues, together with a united support of one set

of candidates for all offices whose incumbents can aid or hinder the

adoption of the measures agreed upon. This, I believe, offers the best

chance of accomplishing the very difficult task of establishing in a

state good and pure government.

_Pole Baker_

BY WILL N. HARBEN

_Author of “The Georgians,” “Abner Daniel,” etc._

CHAPTER I

The planter alighted from the dusty little train under the crumbling

brick car-shed at Darley, turned his heavy hand-luggage over to the negro

porter and walked across the grass to the steps of the Johnston House.

Here he was met by Jim Thornton, the dapper young clerk, who always had a

curled mustache and hair smoothed flatly down over his brow.

“Oh, here you are, right side up, Captain Duncan!” he cried. “You can’t

stay away from those level acres of yours very long at a time.”

“No, Jim.” The short, thick-set man smiled as he took the extended hand.

“As soon as I heard spring had opened up here we left Florida. I had a

bad case of homesickness. My wife and daughter came a week ago. I had to

stop on business in Jacksonville. I always want to be here in planting

season; my men never seem to know exactly what I want done when I am

away. Jim, I’ve got a lot of land out there between the river and the

mountains.”

“I reckon you have,” laughed the clerk as he led his guest into the hotel

office. “There’s a neighbor of yours over there at the stove, old Tom

Mayhew, who runs the big store—Mayhew & Floyd’s—at Springtown.”

“Oh, I know him mighty well,” said Duncan. “How are you, Mayhew? What are

you doing away from your beat? I thought you’d be behind your counter

such fine weather as this.”

“Trade’s dull,” said the merchant, who was a tall, spare-made man about

sixty-five years of age, with iron-gray hair and beard. “Farmers are all

at the plow, and that’s where they ought to be if they expect to pay

anything on their debts this fall. I had to lay in some stock, and so I

ran down to Atlanta day before yesterday. My young partner, Nelson Floyd,

usually does the replenishing, but the books got out of whack, and I left

him to tussle with them; he’s got a better head for figures than I have.

I’ve just sent to the livery-stable for a horse and buggy to take me out;

how are you going?”

“Why, I hardly know,” answered the planter as he took off his straw hat

and wiped his bald head with a silk handkerchief. “I telegraphed Lawson,

my head overseer, to send somebody to meet me, and I was just wondering——”

“Oh, you’ll be attended to all right, Captain Duncan!” said the clerk,

with a laugh as he stood at the register behind the counter. “Pole Baker

was in here last night asking if you had arrived. He said he had brought

a buggy and was going to drive you back. You will make it all right

if Pole sobers up long enough to get out of town. He was thoroughly

‘how-come-you-so’ last night. He was in Askew’s bar raising holy Cain.

The marshal ordered Billy to close at twelve, but Pole wouldn’t hear to

it, and they were within an inch of having a fight. I believe they would

if Mrs. Johnston hadn’t heard them and come down. Pole has more respect

for women than most men, and as soon as he saw her at the door he hushed

up and went to bed.”

“He’s as straight as a shingle this morning, Captain,” put in Charlie

Smith, a mulatto porter, who was rolling a pair of trucks across the room

laden with a drummer’s enormous brass-bound trunk. “He was up before day

asking if you got in durin’ the night.”

“Well, I’m glad he’s sobered up if he’s to take me out,” said the

planter. “He’s about the biggest daredevil out our way. You know him,

don’t you, Mayhew?”

“Know him? Humph! to the extent of over three hundred dollars. Floyd

thinks the sun rises and sets in him and never will close down on him.

They are great friends. Floyd will fight for him at the drop of a hat. He

says Pole has more manhood in him to the square inch than any man in the

county, white or black. He saw him in a knock-down-and-drag-out row in

the public square last election. They say Pole whipped three bigger men

than he is all in a bunch, and bare-handed at that. Nobody knows to this

day how it started. Nelson doesn’t, but I heard it was some remark one of

the fellows made about Nelson himself. You know my partner had a rather

strange start in life—a poor boy with nobody to see to his bringing up,

but that’s a subject that his best friends don’t mention to him.”

The Captain nodded understandingly. “They tell me Pole used to be a

moonshiner,” he said, “and I have heard that he was the shrewdest one

in the mountains. His wife got him to quit it. I understand he fairly

worships the ground she walks on, and there never was a better father to

his children.”

“He thinks well enough of them when he’s at himself,” said Mayhew, “but

when he’s drinking he neglects them awfully. I’ve known the neighbors

to feed them two weeks on a stretch. He’s got enemies out our way. When

he quit moonshining he helped some of the government officers find some

stills over there. That was funny. Pole held off from the job that was

offered him for a month, during which time he sent word everywhere

through the mountains that he would give all his old friends plenty of

time to shut up and quit making whisky, but after his month was up he

intended to do all he could against law-breakers. He had to testify

against several, and they now certainly have it in for him. He’d have

been shot long ago if his enemies weren’t afraid of him.”

“I see him coming now, Mr. Mayhew,” said the clerk. “Captain, he walks

steady enough. I reckon he’ll take you through safe.”

The tall countryman, about thirty-five years of age, without a coat, his

coarse cotton shirt open at the neck, a slouch hat on his massive head

and his tattered trousers stuffed into the tops of his high boots, came

in. He had a brown, sweeping mustache, and his eyebrows were unusually

heavy. On the heel of his right foot he wore an old riding-spur, very

loosely strapped.

“How are you, Captain Duncan?” he said to the planter as he extended his

brawny hand. “You’ve come back to God’s country, eh?”

“Yes, Baker,” the planter returned with a genial smile; “I had to see

what sort of chance you fellows stand for a crop this year. I understand

Lawson sent you over for me and my baggage. I’m certainly glad he engaged

a man about whom I have heard such good reports.”

“Well, I don’t know about that, Captain,” said Pole, his bushy brows

meeting in a frown of displeasure and his dark eyes flashing. “I don’t

know as I’m runnin’ a hack-line, or totin’ trunks about for the upper-ten

set of humanity. I’m a farmer myself, in a sort of way—smaller’n you are,

but a farmer. I was comin’ this way yesterday, and was about to take my

own hoss out o’ the field, where he had plenty to do, when Lawson said,

said he, ‘Baker, bein’ as you are goin’ to make the trip anyways, I’d

feel under obligations ef you’d take my rig and fetch Captain Duncan back

when you come.’ By gum, to tell you the truth, I’ve just come in to tell

you, old hoss, if you are ready right now, we’ll ride out together, if

not I’ll leave you an’ go out with Nathan Porter. Engaged, the devil! I’m

not goin’ to get any money out o’ this job.”

“Oh, I meant no offense at all, Baker,” said the planter in no little

embarrassment, for the group was smiling.

“Well, I reckon you didn’t,” said Pole, slightly mollified, “but it’s

always a good idea fer two men to know exactly where they stand, and I’m

here to say I don’t take off my hat to no man on earth.”

“That’s the right spirit,” Duncan said admiringly. “Now, I’m ready if you

are, and it’s time we were on the move. Those two valises are mine and

that big overcoat tied in a bundle.”

“Here, Charlie!” Pole called out to the porter, “put them things o’

Duncan’s in the back end o’ the buggy, an’ I’ll throw you a dime the next

time I’m in town.”

“All right, boss,” the mulatto said, with a knowing wink and smile at

Mayhew. “They’ll be in by the time you get there.”

While the planter was at the counter, saying good-bye to the clerk, Pole

looked down at Mayhew. “When are _you_ goin’ out?” he asked.

“In an hour or so,” answered the merchant as he spat into a cuspidor.

“I’m waiting now for a turnout, and I’ve got some business to attend to.”

“Collections to make, I’ll bet my hat,” Pole laughed. “I thought mighty

few folks was out on Main Street jest now; they know you are abroad in

the land an’ want to save the’r socks.”

“Do you reckon that’s it, Pole?” said Mayhew as he spat again. “I thought

maybe it was because they was afraid you’d paint the town, and wanted to

keep their skins whole.”

The clerk and the planter laughed. “He got you that time, Baker,” the

latter said, with a smile.

“I’ll acknowledge the corn,” and the mountaineer joined in the laugh

good-naturedly. “To look at the old skinflint, settin’ half asleep all

the time, a body wouldn’t think his tongue had any life to it. I’ve seed

the dern thing wiggle before, but it was mostly when thar was a trade up.”