There was a decided sensation around the table; for that sacred name is

considered altogether _malàpropos_, and in wretched taste in good

society. Then Alice said, “I don’t think Miss Dare intended any

reflection upon the trade of a carpenter, Louis; that was only her witty

manner of speaking. What she meant was that if he were brought up a

carpenter there was less wonder in his taking to the trade now.”

“But it does give one a kind of shock,” quoth Pinkie with candor, “to

hear our Lord spoken of as a carpenter. I wonder why?”

“So do I,” said her uncle. “It is very un-American.”

“He was a very good carpenter, I’m sure of that,” said Louis, the

wistfulness growing deeper in his blue eyes.

“Do you think we had better discuss the subject?” asked Mr. Randolph

with grave disapprobation; “besides,—Miss Dare, I have been wishing to

ask you—how soon does your father intend returning to America?”

“Gracious knows,” answered Miss Dare, with a shrug of her thin

shoulders, “I don’t. But, Mr. Randolph, if you hear of any one going

over—any friend of yours, I mean, would you mind letting me know? Papa

wants me to join him if I can hear of a good escort.”

“Perhaps _I_ may have the pleasure; I may take a fortnight abroad this

spring.”

“Papa!” cried Pinkie, “you will take me this time! You promised!”

“Well, I suppose I might as well be bothered with two girls as one,”

said Mr. Randolph amiably. “Your father was speaking of giving you a

year or so at a French convent when I last saw him, Miss Virgie. Is that

the idea at present?”

“Yes, sir; and oh! if you’d only leave Pinkie there too! I shouldn’t

mind it if she were along. Oh, Pinks! wot larks!”

“Ah! I fear the Sisters would take them for condors,” observed the papa,

with his celebrated genial laugh. “Well, I’ll think it over; but don’t

set your hearts on it, you two.”

Wherewith they rose from the table.

“Nothing could be better,” mused the tender-hearted American, noting the

sudden blankness of Louis’ face at the proposed journey. “Her own

proposal, no interference or parental tyranny on my part. And then—Dare!

‘The old blood holds its own,’ on Wall Street, in his case, and I’m

positive he has some little game in hand there in Paris. It will do no

harm to look after him. His daughter would make an excellent wife for

Frank one of these days; and if the boy is up to any rascality with his

lockets and things, it is just as well she should be abroad, out of the

way of hearing of it. As for this other affair, there is no harm done at

present,—two such children!—but it is just as well to get Pinkie out of

this house with its atmosphere of free thought and Socialism. Yes,

nothing could be better!”

Rendered even more genial than his wont by these reflections, the rich

man paused, ere leaving the dining-room, to say to Louis,—

“My little girl has not thanked you yet for the slippers, Mr. Metzerott.

I suppose they came from you, as that is your department at ‘Prices.’”

“Yes,” said Louis quietly, “it is my department.”

“And they do you credit. Pinkie will find nothing prettier in Paris, if

I decide to take her. Why, they would be just the thing, little girl,

for gala days at the convent, with a white dress and veil.”

“Do they wear veils? I should like to see you in one, Miss Rose,” said

Louis, still with that blank quietness which had so suddenly descended

upon him.

“Papa,” said Pinkie suddenly, “Freddy has something to show me, some of

his own work. And we don’t want you, papa, or Virgie; you are too

learned in technique and chiar-oscuro and that, and Virgie is too

satirical. Go upstairs, you two; I’ll see you later.”

“Don’t wait for me, Mr. Randolph; I have something to say to Mr.

Metzerott,” said Virginia boldly. Louis was only a boy, she said to

herself; besides, one need hardly stand on ceremony with that sort of

people.

Thus cast off by his women-kind, Mr. Randolph had no alternative but to

obey, since interference was not his cue. “Tell Pinkie not to be long,

she is keeping her cousin from his ride,” said the great Wall Street

operator, as he left her; but Virgie was not thinking of Pinkie at all.

“I want to say, Mr. Metzerott,” she said, “that I am so much obliged to

you for speaking as you did, about—carpenters, you know.”

“Why, I did not say anything, did I?” replied Louis, rather absently,

following Pinkie with his eyes as she walked away by the side of

Freddy’s chair, which his father wheeled into the office.

“Oh! I know you’d rather go with them,” said Virgie with the candid

directness which was a part of her character; “but I’ve got something to

say, and I mean to say it. Mr. Metzerott—or, I say, do you mind if I

call you Louis?”

“No, why should I? everybody does except Mr. Randolph; and he—oh! I

don’t suppose he meant to make fun of me.”

“Humph!” said the astute Virginia. “But never mind what he meant, _I_

know his tricks and his manners. Louis, what you said was this, that you

always thought of our Lord as a carpenter. Now, does that mean that you

think of Him often? a bright, handsome boy like you! because _I_ don’t,

not more than once a week, on Sundays, you know; and yet girls,—one

would think a girl had more time!”

“It’s while we’re at work,” answered the boy; “oh! I have plenty of

time, Miss Dare. My father is a very silent man. When he does talk, what

he says is well worth hearing; but he don’t talk much when we’re at

work; and so I think of things then.”

“Things! do you mean our Lord?”

“Him, yes; and of Washington and Bonaparte; and our own Hermann, who

fought the Romans; and Fra Angelico and Titian, and—oh! I couldn’t tell

you half,” said Louis, smiling. “I’m here about every day, you know; and

Fred and I talk about things and people; heroes and great artists, and

all sorts of things. Fred believes that Jesus Christ was really God, you

know, and so is alive still.”

“And don’t you?”

“No: I wish I did, but I can’t. I love Him, you know; I’d rather be like

Him than any of those men I told you of; but I can’t _feel_ Him, like

Fred.”

“_Feel_ Him; what do you mean?”

“Why, Fred says that sometimes, when he is suffering, he knows Jesus

Christ is in the room, close by him; closer than any of us.”

“And that makes him always so bright and happy,” said Virgie under her

breath.

“I suppose so; it would, you know. I’d change with Fred, spine and all,

to feel so,—I know that. Well, I’d change with him anyway, if I could,

and he’d like it; but you can’t make yourself feel, can you?”

“Wouldn’t you just as soon leave the feeling to other people,

sometimes?” asked Miss Dare, relapsing into frivolity without the

slightest warning. “Never mind, Louis, if he does take her abroad to get

her out of your way; fathers are not always as clever as they think

themselves, and I won’t let her forget you.”

“I think she hardly could,” returned the boy, with a troubled smile; “we

have known each other all our lives.”

“Well, here she comes, and I’ll do as I would be done by, and make

myself scarce. That’s a Christian maxim, anyway.”

Louis turned quickly to meet his friend, with an eager face. “I could

not come,” he said, “I was kept—but you have it? he gave it to you?”

Pinkie glanced down at a tile she carried in her hand. “Yes, he gave it

to me,” she said.

“But I want to ask you, Pinkie—oh! I ought to say Miss Rose, but I’ve

called you Pinkie all my life;—she says, Miss Dare says, that your

father will take you to Paris to get you away from _me_. Pinkie, do you

want to go?”

“That’s all Virgie’s nonsense,” said Pinkie decidedly; “he’d better not

play stern parent, and he knows it. Yes, Louis, I do want to go; to see

the ocean, and Paris, and all. Of course I want to go.”

“If you would enjoy it,” said Louis reluctantly, “we would try to bear

it, Freddy and I. But we should miss you, Pinkie, _liebes Herz_,” he

added tenderly.

“Well, you know I’d be back in two years,” said Pinkie, blushing

slightly, though really it was hardly worth while to blush for Louis; a

mere child, and a shoemaker at that.

“If your father wants to get you away from me,” said Louis, “it may be

two years or ten. Will he like you to have my picture, Pinkie?”

“He _ought_ to,” said that young lady, a mischievous dimple showing

itself at the corner of her rosy mouth. “It’s in Freddy’s best manner,

tender, individual, and American, _very_ American.”

Louis smiled, though he would rather have seen Pinkie more respectful to

her genial papa; but he had not been acquainted with that young lady for

twelve long years without having learned the futility of remonstrance.

His arm was around her by this time, and he was stroking back the rough,

brown curls from her brow. It was much such a caress as Freddy might

have bestowed; for, as Henry Randolph had said, they were both mere

children.

“And did the slippers fit?” he said. “Annie Rolf painted them; but not

half well enough for you, _mein Röslein roth_.”

Pinkie drew away from him rather abruptly. “Were he a dairyman, he’d woo

thee with pats of butter,” said Virginia’s voice in her ear. Pinkie

hated herself for the thought; and she loved Louis as well as at that

stage of her development she was capable of loving; but she drew away

from him notwithstanding.

“They are pretty enough for a queen,” she said; “and your father always

fits me; or did you make them all yourself? But you know, Louis, I told

you, we are not children now, and”—

“It is your birthday,” said Louis, “and you will be far away on mine,

perhaps. You might kiss me for my birthday, Pinkie, and another for our

good-by. I do love you so very dearly.”

Pinkie looked doubtful for a moment; but her heart was soft and young,

and Louis was very handsome. Besides, it suddenly occurred to her that

her father would strenuously object to any such proceeding; whereupon

the dairyman and his pats of butter vanished from her mind.

“Just one, then,” she said with a demure, naughty little smile.

Louis was quite equal to the occasion.

“One on your lips,” he said, suiting the action to the word in obedience

to Shakespeare, “and one on each cheek, my pink rose. And then, your

brown eyes are so pretty, you would not have them slighted, I know; and

this white forehead was just made to be kissed. But I like the rosy lips

best, after all, _allerliebste_,” concluded Louis, with great

simplicity.

Whereupon Pinkie amazed him by clinging to his neck, which was almost

out of her reach, she was such a tiny little thing; and bursting into

sudden tears. She was much less simple and innocent than he,—perhaps,

under our present system of education, it is impossible for a girl to be

thoroughly innocent and perfectly simple,—and, though the word marriage

had not been openly named between them, Pinkie knew that Louis looked

upon her as his; his so entirely that there was scarcely need to speak

of it. Besides, they were too young, every one would laugh at them; but

when he should be twenty-one, thought poor Louis—

Pinkie loved no one so well, not her father, nor Freddy. She had, in her

naughty childhood, always been good with Louis; and his power over her

now was almost unlimited when they were together; but yet—

She drew away from him again, and dried her eyes. “There’s nothing the

matter,” she said in answer to his alarmed inquiries, “only that I am

foolish, and that papa will ask why I have been crying. Let me go; I

must bathe my eyes before he sees them.”

She ran lightly up the stairs, then by a sudden impulse turned, ran down

again, and threw her arms about his neck. “I do love you, Louis,” she

said; “and I don’t care what they do to me, if they keep me in a cellar

on bread and water, with _rats_—yes, Louis, _rats_—running over my feet,

I’ll never forget you, never, _never_.”

“You couldn’t, Pinkie, _mein Röslein_, nor I you, you could _not_ forget

me,” he said as he had answered Virginia, when suddenly Pinkie tore

herself away, and vanished like summer lightning. Louis turned to meet

the eyes of Dr. Richards.

“You are both such children,” said that gentleman, “that it is no use to

scold, far less to warn you. But, Louis, did you never hear the story of

Cinderella?”

“Many a time, sir.”

“There is a new version of the story, my boy. The modern Cinderella is a

princess, the daughter of a money-king, and her lover a poor shoemaker.

The slippers were his workmanship, and had a fairy power to test her

truth, and—Louis—when she wore them, and thought of him as he was—no,

not that, but as he appeared; for he was a prince at heart, but a

shoemaker by trade,—then, Louis, her fine raiment and her glittering

equipage vanished, and she appeared to those who understood her only a

poor cinder girl, sitting among the ashes that had ruined a thousand

lives to enrich one.”

“And therefore she left the ashes, and came to her lover in her rags,”

said Louis, smiling proudly.

“Do you think so?” said the doctor. “Well, well, after all you are only

children, and have kissed each other many a time. She will go to Paris”—

“—And come home again,” said Louis.

While Pinkie, as she packed away the pretty china tile with the fair

young face upon it, murmured to herself, “There’s no good in showing it

to Virgie, she would laugh; and as for papa, it is none of his business.

But oh! Louis, if only you were anything but a shoemaker!”

CHAPTER V.

“=Das Ding-an-Sich.=”

It was with a heart that knew not whether to be sad or joyful that Louis

returned home on that eventful afternoon, upon which he had made such a

stride in his young life. Pinkie’s brown eyes had been his lights to

rule the day and the night, since either of them could remember; her

rosy, audacious, mutinous little face was part and parcel of his very

consciousness. Yet, perhaps, just because he could not imagine himself

without her, his imagination had never risen to picturing his life

_with_ her—at Prices. She was simply his; there was neither past,

present, nor future to their life together; only one beautiful,

glorious, eternal now.

Upon this state of mind the thought of separation had acted as the jar

which was all that was needful to produce crystallization, a jar which

any other event might at any moment have supplied; so that the

money-king had after all been wise in his day and generation.

But the electricity evolved in the crystallization had given poor Louis

a rather severe shock. He had been accustomed to look upon “Prices” as

the brief epitome of the time, the picture in little of that which the

world ought to be. But as he re-entered it now, late in the afternoon,

it seemed strangely altered. The great dining-hall stretched blackly

before him; the long lines of tables seeming to reach out to infinity,

and the pale windows glimmering like a vanished hope.

Miss Sally met him in the corridor.

“You’re late, Louis,” she said, “and that ain’t usual. Have you had your

supper? You don’t mean you went out without your overcoat! Don’t you

know these March days ain’t to be trusted? Why, you’re as pale as a

ghost.”

“I’m all right, Aunt Sally,” replied the boy patiently. “I didn’t need

my overcoat. Yes, I had my supper at Dr. Richards’s.”

“It’s as little as they could do to give you your supper, after you’d

been wheeling their son about all the afternoon,” observed Polly.

“I liked it,” said Louis, “and they like to have me to tea. It wasn’t to

economize, Aunt Polly, on their side or mine.”

“It had the same effect, though,” said Polly, looking up with a laugh

from the great account-book before her; for Miss Sally had drawn him

into her own little sitting-room, the room where Susan Price had died.

“What you saved on your supper will help to pay your absence fine.”

It was entirely true, and perfectly disinterested in Polly, who was,

besides, of twice—nay, ten times—the value to her kind that Rose

Randolph was ever likely to be. Yet Louis, hearing now with Pinkie’s

ears, as he had seen the great dining-hall with her eyes, turned away

sick at heart.

“Is the father at home?” he asked.

“There’s a board-meeting to-night. He’s there. I suppose it’ll be

settled about that carpenter’s place. Your father has taken such a fancy

to Mr. Clare, Louis. He says he is the very man we want. I don’t know

how he knows.”

“I don’t know how _I_ know,” said Louis, “but I do. I think one always

does,” he added, so sadly that the women looked at each other meaningly.

“You are tired to death,” said Sally, “that’s what’s the matter; and

there’s nothing going on to-night to brighten you up. For a wonder the

Hall ain’t been lit, and for another the director is at home, playing on

the pianner like mad. You might go to his rooms and have a little music,

Louis; that would do you good.”

“I think I’ll go to bed,” said Louis, smiling faintly. “I heard the Herr

Musik-Direktor as I came up; he was playing ‘Tannhäuser,’ and I don’t

think I could appreciate Wagner to-night. I’ll go to bed, Aunt Sally.”

“Well, so do; but, Louis, by the way, I don’t suppose you saw anything

of Gretchen Schaefer?”

“Gretchen? no; that is, not since dinner-time. Why?” asked Louis, with

his hand on the knob.

“She was absent at supper, without leave or notice, and hasn’t been seen

since. I am afraid Tina has had a bad turn, that’s all. Gretchen would

not do such a thing unless she had to.”

“Shall I step around and see?”

“No: you’re tired. I’ll go myself. I ain’t had a breath of air to-day,

outside the back yard, and it’ll do me good. Polly, there, has the

accounts to do. They ought to been ready for the board-meeting; but

Gretchen she’s been so put back in her work lately by Tina’s bein’

sick.”

“I’ve nearly done,” said Polly, with a vigorous dip of her pen in the

inkstand; “and if you’re not too tired, Louis, you might wait and leave

these books at the board-room, as you go to bed. It’s as near as any

other way, and I promised to send them.”

The boy threw himself obediently into a chair, and watched—still with

Pinkie’s eyes—while Miss Sally adorned herself with a bonnet and shawl

of strange and intricate construction. How the brown eyes would have

laughed at Miss Sally’s bonnet, thought Louis.

Then Polly closed her books with a bang. “There, that’s done!” she said.

“The Bible says we must bear one another’s burdens; and I’ve had my

share of it this day. I hate accounts.”

“Let me do them for you next time,” said Louis, looking down at Polly’s

flushed face and tumbled hair, and the soiled gingham apron she had been

too busy to change.

“I hope there won’t _be_ a next time,” replied Polly. “If there is, we

must get another cashier; that’s all. But Gretchen is real reliable

generally.”

“I hope nothing has happened to her,” said Louis uneasily, thinking of

two figures that had vanished round a corner in North Micklegard, as the

Ark of the Covenant drew nigh. The man was, he felt sure, Frank

Randolph, and the girl had on a blue dress, just the color of Gretchen’s

Sunday one.

“Oh! nothing ever happens to Gretchen,” said Polly, laughing. “Tina is

the one I’m anxious about.”

“So?” said the boy slowly. Twenty-four, nay, twelve hours earlier he

would have spoken at once of the blue dress; but—after all, there were

plenty of blue dresses in the world;—and—then—_were_ classes so widely

separated in America,—Republican America, that—Louis shrunk from

formulating, even to himself, the thought in his mind.

He took the books, and carried them away in silence.

His modest tap at the door of the board-room was answered by a summons

to enter; and when he deposited his burden upon the plain, deal table,

with its covering of oilcloth, round which the managers sat upon much

worn wooden chairs,—for there was little effort at luxury at

“Prices,”—there was not a face in the room but wore a smile to greet

him. They were gray-haired men, all of them, who had known him all his

life, and they could not let him go without a pleasant word.

“Have you turned book-keeper, Herr Louis?” asked one. “We missed you at

supper-time,” said another. “Ah! he was better employed, perhaps I hope

she is pretty.” “Did you give her a good hug and a sounding kiss?” “Ah!

leave that to him, he knows very well how these things are managed.” “He

has a face to help him better with the girls than any of your advice.”

These were some of the things that were said to him before his father

broke in roughly, “Hold your tongues, all of you! would you quite turn

the boy’s head? What does it matter, a face! Hands are what we need in

shoemaking.”

“The boy looks tired,” said the old president gently; “and you are all

wrong, _meine Herren_. He has been doing works of charity, not courting.

I saw you up-town, Louis, with your lame friend.”

“Yes, he enjoyed the ride,” said Louis. “I am glad to be of use to him,

Herr President; they have all been so kind to me.”

“Quite right, my boy,” said the old man benignly; and, after a few more

words, Louis took his leave.

For perhaps the first time in his life he stepped into the elevator; he

who usually ran up the long, steep stairs as fleetly as a gazelle. Then,

reaching his own little room, under the roof, he sat down, slowly and

heavily, and looked about him. It was spotlessly clean, but with no

attempt at beauty, except one or two of Freddy’s drawings; and, to the

boy’s new sense of sight, repulsively bare and comfortless. He let his

head sink hopelessly upon his hands. Look where he would, there was no

place at “Prices” for Pinkie. With his best efforts he could not think

her into his workaday world. It was not her fault, of course; the hardy

_arbor vitæ_ stands erect amidst the snows from which the rose must be

carefully protected. Is the rose to blame? No, it is only a question of

corresponding with one’s environment. Pinkie was, clearly and

self-evidently, not created or evolved to correspond with any such

environment as “Prices.”

He was sitting in the same position when his father entered, half an

hour later, with an elate expression, which changed suddenly at sight of

Louis’ smile; an old smile on a boyish face.

“So!” said Karl Metzerott; “but it is my blame for sending you as a

child among those people! Ah! what a fool I was! What has she done to

thee, Louis, to send thee home with a face like that?”

“It is not her fault, father, nor mine, nor any one’s, for that matter.”

“Tell me that! Nothing is _her_ fault at thy age, Louis. Tell me about

it, and let me be the judge. Have I not always warned thee? A man’s own

senses might tell him that a bit of pink and white wax-work is not the

wife for a workingman.”

Louis sighed. “It is true,” he said. “Father, I have thought and

thought, but I cannot imagine her _here_,—or—myself anywhere else. For

see! I have grown up at ‘Prices,’ father; these dear friends are _my_

friends, part of my life; if I could leave it, only half of my heart

could go with me; if I could rise into her world”—

“Rise? that is, lie, cheat, steal, do anything to get money! For it is

money alone that makes equals in that world, my boy; have I not seen

it?”

Louis bowed his head once more in sad acquiescence. His thoughts were

too chaotic for words, but he felt dimly and confusedly that his father

was right. Polly’s mercenariness was a nobler thing than Pinkie’s scorn

of expense; nay, if he had known it, even the rough raillery of the

board-room, quite as delicate as much schoolgirl teasing. “Prices” might

be—was—in essentials the higher world; but since it was not Pinkie’s

world the result was practically the same. Louis glanced around the

plain, bare room, and thought of Alice’s dainty parlor, of the pink and

white nest that sheltered his bird, of which he had once had an

accidental glimpse,—and he sighed heavily.

“Why _should_ you fancy her here?” asked Metzerott, interpreting the

sigh aright. “She doesn’t suit you, and that’s all there is about it.

Rise into her world indeed! I hope your father is an honest man, which

is more than can be said of hers!”

“Oh! if you come to fathers!” said Louis proudly. “But there’s more in

it than that, if I could only make you see it. I’ve been brought up in

both worlds, father, and I know. Ours—yes, we are working for each other

at ‘Prices,’ while in hers they work for themselves; that makes us

higher; yet in some ways they are higher than us.”

“They’ve more money,” said his father scornfully, “and finer clothes”—

“Not Mrs. Richards,” said Louis; “but it’s in things money won’t buy

that I see the difference. I can’t put it into words, but you would

understand it, father, if you could see Mrs. Richards standing

beside—Aunt Sally, for instance. They are equally good, perhaps, and I

love them equally well, so it’s a good example. It’s not Pinkie’s fault,

father, it’s just because hers is a different world.”

“Was she so unkind to you to-day?”

“Far from it,” said the boy, a deep flush rising to his fair brow; “but

her father—I think because of me—will take her to Paris, and put her

into a convent-school. I only saw her a little while, for he took her

for a drive, and to supper at his hotel; but—she loves me, father.”

“Does she?” said Karl Metzerott. “But I dare say she does. Poor girl,

poor girl.”

He was too wise to say any more. Louis was, he saw, fully alive to the

situation, and comment would only wound without helping him. But he was

inwardly relieved at the escape from this trouble promised by the

Parisian school, which would, he persuaded himself, effectually put an

end to the whole affair. They were only children, and would be in love

half a dozen times apiece before they were married.

Yet—Louis was his own son,—his who had “loved one woman only,” and clave

to her in death as in life. And how dared Henry Randolph scorn his boy,

his noble, beautiful Louis, worth a hundred little gypsies, such as the

one on whom he had set his young heart? With these mixed and

contradictory emotions struggling in his bosom, Karl Metzerott stood for

some moments with folded arms, looking down upon his son. Suddenly he

laid one large, rough, toil-worn hand very softly upon the bowed head.

“Don’t break thy heart for her, Louis,” he said; “there’s not a woman in

the world—_now_—worth that.”

“Ah! _now_,” said Louis. “Was there ever, father?”

“Never,” replied the shoemaker sturdily. “Did I break my heart for thy

mother—yet if ever woman _were_ worth—but I lived on, and not quite for

nothing, _nicht wahr_?”

“You had me,” said Louis, springing to his feet, and clasping like a

child his father’s brown neck; “you had me, and I have you. We won’t

break our hearts while we have each other, father.”

CHAPTER VI.

“AN ENEMY CAME AND SOWED TARES.”

Henry Randolph was not a man to let the grass grow under his feet, when

he had once made up his mind to a certain definite course. Most of his

successes on Wall Street had been won by prompt and decided action; and

within a week from the moment when he had decided that Pinkie’s intimacy

with the “little shoemaker” must be broken off, he, she, and Miss Dare

were on the high seas.

During the short interval before their departure, Louis never once saw

Pinkie alone, by what he considered a series of unfortunate chances;

which the young lady more acutely ascribed to the silent watchfulness of

uncle, aunt, father, and brother. Freddy would have been heart and soul

on the side of the lovers, if they had been sufficiently of one mind to

possess anything that, by the utmost stretch of partisan spirit, could

be called a side at all. As it was, he was ready at any moment to

further any plan or project that Louis might devise; and Louis was too

young and too much in love not to long and innocently to scheme for a

repetition of that last interview, with its tears and tenderness.

But such schemes as his were by no means difficult to see through and

quietly frustrate; nor in truth could any one of the relatives on either

side have been justly blamed for wishing that their mutual inclination,

innocent and beautiful as it was, should die a natural death.

Perhaps it was a laudable desire to foster his daughter’s good

qualities, to enlist her pride on the right side, and appeal silently to

her common sense by showing her Louis’ daily life, that brought Mr.

Randolph from his hotel quite early one morning, with a proposition to

spend the day in a visit to “Prices.”

“Of course we’ve all been there,” he said, “but I, for one, only know

one or two shops and departments, here and there. What I wish to do is

to understand the working of the whole institution; for I may see others

while we are abroad, and, by knowing the peculiarities of this one,

might bring home valuable hints.”

“Then you’d better go alone,” said Pinkie, who always smelt a scheme

when her papa became explanatory; “you can’t study workings at a

picnic.”

“But I particularly wish you to go,” said Mr. Randolph. “Co-operation

has come to stay, Pinkie, and, as a woman who will inherit considerable

wealth, it is your duty to know all about it. Besides, I have already

invited your friend Miss Dare to accompany us. I stopped at her house on

my way down, and promised that the carriage should call for her in an

hour’s time.”

Miss Dare! Virgie! who was by no means averse to an occasional

_tête-à-tête_ with Louis, or in fact anything else masculine that came

in her way. Pinkie concluded that she would go, and revenged herself by

wearing her very prettiest “spring suit,” of pearl-gray and rose-color,

in which she felt quite able to hold her own against any Dare that ever

breathed.

“We’ll give the day to it, and dine there,” said Mr. Randolph with

benevolent airiness. “Of course it will be rather primitive; but we can

stand it well enough for one day. If they stick their knives in the

butter, it won’t matter to us, so it isn’t _our_ butter.”

“Oh! do they do such things as that?” said Miss Dare with a shudder.

It was a warm day, a very warm day for the end of March; consequently

the furnaces at “Prices” were several degrees hotter than usual. The

shoemaker’s work-room, what with this heat, the smell of leather, and

the presence of six overheated human beings, was stifling to a degree

scarcely bearable to Louis’ youthful vitality. His hand, blackened with

work and the soots of Micklegard, had several times brushed away the

drops from his forehead, not without leaving traces of the operation;

his face was pale, and his fair hair disordered; when suddenly a breath

of cooler air made him look up, and there in the doorway, fresh and

sweet as her own royal flower, stood Pinkie, as though fallen from

heaven.

What happened next, Louis could never afterwards clearly recollect. Did

he spring towards her? or was it only that his heart gave one glad,

strong leap, to sink again heavy as lead—nay, heavy as sorrow and

loneliness and a loveless old age—before the scorn, the horrified

disgust upon her fair young face? In truth, Pinkie was to be pitied far

more than he. An atmosphere of dainty, fastidious refinement may be best

for one’s moral lungs; but it is surely not one of its consequences to

prevent us from distinguishing the “_Ding-an-sich_” from mere phenomena.

Such blindness is due to a spiritual indigestion, one would imagine,

caused by—ah! who shall say by what admixture of mortal clay with the

Bread of Life!

As in a dream, Louis went blindly on with his work, not of cream-hued

kid and fairy-like proportions. It was a huge, heavy workman’s shoe into

the sole of which he drove peg after peg, with such fierce, unconscious

energy. There were words passing, something about permission to inspect

the establishment, and a guide; then a whisper from Fritz Rolf, who sat

beside him, to which he replied, without understanding it, by a shake of

the head. Then he heard Fritz’s gay voice offering himself as a guide,

in right, as he averred, of being one of the original founders; and then

all were gone, and only the monotonous tap, tap, sounded again around

him.

It seemed scarcely five minutes, though in fact nearly three hours had

passed, and he had never worked better or faster, when Karl Metzerott

rose, and said gruffly that he supposed they were all quite ready to

dine with the aristocrats. In a second the men were gone; but Karl

lingered to say slowly,—

“As for you, Louis”—

“I shall go to dinner,” said the boy, looking up with wide, bright eyes,

dry lips, and burning cheeks. “You are not ashamed of me, father?”

The man gave a short, angry laugh.

“I should be,” he said, “if I saw you running after a girl who turns up

her nose at your working clothes, and kisses you in your Sunday coat.

She’s not worth a thought, Louis.”

“I have thought of her all my life,” the boy said simply; “but don’t

speak of it, please, papa.”

“That way it sinks deeper,” the shoemaker said, as one who knew. They

washed their hands, and drew on their coats, in the wash-room, between

their rooms and the carpenter shop, and serving the use of both; and so

it happened that Louis entered the dining-room with Ernest Clare’s arm

over his shoulders.

“There’s that handsome man again,” said Miss Dare, who had not disdained

the explanations of such a fine young fellow as Fritz Rolf.

“Didn’t you tell us he was of noble birth?”

“Lineal descendant of Richard de Clare, Earl of Pembroke, surnamed

Strongbow,” replied Fritz. “Louis found it in the history-book, and told

me. I’m not a scholar myself,” he added agreeably.

“I never could remember history,” replied Miss Dare, “it’s such stupid

stuff, but if he was an _earl_—!”

“He conquered Ireland, and was an awful rebel; ought to have been

hanged, only he wasn’t,” observed Pinkie succinctly.

“And now we see why,” said Mr. Randolph; “he was spared to be the

ancestor of our friend the carpenter.”

“Do you really believe that, papa?”

Henry Randolph waved the matter aside with a pleasant smile. “Well,” he

said, “I never knew an Irishman who wasn’t descended from one king or

another, and there were certainly plenty to choose from. Besides, what

does it matter? The sooner you girls learn that blood is absolutely

valueless in America, the better off you will be.”

As he spoke, they had been slowly approaching their table, which, not

without malice prepense on Mr. Randolph’s part, was very near that

called after the “Founders,” with which and the “Parsons’ Table” it

formed a triangle; and as the speech ended they were sufficiently near

for Karl Metzerott to glance around with what I refrain from calling a

scowl.

“_Nicht wahr_, Herr Metzerott?” said the millionnaire blandly.

“Blood?” growled the shoemaker, declining promptly to converse with

Henry Randolph in German; English was good enough for _him_,—“blood?

well, I’ve seen the time when I wanted it,—wanted it bad, too; gallons

of it; I can’t say that it is absolutely valueless.”

“Sure, I wance knowed a man that had too much of it,” said Father

McClosky, his brogue more obtrusive than usual, in honor of the

distinguished guests, “and it wint to his head, bad luck to it! and

killed him with the appleplexy.”

There was a general laugh, as the groups divided and seated themselves.

Mr. Randolph did not exert, during the meal, all those conversational

powers for which he was so justly celebrated. Perhaps he was tired,

after three hours of statistics; for he had gone very thoroughly, as he

had promised, into the “workings” of “Prices;” and his note-book

contained neat rows of figures and cabalistic signs furnished him by the

heads of departments. “Perhaps I may bring you home some ideas from

abroad,” he had said, genuinely surprised to find that the promise was

not received with enthusiasm. In fact, Frau Anna Rolf, the head of the

clothing department, which included dressmaking, tailors’, and

milliners’ shops, had replied somewhat curtly that there were ideas in

plenty at “Prices.” What they needed was means to carry them out, and

room to grow.

“Why, how much more room do you want?” Pinkie had asked rather

pettishly. “I never saw such a big place as this.”

“America is a bigger place,” Frau Anna had answered, with her solemn,

gloomy eyes burning upon the girl’s young face; “America is bigger, and

so is the world.”

Then Mr. Randolph had pressed her shoulder significantly, and Pinkie had

said no more.

From the point of view of a party of pleasure, Pinkie’s day had not been

a success. She had been shocked and disgusted, frightened, and, always

and above all, thoroughly and intensely bored. The number of barrels of

flour consumed a week, the sale for jewelry, above all, the prices of

leather and the demand for shoes,—what was all this to Pinkie, aged

sixteen, and on the verge of a trip to Paris, but a weariness of the

flesh? “Prices” had presented its least attractive face to the little

heiress, that morning, not, perhaps, without the knowledge and consent

of her wise papa. But at dinner Mr. Randolph indulged himself in a

well-earned silence. The humors of the dining-hall could, he felt, be

safely left to the conduct of Miss Dare, whose pale, prominent eyes

seemed everywhere at once, while the low-toned sarcasms flowed on as

unceasingly as Tennyson’s “Brook.”

“Girls, girls! don’t laugh at these good people! They will see you, and

feel hurt,” interposed at gentle intervals the Machiavelli of

rough-running love-affairs.

Pinkie was not anxious about the feelings of “these good people.” Louis

was sitting not a dozen feet from her, beside a sweet, gentle-faced

girl, who seemed to absorb more of his attention than his dinner.

Moreover, his color was unusually bright, which gave him a very cheerful

and animated appearance; and Pinkie felt that if any one at “Prices” had

any feelings at all, it would be a satisfaction to wound them as deeply

as possible. Meanwhile there were eyes to see and hearts to remember at

every table around, and many an ill seed, to bear fruit an hundred-fold

thereafter, was sown amid girlish laughter, during that short half-hour.

“Well,” asked Karl Metzerott as he rose from the table, “have you

finished your inspection? or do you want that boy of mine again this

afternoon?”

“Thanks, I think we have seen everything,” replied the guest in his

courteous manner; “I hope the interruption has not been a serious

annoyance to you!”

“Well, good workmen don’t grow on trees, and we have plenty of work on

hand,” said the shoemaker.

“Ah!” affirmatively, yet somehow conveying to the shoemaker that he had

been a bear. “I assure you the morning has been one both of pleasure and

profit to me; but I want to ask you just one question. Are you a

Socialist?”

“I’m a Socialist bred and a Socialist born, and when I’m dead there’s a

Socialist gone,” replied the shoemaker with grim humor.

“And you would like to see the United States of America one great

commune?”

“I _intend_ to see it.”

“Then don’t you see that such institutions as ‘Prices,’ by making the

workingman more contented, and his life an easier one, are really

defeating your own object?”

“_He_ don’t,” said Father McClosky, indicating Mr. Clare, whose blue

eyes suddenly flamed up; “but, then, he never argues.”

“It depends upon what Mr. Metzerott’s object is,” said the carpenter

parson quietly. “As I understand it, ‘Prices’ took its rise in the

endeavor to make life not only easier but possible to those whose name

it bears. If the Commune come, or _when_ it comes, ‘Prices’ will be

found to have done good work in training citizens for it; meanwhile,

life _is_ made easier for hundreds.”

“Didn’t I say so?” cried the priest triumphantly. “He never argues, he

only convinces.”

“Yet I am sorry to say that I am still unconvinced,” said the rich man,

smiling. “History is against you, Mr. Clare. A people never rebel until

their wrongs have become unbearable; take the French Revolution, for

example, or even our own, a hundred years ago. I hope you don’t pretend

that the American workingman is oppressed as the French peasant was.”

“My friend has told you that I never argue,” replied Ernest Clare,

smiling, “certainly not here, with you, and on that subject.”

“I see no objection,” was Mr. Randolph’s reply, “for I consider the

American workingman exceptionally well off. And as to wrong”—

“Oh, papa, what does it matter? Rights or wrongs, who cares?” cried

Pinkie despairingly; “you have smothered me with bales of cloth, and

stifled me with barrels of sugar and bags of coffee, all the morning;

but when it comes to the American workingman, I can stand it no longer;

_my_ wrongs become unbearable and I rebel.”

“So you take no interest in working-people?” asked Karl Metzerott

meaningly.

Rosalie Randolph looked at him with eyes of haughty surprise.

“Not the slightest,” she said distinctly.

“Ah! your interest is reserved for your dolls as yet, my dear,” said her

indulgent papa; “public affairs will come later. Good-morning then, Mr.

Metzerott; thank you very much for your kindness. Mr. Clare, I am glad

you did _not_ convince me, as at present I feel inclined to assist

‘Prices’ to the best of my ability, and yet I object to the Commune. A

‘divide’ is the last thing I should crave.”

“It would be the last thing you’d _get_, in all probability,” growled

Metzerott, “except”—

“‘_Les aristocrates à la lanterne_, eh?’” said the millionnaire, with

his glorious laugh. “Well, the best dog will probably find his way to

the top, as usual. Friend Fritz, may I speak to you a moment?”

“You have been very kind and polite,” continued the millionnaire

courteously, when he had drawn Fritz aside from the rest, “and I should

like to feel that you would not be a loser by it. Is there any favor I

can do for you?”

“Well,” said Fritz, after a moment’s thought, “there’s nothing mean

about me; so if you should happen to stray into a railroad office, and

see a pass to New York lying about handy, why, I don’t know but I might

find use for it.”

“You shall have it; that is, if I have the influence I ought to have.

For two?”

“Well, yes; in case of a bridal tour, you know,” said the young man,

laughing.

Henry Randolph slapped him on the shoulder genially. “It’s that pretty

Miss Gretchen, I’ll bet a cookie,” he said. “I saw how it was this

morning; if I hadn’t, the young ladies would have opened my eyes. Let me

know in time, and I’ll send you a bridal present from Paris.”

“I will, for a fact,” said Fritz Rolf.

Mr. Randolph was sincerely glad to hear that Gretchen had so good a

guardian as this wide-awake young Fritz. Frank was to be left in

Micklegard as manager of the Randolph nail-mill, a position which he

had, in fact, filled to the satisfaction of everybody but the hands, for

several years. For he had a good business head, and much of his father’s

“luck” at turning an honest penny, though he was by no means so popular

as his genial sire.

But did it never occur to this same courteous, genial, warm-hearted

gentleman, who wished so exceedingly well to everybody, that an

outspoken warning, either to his son, to Gretchen, or to her friends,

might possibly have been in place?

CHAPTER VII.

GRADUAL ENFRANCHISEMENT.

“If the Commune come, or _when_ it comes,” said Dr. Richards; “and

meanwhile ‘Prices’ is acting as training-school, eh? I should like to

make Mr. Clare’s acquaintance, Louis. Suppose you tell him that my old

enemy, rheumatism, has me by the heels again, so that it is impossible

for me to call upon him, and ask him to come and dine with us on Sunday.

I’d write a note if I could hold a pen; or you might write for me,

Alice.”

“He’s not one to stand on ceremony if he thought you really wanted him

to come,” replied Louis. “Don’t bother Mrs. Richards. I’ll tell him.”

“And the little priest,” said Dr. Richards, “Father McClosky. I don’t

know a more well-meaning little man; bring him along, my boy. And

Harrison and his son”—

“Do you feel quite able for such a large party, Fred?” asked Mrs.

Richards gently. She was sewing diligently, and her face had a careworn

look, which deepened as her husband enumerated his guests, in a way that

did not escape at least one pair of watchful, tender eyes.

“If it puts you out, my dear,” returned her husband, somewhat testily—he

was in his great arm-chair, poor man! unable to put a foot to the ground

or move a finger without pain—“if it puts you out at all—but I don’t see

how it can. Just order the whole dinner bodily from ‘Prices,’ and have

done with it.”

Mrs. Richards gave a rather difficult smile. The rules at “Prices”

involved strictly cash payments, and cash was just now by no means a

drug in the market. But she could not give this reason to her husband.

“There doesn’t seem to be much object,” she said instead, “in asking

persons to dine, and ordering exactly the dinner they would have at

home.”

“That can’t possibly apply to the Harrisons; but if you are too

high-toned to ask a carpenter to your house”—

“She don’t mind a shoemaker,” interposed Louis, smiling. “Dr. Harrison

and Mr. Edgar are pretty sure to drop in during the afternoon, you know,

doctor; and don’t you think you could study Mr. Clare to better

advantage if you had him all to himself?”

“Oh! we couldn’t spare Father McClosky,” said Alice, with a grateful

glance at the boy; “he is so merry and good-humored, he puts new life

into one.”

“I believe you two are in league,” grumbled the doctor. “Whatever one of

you says the other one swears to.”

He would have been thoroughly convinced of it had he been present at an

interview that took place between them before Louis went home that

night.

“What we are to do, how we are to manage, Louis, I really can’t see,”

said poor Alice. “The doctor has some bills out, but I can’t say when

they will be paid, and, until then, I have literally not a penny—that I

can use—except what I can earn by the sewing you got for me to do.”

“Frau Anna can give you as much as you want,” replied Louis; “her

department is doing a big business just now. I hope you won’t be angry,

Mrs. Richards, but I talked matters over with Miss Sally, and she made

some very practical suggestions.”

“Did she!” replied Alice rather coldly; but Louis was not easily

discouraged, and went on to say that Miss Sally had averred that dealing

at “Prices” was no economy unless one made a thorough job of it. “Buying

a cake here and a loaf of bread there is all nonsense,” Miss Sally had

said; “let her shut up her kitchen and discharge her cook, and she’ll

see the difference.”

“It will save work as well as money,” said Louis. “By the by, should you

mind if Freddy could get some work to do?”

“Freddy! what could he do, poor boy!”

“Well,” replied Louis, reddening deeply, “it seems that the slippers

I—we—made for—for—Miss Randolph were very much admired. Miss Dare

ordered a pair just like them before she left, to be sent after her to

Paris, but her mother will pay for them; and at least twenty pairs have

been ordered since then, for Commencement slippers. Annie Rolf, you

know, works in the pottery, in the decorating-room; and of course hasn’t

time for such a job as that; and if Freddy could do it, we could get a

good price for him, for the extra work, and it would be a great

accommodation to us.”

“Freddy will be delighted,” said Alice quietly; “and—you know what a

help the money will be, Louis.” She stroked the fair hair from his brow

with a motherly touch, thinking how much older and paler he had grown in

these last weeks. But Alice did not know how her own troubles had helped

Louis. His was the temperament to resist the first force of any shock,

and sink beneath the consequent re-action. He had not resented or

despised Pinkie’s scorn, for there was no anger in his heart towards

her; but he had rallied his forces to the defence of a life, a world,

which he felt intuitively were in essentials, in aim and possibility,

nobler and purer than that from which she ventured to look down upon

him. Only when she was far away did he realize that hope, light, and

color had gone out of his life so utterly as is only possible at

eighteen. Then, he had one day found Alice in tears, and, when his

tender questioning had drawn her troubles from her, Louis had gained a

new object to live for.

So now when she said, “I don’t know what I should do without you,

Louis,” he clasped and kissed her like a son.

“I don’t believe I could have loved my own mamma better than I do you,”

he said; “why can’t I work for you as a son would do?”

But Alice shook her head. Not while they could keep body and soul

together in any other way, she said, and perhaps she judged rightly as

to what was best for herself, though Louis’ suggestion might have been

best for him. But one cannot receive benefits involving money—or often

confer them—under our present social system, without certain moral

deterioration; it will be different when the next development of the

kingdom has made it impossible to look upon one’s own things without

looking also on the things of others.

Louis did not know, however, of the one Tantalus-drop in Alice’s cup.

Henry Randolph, upon leaving home, had been careful to inform her of a

very liberal sum of money which lay in bank subject to her order. She

had told her husband of it; for it was very bitter to her to be obliged

to conceal from him even a thought; and—he had left her at liberty to do

as she would.

“A useless wretch like me,” he had said, “unable to take care of his own

family, has no right to quarrel with the hand that saves them from

starvation. Only—don’t tell me, Alice, which loaf of bread is bought

with that money, for I think a crumb of it would choke me.”

“I will never touch a penny of it, Fred, until it _is_ a question of

starvation,” she had answered quietly. Then he had kissed her, and

called her his good little wife, but no power on earth could have kept

him in the house that day, though the March wind was keen to the

dividing asunder of bone and marrow, and the rain heavy enough to drown

a cuttle-fish.

So the consequence had been a sharp attack of rheumatism, from which he

was only beginning to recover. And it was only human that, in the first

glow of convalescence, he should feel aggrieved at having his social

impulses curbed by a pecuniary bridle. For, indeed, never having in his

life felt the sting of genuine _poortith cauld_, it was always difficult

for Dr. Richards to remember that five dollars are only equal, after

all, to five hundred cents; and that, while actually having nothing, a

man cannot, in our present stage of development, virtually possess all

things.

The Sunday dinner was a perfect success, Louis having spurred on Miss

Sally to the concocting of a new, and, as she called it, “researchy,”

bill of fare.

“And if they _could_ have had just the same at ‘Prices’ they’ll never

know it,” Louis had said to the giver of the feast; “for they’ve never

had just these dishes there yet, and in all probability never will, all

at the same time; so you see it will be the same to them as if you had

cooked it all yourself.”

“And a good deal better to me,” said Alice, laughing.

The guests were in fine spirits and appetite, and cleared their plates

in royal style, Father McClosky averring that preaching was a mighty

fine thing for the appetite, av it was bad intirely for the pocketbook.

“On that score, I’ve only a right to half-rations,” said Ernest Clare,

laughing; “for though I have offered my services to a certain overworked

rector in our neighborhood, he only trusted me to read the lessons this

morning.”

“Sure he was afraid ye’d be after preaching Socialism if he let ye into

his pulpit, from the text of the eleventh commandment, ‘Thou shalt

surely divide,’” said Father McClosky.

“I wouldn’t have done it,” returned the other; “there is only one rich

man in the congregation, and it would have been decidedly personal.

However, if I had preached from ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbor as

thyself,’ I don’t know that he could have taken offence.”

“And you think they mean the same?” asked Dr. Richards.

“Don’t you?” returned the man who never argued.

“In so far as neither one is practised or practicable, I suppose they

do.”

“You are entirely right, Dr. Richards. My text should have been ‘Thou

shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and

with all thy strength;’ then the other would follow as a practical

consequence.”

“Humph! I suppose you mean that in a Pickwickian sense?”

“Did you ever know a man who loved God with heart, soul, and strength,

and did _not_ love his neighbor as himself?”

“I never knew—anything about it. Great heavens! can I read a man’s

heart, and say whom he loves?”

“Only your own,” said Ernest Clare, half smiling, yet meeting the

doctor’s eyes with all the full, sweet, solemn power of his own.

The eyes fell, their owner hesitated how to reply. It was impossible to

consider the clergyman a presuming meddler; he had pried into no man’s

individual consciousness; nay, had even quietly stated his conviction

that the sacred penetralia could be entered only by the man himself.

Consciousness.

Did not the word itself—knowing _with_—imply another Presence within

that Holy of holies?

Dr. Richards, as I have said before, was not a practised etymologist.

But had his emphatic denial of all power to read another man’s heart

been entirely sincere? Had not a sudden glory in a pair of liquid brown

eyes beside him answered for one at least who loved both God and his

neighbor? This thought, it is certain, came to the father’s heart, and,

because it came, he could not reply lightly or scoffingly to that sudden

_argumentum ad hominem_.

Mr. Clare did not wait to be answered. When the doctor was again ready

to listen, he found a brisk discussion going on of a certain book which

had of late appeared, purporting to describe a Socialistic Utopia in the

year of our Lord 2000.

“Oh! go away with your Socialism,” Father McClosky was saying

vehemently; “sorra a word but ‘the Nation’ is in the man’s mouth from

first to last; and a mighty fine word it is, too, with a history and a

meaning in the old country, and without the bad associations of

Socialism.”

“Right, Father McClosky!” exclaimed the doctor. “When Socialists

re-organize under the name of Nationalists, they will play a very strong

card.”

“I’m not a particularly brilliant statesman,” said Mr. Clare, “and you

may be quite right about the strong card; but, from my point of view, I

confess I should be sorry to see it played. There is too much

organization now, on that side of the fence.”

Dr. Richards took time for thought before he replied to this. He had

come to feel a little shy of contradicting the man who never argued.

“As political parties now stand in this country,” he said slowly,

“another one would but add so much more to the corruption and bribery at

present existing. Is that what you mean?”

“Precisely. As matters now stand, the ideas which I am quite willing to

call National are gaining new adherents every day, irrespective of

party. And when a plant has once taken root, it isn’t well to be digging

it up every day or two, to see how the process is going on.”

“You are as sanguine as Bellamy himself, Mr. Clare,” said Alice. “I

wonder if he really believes in his Boston of the future?”

“He takes care to slur over the embryonic stages,” observed the doctor,

laughing, “and present to us his Phœnix, the Nation, fully grown.”

“You must remember we are passing through the embryonic stage now,” said

Mr. Clare, “though, I confess, I should have liked a few particulars of

our chipping the shell, and just how we looked when we first came out.”

“Ah! there you put your finger on the weak point. He insists that the

shell was _chipped_, not cut by the sword; and I don’t see the slightest

possibility of that.”

“One never does till the hour strikes.”

“The hour!” said Father McClosky, “sure, it’s the hour and the Man, too,

that we want. Where’s the Man?”

“Perhaps not yet born,” said Ernest Clare, smiling; “perhaps a baby in

his mother’s arms; perhaps a schoolboy, studying the Monroe Doctrine and

parsing the Declaration of Independence; perhaps working at some trade

or profession: guiding the plough, like Cincinnatus; surveying his

native land, like Washington; or practising law, like Abraham Lincoln.”

“You are very sanguine,” said Dr. Richards, between a smile and a sigh;

“I wish I were half so much so. But, whatever I might wish, I don’t

venture to hope for the establishment of a Commune, at least in my time

or without violence. It doesn’t seem to me at all a practicable idea.”

“The abolition of slavery was not practicable, Dr. Richards; it was

simply _done_.”

“And done by the sword, Mr. Clare. Although you never argue, you will be

able to remember, perhaps,” said the doctor, smiling, “that I don’t

dispute the possibility of establishing, by violence, a Commune that

should be as short-lived as those Parisian affairs.”

“Our own Republic was founded by the sword,” said Alice.

“But with a difference, and in different times,” returned the clergyman.

“One must always take one’s century into account, you know; though in

any age it is lawful and right to kick a man out who has broken into

one’s house. But, as to slavery, do you call the negro question a

settled one?”

“Well, they are legally their own masters, but whether they are better

off in essentials is an open question.”

“Some day, Dr. Richards, take up some thoughtful history which you

already know pretty thoroughly, and read it with this question in your

mind, ‘Is any question ever so decided by the sword as to leave

everybody better off all round?’ Isn’t there always a residuum of evil

to somebody—and usually to everybody—caused by the very means used to

effect a cure?”

“Just as the homœopaths say of allopathic remedies,” interposed Alice

roguishly; “one must recover from the disease first, and the medicine

afterwards.”

“Passing over that slur on my profession, which I scorn to notice,” said

the doctor, with a disdainful glance at his wife, “I agree with you

entirely, Mr. Clare; but might not one say the same of everything else

in the world, besides war and allopathy? Is not the true reading of the

curse laid on Adam, ‘In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, and

it shall not agree with thee after thou eatest it’?”

“Well, no,” replied Ernest Clare, laughing; “bread always agrees with a

healthy stomach, I think, when it is pure. The trouble in the slavery

business was that the bread was not pure, in fact, was scarcely to be

called bread at all, and the stomachs were not healthy.”

“Southern fire-eaters!” observed the doctor with a smile.

“And Northern interference,” said the other. “Of course, the question

was not a simple one between slavery and freedom, but was complicated by

demagogy and sectional prejudice, as well as the old story of Cavalier

and Puritan. But, leaving these points out of sight for the moment, it

seems to me that the fault of the war lay chiefly with the side which on

other grounds I sympathize with most cordially, the abolition party.”

“Do you think it well to discuss those old questions?” asked Alice. “The

war is over and done with, and in my opinion ought to be forgotten.”

“If it were _done with_,” said Mr. Clare. “But ought the past ever to be

forgotten? For my part, I can never look upon it as a ‘dead past,’ but

as a wise, living teacher, whose lessons are very necessary and full of

significance. But, of course, no subject can be discussed at your table

that is disagreeable to you,” he added courteously.

“Oh! I was merely speaking generally,” she said, smiling; “don’t let me

interrupt you. Dr. Richards’s pessimism is contagious, perhaps; but if

the war can really teach us any valuable lessons, it would be a pity not

at least to know what they are.”

Ernest Clare looked at her very gravely, very kindly before he replied.

There was to him something infinitely touching in the atmosphere of this

home, its intellect, its refinement, purity, and brave self-devotion,

and its utter hopelessness. After a moment he said gently,—

“We should be poor indeed without the past, Mrs. Richards; our own

individual past, I mean. Don’t you remember Dickens’s ‘Haunted Man’?”

Then, with a sudden change of tone,—

“I think I learned my horror of organization from the abolitionists,

though I am not sure that that was their mistake. If every man’s motives

had been pure, and every man’s heart full of love to white and black

brother alike, they might have organized and welcome; but it is hard to

have a party without party spirit, and with every member added the

difficulty as to loving the sinner and hating the sin increases in a

geometrical ratio.”

“That’s because it’s so much aisier to love the sin and hate the

sinner,” put in Father McClosky, whose orator’s appetite was, by this

time, partially satisfied.

“I should not object to a party,” said Dr. Richards thoughtfully, “nor

to party spirit, provided it kept within bounds. But I think we ought to

have followed England’s example, and indemnified our slave-holders.”

“Even though they could not show a clear title to human souls?” asked

Mr. Clare suggestively.

“Souls! I really can’t say, as I have never dissected one, what a soul

is. But, as to title, I might not be able to show a clear title to this

house; yet I inherited it from my father, and he built it, or, rather,

had it built by another man. Now, suppose the other man stole the

materials or the money to buy them; the house would, no doubt, by moral

right belong to him from whom the money was stolen. Would the government

be, therefore, justified in forcibly ejecting me, for his benefit, I and

mine being entirely innocent in the matter?”

“The point is, it seems to me,” said Mr. Clare, “whether we aim to get

rid of evil in itself, or only of a wrong to some individual or class.

In this case, the wrong to the slave was abolished at the expense of

another wrong to the slaveholder, a wrong forbidden by the law which

bids us to overcome evil with good, the only method by which it can be

overcome. The old abolition party tried to overcome it with evil, by

stirring up strife and preaching insurrection; then the Southern pride

and obstinacy determined to fight for their peculiar institution, and

the result is that the large majority of our negroes are worse off,

morally and physically, than they were as slaves; and the negro question

is a more puzzling problem to-day than it was in ’61.”

“But would not their condition have been the same had they been set free

by purchase?” asked Alice.

“No; for the most thoughtful minds on both sides favored their gradual

enfranchisement and colonization in Liberia, which would have been the

making of them as a nation. But I see no hope of anything like that now,

unless we get the Commune _without violence_: in which case, among so

many sweeping changes, one more or less will not signify materially,”

said Mr. Clare.

“We seem to return to our muttons, whether we would or no,” observed the

doctor. “Here is Monsieur Tonson come again. But I think I see what you

mean by your lessons of the past; only, how the wrongs of the poor man

are to be redressed without violence or wrong to the rich, is too hard a

nut for me to crack.”

“Gradual enfranchisement,” said Mr. Clare, “and brotherly love on both

sides.”

Dr. Richards shrugged his shoulders. “It is a question of ‘next

things,’” said the clergyman. “Some day I will read you a little poem,

if you like, about that. The idea is, that we can see only one step at a

time, can live but one moment at a time; and that, if each of these is

clearly right, the end must be the same. Of course, the application is

only to individual life, but I think it is also true of nations; we can

see but one step at a time. It has been objected to Socialism that no

practicable plan for securing it has ever been suggested. To my mind,

that is its most hopeful feature.”

“My dear sir, do you wish to stun us with your paradoxes?”

“The kingdom of God cometh as a thief in the night,” said Mr. Clare

earnestly. “I think though—in fact, I am sure—that we can see the _next

step_ clearly enough,” he added.

“And that is?”—

“A more equitable division of profits between employer and employed,

which, by the definition, would certainly wrong nobody, and could not be

carried out by violence,” he added, smiling. “Public opinion is steadily

growing in that direction, and by and by it will become a matter for

legislation; for one good result of our election-machine is that if the

great mass of the people want any definite thing they will infallibly

get it.”

“And the result will be that most of the employers and stockholders will

find out that the change has been to their interest as well as that of

their employés,” said the doctor. “Go on, Mr. Clare; you would convert

me to optimism if—I had a _leetle_ more confidence in human nature.”

“Sure, human nature is capable of infinite pawsibilitees,” said Father

McClosky; “though, when it comes to probabilitees,” he added

thoughtfully, “a man must look out for storms.”

“I don’t overlook the danger of storms,” said Mr. Clare; “on the

contrary, I have pointed it out.”

“Well, well, meteorology notwithstanding,” interposed Dr. Richards,

“when you had secured your division of profits, Mr. Clare, and thus, we

will say, obviated all future strikes and commercial crises, as, I

presume, would be the result”—

“I suppose it would, Dr. Richards.”

“Well, what would you do next?”

If he hoped to catch Ernest Clare tripping, he missed his mark.

“I’ll tell you, when it _is_ next,” the other replied, smiling.

“Perhaps, some restriction upon the amount of property which a man may

leave by will to any one heir”—

“Would that be equitable?” asked Alice.

“If the law claims—as it does—the right to regulate testamentary

dispositions at all, I don’t see why one should draw the line just

here,” replied Mr. Clare. “However, I don’t lay much stress on such a

regulation as that; there would be so many ways of evading it, unless it

were so worded as to be tyrannous. The next step that I fancy I see

sometimes, when the clouds lift a little, is a modified and modern

version of the old Jewish land-laws; the main principle of which was

that the land belonged, not to individuals, but to the nation or tribe.”

“Eh? I might be better up than I am in Hebrew antiquities, but I thought

that at the Jubilee the land, if it had been sold, reverted to the heirs

of the original possessor,” said the doctor.

“The fact that he was unable to alienate the land shows that he

possessed merely a life-interest. And you know that not one inch of

ground was allowed to pass from one tribe to another.”

“I see,” said Dr. Richards; “well! but if the step from the present

_régime_ to your modified Hebraism equals one hundred, from modified

Hebraism to Socialism equals only about one. I see only a solitary

obstacle; but that will make one equal to the m’th power of one

hundred.”

“An impossible equation,” said Mr. Clare, smiling. “What is the

obstacle?”

“This. Given your equitable division and your Jewish land-laws—why, the

people would be too well contented to take any more steps until that

state of society had become as rotten as the present.”

“Revolutions never go backward,” returned the other, “and, rotten as our

present state of society may be, we are farther on than any nation of

the world, and our real progress so far has been steadily in the right

direction.”

“Humph! as you never argue, I suppose you can’t prove that.”

“Oh, no! but I can give you a few instances,” said the clergyman,

laughing. “Take the idea of duty or allegiance to a man—or woman—who

claims it simply as his birthright, because his ancestors oppressed

ours, whom they allowed only such rights as were actually extorted from

them. Unless your mother was an Englishwoman, as mine was, Dr. Richards,

you can hardly realize how utterly obsolete such an idea has become in

America. I don’t deny that we feel a sneaking kindness for the royal

family of Great Britain; but anything like duty or loyalty”—

“Why should we be loyal to Queen Victoria or Kaiser Wilhelm, either?”

asked Louis, speaking for the first time. “She’s a good woman, and he’s

a great soldier; but that has nothing to do with _us_.”

“That is exactly what I mean,” said Ernest Clare. “The idea of

superiority of birth is rapidly decaying, Dr. Richards; we have almost

come to believe that all men are created free and equal; after a bit, we

shall come to the ‘inalienable rights.’ I am not at all afraid but that

the Declaration will take care of itself. As for your impossible

equation, you must bear in mind the conditions of the problem. If

‘gradual enfranchisement’ equal _x_, and brotherly love on both sides

equal _y_, then, indeed, 1 + _y_ = _x_ + 100^m might be possible and

welcome! I won’t stickle for the form of a commune, so long as I have

the spirit.”

“Ah—h!” cried Father McClosky, “ye’ve got to firm ground at last, ye

bog-trotter! the very ground where the Church has been intrenched for

eighteen hundred years!”

“And high time,” said Ernest Clare with quiet intensity, “that she

should take up the ark of the Lord, and bear it across Jordan into the

Promised Land.”

“I don’t quite understand you,” said the doctor curiously. He was

intensely interested in the theories and beliefs of his new friend,

which, as the reader may have observed, he only opposed to draw out more

fully.

“Why, you know, of course, that communism is the theory of the Church,”

said Mr. Clare. “Marion Crawford brings that out very well in his

‘Saracinesca;’ but Crawford—I hope I don’t do him injustice—seems to me

a dilettante in religion and politics, who doesn’t believe anything

deeply enough to fight for it.”

“Aha!” cried Father McClosky, “there’s the blood of ould Ireland at

last!”

“Fighting with one’s pen is quite in accordance with the spirit of the

age,” replied Mr. Clare calmly.

“But not argument, hey?”

“Not unless you are sure of convincing your man,” was the reply. “Well,

Dr. Richards, to take up our subject where it was broken off by this

discourteous Irishman, I have sometimes fancied that one of the

differences of opinion between St. Paul and the Church of Jerusalem may

have been that they wished to insist on the Gentile converts holding all

their possessions in common, as did those at Jerusalem, while St. Paul,

as a man of the world, saw that this was inexpedient, if not impossible,

at that time.”

“A bit of original exegesis that is truly edifying,” observed Father

McClosky.

“I don’t preach it as truth, only suggest it as an hypothesis,” said Mr.

Clare good-humoredly; “but, there is some authority for it, ’tis of a

piece with his treatment of the slave question, and—not impossible,

which, I suppose, is the most one can say for it. He was not one to

throw an unnecessary stumbling-block in a weak brother’s path; and,

besides, it is only the _spirit_ of Communism that is essential to

Christianity.”

“Do you ever contradict yourself just a little bit?” asked the doctor.

“As an Irishman, no doubt I do,” was the reply, “but in this case the

contradiction is only in seeming. For I believe—though perhaps

wrongly—that the time is at hand when we may have both the form and the

spirit. Nay, I think—I am sure—that if the human race is to advance much

farther than it has done, money must be abolished, the temple of Mammon

overthrown, and the Almighty Dollar perish in the ruins. That is the

crusade in which I would engage every man, woman, and child who bears

the name of Christian, officered by those who call themselves God’s

ambassadors.”

“I don’t know,” said Alice doubtfully; “one can do so much good with

money.”

“One must do harm with it,” was the reply. “Besides, there ought not to

be the need of doing good—of that sort; and under the Commune, where

alone it would be possible to dispense with money, there would be no

good to be done except with love.”

“Mr. Clare,” said Alice, “what would you do if you were a rich man?”

“I thank God I am not,” he replied; “but if I had inherited wealth that

was honestly come by in the first instance, I hope I should do my duty

in that state of life unto which it had pleased God to call me.”

“And if the money were coined from the blood and tears of your

fellow-beings,” asked the doctor, “would you take it, or starve?”

“Starve!” said Ernest Clare. “Ah! Mrs. Richards shakes her head, she

thinks me a terrible fanatic; but only because she doesn’t understand

that every age has its own battles to fight, and this against Mammon is

ours. I see a very pretty little bronze statuette of the flying Mercury

on the bracket yonder, Mrs. Richards, and there is a head of the

Capitoline Jove on my own mantel-piece, which I value exceedingly. Yet

what would a Christian of the first century have thought of possessing

such images? they who would not sit at meat in an idol’s temple, and

died in agony rather than offer one grain of incense before an idol’s

altar! That, you see, was _their_ battle. Mammon is _our_ enemy. Truly

‘an idol is nothing in this world; and there is none other God but one’;

_yet_, ‘if meat make my brother to offend, I will eat no flesh while the

world standeth, lest I make my brother to offend.’”

He was silent for a moment; for the look exchanged between husband and

wife told him that he had spoken more wisely than he knew. Then Dr.

Richards said lightly,—

“Well, if ever I turn Christian, Mr. Clare, you shall have the glory of

my conversion.”

CHAPTER VIII.

RITTER FRITZ.

One afternoon late in the summer, Mr. Clare and Dr. Richards,

accompanied by a large party of boys and young men, including Freddy and

the Ark of the Covenant, had climbed a rather steep road which led to

one of their favorite resorts, a quaint and beautiful cemetery on a hill

overlooking the river. The names, the German inscriptions, the

artificial flowers, the child’s toys upon the smaller graves, the

beautiful river flowing beneath—“It is all a mistake,” said Dr.

Richards, smiling; “this is not practical, humdrum America; we are in

Germany, the home of myth and song, and yonder flows the mysterious and

beautiful Rhine. I am positive there is a ruined castle just at the turn

of the hill yonder; and, if you listen, you will hear the song of the

Lorelei.”

“I hope not,” replied Mr. Clare, so seriously that the others looked at

him in surprise, perceiving which he went on more lightly, “There’s a

song of the kind to be heard even in humdrum America, boys; and I

confess to a terrible fear lest some of us should some day listen to it.

A song that promises wealth and happiness to everybody at the cost of

only a little bloodshed and violence. ‘All these things will I give

thee,’ says Satan to us, as once to our Master, ‘if thou wilt fall down

and worship me.’ And don’t you suppose it was a real temptation? to blot

out the ‘two thousand years of wrong’ through which the world has

waited, and to establish then and there the kingdom for which we still

look?”

“That’s a new explanation of that temptation,” observed Dr. Richards,

who never let fall a syllable that could lessen or hinder Mr. Clare’s

influence over his “boys.”

“No, it’s in all the Commentaries,” said the clergyman, smiling; “except

that we are now hoping that this kingdom may manifest itself to the

world after a certain new yet old fashion. And that hope is the more

sure,” he added, “because the temptation has grown so loud and

insistent. ‘Fall down and worship me; manufacture a little dynamite;

plot and conspire a little; murder a few tyrants; it’s all for the good

of the race, the salvation of the oppressed, and the rescue of the poor

and suffering!’ Do I blink the strength of the temptation, or blame

unduly those who fall before it? The blessed Lord Himself can feel for

them, and has given them the only effective weapon against it: ‘Thou

shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve.’”

“It’s pretty hard, sometimes, not to hate a rich man,” said Fritz Rolf

gloomily. He laid down beside him on the grass an opera-glass which he

had borrowed from Herr Martin, the jeweller, in order to examine some

distant object in the landscape; but it had evidently been directed, as

he held it to his eyes, towards the town they had left, where, perhaps,

the color of a dress had caught his eye. It was on a secluded by-street,

shut in by the high side walls of factories, empty and deserted on this

summer Sunday evening, that the wearer of the dress stood, with her fair

head drooping against the breast of a black coat, the sleeve of which

gloomed about the blue waist.

Fritz was very pale, but he said nothing; as he himself would have

expressed it, he “wouldn’t give it away to those fellows;” so he kept

the glass strictly in his own possession, in spite of the objurgations

levelled against him. He had borrowed it, he said, he was responsible

for it, and he did not mean to have it broken. Only Mr. Clare, whose

eyesight was as keen as the rest of his faculties, had caught a gleam of

blue down the same treacherous vista of tall chimneys and low fences;

and, though it was too far away for recognition of the wearer, fancied

that he traced in the young man’s unusual sulky selfishness the features

of chivalrous knighthood; upon which hint he spake.

“It must have been especially hard,” he said, “for those old fellows who

used ‘to ride abroad redressing human wrong,’ putting down violence with

the strong hand.”

“Like King Arthur’s Round Table,” said Freddy eagerly.

“Just so; next time, boys, we’ll bring Tennyson along, and Freddy shall

read to us, if he will, about the knights. He reads wonderfully well; as

well as he paints. But now I’ll tell you some of the story of it.”

Fritz scarcely listened to the story, he was so busy considering what

was best to be done. Long before he could reach the street where he had

seen them, the blue dress and the black coat would have vanished;

besides, he had no legal or moral right to interfere, or even to suppose

that what he had seen was anything more than honest “keeping company.”

Indeed, from any contrary supposition Fritz’s honest soul revolted with

all the strength of its own integrity; yet the secrecy observed,—for no

one at “Prices” suspected that even an acquaintance existed between the

two he had seen,—and the man’s reputation, which was none of the best,

left no reason to suppose that he, at least, intended honorable

marriage. “And it is so easy to deceive a girl,” thought Fritz, grinding

his teeth with secret rage. Just at this moment, something Mr. Clare was

saying caught his attention.

“No enemy, boys, is bad enough to justify us in hating him. It may be

perfectly right to knock him down or give him a good thrashing, but only

in case it is the best course for _him_, as well as for those we want to

help. For there is many a brute who is not amenable to any milder

argument than a horsewhip; and it is, of course, better for him to try

conclusions with that than to be allowed to commit a crime and injure

the innocent. Your muscles were given you to protect not only your

mothers, sisters, and sweethearts, but also every weak one unable to

protect himself; but I should be chary of handing over the oppressor to

the secular arm, until all other methods had failed; nor even then to

gratify any personal feeling. If you are ready to bind his head up

afterwards, you may trust yourself to knock it against a stone wall,” he

ended, smiling, “but not unless.”

“I’d like to see the color of his brains first,” said Fritz savagely;

“and decide upon mending him afterwards.”

“Then you’re not a good soldier, my boy,” said Mr. Clare. “While you

profess to beat the enemy off the open battle-field, you will in reality

give him shelter in the fortress intrusted to your special care, your

own heart.”

“The enemy! you mean sin?” said Fritz, who was well accustomed to Mr.

Clare’s modes of speech.

“The only enemy worth speaking of.”

“But suppose a man is trying to lead some one into sin—a girl, say; and

you could prevent it by breaking his head?”

“Would that root out the sin from her heart, Fritz? A girl who will

listen to one man might listen to another, and you could not keep on

breaking heads forever.”

“She might be deceived once; she could not be the second time.”

“In that case, there need be no question of breaking heads; you need

simply open her eyes.”

“And if she refused to believe me?”

“Those who are true know the truth when it comes to them. If a woman

deliberately shuts her eyes to a danger of that sort, it argues some

untrueness in herself, which he who would save her can only conquer by

the completeness of his own truth and purity. He may die for her; he

_must_ die to self; but he must not _dare_ to sin for her, lest he lose

both her and himself.”

Fritz had been lying upon the grass with his handsome head very close to

Mr. Clare’s knee, as the latter sat on a circular bench around the stem

of a tall chestnut tree; and this conversation had therefore been

inaudible to all but themselves. At this point, the young man turned

slightly, so as to look the clergyman full in the face. His own, usually

so bright and carelessly gay, was pale and drawn with care and anxiety,

and his dark eyes asked so plainly, “How much do you know?” that the

clergyman answered the question.

“My dear boy,” he said kindly, “I don’t know at all what is troubling

you, only that you are troubled. If I can help you, I will, without

asking any questions. Mind that, my boy; but the dear Lord, Fritz,

_does_ know, and can help you better than I can.”

“If a fellow could only believe that,” said Fritz slowly. “I think I’d

like to go an errand for you, Mr. Clare. Isn’t there something you’d

like at ‘Prices’? I want to get away from the boys”—

“No explanations,” said Mr. Clare, smiling. “I’ll trust you and abet you

without. Here is the key of my rooms; you might see if the soot has

fallen down the chimney, or the sun faded the carpet.”

“All right,” said Fritz, slowly raising himself to an erect position. He

put the key in his pocket, and strolled off, leaving Mr. Clare to

satisfy the uproarious curiosity of his companions.

Soot and carpet were in their proper relative positions as he opened the

door of the clergyman’s sitting-room, and the sun could not possibly

have forced an entrance through the heavy green shutters that guarded

the window. The room felt close and warm after the cool evening air on

the hill, and Fritz threw the shutters wide, and, leaning his arms on

the window-sill, looked down into the street.

“If a fellow could only believe in Jesus Christ!” he murmured. “He’s

about the only one I know who could help me; for the pastor never could

manage Gretchen; besides, he’d be so wild at the bare idea that he’d be

ready to tear me in pieces. Then, any interference from anybody would

put her on her ear directly; yet, as the parson says, breaking that

rascal’s head wouldn’t do anybody good—but me! Now, Jesus Christ—if

there is such a person—could help, if He’d a mind to; and if help of any

kind _does_ come, it’ll be from Him, that’s a dead certainty. I suppose

the parson would ask Him; but, no, hang it all! if He is the sort of

person they say He is, and knows all about it, He won’t wait to be

asked; Mr. Clare didn’t. Well, there’s just this about it. If Gretchen

comes safe out of this, even if she marries some other fellow, so he’s

an honest man and not a cursed rascal like Frank Randolph, then I will

believe in Him, and fight His battles, too, for all I’m worth.”

It was an odd self-dedication, and one could almost fancy a smile of

amused tenderness on the Face that was all the while so very, very close

to him. The next moment Gretchen herself came hurriedly around the

corner. She was flushed and heated as if from rapid walking; her bonnet

was slightly askew, and her “bangs” were wild: the whole appearance of

things was as if something had happened, or was about to happen, to her,

at last.

“Aha! my lady,” said Fritz to himself, “my eye is upon you, and I

propose to keep it there. It’s come to stay. Hello!” he called aloud.

“Hello, Gretchen!”

She glanced up and around with an air of frightened guilt until she

caught his eye.

“What are you doing there?” she called.

“Waiting for the parson. Where have you been, to get so warm?”

“None of your business,” she cried, as she disappeared around the

corner.

Fritz drew in his head with a smile.

“I don’t mind trifles like that,” he said grimly. “Guess she’ll sing

another tune by and by; and meanwhile I’ll go get some supper.” He

paused before a copy of Gabriel Max’s head of Christ, and looked at it

steadfastly, just checking himself in saying, “I am much obliged to

you.”

“Stuff and nonsense! He ain’t a picture, anyway,” said Fritz, as he

banged the door with unnecessary emphasis.

In spite of his eye being upon her, Gretchen managed to elude him, and

go home by herself when her duties were over; and when he followed her

to the parsonage, he was told that she had gone to bed with a bad

headache. There was a light in her window, however, and a shadow upon

the blind as of some one moving about the room. Fritz felt half inclined

to keep watch all night; but, though in one sense a full-blooded German,

three generations of his kith and kin had breathed American air; so he

only said, “Humbug!” and went to bed in a re-actionary frame of mind.

And all the while that Face was so very, very close to him!

He could not sleep; the room was small and close on that warm night; his

pillow was first too high, then too low; and all sorts of horrors

haunted his restless brain. George, on the pillow beside him, snored

loud and heavily, only rousing occasionally to protest against his

brother’s restlessness, and bid him—with a mild but terribly sounding

German oath—to lie still and go to sleep. But it was not until near

morning that Fritz, having by sheer force of will remained motionless

unusually long, had a strange dream. He thought the Christ Himself stood

beside him, like as Gabriel Max has drawn Him, only without that look of

solemn agony. Gently as a father, tenderly as a mother, He laid His hand

on the young man’s burning brow, saying, “Sleep, Fritz, I am watching

over her.” What he dreamed next, Fritz could not remember; but suddenly

it was broad daylight in the room, and he was sitting up in bed,

inspired—not oppressed—by the sense that _something_ was to be done

immediately.

He dressed himself quickly without waking George, and only discovered,

when he was outside in the silent street, that he had mechanically put

on his Sunday clothes.

“But it’s all right,” said Fritz, “if He’s got anything really for me to

do, I’m ready; and if not, I’ll get home in time to change ‘em. Well!

I’m hanged if I even know where I’m going, for all I walk so thundering

fast. Eh? oh! good-morning to you, Denny,” as the railway porter we once

saw conversing with Father McClosky, crossed over the street to meet

him.

“What’s up at ‘Prices,’ Fritz,” demanded the porter, “that they do be

sendin’ Miss Gretchen to New York be the foive-o’clock train?”

Fritz’s heart stood still for a minute, then he said coolly, “That’s

more than I can tell you, Denny. Did you see her off?”

“Sure, I did, an’ mighty glad to oblige her. She axed me to buy her

ticket, but that blazin’ young spalpeen that’s managin’ Randolph’s Mill

come along, and took it out of my hands intirely, bad luck to him!”

“Oh! Frank Randolph has gone too, has he? Then she won’t travel alone,

at any rate.”

“Indade, and she won’t that, for they got into the same car, and it’s

mighty attintive he was, wrappin’ her up, and carryin’ her carpet-bag,”

said Denny, looking curiously at the young man.

If Fritz had been a genuine American, he would have laughed, even under

the given circumstances, at the idea of the elegant Frank Randolph

saddled with the pastor’s antiquated carpet-bag, with its faded, once

gaudy colors, and oilcloth-covered handles; but, as it was, he only

said, still coolly,—

“Well, don’t give it away, Denny; it’s private business she’s gone on. I

did not know young Randolph was going on this train, though. I say, if I

take the six-o’clock, I won’t be much behind her, will I?”

“Gets in three hours later,” said Denny, “connects with the western

express at the junction; but I guess it’s the best ye’ll do now. Phy

didn’t ye make the five-o’clock?”

“Overslept myself,” said Fritz. “I say, will you take a note from me to

‘Prices’?”

To which Denis consenting, he wrote on a blank leaf of the huge

pocketbook in which he always carried the “pass” Mr. Randolph had

procured for him,—

“DEAR MR. CLARE,—I’m off for New York. Gretchen has gone on the 5 A.M.

You promised to help me, so make it all right with the Emperor and

Miss Sally, and don’t let the pastor make a row. I’ll bring her back

all right in a day or two. Blame it all on me.

“Truly yrs,

“FRITZ R.”

“P. S. I don’t want her talked about: my wife, you know.”

CHAPTER IX.

“THE ETYMOLOGY OF GRACE.”

“It is rather a confused note,” said Mr. Clare, “and I fear I can’t show

it to any one, as it was intended for my eye alone; but I gather from it

that Fritz expects to be married in New York, and to return in a day or

two.”

“The letter she left on her bureau,” said the pastor, whose eyes were

red with weeping, “said much the same, except that she spoke not of so

soon returning. I doubted it not to be Fritz with whom she had fled,

though she spoke of riches and jewels, and of taking care of her old

father. But ach! that a child of mine should so act!”

“Well, young folks will be young folks,” observed the Emperor, who sat

looking intensely amused, on the side of the table; “and I suppose they

just got tired of waiting.”

“It was that there pass to New York that was burning a hole in Fritz’s

pocketbook,” said Miss Sally sagely, “that’s what it was. Well, it’s a

foolish business altogether, and I thought better of both of them, but I

guess we’ll have to make the best of it.”

“Laugh it off,” advised Father McClosky. “Av coorse, ’twas foolish, as

ye say, Miss Sally; but maybe after all ’twas motives of economy

injeuced ‘em. Sure, New York’s a mighty aisy place to get married in,

annyway; no fuss about a license or that. The wurrust of it is, a felly

never knows whin he _ain’t_ married. I never was there but wance, and

thin I shook in me shoes till I was safe out again; but whin a man

_wants_ to be married”—he paused expressively.

The plan thus outlined being adopted, it came to pass that when Mr. and

Mrs. Fritz Rolf returned to Micklegard, as they did in the course of a

week, they were greeted with a roar of good-natured ridicule, but found

their escapade considered otherwise a matter of slight importance.

But every one wondered at the change that had come over the erstwhile

calm and self-reliant Gretchen. She was prettier than ever, with that

new softness in her eyes, that shrinking timidity in her manner; and it

was beautiful to see how she clung to her young husband, watching every

look and gesture as though her life hung upon the issue, while his

manner to her was tenderly authoritative; and he seemed altogether older

and more sedate,—sobered, as every one said, by his new

responsibilities.

Both retained their former positions at “Prices,” though, “for the sake

of the example,” as they were sternly assured, they ought, in strict

justice, to have been discharged. It was an evening or two after their

return that the young bridegroom sought opportunity for a confidential

talk with Mr. Clare.

“You’ve stood by me, sir,” he said, “like a man and a brother; and I

want to tell you all about it.”

“Whatever you like, Fritz. You know I’m not inquisitive.”

“That you ain’t, Mr. Clare; but you know so much already, I’m afraid you

might blame her more than she deserves. Did you suspicion anything that

day on the hill?”

“Why, I saw you were troubled; and I knew that your wife—as she is

now—had—well, since you ask—had given occasion for complaints of

non-attention to business, and had been seen in company you would have

disapproved.”

“Is that so? I didn’t know it. Who saw her?”

“Louis Metzerott; but he thinks they met only once, by accident.”

Fritz swore a huge oath under his breath, then begged Mr. Clare’s

pardon. “And after all,” he said, “it was a pretty neat job; for I

suppose no one else suspects anything.”

“Why, your friend, the porter, upon hearing of your marriage, carried

his perplexities to Father McClosky,” said Mr. Clare, laughing, “as to

how a young man should have overslept himself on the morning of his

projected elopement. I don’t know how he was convinced it was all right

and perfectly natural, for there aren’t many matrimonial precedents in

the Acta Sanctorum or Alban Butler. But Father McClosky is equal to most

things.”

“Then, I suppose he mentioned that she and Frank Randolph left together?

It would be better for you to tell the Father, then, Mr. Clare, that

when she got to that d—— confounded city, and found he did not mean to

marry her, she just slapped his face and left him,” said Fritz proudly.

“In a fair, stand-up fight, Gretchen could lick that puppy any day.

She’s got twice his muscle; but she had a pretty bad fright, poor girl,

wandering about the streets of New York; and so had I for her. I traced

‘em at the depot, by the pastor’s old carpet-bag; but, when I got to the

hotel, where they had a suite of rooms, and found both of ‘em gone, I

was just ready to give up. However, I started off again, wild enough,

you bet; and, just at the corner, who should run into my arms but

Gretchen herself! So, as Frank Randolph had registered under a false

name at that hotel, and paid a week in advance, we went back there, till

I got her a little cheered up; then, we found a clergyman, got married,

and stayed the week out at the hotel”—

“You did?” with much surprise.

“You bet your sweet life we did! Why not? Randolph had had enough of it;

he wasn’t going to show _his_ face there again in a hurry, and, if he

had, I was ready for him. Yes, sir; we lived like princes, and it didn’t

cost us a red cent!”

Mr. Clare repressed a smile. “It was a great danger, and a wonderful

escape,” he said gravely. “Hundreds of poor girls are less fortunate,

Fritz, than your Gretchen.”

“That’s what I tell her,” said the young man coolly. “Oh! I think she’s

all right now; she’s found her master, and knows it. And I’ll never

forget the way you’ve stood by me in this, Mr. Clare; you and Jesus

Christ,” he added, not irreverently. “I’m solid on the religious

question from now on, and don’t you forget it.”

Mr. Clare knew his business too well to ‘thuse over his new convert. “I

am glad to hear it, my boy,” he said, with a manner that did not belie

his words, yet quietly. “You will find the dear Lord a true friend

always; but not, perhaps, always as visibly as in the present instance.

Sometimes He requires us to say with Job, ‘Though He slay me, _yet_ will

I trust in Him.’ When you have children of your own, Fritz, you will

understand fatherly correction.”

“I see,” said Fritz, smiling, and coloring at the allusion. “Well, I

won’t go back on Him, whatever happens; and that’s all there is about

it.”

As he went his way to the parsonage, where he and his bride were lodged

for the present, there was a quiet smile upon the young bridegroom’s

lips. “She’s found her master,” he said within himself; “but that ain’t

the best of it. She’s found her heart, too, Gretchen has. She never

loved that puppy; she hadn’t a heart then to love him or anybody but

herself; but she loves me. She has her faults yet, I know; though any

girl will tell lies about a sweetheart and keeping company; but I love

her, and she loves me, and what more a fellow ought to want _I_ don’t

know.”

And indeed he had the air of being perfectly contented.

Meanwhile Frank Randolph was too well aware of the sorry figure he had

cut in the matter, to be otherwise than silent.

And Henry Randolph came home, having deposited his young charges at

their convent, and also kept an eye on Dare, with evident success, as

the latter returned with him to America; and both were in such jubilant

spirits that it seemed as though all things had gone with them exceeding

well.

Louis Metzerott felt, quite illogically, that the return of her father

had broken the last bond that connected him with Pinkie. He was too

young for all the hope and courage to die forever out of his life, but

also too young to believe in their resurrection; and, just for the

present, life was very bitter to him; and only his inherited share of

his father’s dogged resolution brought him safely through the summer and

winter to a somewhat eventful spring, whereunto we are hurrying as fast

as our pen will take us, with due attention to necessary business

matters.

Upon one of these, the disposal of the sum which Mr. Randolph had

transferred to her credit, Alice obtained her husband’s permission to

consult Mr. Clare.

“So long as your husband’s counsel is not enough for you,” said the

doctor, with some bitterness. “But all women are influenced by a

straight-cut black coat, even though they may know it covers a fool.”

“Mr. Clare is not a fool, Fred.”

“He’s an enigma, to be as clear-headed as he is, and yet no hypocrite.

Go on, ask him whatever you like; I sha’n’t, mind having his views on

the subject, that is, if you care to tell me, for they are sure to be

original at all events, and you need not bind yourself to carry them

out.”

“I shall consult him in your presence and nowhere else,” said Alice,

more wounded than she cared to show.

Mr. Clare listened to her statement of the facts in the case, with a

calm exterior but some inward perplexity.