"Well, they're all givin' you somethin', Johnnie: Watts here has given

a bit of a posey in verse; and my friend, General Hendricks, I'm told,

has given you a hundred-dollar note; and General Philemon Ward has

given you Wendell Phillips' orations; and your sweetheart--God bless

her, whoever she is--will be givin' ye the makins' of a broken heart;

and your mother'll be givin' you her blessin'--and the saints'

prayers go with 'em; and me, havin' known your father before you and

the mother that bore you, and seein' her rub the roses off her cheeks

tryin' to keep your ornery little soul in your worthless little body,

I'll give you this sentiment to put in your pipe and smoke: John

Barclay, man--if they ever be's a law agin damn fools, the first raid

the officers should make is on the colleges. And now may ye be struck

blind before ye get your education and dumb if it makes a fool of ye."

And so slapping the boy on the back, Jake Dolan went down the street

winding in and out among the brick piles and lumber and mortar boxes,

whistling "Tread on the Tail of me Coat."

For life was all so fine and gay with Lieutenant Dolan in those days.

And he whistled and sang, and thought what he pleased, and said what

he pleased, and did what he pleased, and if the world didn't like it,

the world could picket its horses and get out of Jacob Dolan's livery

barn. For Mr. Dolan was thinking that from the livery-stable to the

office of sheriff is but a step in this land of the free and home of

the brave; so he carried his head back and his chest out and invited

insult in the fond hope of provoking assault. He was the flower of the

times,--effulgent, rather gaudy, and mostly red!

CHAPTER V

Good times came to Sycamore Ridge in the autumn. The dam across the

creek was furnishing power for a flour-mill and a furniture factory.

The endless worm of wagons that was wriggling through the town

carrying movers to the West, was sloughing many of its scales in

Sycamore Ridge. Martin Culpepper had been East with circulars

describing the town and adjacent country. He had brought back three

stage loads of settlers, and was selling lots in Culpepper's addition

faster than they could be surveyed. The Frye blacksmith shop had

become a wagon shop, and then a hardware store was added; the flag

fluttered from the high flagstaff over the Exchange National Bank

building, and all day long farmers were going from the mill to the

bank. General Philemon Ward gave up school-teaching and went back to

his law office; but he was apt to take sides with President Andrew

Johnson too vigorously for his own good, and clients often avoided his

office in fear of an argument. Still he was cheerful, and being only

in his early thirties, looked at the green hills afar from his pasture

and was happy. The Thayer House was filled with guests, and the

Fernalds had money in the bank; Mary Murphy and Gabriel Carnine were

living happily ever after, and Nellie Logan was clerking in Dorman's

Dry Goods store and making Watts McHurdie understand that she had her

choice between a preacher and a drummer. Other girls in the dining

room of the Thayer House were rattling the dinner dishes and singing

"Sweet Belle Mahone" and "Do you love me, Molly Darling?" to ensnare

the travelling public that might be tilted back against the veranda in

a mood for romance. And as John and Bob that hot September afternoon

made the round of the stores and offices bidding the town good-by, it

seemed to them that perhaps they were seizing the shadow and letting

the substance fade. For it was such a good-natured busy little place

that their hearts were heavy at leaving it.

But that evening John in his gorgeous necktie, his clean paper collar,

his new stiff hat, his first store clothes, wearing proudly his

father's silver watch and chain, set out to say good-by to Ellen

Culpepper, and his mother, standing in the doorway of their home,

sighed at his limp and laughed at his strut--the first laugh she had

enjoyed in a dozen days.

John and Bob together went up the stone walk leading across a yard,

still littered with the debris of building, to the unboxed steps that

climbed to the veranda of the Culpepper house. There they met Colonel

Culpepper in his shirt-sleeves, walking up and down the veranda

admiring the tall white pillars. When he had greeted the boys, he put

his thumbs in his vest holes and continued his parade in some pomp.

The boys were used to this attitude of the colonel's toward themselves

and the pillars. It always followed a hearty meal. So they sat

respectfully while he marched before them, pointing occasionally, when

he took his cigar from his mouth and a hand from his vest, to some

feature of the landscape in the sunset light that needed emphatic

attention.

"Yes, sir, young gentlemen," expanded the colonel, "you are doing the

right and proper thing--the right and proper thing. Of all the

avocations of youth, I conceive the pursuit of the sombre goddess of

learning to be the most profitable--entirely the most profitable. I

myself, though a young man,--being still on the right side of

forty,--have reaped the richest harvest from my labours in the

classic shades. Twenty years ago, young gentlemen, I, like you, left

my ancestral estates to sip at the Pierian spring. In point of fact, I

attended the institution founded by Thomas Jefferson, the father of

the American democracy--yes, sir." He put his cigar back in his mouth

and added, "Yes, sir, you are certainly taking a wise and, I may say,

highly necessary step--"

Mrs. Culpepper, small, sprightly, blue-eyed, and calm, entered the

veranda, and cut the colonel off with: "Good evening, boys. So you are

going away. Well--we'll miss you. The girls will be right out."

But the colonel would not be quenched; his fires were burning deeply.

"As I was saying, Mrs. Culpepper," he went on, "the classic training

obtained from a liberal education such as it was my fortune--"

Mrs. Culpepper smiled blandly as she put in, "Now, pa, these boys

don't care for that."

"But, my dear, let me finish. As I started to say: the flowers of

poetry, Keats and his large white plumes, the contemplation of

nature's secrets, the reflective study of--"

"Yes,--here's your coat now, pa," said the wife, returning from a

dive into the hall. "John, how's your ma going to get on without you?

And, pa, be sure don't forget the eggs for breakfast. I declare since

we've moved up here so far from the stores, we nearly starve."

The colonel waited a second while a glare melted into a smile, and

then backed meekly into the arms stretched high to hold his alpaca

coat. As he turned toward the group, he was beaming. "If it were not,"

exclaimed the colonel, addressing the young men with a quizzical

smile, "that there is a lady present--a very important lady in point

of fact,--I might be tempted to say, 'I will certainly be damned!'"

And with that the colonel lifted Mrs. Culpepper off her feet and

kissed her, then lumbered down the steps and strode away. He paused at

the gate to gaze at the valley and turned to look back at the great

unfinished house, then swung into the street and soon his hat

disappeared under the hill.

As he went Mrs. Culpepper said, "Let them say what they will about

Mart Culpepper, I always tell the girls if they get as good a man as

their pa, they will be doing mighty well."

Then the girls appeared bulging in hoops, and ruffles, with elbow

sleeves, with a hint of their shoulders showing and with pink ribbons

in their hair. Clearly it was a state occasion. The mother beamed at

them a moment, and walked around Molly, saying, "I told you that was

all right," and tied Ellen's hair ribbon over, while the young people

were chattering, and before the boys knew it, she had faded into the

dusk of the hall, and the clattering of dishes came to them from the

rear of the house. John fancied he felt the heavy step of Buchanan

Culpepper, and then he heard: "Don't you talk to me, Buck Culpepper,

about woman's work. You'll do what I tell you, and if I say wipe

dishes--" the voice was drowned by the rattle of a passing wagon. And

soon the young people on the front porch were so busy with their

affairs that the house behind them and its affairs dropped to another

world. They say, who seem to know, that when any group of boys and

girls meet under twenty-five serious years, the recording angel puts

down his pen with, a sigh and takes a needed nap. But when the group

pairs off, then Mr. Recorder pricks up his ears and works with both

hands, one busy taking what the youngsters say, and the other busy

with what they would like to say. And shame be it upon the courage of

youth that what they would like to say fills the larger book. And

marvel of marvels, often the book that holds what the boys would say

is merely a copy of what the girls would like to hear, and so much of

the work is saved to the angel.

It was nine o'clock when the limping boy and the slender girl followed

the tall youth and the plump little girl down the walk from the

Culpepper home through the gate and into the main road. And the couple

that walked behind took the opposite direction from that which they

took who walked ahead. Yet when John and Ellen reached the river and

were seated on the mill-dam, where the roar of the falling water

drowned their voices, Ellen Culpepper spoke first: "That looks like

them over on the bridge. I can see Molly, and Bob's hat about three

feet above her."

"I guess so," returned the boy. He was reaching behind him for clods

and pebbles to toss into the white foaming flood below them. The girl

reached back and got one, then another, then their hands met, and she

pulled hers away and said, "Get me some stones." He gave her a

handful, and she threw the pebbles away slowly and awkwardly, one at a

time. There was a long gap in their talk while they threw the pebbles.

The girl closed it with, "Ma made old Buck wipe the dishes." Then she

giggled, "Poor Buckie."

John managed to say, "Yes, I heard him." Then he added, "What does

your mother think of Bob?"

"Oh, she likes him fine. But she's glad you're all going away."

The boy asked why and the girl returned, "Watch me hit that log." She

threw, and missed the water.

"Why?" persisted the boy.

The girl was digging in a crevice for a stone and said, "Can you get

that out?"

John worked at it a moment and handed it to her with, "Why?"

She threw it, standing up to give her arm strength. She sat down and

folded her hands and waited for another "why." When it came she said,

"Oh, you know why." When he protested she answered, "Ma thinks Molly's

too young."

"Too young for what?" demanded the boy, who knew.

"Too young to be going with boys."

There was a long pause, then he managed to say it, "She's no younger

than you were--nor half as old."

"When?" returned the girl, giving him the broadside of her eyes for a

second, and letting them droop. The eyes bewitched the boy, and he

could not speak. At length the girl shivered, "It's getting cold--I

must go home."

The boy found voice. "Aw no, Bob and Molly are still up there."

She started to rise, he caught her hand, but she pulled it away and

resigned herself for a moment. Then she looked at him a long second

and said, "Do you remember years ago at the Frye boy's party--when we

were little tots, and I chose you?"

The boy nodded his head and turned full toward her with serious eyes.

He devoured her feature by feature with his gaze in the starlight. The

moon was just rising at the end of the mill-dam behind them, and its

light fell on her profile. He cried out, "Yes, Ellen, do you--do

you?"

She nodded her head and spoke quickly, "That was the time you got your

hands stuck in the taffy and had to be soaked out."

They laughed. John tried to get the moment back. "Do you remember the

rubber ring I gave you?"

She grew bold and turned to him with her heart in her face:

"Yes--yes, John, and the coffee-bean locket. I've got them both in a

little box at home." Then, scampering back to her reserve, she added,

"You know ma says I'm a regular rat to store things away." She felt

that the sudden reserve chilled him, for in a minute or two she said,

looking at the bridge: "They're going now. We mustn't stay but a

minute." She put her hand on the rock between them, and said, "You

remember that night when you went away before?" Before he answered she

went on: "I was counting up this afternoon, and it's six years ago. We

were just children then."

Again the boy found his voice: "Ellen Culpepper, we've been going

together seven years. Don't you think that's long enough?"

"We were just children then," she replied.

The boy leaned awkwardly toward her and their hands met on the rock,

and he withdrew his as he asked, "Do you--do you?"

She bent toward him, and looked at him steadily as she nodded her head

again and again. She rose to go, saying, "We mustn't stay here any

longer."

He caught her hand to stop her, and said, "Ellen--Ellen, promise me

just one thing." She looked her question. He cried, "That you won't

forget--just that you won't forget."

She took his hand and stood before him as he sat, hoping to stay her.

She answered: "Not as long as I live, John Barclay. Oh, not as long as

I live." Then she exclaimed: "Now--" and her voice changed, "we just

must go, John; Molly's gone, and it's getting late." She helped him

limp over the rocks and up the steep road, but when they reached the

level, she dropped his hand, and they walked home slowly, looking back

at the moon, so that they might not overtake the other couple. Once or

twice they stopped and sat on lumber piles in the street, talking of

nothing, and it was after ten o'clock when they came to the gate. The

girl looked anxiously up the walk toward the house. "They've come and

gone," she said. She moved as if to go away.

"I wish you wouldn't go right in," he begged.

"Oh--I ought to," she replied. They were silent. The roar of the

water over the dam came to them on the evening breeze. She put out her

hand.

"Well," he sighed as he rested his lame foot, and started,

"well--good-by."

She turned to go, and then swiftly stepped toward him, and kissed him,

and ran gasping and laughing up the walk.

The boy gazed after her a moment, wondering if he should follow her,

but while he waited she was gone, and he heard her lock the door after

her. Then he limped down the road in a kind of swoon of joy. Sometimes

he tried to whistle--he tried a bar of Schubert's "Serenade," but

consciously stopped. Again and again under his breath as loud as he

dared, he called the name "Ellen" and stood gazing at the moon, and

then tried to hippety-hop, but his limp stopped that. Then he tried

whistling the "Miserere," but he pitched it too high, and it ran out,

so he sang as he turned across the commons toward home, and that

helped a little; and he opened the door of his home singing, "How can

I leave thee--how can I bear to part?" The light was burning in the

kitchen, and he went to his mother and kissed her. His face was aglow,

and she saw what had happened to him. She put him aside with, "Run on

to bed now, sonny; I've got a little work out here." And he left her.

In the sitting room only the moon gave light. He stood at the window a

moment, and then turned to his melodeon. His hands fell on the major

chord of "G," and without knowing what he was playing he began

"Largo." He played his soul into his music, and looking up, whispered

the name "Ellen" rapturously over and over, and then as the music

mounted to its climax the whole world's mystery, and his personal

thought of the meaning of life revelled through his brain, and he

played on, not stopping at the close but wandering into he knew not

what mazes of harmony. When his hands dropped, he was playing "The

Long and Weary Day," and his mother was standing behind him humming

it. When he rose from the bench, she ran her fingers through his hair

and spoke the words of the song, "'My lone watch keeping,' John, 'my

lone watch keeping.' But I think it has been worth while."

Then she left him and he went to bed, with the moon in his room, and

the murmur of waters lulling him to sleep. But he looked out into the

sky a long time before his dream came, and then it slipped in gently

through the door of a nameless hope. For he wished to meet her in the

moon that night, but when they did meet, the white veil of the falling

waters of the dam blew across her face and he could not brush it away.

For one is bold in dreams.

A little after sunrise the next morning John rode away from his

mother's door, on one of his horses, leading the other one. He was

going up the hill to get Bob Hendricks, and the two were to ride to

Lawrence. He had been promised work, carrying newspapers, and the

Yankee in him made him believe he could find work for the other horse.

As the boy turned into Main Street waving his mother good-by, he saw

the places where he and Ellen Culpepper had stopped the night before,

and they looked different some way, and he could not realize that he

was in the same street.

As he climbed the hill, he passed General Ward, working in his flower

garden, and the man sprang over the fence and came into the road, and

put his hand on the horse's bridle, saying, "Stop a minute, John: I

just wanted to say something." He hesitated a moment before going on:

"You know back where I came from--back in New England--the name of

John Barclay stands for a good deal--more than you can realize, John.

Your father was one of the first martyrs of our cause. I guess your

mother never has told you, but I'm going to--your father gave up a

business career for this cause. His father was rich--very rich, and

your grandfather was set on your father going into business." John

looked up the hill toward the Hendricks home, and Ward saw it, and

mistook the glance for one of impatience. "Johnnie," said the man, his

fine thin, features glowing with earnestness, "Johnnie--I wish I

could get to your heart, boy. I want to make you hear what I have to

say with your soul and not with your ears, and I know youth is so

deaf. Your grandfather was angry when your father entered the ministry

and came out here. He thought it was folly. The old man offered to

give fifty thousand dollars to the Kansas-Nebraska cause, and that

would have sent a good many men out here. But your father said no. He

said money wouldn't win this cause. He said personal sacrifice was all

that would win it. He said men must give up themselves, not their

money, to make this cause win--and so he came; and there was a

terrible quarrel, and that is why your mother has stayed. She had

faith in God, too--faith that her life some way in His Providence

would prove worth something. Your father and mother, John, believed in

God--they believed in a God, not a Moloch; your father's faith has

been justified. The death he died was worth millions to the cause of

liberty. It stirred the whole North, as the miserable little fifty

thousand dollars that Abijah Barclay offered never could have done.

But your mother's sacrifice must find its justification in you. And

she, not your father, made the final decision to give up everything

for human freedom. She has endured poverty, Johnnie--" the man's

voice was growing tense, and his eyes were ablaze; "you know how she

worked, and if you fail her, if you do not live a consecrated life,

John, your mother's life has failed. I don't mean a pious life; God

knows I hate sanctimony. But I mean a life consecrated to some

practical service, to an ideal--to some actual service to your

fellows--not money service, but personal service. Do you understand?"

Ward leaned forward and looked into the boy's face. He took hold of

John's arm as he pleaded, "Johnnie--boy--Johnnie, do you

understand?"

The boy answered, "Yes, General--I think I get your meaning." He

picked up his bridle, and Ward relaxed his hold on the boy's arm. The

man's hand dropped and he sighed, for he saw only a boy's face, and

heard a boy's politeness in the voice that went on, "Thank you,

General, give my love to Miss Lucy." And the youth rode on up the

hill.

In a few minutes the boys were riding down the steep clay bank that

led to the new iron bridge across the ford of the Sycamore, and for

half an hour they rode chattering through the wood before they came

into the valley and soon were Climbing the bluff which they had seen

the night before from the Culpepper home. On the brow of the bluff Bob

said, "Hold on--" He turned his horse and looked back. The sun was on

the town, and across on the opposite hill stood the colonel's big

house with its proud pillars. No trees were about it in those days,

and it and the Hendricks house stood out clearly on the horizon. But

on the top of the Culpepper home were two little figures waving

handkerchiefs. The boys waved back, and John thought he could tell

Ellen from her sister, and the night and its joy came back to him, and

he was silent.

They had ridden half an hour without speaking when Bob Hendricks said,

"Awful fine girls--aren't they?"

"That's what I've always told you," returned John.

After another quarter of a mile Bob tried it again. "The colonel's a

funny old rooster--isn't he?"

"Well, I don't know. That day at the battle of Wilson's Creek when he

walked out in front of a thousand soldiers and got a Union flag and

brought it back to the line, he didn't look very funny. But he's windy

all right."

Again, as they crossed a creek and the horses were drinking, Bob said:

"Father thinks General Ward's a crank. He says Ward will keep harping

on about those war bonds, and quarrelling because the soldiers got

their pay in paper money and the bondholders in gold, until people

will think every one in high places is a thief."

"Oh, Ward's all right," answered John. "He's just talking; he likes an

argument, I guess. He's kind of built that way."

It was a poor starved-to-death school that the boys found at Lawrence

in those days; with half a dozen instructors--most of whom were still

in their twenties; with books lent by the instructors, and with

appliances devised by necessity. But John was happy; he was making

money with his horses, doing chores for his board, and carrying papers

night and morning besides. The boy's industry was the marvel of the

town. His limp got him sympathy, and he capitalized the sympathy.

Indeed, he would have capitalized his soul, if it had been necessary.

For his Yankee blood was beginning to come out. Before he had been in

school a year he had swapped, traded, and saved until he had two

teams, and was working them with hired drivers on excavation

contracts. In his summer vacations he went to Topeka and worked his

two teams, and by some sharp practice got the title to a third. He was

rollicking, noisy, good-natured, but under the boyish veneer was a

hard indomitable nature. He was becoming a stickler for his rights in

every transaction.

"John," said Bob, one day after John had cut a particularly lamentable

figure, gouging a driver in a settlement, "don't you know that your

rights are often others' wrongs?"

John was silent a moment. He looked at the driver moving away, and

then the boy's face set hard and he said: "Well--what's the use of

blubbering over him? If I don't get it, some one else will. I'm no

charitable institution for John Walruff's brewery!" And he snapped the

rubber band on his wallet viciously, and turned to his books.

But on the other hand he wrote every other day to his mother and every

other day to Ellen Culpepper with unwavering precision. He told his

mother the news, and he told Ellen Culpepper the news plus some

Emerson, something more of "Faust," with such dashes of Longfellow and

Ruskin as seemed to express his soul. He never wrote to Ellen of

money, and so strong was her influence upon him that when he had

written to her after his quarrel with the driver, he went out in the

night, hunted the man up, and paid him the disputed wages. Then he

mailed Ellen Culpepper's letter, and was a lover living in an ethereal

world as he walked home babbling her name in whispers to the stars.

Often when this mood was not upon him, and a letter was due to Ellen,

he went downstairs in the house where he lived and played the piano to

bring her near to him. That never failed to change his face as by a

miracle. "When John comes upstairs," wrote Bob Hendricks to Molly, "he

is as one in a dream, with the mists of the music in his eyes. I never

bother him then. He will not speak to me, nor do a thing in the world,

until that letter is written, sealed, and stamped. Then he gets up,

yawns and smiles sheepishly and perhaps hits me with a book or punches

me with his fist, and then we wrestle over the room and the bed like

bear cubs. After the wrestle he comes back to himself. I wonder why?"

And Ellen Culpepper read those letters from John Barclay over and

over, and curiously enough she understood them; for there is a

telepathy between spirits that meet as these two children's souls had

met, and in that concord words drop out and only thoughts are

merchandized. Her spirit grew with his, and so "through all the world

she followed him."

But there came a gray dawn of a May morning when John Barclay clutched

his bedfellow and whispered, "Bob, Bob--look, look." When the

awakened one saw nothing, John tried to scream, but could only gasp,

"Don't you see Ellen--there--there by the table?" But whatever it

was that startled him fluttered away on a beam of sunrise, and Bob

Hendricks rose with the frightened boy, and went to his work with him.

Two days later a letter came telling him that Ellen Culpepper was

dead.

Now death--the vast baffling mystery of death--is Fate's strongest

lever to pry men from their philosophy. And death came into this boy's

life before his creed was set and hard, and in those first days while

he walked far afield, he turned his face to the sky in his lonely

sorrow, and when he cried to Heaven there was a silence.

So his heart curdled, and you kind gentlemen of the jury who are to

pass on the case of John Barclay in this story, remember that he was

only twenty years old, and that in all his life there was nothing to

symbolize the joy of sacrifice except this young girl. All his boyish

life she had nurtured the other self in his soul,--the self that

might have learned to give and be glad in the giving. And when she

went, he closed his Emerson and opened his Trigonometry, and put money

in his purse.[1]

There came a time when Ellen Culpepper was to him as a dream. But she

lived in her mother's eyes, and through all the years that followed

the mother watched the little girl grow to maturity and into middle

life with the other girls of her age. And even when the little

headstone on the Hill slanted in sad neglect, Mrs. Culpepper's old

eyes still saw Ellen growing old with her playmates. And she never saw

John Barclay that she did not think of Ellen--and and what she would

have made of him.

And what would she have made of him? Maybe a poet, maybe a dreamer of

dreams--surely not the hard, grinding, rich man that he became in

this world.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] To the Publisher.--"In returning the Mss. of the life of John

Barclay, which you sent for my verification as to certain dates and

incidents, let me first set down, before discussing matters pertaining

to his later life, my belief that your author has found in the death

of Ellen Culpepper an incident, humble though it is, that explains

much in the character of Mr. Barclay. The incident probably produced a

mental shock like that of a psychological earthquake, literally

sealing up the spring of his life as it was flowing into consciousness

at that time, and the John Barclay of his boyhood and youth became

subterranean, to appear later in life after the weakening of his

virility under the strain of the crushing events of his fifties. Yet

the subterranean Barclay often appeared for a moment in his life,

glowed in some kind act and sank again. Ellen Culpepper explains it

all. How many of our lives are similarly divided, forced upward or

downward by events, Heaven only knows. We do not know our own souls. I

am sure John never knew of the transformation. Surely 'we are

fearfully and wonderfully made.'... The other dates and incidents are

as I have indicated.... Allow me to thank you for your kindness in

sending me the Mss., and permit me to subscribe myself,

"Yours faithfully,

"Philemon R. Ward."

CHAPTER VI

John Barclay returned to Sycamore Ridge in 1872 a full-fledged young

man. He was of a slight build and rather pale of face, for five years

indoors had rubbed the sunburn off. During the five years he had been

absent from Sycamore Ridge he had acquired a master's degree from the

state university, and a license to practise law. He was distinctly

dapper, in the black and white checked trousers, the flowered cravat,

and tight-fitting coat of the period; and the first Monday after he

and his mother went to the Congregational Church, whereat John let out

his baritone voice, he was invited to sing in the choir. Bob Hendricks

came home a year before John, and with Bob and Watts McHurdie singing

tenor at one end of the choir, and John and Philemon Ward holding down

the other end of the line, with Mrs. Ward, Nellie Logan, Molly

Culpepper, and Jane Mason of Minneola,--grown up out of short dresses

in his absence,--all in gay colours between the sombre clothes of the

men, the choir in the Congregational Church was worth going miles to

see--if not to hear.

Now you know, of course,--or if you do not know, it is high time you

were learning,--that when Fate gives a man who can sing a head of

curly hair, the devil, who is after us all, quits worrying about that

young person. For the Old Boy knows that a voice and curly hair are

mortgages on a young man's soul that few young fellows ever pay off.

Now there was neither curly head nor music in all the Barclay tribe,

and when John sang "Through the trees the night winds murmur, murmur

low and sweet," his mother could shut her eyes and hear Uncle Leander,

the black sheep of three generations of Thatchers. So that the fact

that John had something over a thousand dollars to put in General

Hendricks' bank, and owned half a dozen town lots in the various

additions to the town, made the mother thankful for the Grandfather

Barclay's blood in him. But she saw a soul growing into the boy's face

that frightened her. What others admired as strength she feared, for

she knew it was ruthlessness. What others called shrewdness she,

remembering his Grandfather Barclay, knew might grow into blind, cruel

greed, and when she thought of his voice and his curly hair, and

recalled Uncle Leander, the curly-headed, singing ne'er-do-well of her

family, and then in the boy's hardening mouth and his canine jaw saw

Grandfather Barclay sneering at her, she was uncertain which blood she

feared most. So she managed it that John should go into partnership

with General Ward, and Bob Hendricks managed it that the firm should

have offices over the bank, and also that the firm was made attorneys

for the bank,--the highest mark of distinction that may come to a law

firm in a country town. The general realized it and was proud. But he

thought the young man took it too much as a matter of course.

"John," said the general, one day, as they were dividing their first

five-hundred-dollar fee, "you're a lucky dog. Everything comes so

easily with you. Let me tell you something; I've figured this out: if

you don't give it back some way--give it back to the world, or

society, or your fellows,--or God, if you like to bunch your good

luck under one head,--you're surely going to suffer for it. There is

no come-easy-go-easy in this world. I've learned that much of the

scheme of things."

"You mean that I've got to pay as I go, or Providence will keep books

on me and foreclose?" asked John, as he stood patting the roll of

bills in his trousers pocket.

"That's the idea, son," smiled the elder man.

The younger man put his hand to his chin and grinned. "I suppose," he

replied, "that's why so many men keep the title to their religious

proclivities in their wife's name." He went out gayly, and the elder

man heard the boyish limp almost tripping down the stairs. Ward walked

to the window, straightening his white tie, and stood looking into the

street at the young man shaking hands and bowing and raising his hat

as he went. Ward's hair was graying at the temples, and his thin

smooth face was that of a man who spends many hours considering many

things, and he sighed as he saw John turn a corner and disappear.

"No, Lucy, that's not it exactly," said the general that afternoon, as

he brought the sprinkler full of water to the flower bed for the

eighth time, and picketed little Harriet Beecher Ward out of the

watermelon patch, and wheeled the baby's buggy to the four-o'clocks,

where Mrs. Ward was working. "It isn't that he is conceited--the boy

isn't that at all. He just seems to have too little faith in God and

too much in the ability of John Barclay. He thinks he can beat the

game--can take out more happiness for himself than he puts in for

others."

The wife looked up and put back her sunbonnet as she said, "Yes, I

believe his mother thinks something of the kind."

One of the things that surprised John when he came home from the

university was the prominence of Lige Bemis in the town. When John

left Sycamore Ridge to go to school, Bemis was a drunken sign-painter

married to a woman who a few years before had been the scandal of half

a dozen communities. And now though Mrs. Bemis was still queen only of

the miserable unpainted Bemis domicile in the sunflowers at the edge

of town, Lige Bemis politically was a potentate of some power. General

Hendricks consulted Bemis about politics. Often he was found in the

back room of the bank, and Colonel Culpepper, although he was an

unterrified Democrat, in his campaign speeches referred to Bemis as "a

diamond in the rough." John was sitting on a roll of leather one day

in Watts McHurdie's shop talking of old times when Watts recalled the

battle of Sycamore Ridge, and the time when Bemis came to town with

the Red Legs and frightened Mrs. Barclay.

"Yes--and now look at him," exclaimed John, "dressed up like a

gambler, and referred to in the _Banner_ as 'Hon. E. W. Bemis'! How

did he do it?"

McHurdie sewed two or three long stitches in silence. He leaned over

from his bench to throw his tobacco quid in the sawdust box under the

rusty stove, then the little man scraped his fuzzy jaw reflectively

with his blackened hand as if about to speak, but he thought better of

it and waxed his thread. He showed his yellow teeth in a smile, and

motioned John to come closer. Then he put his head forward, and

whispered confidentially:--

"What'd you ruther do or go a-fishing?"

"But why?" persisted the young man.

"Widder who?" returned Watts, grinning and putting his hand to his

ear.

When John repeated his question the third time, McHurdie said:--

"I know a way you can get rich mighty quick, sonny." And when the boy

refused to "bite," Watts went on: "If any one asks you what Watts

McHurdie thinks about politics so long as he is in the harness

business, you just take the fellow upstairs, and pull down the

curtain, and lock the door, and tell him you don't know, and not to

tell a living soul."

With Bob Hendricks, John had little better success in solving the

mystery of the rise of Bemis. "Father says he's effective, and he

would rather have him for him than against him," was the extent of

Bob's explanation.

Ward's answer was more to the point. He said: "Lige Bemis is a living

example of the power of soft soap in politics. We know--every man in

this county knows--that Lige Bemis was a horse thief before the war,

and that he was a cattle thief and a camp-follower during the war; and

after the war we know what he was--he and the woman he took up with.

Yet here he has been a member of the legislature and is beginning to

be a figure in state politics,--at least the one to whom the governor

and all the fellows write when they want information about this

county. Why? I'll tell you: because he's committed every crime and

can't denounce one and goes about the country extenuating things and

oiling people up with his palaver. Now he says he is a lawyer--yes,

sir, actually claims to be a lawyer, and brought his diploma into

court two years ago, and they accepted it. But I know, and the court

knows, and the bar knows it was forged; it belonged to his dead

brother back in Hornellsville, New York. But Hendricks downstairs said

we needed Lige in the county-seat case, so he is a member of the bar,

taking one hundred per cent for collecting accounts for Eastern

people, and giving the country a black eye. A man told me he was on

over fifty notes for people at the bank; he signs with every one, and

Hendricks never bothers him. He managed to get into all the lodges,

right after the war when they were reorganized, and he sits up with

the sick, and is pall-bearer--regular professional pall-bearer, and I

don't doubt gets a commission for selling coffins from Livingston."

Ward rose from the table his full six feet and put his hands in his

pocket and stretched his legs as he added, "And when you think how

many Bemises in the first, second, or third degree there are in this

government, you wonder if the Democrats weren't right when they

declared the war was a failure."

The general spoke as he did to John partly in anger and partly because

he thought the youth needed the lesson he was trying to implant. "You

know, Martin," explained the general, a few days later, to Colonel

Culpepper, "John has come home a Barclay--not a Barclay of his

father's stripe. He has taken back, as they say. It's old

Abijah--with the mouth and jaw of a wolf. I caught him palavering

with a juror the other day while we had a case trying."

The colonel rested his hands on his knees a moment in meditation and

smiled as he replied: "Still, there's his mother, General. Don't ever

forget that the boy's mother is Mary Barclay; she has bred most of the

wolf out of him. And in the end her blood will tell."

And now observe John Barclay laying the footing stones of his fortune.

He put every dollar he could get into town lots, paying for all he

bought and avoiding mortgages. Also he joined Colonel Culpepper in

putting the College Heights upon the market. "For what," explained the

colonel, when the propriety of using the name for his addition was

questioned, when no college was there nor any prospect of a college

for years to come--"what is plainer to the prophetic eye than that

time will bring to this magnificent city an institution of learning

worthy of our hopes? I have noticed," added the colonel, waving his

cigar broadly about him, "that learning is a shy goddess; she has to

be coaxed--hence on these empyrean heights we have provided for a

seat of learning; therefore College Heights. Look at the splendid

vista, the entrancing view, in point of fact." It was the large white

plumes dancing in the colonel's prophetic eyes. So it happened that

more real estate buyers than clients came to the office of Ward and

Barclay. But as the general that fall had been out of the office

running for Congress on the Greeley ticket, still protesting against

the crime of paying the soldiers in paper and the bondholders in gold,

he did not miss the clients, and as John saw to it that there was

enough law business to keep Mrs. Ward going, the general returned from

the canvass overwhelmingly beaten, but not in the least dismayed; and

as Jake Dolan put it, "The general had his say and the people had

their choice--so both are happy."

As the winter deepened John and Colonel Culpepper planted five hundred

elm trees on the campus on College Heights, lining three broad avenues

leading from the town to the campus with the trees. John rode into the

woods and picked the trees, and saw that each one was properly set.

And the colonel noticed that the finest trees were on Ellen Avenue and

spoke of it to Mrs. Culpepper, who only said, "Yes, pa--that's just

like him." And the colonel looked puzzled. And when the colonel added,

"They say he is shining up to that Mason girl from Minneola, that

comes here with Molly," his wife returned, "Yes, I expected that

sooner than now." The colonel gave the subject up. The ways of women

were past his finding out. But Mrs. Culpepper had heard Jane Mason

sing a duet in church with John Barclay, and the elder woman had heard

in the big contralto voice of the girl something not meant for the

preacher. And Mrs. Culpepper heard John answer it, so she knew what he

did not know, what Jane Mason did not know, and what only Molly

Culpepper suspected, and Bob Hendricks scoffed at.

As for John, he said to Bob: "I know why you always want me to go over

with you and Molly to get the Mason girl--by cracky, I'm the only

fellow in town that will let you and Molly have the back seat coming

home without a fuss! No, Robbie--you don't fool your Uncle John." And

so when there was to be special music at the church, or when any other

musical event was expected, John and Bob would get a two-seated buggy,

and drive to Minneola and bring the soloist back with them. And there

would be dances and parties, and coming from Minneola and going back

there would be much singing. "The fox is on the hill, I hear him

calling still," was a favourite, but "Come where the lilies bloom"

rent the midnight air between the rival towns many times that winter

and spring of '73. And never once did John try to get the back seat.

But there came a time when Bob Hendricks told him that Molly told him

that Jane had said that Molly and Bob were pigs--never to do any of

the driving. And the next time there was a trip to Minneola, John said

as the young people were seated comfortably for the return trip,

"Molly, I heard you said that I was a pig to do all the driving, and

not let you and Bob have a chance. Was that true?"

"No--but do you want to know who did say it?" answered Molly, and

Jane Mason looked straight ahead and cut in with, "Molly Culpepper, if

you say another word, I'll never speak to you as long as I live." But

she glanced down at Barclay, who caught her eye and saw the smile she

was swallowing, and he cried: "I don't believe you ever said it,

Molly,--it must have been some one else." And when they had all had

their say,--all but Jane Mason,--John saw that she was crying, and

the others had to sing for ten minutes without her, before they could

coax away her temper. And crafty as he was, he did not know it was

temper--he thought it was something entirely different.

For the craft of youth always is clumsy. The business of youth is to

fight and to mate. Wherever there is young blood, there is "boot and

horse," and John Barclay in his early twenties felt in him the call

for combat. It came with the events that were forming about him. For

the war between the states had left the men restless and unsatisfied

who had come into the plain to make their homes. They had heard and

followed in their youth the call John Barclay was hearing, and after

the war was over, they were still impatient with the obstacles they

found in their paths. So Sycamore Ridge and Minneola, being rival

towns, had to fight. The men who made these towns knew no better

settlement than the settlement by force. And even during his first six

months at home from school, when John sniffed the battle from afar, he

was glad in his soul that the fight was coming. Sycamore Ridge had the

county-seat; but Minneola, having a majority of the votes in the

county, was trying to get the county-seat, and the situation grew so

serious for Sycamore Ridge that General Hendricks felt it necessary to

defeat Philemon Ward for the state senate so that Sycamore Ridge could

get a law passed that would prevent Minneola's majority from changing

the county-seat. This was done by a law which Hendricks secured,

giving the county commissioners the right to build a court-house by

direct levy, without a vote of the people,--a court-house so large

that it would settle the county-seat matter out of hand.

The general, however, took no chances even with his commissioners. For

he had his son elected as one, and with the knowledge that John was

investing in real estate in the Ridge and had an eye for the main

chance, the general picked John for the other commissioner. The place

was on the firing-line of the battle, and John took it almost

greedily. As the spring of '73 opened, there were alarms and rumours

of strife on every breeze, and youth was happy and breathed the fight

into its nostrils like a balsam. For all the world of Sycamore Ridge

was young then, and all the trees were green in the eyes of the men

who kept up the town. Each town had its hired desperadoes, and there

were pickets about each village, and drills in the streets of the two

towns, and a martial spirit all over the county. And as John limped

about his tasks in those stirring spring days, he felt that he was

coming into his own. But it was all a curious mock combat,--that

between the towns,--for though the pickets drilled, and the bad men

swaggered on the streets, and the bullies roared their anathemas, the

social relations between the towns were not seriously disturbed.

Youths and maidens came from Minneola to the Ridge for parties and

dances, and from the Ridge young men went to Minneola to weddings and

festivals of a social nature unmolested, for it takes a real war--and

sometimes more than that--to put a bar across the mating ground of

youth. So Bob and Molly and John drove to Minneola time and again for

Jane Mason, and other boys and girls came and went from town to town,

while the bitterness and the bickering and the mimic war between the

rival communities went on.

Dolan was made sheriff, and Bemis county attorney, and with those two

officers and a majority of the county commissioners the Ridge had the

forces of administration with her. And so one night Minneola came with

her wrinkled front of war; viz., forty fighting men under Gabriel

Carnine and an ox team, prepared to take the county records by force

and haul them home by main strength. But Lycurgus Mason, whose wife

had locked him in the cellar that night to keep him from danger, was

the cackling goose that saved Rome; for when, having escaped his

wife's vigilance, he came riding down the wind from Minneola to catch

up with his fellow-townsmen, his clatter aroused the men of the Ridge,

and they hurried to the court-house and greeted the invaders with half

a thousand armed men in the court-house yard. And in a crisis where

craft and cunning would not help him, courage came out of John

Barclay's soul for the first time and into his life as he limped

through the guns into the open to explain to the men from Minneola

when they finally arrived that Lycurgus Mason had not betrayed them,

but had rushed into the town, thinking his friends were there ahead of

him. It was a plucky thing for John to do, considering that his death

would stop the making of the levy for the court-house that was to be

recorded in a few days. But the young man's blood tingled with joy as

he jumped the court-house fence and went back to his men. There was

something like a smile from Jane Mason in his joy, but chiefly it was

the joy that youth has in daring, that thrilled him. And the next day,

or perhaps it was the next,--at any rate, it was a Sunday late in

June,--when an armed posse from Minneola came charging down on the

town at noon, John ran from his office unseen, over the roofs of

buildings upon which as a boy he had romped, and ducking through a

second-story window in Frye's store, got two kegs of powder, ran out

of the back door, under the exposed piling supporting the building,

put the two kegs of powder in a wooden culvert under the ammunition

wagons of the Minneola men, who were battling with the town in the

street, and taking a long fuse in his teeth, crawled back to the

alley, lit the fuse, and ran into the street to look into the revolver

of J. Lord Lee--late of the Red Legs--and warn him to run or be

blown up with the wagons. And when the explosion came, knocking him

senseless, he woke up a hero, with the town bending over him, and

Minneola's forces gone.

And so John and the town had their fling together. And we who sit

among our books or by our fire--or if not that by our iron radiator

exuding its pleasance and comfort--should not sniff at that day when

blood pulsed quicker and joy was keener, and life was more vivid than

it is to-day.

Thirty-five years later--in August, 1908, to be exact--the general,

in his late seventies, sat in McHurdie's harness shop while the poet

worked at his bench. On the floor beside the general was the

historical edition of the Sycamore Ridge _Banner_--rather an

elaborate affair, printed on glossy paper and bedecked with many

photogravures of old scenes and old faces. A page of the paper was

devoted to the County Seat War of '73. The general had furnished the

material for most of the article,--though he would not do the

writing,--and he held the sheet with the story upon it in his hand.

As he read it in the light of that later day, it seemed a sordid story

of chicanery and violence--the sort of an episode that one would

expect to find following a great war. The general read and reread the

old story of the defeat of Minneola, and folded his paper and rolled

it into a wand with which he conjured up his spirit of philosophy.

"Heigh-ho," he sighed. "We don't know much, do we?"

McHurdie made no reply. He bent closely over his work, and the general

went on: "I was mighty mad when Hendricks defeated me for the state

senate in '72, just to get that law passed cheating Minneola out of a

fair vote on the court-house question. But it's come out all right."

The harness maker sewed on, and the general reflected. Finally the

little man at the bench turned his big dimmed eyes on his visitor, and

asked, "Did you think, General, that you knew more than the Lord about

making things come out right?" There was no reply and McHurdie

continued, "Well, you don't--I've got that settled in my mind."

There was silence for a time, and Ward kept beating his leg with the

paper wand in his hand. "Watts," said the general, finally, "I know

what it was--it was youth. John Barclay had to go through that

period. He had to fight and wrangle and grapple with life as he did.

Do you remember that night the Minneola fellows came up with their ox

team and their band of killers to take the county records--" and

there was more of it--the old story of the town's wild days that need

not be recorded, and in the end, in answer to some query from the

general on John's courage, Watts replied, "John was always a bold

little fice--he never lacked brass."

"Was he going with Jane Mason then, Watts,--I forget?" queried the

general.

"Yes--yes," replied McHurdie. "Don't you remember that very next

night she sang in the choir--well, John had brought her over from

Minneola two days before, and that Sunday when the little devil went

in the culvert across Main Street and blew up the Minneola wagons,

Jane was in town that day--I remember that; and man--man--I heard

her voice say things to him in the duet that night that she would have

been ashamed to put in words."

The two old men were silent. "That was youth, too, Watts,--fighting

and loving, and loving and fighting,--that's youth," sighed the

general.

"Well, Johnnie got his belly full of it in his day, as old Shakespeare

says, Phil--and in your day you had yours, too. Every dog,

General--every dog--you know." The two voices were silent, as two

old men looked back through the years.

McHurdie put the strap he was working upon in the water, and turned

with his spectacles in his hands to his comrade. "Maybe it's this way:

with a man, it's fighting and loving before we get any sense; and with

a town it's the same way, and I guess with the race it's the same

way--fighting and loving and growing sensible after it's over. Maybe

so--maybe so, Phil, comrade, but man, man," he said as he climbed on

his bench, "it's fine to be a fool!"

CHAPTER VII

In Sycamore Ridge every one knows Watts McHurdie, and every one takes

pride in the fact that far and wide the Ridge is known as Watts

McHurdie's town, and this too in spite of the fact that from Sycamore

Ridge Bob Hendricks gained his national reputation as a reformer and

the further fact that when the Barclays went to New York or Chicago or

to California for the winter in their private car, they always

registered from Sycamore Ridge at the great hotels. One would think

that the town would be known more as Hendricks' town or Barclay's

town; but no--nothing of the kind has happened, and when the rich and

the great go forth from the Ridge, people say: "Oh, yes, Sycamore

Ridge--that's Watts McHurdie's town, who wrote--" but people from

the Ridge let the inquirers get no farther; they say: "Exactly--it's

Watts McHurdie's town--and you ought to see him ride in the open

hack with the proprietor of a circus when it comes to the Ridge and

all the bands and the calliope are playing Watts' song. The way the

people cheer shows that it is really Watts McHurdie's town." So when

Colonel Martin Culpepper wrote the "Biography of Watts McHurdie" which

was published together with McHurdie's "Complete Poetical and

Philosophical Works," there was naturally much discussion, and the

town was more or less divided as to what part of the book was the

best. But the old settlers,--those who, during the drouth of '60, ate

mince pies with pumpkins as the fruit and rabbit meat as the filling

and New Orleans black-strap as the sweetening, the old settlers who

knew Watts before he became famous,--they like best of all the

chapters in the colonel's Biography the one entitled "At Hymen's

Altar." And here is a curious thing about it: in that chapter there is

really less of Watts and considerably more of Colonel Martin Culpepper

than in any other chapter.

But the newcomers, those who came in the prosperous days of the 70's

or 80's, never could understand the partiality of the old settlers for

the "Hymen's Altar" chapter. Lycurgus Mason also always took the view

that the "Hymen" chapter was drivel.

"Now, John, be sensible--" Lycurgus insisted one night in 1903 when

the two were eating supper in Barclay's private car on a side-track in

Arizona; "don't be like my wife--she always drools over that chapter,

too. But you know my wife--" Lycurgus always referred to Mrs. Mason

with a grand gesture as to his dog or his horse, which were especially

desirable chattels. "My wife,--it's just like a woman,--she sits and

reads that, and laughs and weeps, and giggles and sniffs, and I say,

'What's the matter with you, anyway?'"

John Barclay pushed a button. To the porter he said, "Bring me that

little red book in my satchel." The book had been published but a few

weeks, and John always carried a copy around with him in those days to

give to a friend. When the porter brought the book, Barclay read

aloud, "Ah, truly hath the poet said, 'Marriages are made in heaven.'"

But Lycurgus Mason pulled his napkin from under his chin and moved

back from the table, dusting the crumbs from his obviously Sunday

clothes. "There you go--that's it; 'as the poet says.' John, if you

heard that 'as the poet says' as often as I do--" He could not finish

the figure. But he sniffed out his disgust with "as the poet says."

"It wasn't so bad when we were in the hotel, and she was busy with

something else. But now--but now--" he repeated it the third time,

"but now--honest, every time that woman goes to get up a paper for

the Hypatia Club, she gets me in the parlour, and rehearses it to me,

and the dad-binged thing is simply packed full of 'as the poet

sayses.' And about that marriages being made in heaven, I tell my wife

this: I say, 'Maybe so, but if they are, I know one that was made on a

busy day when the angels were thinking of something else.'"

And John Barclay, who knew Mrs. Mason and knew Lycurgus, knew that he

would as soon think of throwing a bomb at the President as to say such

a thing to her; so John asked credulously: "You did? Well, well! Say,

what did she say to that?"

"That's it--" responded Lycurgus. "That's it. What could she say? I

had her." He walked the length of the room proudly, with his hands

thrust into his pockets.

Barclay moved his chair to the rear of the car, where he sat smoking

and looking into the clear star-lit heavens above the desert. And his

mind went back thirty years to the twilight in June after he had set

off the powder keg in the culvert under Main Street in Sycamore Ridge,

and he tried to remember how Jane Mason got over from Minneola--did

he bring her over the day before, or was she visiting at the

Culpeppers', or did she come over that day? It puzzled him, but he

remembered well that in the Congregational choir he and Jane sang a

duet in an anthem, "He giveth his beloved sleep." And he hummed the

old aria, a rather melancholy tune, as he sat on the car platform in

Arizona that night, and her voice came back--a deep sweet contralto

that took "G" below middle "C" as clearly as a tenor, and in her lower

register there was a passion and a fire that did not blaze in the

higher notes. For those notes were merely girlish and untrained. That

June night in '73 was the first night that he and Jane Mason ever had

lagged behind as they walked up the hill with Bob and Molly. And what

curious things stick in the memory! The man on the rear of the car

remembered that as they left the business part of Main Street behind

and walked up the hill, they came to a narrow cross-walk, a single

stone in width, and that they tried to walk upon it together, and that

his limp made him jostle her, and she said, "We mustn't do that."

"What?" he inquired.

"Oh--you know--walk on one stone. You know what it's a sign of."

"Do you believe in signs?" he asked. She kept hold of his arm, and

kept him from leaving the stone. She was taller than he by a head, and

he hated himself for it. They managed to keep together until they

crossed the street and came into the broader walk. Then she drew a

relieved breath and answered: "Oh, I don't know. Sometimes I do." They

were lagging far behind their friends, and the girl hummed a tune,

then she said, "You know I've always believed in my 'Star light--star

bright--first star I've seen to-night,' just as I believe in my

prayers." And she looked up and said, "Oh, I haven't said it yet." She

picked out her star and said the rhyme, closing with, "I wish I may, I

wish I might, have the wish I wish to-night."

And sitting on the car end in Arizona thirty years after, he tried to

find her star in the firmament above him. He was a man in his fifties

then, and the night she showed him her star was more than thirty years

gone by. But he remembered. We are curious creatures, we men, and we

remember much more than we pretend to. For our mothers in many cases

were women, and we take after them.

As Barclay stood in the door of his car debating whether or not to go

in, the light from the chimney of the sawmill on the hill attracted

his attention, and because he was in a mood for it, the flying sparks

trailing across the night sky reminded him of the fireworks that

Fourth of July in 1873, when he and Jane Mason and Bob and Molly spent

the day together, picnicking down in the timber and coming home to

dance on the platform under the cottonwood-bough pavilion in the

evening. It was a riotous day, and Bob and Molly being lovers of long

acceptance assumed a paternal attitude to John and Jane that was

charming in the main, but sometimes embarrassing. And of all the

chatter he only remembered that Jane said: "Think how many years these

old woods have been here--how many hundred years--maybe when the

mound-builders were here! Don't you suppose that they are used to--to

young people--oh, maybe Indian lovers, and all that, and don't you

suppose the trees see these young people loving and marrying, and

growing old and ugly and unhappy, and that they some way feel that

they are just a little tired of it all?"

If any one replied to her, he had no recollection of it, for after

that he saw the dance and heard the music, and then events seemed to

slip along without registering in his memory. There must have been the

fifth and the sixth of July in 1873, for certainly there was the

seventh, and that was Sunday; he remembered that well enough, for in

the morning there was a council in his office to discuss ways and

means for the week's work in the county-seat trouble. Tuesday was the

day which the new law designated as the one when the levy must be made

for the court-house improvements that would hold the county-seat in

Sycamore Ridge. At four o'clock, after the Sunday council, John and

Bob drove out of Sheriff Jake Dolan's stable with his best two-seated

buggy, and told him they would be back from Minneola at midnight or

thereabout after taking Jane Mason home, and the two boys drove down

Main Street with the girls, waving to every one with their hats, while

the girls waved their parasols, and the town smiled; for though all

the world loves a lover, in Sycamore Ridge it has been the custom,

since the days when Philemon Ward first took Miss Lucy out to drive,

for all the town to jeer at lovers as they pass down street in buggies

and carriages! And so thirty years slipped from Barclay as he stood in

the doorway of his car looking at the Arizona stars. A flicker of

light high up in the sky-line seemed to move. It was the headlight of

a train coming over the mountain. A switchman with a lantern was

passing near the car, and Barclay called to him, "Is that headlight

No. 2?" And when the man affirmed Barclay's theory, he asked, "How

long does it take it to get down here?"

"Oh, she comes a-humming," replied the man. "If she doesn't jump the

track, she'll be down in eight minutes."

Inside the car Barclay heard a watch snap, and knew that Lycurgus

Mason didn't believe anything of the kind and proposed to get at the

facts. So Barclay sat down on the platform; but his mind went back to

the old days, and the ride through the woods along the Sycamore that

Sunday night in July came to him, with all its fragrance and stillness

and sweetness. He recalled that they came into the prairie just as the

meadow-lark was crying its last plaintive twilight trill, and the

western sky was glowing with a rim of gold upon the tips of the

clouds. The beauty of the prairie and the sky and the calm of the

evening entered into their hearts, and they were silent. Then they

left the prairie and went into the woods again, on the river road. And

before they came out of that road into the upland, Fate turned a screw

that changed the lives of all of them. For in a turn of the road, in a

deep cut made by a ravine, Gabriel Carnine, making the last stand for

Minneola, stepped into the path and took the horses by the bridles.

The shock that John felt that night when he realized what had happened

came back even across the years. And as the headlight far up in the

mountain above the desert slipped into a tunnel, though it flashed out

again in a few seconds, while it was gone, all the details of the

kidnapping of the young people in the buggy hurried across his mind.

Even the old anxiety that he felt lest Sycamore Ridge would think him

a traitor to their cause, when they should find that he was not there

to sign the tax levy and save the court-house and the county-seat,

came back to him as he gazed at the mountain, waiting for the

headlight, and he remembered how he made a paper trail of torn bits

from a Congregational hymn-book, left in Bob's pocket from the morning

service, dropping the bits under the buggy wheels in the dust so that

the men from the Ridge would see the trail and follow the captives. In

his memory he saw Jake Dolan, who had followed the trail where it led

to Carnine's farm, come stumbling into the farm-house Tuesday where

they were hidden, and John, in memory, heard Jake whisper that he had

left his dog with the rescuing party to lead the rescuers to him if he

was on the right trail and did not return.

And then as Barclay's mind went back to the long Tuesday, when he

should have been at the Ridge to sign the tax levy, the headlight

flashed out of the tunnel. But these were fading pictures. The one

image that was in his mind--clear through all the years--was of a

wood and a tree,--a great, spreading, low-boughed elm, near Carnine's

house where the young people were held prisoners, and Jane Mason

sitting with her back against the tree, and lying on the dry grass at

her feet his own slight figure; sometimes he was looking up at her

over his brow, and sometimes his head rested on the roots of the tree

beside her, and she looked down at him and they talked, and no one was

near. For through youth into middle life, and into the dawn of old

age, That Day was marked in his life. The day of the month--he forgot

which it was. The day of the week--that also left him, and there came

a time when he had to figure back to recall the year; but for all

that, there was a radiance in his life, an hour of calm joy that never

left him, and he called it only--That Day. That Day is in every

heart; in yours, my dear fat Mr. Jones, and in yours, my good dried-up

Mrs. Smith; and in yours, Mrs. Goodman, and in yours, Mr. Badman;

maybe it is upon the sea, or in the woods, or among the noises of some

great city--but it is That Day. And no other day of all the thousands

that have come to you is like it.

Why should he remember the ugly farm-yard, the hard faces of the men,

the straw-covered frame they called a barn, and the unpainted house?

All these things passed by him unrecorded, as did the miserable fare

of the table, the hard bed at night, and the worry that must have

gnawed at his nerves to know that perhaps the town was thinking him

false to it, or that his mother, guessing the truth, was in pain with

terror, or to feel that a rescuing party coming at the wrong time

would bring on a fight in which the girls would be killed. Only the

picture of Jane Mason, fine and lithe and strong, with the pink cheeks

of twenty, and the soft curves of childhood still playing about her

chin and throat as he saw it from the ground at her feet,--that

picture was etched into his heart, and with it the recollection of her

eyes when she said, "John,--you don't think I--I knew of

this--beforehand, do you?" Just that sentence--those were the only

words left in his memory of a day's happiness. And he never heard a

locust whirring in a tree that it did not bring back the memory of the

spreading tree and the touch--the soft, quick, shy touch of her

fingers in his hair, and the fire that was in her eyes.

It was in the dusk of Tuesday evening that Jake Dolan's dog came into

the yard where the captives were, and Jake disowned him, and joined

the men who stoned the faithful creature out to the main road. But the

prisoners knew that their rescuers would follow the dog, so at supper

the three men from the Ridge sat together on a bench at the table

while Mrs. Carnine and the girls waited on the men--after the fashion

of country places in those days. Dolan managed to say under his breath

to Barclay, "It's all right--but the girls must stay in the house

to-night." And John knew that if he and Bob escaped with horses before

ten o'clock, they could reach the Ridge in time to sign the levy

before midnight. Darkness fell at eight, and a screech-owl in the wood

complained to the night. Dolan rose and stretched and yawned, and then

began to talk of going to bed, and Gabriel Carnine, whose turn it was

to sleep because he had been up two nights, shuffled off to the

straw-covered stable to lie down with the Texan who was his bunk mate,

leaving half a dozen men to guard the prisoners. An hour later the

screech-owl in the wood murmured again, this time much closer, and

Dolan rose and took off his hat and threw it in the straw beside him.

He was looking at the time anxiously toward the wood. But the next

moment from behind the barn in the opposite direction something

attracted them. It was a glare of light, and the guards noticed it at

the same time. A last year's straw stack next to the barn was afire.

Jane Mason was standing in the back door of the house, and in the

hurried blur of moving events John divined that she had slipped out

and fired the stack. In an instant there was confusion. The men were

on their feet. They must fight fire, or the barn would go. Dolan ran

with the men to the straw stack. "We'll help you," he cried. "I'll

wake Gabe." There was hurrrying for water pails. The women appeared,

crying shrilly, and in the glare that reddened the sky the yard

seemed, full of mad men racing heedlessly.

"John," whispered Jane, coming up to him as he drew water from the

well, "let me do this. There are two horses in the pasture. You and

Bob go--fly--fly." The Texan came running from the barn, which was

beginning to blaze. Dolan and Carnine still were in it. Then from the

wood back of the camp fifty men appeared, riding at a gallop. Lige

Bemis and General Ward rode in front of the troop of horsemen. Carnine

was still in the burning barn asleep, and there was no leader to give

command to the dazed guards. Ward and Bemis ran up, motioning the men

back, and Ward cried, "Shall we help you save your stock and barn, or

must we fight?" It was addressed to the crowd, but before they could

answer, Dolan stumbled out of the barn through the smoke and flames

crying, "Boys,--boys,--I can't find him." He saw the rescuing party

and shouted, "Boys,--Gabe's in there asleep and I can't find him."

The wind had suddenly veered, and the crackling flames had reached the

straw roof of the barn. The fire was gaining headway, and the three

buckets that were coming from the well had no effect on it. As the

last horse was pulled out of the door, one side of the straw wall of

the barn fell away on fire and showed Gabriel Carnine sleeping not ten

feet from the flames. Lige Bemis soused his handkerchief in water,

tied it over his mouth, and ran in. He grabbed the sleeping man and

dragged him through, the flames; but both were afire as they came into

the open.

Now in this story Elijah Westlake Bemis is not shown often in a heroic

light. Yet he had in his being the making of a hero, for he was brave.

And heroism, after all, is only effective reliance on some virtue in a

crisis, in spite of temptations to do the easy excusable thing. And

when Lige Bemis sneaks through this story in unlovely guise, remember

that he has a virtue that once exalted even him.

"Gabe Carnine," said Ward, as the barn fell and there was nothing more

to fear, "we didn't fire your haystack; I give you my word on that.

But we are going to take these boys home now. And you better let us

alone."

That John Barclay remembered, and then he remembered being in the

front yard of the farm-house a moment--alone with Jane Mason, his

bridle rein over his arm. Her hair was down, and she looked wild and

beautiful. The straw was still burning back of the house, and the glow

was everywhere. He always remembered that she held his hand and would

not let him go, and there two memories are different; for she always

maintained that he did, right there and then, and he recollected that

as he mounted his horse he tried to kiss her and failed. Perhaps both

are right--who knows? But both agree that as he sat there an instant

on his horse, she threw kisses at him and he threw them back. And when

the men rode away, she stood in the road, and he could see her in the

light of the waning fire, and thirty years passed and still he saw

her.

As the headlight of the train lit up the cinder yard, and brought the

glint of the rails out of the darkness, John Barclay, a thousand miles

away and thirty years after, fancied he could see her there in the

railroad yards beside him waving her hands at him, smiling at him with

the new-found joy in her face. For there is no difference between

fifty-three and twenty-three when men are in love, and if they are in

love with the same woman in both years, her face will never change,

her smile will always seem the same. And to John Barclay there on the

rear platform of the car, with the crash of the great train in his

ears, the same face looked out of the night at him that he saw back in

his twenties, and he knew that the same prayer to the same God would

go up that night for him that went up from the same lips so long ago.

The man on the car platform rose from his chair, and went into the

car.

"Well," he said to Lycurgus Mason as the old man reached for his

watch, "how about it?"

Lycurgus replied as he put it back in his pocket, "Just seven minutes

and a half. She's covered a lot of track in those seven minutes!"

And John Barclay looked back over the years, and saw a boy riding like

the wind through the night, changing horses every half-hour, and

trying to tell time from his watch by a rising moon, but the moon was

blown with clouds like a woman's hair, and he could not see the hands

on the watch face. So as he looked at the old man sitting crooked over

in the great leather chair, John Barclay only grunted, "Yes--she's

covered a long stretch of country in those seven minutes." And he

picked the Biography off the table and read to himself: "I sometimes

think that only that part of the soul that loves is saved. The rest is

dross and perishes in the fire. Whether the love be the love of woman

or the love of kind, or the love of God that embraces all, it matters

not. That sanctifies; that purifies--that marks the way of the only

salvation the soul can know, and he who does not love with the fervour

of a passionate heart some of God's creatures, cannot love God, and

not loving Him, is lost in spite of all his prayers, in spite of all

his aspirations. Therefore, if you would live you must love, for when

love dies the soul shrivels. And if God takes what you love--love on;

for only love will make you immortal, only love will cheat death of

its victory."

And looking at Lycurgus Mason fidgeting in his chair, John Barclay

wondered when he would die the kind of a death that had come to the

little old man before him, and then he felt the car move under him,

and knew they were going back to Sycamore Ridge.

"Day after to-morrow," said Barclay, meditatively, as he heard the

first faint screaming of the heavily laden wheels under him, "day

after to-morrow, Daddy Mason, we will be home with Colonel Culpepper

and his large white plumes."

CHAPTER VIII

This chapter might have had in it "all the quality, pride, pomp, and

circumstance of glorious war" if it had not been for the matters that

came up for discussion at the meeting of the Garrison County Old

Settlers' Association this year of our Lord Nineteen Hundred and

Eight. For until that meeting the legend of the last hour of the

County-seat War of '73 had flourished unmolested; but there General

Philemon Ward rose and laid an axe at the root of the legend, and

while of course he did not destroy it entirely, he left it scarred and

withered on one side and therefore entirely unfitted for historical

purposes. It seems that Gabriel Carnine was assigned by President John

Barclay of the Association to prepare and read a paper on "The Rise,

Decline, and Fall of Minneola." Certainly that was a proper subject

considering the fact that corn has been growing over the site of

Minneola for twenty years. And surely Gabriel Carnine, whose black

beard has whitened in thirty years' faithful service to Sycamore

Ridge, whose wife lies buried on the Hill, and whose children read the

Sycamore Ridge _Banner_ in the uttermost parts of the earth,--surely

Gabriel Carnine might have been trusted to tell the truth of the

conflict waged between the towns a generation ago. But men have

curious works in them, and unless one has that faith in God that gives

him unbounded faith in the goodness of man, one should not open men up

in the back and watch the wheels go 'round. For though men are good,

and in the long run what they do is God's work and is therefore

acceptable, no man is perfect. There goes Lige Bemis past the

post-office, now, for instance; when he was in the legislature in the

late sixties, every one knows that Minneola raised twenty thousand

dollars in cash and offered it to Lige if he would pretend to be sick

and quit work on the Sycamore Ridge county-seat bill. He could have

fooled us, and could have taken the money, which was certainly more

than he could expect to get from Sycamore Ridge. Did he take it? Not

at all. A million would not have tempted him. He was in that game; yet

ten days after he refused the offer of Minneola, he tried to blackmail

his United States senator out of fifty dollars, and sold his vote to a

candidate for state printer for one hundred dollars and flashed the

bill around Sycamore Ridge proudly for a week before spending it.

So Gabriel Carnine must not be blamed if in that paper on Minneola,

before the Old Settlers' Association, he let out the pent-up wrath of

thirty years; and also if in the discussion General Ward unsealed his

lips for the first time and blighted the myth that told how a hundred

Minneola men had captured the court-house yard on the night that John

Barclay and Bob Hendricks rode home from their captivity to sign the

tax levy. Legend has always said that Lige Bemis, riding half a mile

ahead of the others that night, came to the courtyard; found it

guarded by Minneola men, rode back, met John and Bob and the general

crossing the bridge over the old ford of the Sycamore, and told them

that they could not get into the court-house until the men came up who

had ridden out to rescue the commissioners,--perhaps a quarter of an

hour behind the others,--and that even then there must be a fight of

doubtful issue; and further that it was after eleven o'clock, and soon

would be too late to sign the levy. The forty thousand people in

Garrison County have believed for thirty years that finding the

court-house yard in possession of the enemy, Bemis suggested going

through the cave by the Barclays' home, which had its west opening in

the wall of the basement of the court-house; and furthermore,

tradition has said that Bemis led John and Bob through the cave, and

with crowbars and hammers they made a man-sized hole in the wall,

crawled through it, mounted the basement stairs, unlocked the

commissioners' room, held their meeting in darkness, and five minutes

before twelve o'clock astonished the invading forces by lighting a

lamp in their room, signing the levy that Bemis, as county attorney,

had prepared the Sunday before, and slipping with it into the

basement, through the cave and back to the troop of horsemen as they

were jogging across the bridge on their way back from Carnine's farm.

And here are the marks of General Ward's axe--verified by Gabriel

Carnine: first, that there were no Minneola invaders in possession of

the court-house, but only a dozen visitors loafing about town that

night to watch developments; second, that the regular pickets were out

as usual, and an invading force could not have stolen in; and third,

that Bemis knew it, but as his political fortunes were low, he rode

ahead of the others, hatched up the cock-and-bull story about the

guarded court-house, and persuaded the boys to let him lead them into

a romantic adventure that would sound well in the campaign and help to

insure his reëlection the following year. In view of the general's

remarks and Gabriel Carnine's corroborative statement, and in view of

the bitterness with which Carnine assailed the whole Sycamore Ridge

campaign, how can a truthful chronicler use the episode at all?

History is a fickle goddess, and perhaps Pontius Pilate, being human

and used to human errors and human weakness, is not so much to blame

for asking, "What is truth?" and then turning away before he had the

answer.

Walking home from the meeting through Mary Barclay Park, Barclay's

mind wandered back to the days when he won his first important

lawsuit--the suit brought by Minneola to prevent the collection of

taxes under the midnight levy to build the court-house. It was that

lawsuit which brought him to the attention of the legal department of

the Fifth Parallel Railroad Company, and his employment by that

company to defeat the bonds of its narrow-gauged competitor, that was

seeking entrance into Garrison County, was the beginning of his

career. And in that fight to defeat the narrow-gauged railroad, the

people of Garrison County learned something of Barclay as well. He and

Bemis went over the county together,--the little fox and the old

coyote, the people called them,--and where men were for sale, Bemis

bought them, and where they were timid, John threatened them, and

where they were neither, both John and Bemis fought with a ferocity

that made men hate but respect the pair. And so though the Fifth

Parallel Railroad never came to the Ridge, its successor, the Corn

Belt Road, did come, and in '74 John spoke in every schoolhouse in the

county, urging the people to vote the bonds for the Corn Belt Road,

and his employment as local attorney for the company marked his first

step into the field of state politics. For it gave him a railroad

pass, and brought him into relations with the men who manipulated

state affairs; also it made him a silent partner of Lige Bemis in

Garrison County politics.

But even when he was county commissioner, less than two dozen years

old, he was a force in Sycamore Ridge, and there were days when he had

four or five thousand dollars to his credit in General Hendricks'

bank. The general used to look over the daily balances and stroke his

iron-gray beard and say: "Robert, John is doing well to-day. Son, I

wish you had the acquisitive faculty. Why don't you invest something

and make something?" But Bob Hendricks was content to do his work in

the bank, and read at home one night and slip over to the Culpeppers'

the next night, and so long as the boy was steady and industrious and

careful, his father had no real cause for complaint, and he knew it.

But the town knew that John was getting on in the world. He owned half

of Culpepper's second addition, and his interest in College Heights

was clear; he never dealt in equities, but paid cash and gave warranty

deeds for what he sold. It was believed around the Ridge that he could

"clean up," for fifteen or twenty thousand dollars, and when he called

Mrs. Mason of the Mason House, Minneola, into the dining room one

afternoon to talk over a little matter with her, he found her most

willing. It was a short session. After listening and punctuating his

remarks with "of courses" and "yeses" and "so's," Mrs. Mason's reply

was:--

"Of course, Mr. Barclay,"--the Mr. Barclay he remembered as the only

time in his life he ever had it from her,--"of course, Mr. Barclay,

that is a matter rather for you and Mr. Mason to settle. You know,"

she added, folding her hands across her ample waist, "Mr. Mason is the

head of the house!" Then she lifted her voice, perhaps fearing that

matters might be delayed. "Oh, pa!" she cried. "Pa! Come in here,

please. There's a gentleman to see you."

Lycurgus Mason came in with a tea towel in his hands and an apron on.

He heard John through in a dazed way, his hollow eyes blinking with

evident uncertainty as to what was expected of him. When Barclay was

through, the father looked at the mother for his cue, and did not

speak for a moment. Then he faltered: "Why, yes,--yes,--I see! Well,

ma, what--" And at the cloud on her brow Lycurgus hesitated again,

and rolled his apron about his hands nervously and finally said,

"Oh--well--whatever you and her ma think will be all right with me,

I guess." And having been dismissed telepathically, Lycurgus hurried

back to his work.

It was when John Barclay was elected President of the Corn Belt

Railway, in the early nineties, that Lycurgus told McHurdie and Ward

and Culpepper and Frye, as the graybeards wagged around the big brown

stove in the harness shop one winter day: "You know ma, she never saw

much in him, and when I came in the room she was about to tell him he

couldn't have her. Now, isn't that like a woman?--no sense about men.

But I says: 'Ma, John Barclay's got good blood in him. His grandpa

died worth a million,--and that was a pile of money for them days;'

so I says, 'If Jane Mason wants him, ma,' I says, 'let her have him.

Remember what a fuss your folks made over me getting you,' I says;

'and see how it's turned out.' Then I turned to John--I can see the

little chap now a-standing there with his dicky hat in his hand and

his pipe-stem legs no bigger than his cane, and his gray eyes lookin'

as wistful as a dog's when you got a bone in your hand, and I says,

'Take her along, John; take her along and good luck go with you,' I

says; 'but,' I says, 'John Barclay, I want you always to remember Jane

Mason has got a father.' Just that way I says. I tell you, gentlemen,

there's nothing like having a wife that respects you." The crowd in

the harness shop wagged their heads, and Lycurgus went on: "Now, they

ain't many women that would just let a man stand up like that and, as

you may say, give her daughter right away under her nose. But my wife,

she's been well trained."

In the pause that followed, Watts McHurdie's creaking lever was the

only sound that broke the silence. Then Watts, who had been sewing

away at his work with waving arms, spoke, after clearing his throat,

"I've heard many say that she was sich." And the old man cackled, and

it became a saying-among them and in the town.

One who goes back over the fifty years that have passed since Sycamore

Ridge became a local habitation and a name finds it difficult to

realize that one-third of its life was passed before the panic of '78,

which closed the Hendricks' bank. For those first nineteen years

passed as the life of a child passes, so that they seem only sketched

in; yet to those who lived at all, to those like Watts McHurdie and

Philemon Ward, who now pass their happiest moments mooning over tilted

headstones in the cemetery on the Hill, those first nineteen years

seem the longest and the best. And that fateful year of '73 to them

seems the most portentous. For then, perhaps for the first time, they

realized the cruel uncertainty of the struggle for existence. With the

terrible drouth of '60 this realization did not come; for the town was

young, and the people were young; only Ezra Lane was a graybeard in

all the town in the sixties; and youth is so sure; there is no hazard

under thirty. In the war they fought and marched and sang and starved

and died, and were still young. But when the financial panic of '73

spread its dread and its trouble over the land, youth in Sycamore

Ridge was gone; it was manhood that faced these things in the Ridge,

and manhood had cares, had given hostages to fortune, and life was

serious and hard; and big on the horizon was the fear of failure.

General Hendricks swayed in the panic of '73; and the time marked him,

took the best of the light from his eye, and put the slightest

perceptible hobble on his feet. To Martin Culpepper and Watts McHurdie

and Philemon Ward and Jacob Dolan and Oscar Fernald, the panic came in

their late thirties and early forties, a flash of lightning that

prophesied the coming of the storm and stress of an inexorable fate.

The wedding of John Barclay and Jane Mason occurred in September,

1873, two days after he had stood on the high stone steps of the

Exchange National Bank and made a speech to the crowd, telling them he

was the largest depositor in the bank, and begging them to stop the

run. But the run did not stop, and the day before John's wedding the

bank did not open; the short crop and the panic in the East were more

than Garrison County people could stand. But all the first day of the

bank's closing and all the next day John worked among the people,

reassuring them. So that it was five o'clock in the evening before he

could start to Minneola for his wedding.

And such a wedding! One would say that when hard times were staring

every one in the face, social forms would be observed most simply. But

one would say so without reckoning with Mrs. Lycurgus Mason. As the

groom and the bridesmaid and best man rode up from Sycamore Valley,

two miles from Minneola, in the early falling dusk that night, the

Mason House loomed through the darkness, lighted up like a steamboat.

"You'll have to move along, John," said Bob Hendricks; "I think I

heard her whistle."

On the sidewalk in front of the hotel they met Mrs. Mason in her black

silk with a hemstitched linen apron over it. She ushered them into the

house, took them to their rooms, and whirled John around on a pivot,

it seemed to him, with her interminable directions. His mother, who

had come over to Minneola the day before, came to his room and quieted

her son, and as he got ready for what he called the "ordeal," he could

hear Mrs. Mason swinging doors below stairs, walking on her heels

through the house, receiving belated guests from Sycamore Ridge and

the country,--for the whole county had been invited,--and he heard

her carrying out a dog that had sneaked into the dining room.

The groom missed the bride, and as he was tying his necktie,--which

reminded him of General Ward by its whiteness,--he wondered why she

did not come to him. He did not know that she was a prisoner in her

room, while all the young girls in Sycamore Ridge and Minneola were

looking for pins and hooking her up and stepping on each other's

skirts. For one wedding is like all weddings--whether it be in the

Mason House, Minneola, or in Buckingham Palace. And some there are who

marry for love in Minneola, and some for money, and some for a home,

and some for Heaven only knows what, just as they do in the châteaux

and palaces and mansions. And the groom is nobody and the bride is

everything, as it was in the beginning and as it shall be ever after.

Probably poor Adam had to stand behind a tree neglected and alone,

while Lilith and girls from the land of Nod bedecked Eve for the

festivities. Men are not made for ceremonies. And so at all the formal

occasions of this life--whether it be among the great or among the

lowly, in the East or the West, at weddings, christenings, and

funerals--man hides in shame and leaves the affairs to woman, who

leads him as an ox, even a muzzled ox, that treadeth out the corn.

"The doomed man," whispered John to Bob as the two in their black

clothes stood at the head of the stair that led into the parlour of

the Mason House that night, waiting for the wedding march to begin on

the cabinet organ, "ate a hearty supper, consisting of beefsteak and

eggs, and after shaking hands with his friends he mounted the gallows

with a firm step!"

Then he heard the thud of the music book on the organ, the creak of

the treadle,--and when he returned to consciousness he was Mrs.

Mason's son-in-law, and proud of it. And she,--bless her heart and

the hearts of all good women who give up the joy of their lives to us

poor unworthy creatures,--she stood by the wax-flower wreath under

the glass case on the whatnot in the corner, and wept into her real

lace handkerchief, and wished with all the earnestness of her soul

that she could think of some way to let John know that his trousers

leg was wrinkled over his left shoe top. But she could not solve the

problem, so she gave herself up to the consolation of her tears. Yet

it should be set down to her credit that when the preacher's amen was

said, hers was the first head up, and while the others were rushing

for the happy pair she was in the kitchen with her apron on dishing up

the wedding supper. Well might the Sycamore Ridge _Weekly Banner_

declare that the "tables groaned with good things." There were not

merely a little piddling dish of salad, a bite of cake, and a dab of

ice-cream. There were turkey and potatoes and vegetables and fruit and

bread and cake and pudding and pie--four kinds of pie, mark you--and

preserves, and "Won't you please, Mrs. Culpepper, try some of that

piccalilli?" and "Oh, Mrs. Ward, if you just would have a slice of

that fruit cake," and "Now, General,--a little more of the gravy for

that turkey dressing--it is such a long ride home," or "Colonel, I

know you like corn bread, and I made this myself as a special

compliment to Virginia."

And through it all the bride sat watching the door--looking always

through the crowd for some one. Her face was anxious and her heart was

clouded, and when the guests had gone and the house was empty, she

left her husband and slipped out of the back door. There, after the

glare of the lamps had left her eyes, she saw a little man walking

with his head down, out near the barn, and she ran to him and threw

her arms about him and kissed him, and when she led Lycurgus Mason,

who was all washed and dressed, back through the kitchen to her

husband, John saw that the man's eyelids were red, and that on the

starched cuffs were the marks of tears. For to him she was only his

little girl, and John afterward knew that she was the only friend he

had in the world. "Oh, father, why didn't you come in?" cried the

daughter. "I missed you so!" The man blinked a moment at the lights

and looked toward his wife, who was busy at a table, as he said: "Who?

Me?" and then added: "I was just lookin' after their horses. I was

coming in pretty soon. You oughtn't to bother about me. Well, John,"

he smiled, as he put out his hand, "the seegars seems to be on

you--as the feller says." And John put his arm about Lycurgus Mason,

as they walked out of the kitchen, and Jane reached for her gingham

apron. Then life began for Mr. and Mrs. John Barclay in earnest.

CHAPTER IX

Forty thousand words--and that is the number we have piled up in this

story--is a large number of words to string together without a

heroine. That is almost as bad as the dictionary, in which He and She

are always hundreds of pages apart and never meet,--not even in the

"Z's" at the end,--which is why the dictionary is so unpopular,

perhaps. But this is the story of a man, and naturally it must have

many heroines. For you know men--they are all alike! First, Mrs. Mary

Barclay was a heroine--you saw her face, strong and clean and sharply

chiselled with a great purpose; then Miss Lucy--black-eyed,

red-cheeked, slender little Miss Lucy--was a heroine, but she married

General Ward; and then Ellen Culpepper was a heroine, but she

fluttered out of the book into the sunlight, and was gone; and then

came Jane Mason,--and you have seen her girlish beauty, and you will

see it develop into gentle womanhood; but the real heroine,--of the

real story,--you have not seen her face. You have heard her name, and

have seen her moving through these pages with her back consciously

turned to you--for being a shy minx, she had no desire to intrude

until she was properly introduced. And now we will whirl her around

that you may have a good look at her.

Let us begin at the ground: as to feet--they are not too small--say

three and a half in size. And they support rather short legs--my

goodness, of course she has legs--did you think her shoes were pinned to

her over-skirt? Her legs carry around a plump body,--not fat--why,

certainly not--who ever heard of a fat heroine (the very best a heroine

can do for comfort is to be plump)--and so beginning the sentence over

again, being a plump little body, there is a neck to account for--a neck

which we may look at, but which is so exquisite that it would be hardly

polite to consider it in terms of language. Only when we come to the

chin that tips the oval of the face may we descend to language, and even

then we must rise and flick the red mouth with, but a passing word. But

this much must be plainly spoken. The nose does turn up--not much--but a

little (Bob used to say, just to be good and out of the way)! That,

however, is mere personal opinion, and of little importance here. But

the eyes are brown--reddish brown, with enough white at the corners to

make them seem liquid; only liquid is not the word. For they are

radiant--remember that word, for we may come back to it, after we are

done with the brow--a wide brow--low enough for Dickens and Thackeray

and Charlotte Bronte, and for Longfellow and Whittier and Will Carleton

in his day, and high enough for Tennyson at the temples, but not so high

but that the gate of the eyes has to shut wearily when Browning would

sail through the current of her soul. As to hair--Heaven knows there is

plenty of that, but it had rather a checkered career. As she clung to

her mother's apron and waved her father away to war, she was a

tow-headed little tot, and when he came back from the field of glory he

thought he could detect a tendency to red in it, but the fire smouldered

and went out, and the hair turned brown--a dark brown with the glint of

the quenched fires in it when it blew in the sun. Now frame a glowing

young face in that soft waving hair, and you have a picture that will

speak, and if the picture should come to life and speak as it was in the

year of our Lord 1873, the first word of all the words in the big fat

dictionary it would utter would be Bob. And so you may lift up your face

and take your name and place in this story--Molly Culpepper, heroine.

And when you lift your face, we may see something more than its pretty

features: we shall see a radiant soul. For scientists have found out

that every material thing in this universe gives off atomic particles of

itself, and some elements are more radiant than others. And there is a

paralleling quality in the spiritual world, and some souls give off more

of their colour and substance than others, though what it is they

radiate we do not know. Even the scientists do not know the material

things that the atoms radiate, so why should we be asked to define the

essence of souls? Yet from the soul of Molly Culpepper, in joy and in

sorrow, in her moments of usefulness and in her deepest woe, her soul

glowed and shed its glory, and she grew even as she gave her substance

to the world about her. For that is the magic of God's mystery of life.

And now having for the moment finished our discussion on the

radio-activity of souls, let us go back to the story.

Mary Barclay rode home from her son's wedding that night with Bob

Hendricks and Molly Culpepper. They were in a long line of buggies

that began to scatter out and roam across fields to escape the dust of

the roads. "Well," said Mrs. Barclay, as they pulled up the bank of

the Sycamore for home, "I suppose it will be you and Molly next, Bob?"

It was Molly who replied: "Yes. It is going to be Thanksgiving."

"Well, why not?" asked Mrs. Barclay.

"Oh--they all seem to think we shouldn't, don't you know, Mrs.

Barclay--with all this hard times--and the bank closing. And hasn't

John told you of the plan he's worked out for Bob to go to New York

this winter?"

The buggy was nearing the Barclay home. Mrs. Barclay answered, "No,"

and the girl went on.

"Well, it's a big wheat land scheme--and Bob's to go East and sell

the stock. They worked it out last night after the bank closed. He'll

tell you all about it."

Mrs. Barclay was standing by the buggy when the girl finished. The

elder woman bade the young people good night, and turned and went into

the yard and stood a moment looking at the stars before going into her

lonely house. The lovers let the tired horses lag up the hill, and as

they turned into Lincoln Avenue the girl was saying: "A year's so

long, Bob,--so long. And you'll be away, and I'm afraid." He tried to

reassure her; but she protested: "You are all my life,--big

boy,--all my life. I was only fourteen, just a little girl, when you

came into my life, and all these long seven years you are the only

human being that has been always in my heart. Oh, Bob, Bob,--always."

What a man says to his sweetheart is of no importance. Men are so

circumscribed in their utterances--so tongue-tied in love. They all

say one thing; so it need not be set down here what Bob Hendricks

said. It was what the king said to the queen, the prince to the

princess, the duke to the lady, the gardener to the maid, the

troubadour to his dulcinea. And Molly Culpepper replied, "When are you

going, Bob?"

The young man picked up the sagging lines to turn out for Watts

McHurdie's buggy. He had just let Nellie Logan out at the Wards',

where she lived. After a "Hello, Watts; getting pretty late for an old

man like you," Hendricks answered: "Well, you know John--when he gets

a thing in his head he's a regular tornado. There was an immense crowd

in town to-day--depositors and all that. And do you know, John went

out this afternoon with a paper in his hand, and five hundred dollars

he dug out of his safe over in the office, and he got options to lease

their land for a year signed up by the owners of five thousand acres

of the best wheat land in Garrison County. He wants twenty thousand

acres, and pretty well bunched down in Pleasant and Spring townships,

and I'm going in four days." The young man was full of the scheme. He

went on: "John's a wonder, Molly,--a perfect wonder. He's got grit.

Father wouldn't have been able to stand up under this--but John has

braced him, and has cheered up the people, and I believe, before the

week is out, we will be able to get nearly all the depositors to agree

to leave their money alone for a year, and then only take it out on

thirty days' notice. And if we can get that, we can open up by the

first of the month. But I've got to go on to Washington to see if I

can arrange that with the comptroller of the currency."

They were standing at the Culpepper gate as he spoke. A light in the

upper windows showed that the parents were in. Buchanan came ambling

along the walk and went through the gate between them without

speaking. When he had closed the door, the girl came close to her

lover. He took her in his arms, and cried, "Oh, darling,--only four

more days together." He paused, and in the starlight she saw on his

face more than words could have told her of his love for her. He was a

silent youth; the spoken word came haltingly to his lips, and as often

happens, words were superfluous to him in his moments of great

emotion. He put her hands to his lips, and moaned, for the hour of

parting seemed to be hurrying down upon him. Finally his tongue found

liberty. "Oh, sweetheart--sweetheart," he cried, "always remember

that you are bound in my soul with the iron of youth's first love--my

only love. Oh, I never could again, dear,--only you--only you. After

this it would be a sacrilege."

They stood silent in the joy of their ecstacy for a long minute, then

he asked gently: "Do you understand, Molly,--do you understand? this

is forever for us, Molly,--forever. When one loves as we love--with

our childhood and youth welded into it all--whom God hath joined--"

he stammered; "oh, Molly, whom God hath joined," he whispered, and his

voice trembled as he sighed again, and kissed her, "whom God hath

joined. Oh, God--God, God!" cried the lover, as he closed his eyes

with his lips against her hair.

The restless horses recalled the lovers to the earth. It was Molly who

spoke. "Bob--Bob--I can't let you go!"

Molly Culpepper had no reserves with her lover. She went on

whispering, with, her face against his heart: "Bob--Bob, big boy, I

am going to tell you something truthy true, that I never breathed to

any one. At night--to-night, in just a few minutes--when I go up to

my room--all alone--I get your picture and hold it to me close, and

holding it right next to my very heart, Bob, I pray for you." She

paused a moment, and then continued, "Oh, and--I pray for

us--Bob--I pray for us." Then she ran up the stone walk, and on the

steps she turned to throw kisses at him, but he did not move until he

heard the lock click in the front door.

At the livery-stable he found Watts McHurdie bending over some break

in his buggy. They walked up the street together. At the corner where

they were about to part the little man said, as he looked into the

rapturous face of the lanky boy, "Well, Bob,--it's good-by, John, for

you, I suppose?"

"Oh--I don't know," replied the other from his enchanted world and

then asked absently, "Why?"

"Well, it's nature, I guess. She'll take all his time now." He rubbed

his chin reflectively, and as Bob turned to go Watts said: "My

Heavens, how time does fly! It just seems like yesterday that all you

boys were raking over the scrap-pile back of my shop, and slipping in

and nipping leather strands and braiding them into whips, and I'd have

to douse you with water to get rid of you. I got a quirt hanging up in

the shop now that Johnnie Barclay dropped one day when I got after him

with a pan of water. It's a six-sided one, with eight strands down in

the round part. I taught him how to braid it." He chewed a moment and

spat before going on: "And now look at him. He's little, but oh my."

Something was working under McHurdie's belt, for Bob could hear it

chuckling as he chewed: "Wasn't she a buster? It's funny, ain't

it--the way we all pick big ones--we sawed-offs"? The laugh came--a

quiet, repressed gurgle, and he added: "Yes--by hen, and you

long-shanks always pick little dominickers. Eh?" He chewed a

meditative cud before venturing, "That's what I told her comin' home

to-night." Bob knew whom he meant. The man went on: "But when she saw

them--him so little she'll have to shake the sheet to find him--and

her so big and busting, I seen _her_--you know," he nodded his head

wisely to indicate which "her" he meant. "I saw her a-eying me, out of

the corner of her eye, and looking at him, and then looking at the

girl, and looking at herself, and on the way home to-night I'm damned

if I didn't have to put off asking her another six months." He sighed

and continued, "And the first thing I know the drummer or the

preacher'll get her." He chewed for a minute in peace and chuckled,

"Well--Bob, I suppose you'll be next?" He did not wait for an answer,

but spoke up quickly, "Well, Bob, good night--good night," and

hurried to his shop.

The next day the people that blackened Main Street in Sycamore Ridge

talked of two things--the bank failure and the new Golden Belt Wheat

Company. Barclay enlisted Colonel Culpepper, and promised him two

dollars for every hundred-acre option to lease that he secured at

three dollars an acre--the cash on the lease to be paid March first.

Barclay's plan was to organize a stock company and to sell his stock

in the East for enough to raise eight dollars an acre for every acre

he secured, and to use the five dollars for making the crop. He

believed that with a good wheat crop the next year he could make money

and buy as much land as he needed. But that year of the panic John

capitalized the hardship of his people, and made terms for them, which

they could not refuse. He literally sold them their own want. For the

fact that he had a little ready money and could promise more before

harvest upon which the people might live--however miserably was no

concern of his--made it possible for him to drive a bargain little

short of robbery. It was Bob's part of the business to float the stock

company in the East among his father's rich friends. John was to

furnish the money to keep Bob in New York, and the Hendricks'

connections in banking circles were to furnish the cash to float the

proposition, and the Hendricks' bank--if John could get it opened

again--was to guarantee that the stock subscribed would pay six per

cent interest. So there was no honeymoon for John Barclay. When he

dropped the reins and helped his bride out of the buggy the next

morning in front of the Thayer House, he hustled General Ward's little

boy into the seat, told him to drive the team to Dolan's stable, and

waving the new Mrs. Barclay good-by, limped in a trot over to the

bank. In five minutes he was working in the crowd, and by night had

the required number of the depositors ready to agree to let their

money lie a year on deposit, and that matter was closed. He was a

solemn-faced youth in those days, with a serious air about him, and

something of that superabundance of dignity little men often think

they must assume to hold their own. The town knew him as a trim little

man in a three-buttoned tail-coat, with rather extraordinary neckties,

a well-brushed hat, and shiny shoes. To the country people he was

"limping Johnnie," and General Ward, watching Barclay hustle his way

down Main Street Saturday afternoons, when the sidewalk and the

streets were full of people, used to say, "Busier 'n a tin pedler."

And he said to Mrs. Ward, "Lucy, if it's true that old Grandpa Barclay

got his start carrying a pack, you can see him cropping out in John,

bigger than a wolf."

But the general had little time to devote to John, for he was state

organizer of a movement that had for its object the abolition of

middlemen in trade, and he was travelling most of the time. The dust

gathered on his law-books, and his Sunday suit grew frayed at the

edges and shiny at the elbows, but his heart was in the cause, and his

blue eyes burned with joy when he talked, and he was happy, and had to

travel two days and nights when the fourth baby came, and then was too

late to serve on the committee on reception, and had to be satisfied

with a minor place on the committee on entertainment and amusements of

which Mrs. Culpepper was chairman. But John turned in half of a fee

that came from the East for a lawsuit that both he and Ward had

forgotten, and Miss Lucy would have named the new baby Mary Ward, but

the general stood firm for Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Sitting at Sunday

dinner with the Wards on the occasion of Elizabeth Cady Stanton Ward's

first monthly birthday, John listened to the general's remarks on the

iniquity of the money power, and the wickedness of the national banks,

and kept respectful and attentive silence. The worst the young man did

was to wink swiftly across the table at Watts McHurdie, who had been

invited by Mrs. Ward with malice prepense and seated by Nellie Logan.

The wink came just as the general, waving the carving knife, was

saying: "Gentlemen, it's the world-old fight--the fight of might

against right. When I was a boy like you, John, the fight was between

brute strength and the oppressed; between slaves and masters. Now it

is between weakness and cunning, between those who would be

slaveholders if they could be, and those who are fighting the

shackles." And Mrs. Ward saw the wink, and John saw that she saw it,

and he was ashamed.

So before the afternoon was over, Mr. and Mrs. John Barclay went over

to Hendricks's, picking up Molly Culpepper on the way, and the three

spent the evening with the general and Miss Hendricks--a faded mousy

little woman in despairing thirties; and before the open fire they sat

and talked, and John played the piano for an hour, and thought out an

extra kink for the Golden Belt Wheat Company's charter. He jabbered

about it to Jane as they walked home, and the next day it became a

fact.

"That boy," said the colonel to his assembled family one evening as

they dined on mush and dried peaches, and coffee made of parched corn,

"that John Barclay certainly and surely is a marvel. Talk about

drawing blood from a turnip,--why, he can strike an artery in a

pumpkin." The colonel smiled reflectively as he proceeded: "Chicago

lawyer came in on the stage this afternoon,--kinder getting uneasy

about a little interest I owed to an Ohio man on that College Heights

property, and John took that Chicago lawyer up to his office, and

talked him into putting the interest in a second mortgage with all the

interest that will fall due till next spring, and then traded him

Golden Belt Wheat Company stock for the mortgage and a thousand

dollars besides."

"Well, did John give you back the mortgage, father?" asked Molly.

"No, sis,--that wouldn't be business," replied the colonel, as he

stirred his dried peaches into his third dish of mush for dessert;

"business is business, you know. John took the mortgage over to the

bank and discounted it for some money to buy more options with. John

surely does make things hum."