"MY DARLING GIRL: This is the last letter I shall ever mail to you,

perhaps. I can imagine no miracle that will bring us together again.

My duty, as I see it, stands between us. The government inspector is

going to put me under oath to-morrow--unless I run, and I

won't--and question me about your father's business. What I must

tell will injure him--maybe ruin him. I am going to tell your father

what I am going to do before I do it. But by all the faith I have

been taught in a God--and you know I am not pious, and belong to no

church--I am forced to do this thing. Oh, Jeanette, Jeanette--if I

loved you less, I would take you for this life alone and sell my

soul for you; but I want you for an eternity--and in that eternity I

want to bring you an unsoiled soul. Good-by--oh, good-by.

NEAL."

The next morning when Neal Ward went out of the office at the mill,

John Barclay sat shivering with wrath and horror. Every second stamped

him with its indelible finger, as a day, or a month, puts its stain on

other men.

Another morning, a week later, as he sat at his desk, a telegram from

his office manager in the city fluttered in his hands. It read: "We

are privately advised that you were indicted by the federal grand jury

last night--though we do not know upon what specific charge--our

friend B. will advise us later in the day."

It was a gray December day, and a thin film of ice covered the

mill-pond. Barclay looked there and shuddered away from the thought

that came to him. He was alone in the mill. He longed for his wife and

daughter, and yet when he thought of their homecoming to disgrace, he

shook with agony. Over and over again he whispered the word

"indicted." The thought of his mother and her sorrow broke him down.

He locked the door, dropped heavily into his chair, and bowed his head

on his crossed arms. And then--

What, tears? Tears for Mr. Barclay?--for himself? Look back along the

record for his life: there are many tears charged to his account, but

none for his own use. Back in the seventies there are tears of Miss

Culpepper, charged to Mr. Barclay, and one heart-break for General

Hendricks. Again in the eighties there is sorrow for Mr. Robert

Hendricks, and more tears for Mrs. Brownwell, that was Miss

Culpepper--all charged to the account of Mr. Barclay; and in the

early nineties there are some manly tears for Martin F. Culpepper,

also charged to Mr. Barclay--but none before for his own use. Are

they, then, tears of repentance? No, not tears for the recording

angel, not good, man's size, soul-washing tears of repentance, but

miserable, dwarf, useless, self-pitying, corroding tears--tears of

shame and rage, for the proud, God-mocking, man-cheating, powerful,

faithless, arrogant John Barclay, dealer in the Larger Good.

And so with his head upon his arms, and his arms upon his desk,--a

gray-clad, gray-haired, slightly built, time-racked little

figure,--John Barclay strained his soul and wrenched his body and

tried in vain to weep.

CHAPTER XXV

Down comes the curtain. Only a minute does John Barclay sit there with

his head in his arms, and then, while you are stretching your legs, or

reading your programme, or looking over the house to see who may be

here, up rises John Barclay, and while the stage carpenters are

setting the new scene, he is behind there telephoning to Chicago, to

Minneapolis, to Omaha, to Cleveland, to Buffalo,--he fairly swamps

the girl with expensive long-distance calls,--trying to see if there

is not some way to stop the filing of that indictment. For to him the

mere indictment advertises to mankind that money is not power, and

with him and with all of his caste and class a confession of weakness

is equivalent to a confession of wrong. For where might makes right,

as it does in his world, weakness spells guilt, and with all the

people jeering at him, with the press saying: "Aha, so they have got

Mr. Barclay, have they? Well, if all his money and all his power could

not prevent an indictment, he must be a pretty tough customer,"--with

the public peering into his private books and papers in a lawsuit,

confirming as facts all that they had read in the newspapers, in short

with the gold plating of respectability rubbed off his moral brass, he

feels the crushing weight of the indictment, as he limps up and down

his room at the mill and frets at the long-distance operator for being

so slow with his calls.

But he is behind the scenes now; and so is Neal Ward, walking the

streets of Chicago, looking for work on a newspaper, and finally

finding it. And so are Mrs. Jane Barclay and Miss Barclay, as they

sail away on their ten days' cruise of the Mediterranean. And while

the orchestra plays and the man in the middle of row A of the dress

circle edges out of his seat and in again, we cannot hear John Barclay

sigh when the last telephone call is answered, and he finds that

nothing can be done. And he is not particularly cheered by the

knowledge that the Associated Press report that very afternoon is

sending all over the world the story of the indictment. But late in

the afternoon Judge Bemis, in whose court the indictment was found,

much to his chagrin, upon evidence furnished by special counsel sent

out from Washington--Judge Bemis tells him, as from one old friend to

another, that the special counsellor isn't much of a lawyer. The

pleasant friendly little rip-saw laugh of the judge over the telephone

nearly a thousand miles away is not distinct enough to be heard across

the stage even if the carpenters were not hammering, and the orchestra

screaming, and the audience buzzing; but that little laugh of his good

friend, Judge Bemis, was the sweetest sound John Barclay had heard in

many a day. It seemed curious that he should so associate it, but that

little laugh seemed to drown the sound of a clicking key in a lock--a

large iron lock, that had been rattling in his mind since noon. For

even in the minds of the rich and the great, even in the minds of men

who fancy they are divinely appointed to parcel out to their less

daring brethren the good things of this world, there is always a

child's horror of the jail. So when Mr. Barclay, who was something of

a lawyer himself, heard his good friend, Judge Bemis, laugh that

pleasant little friendly laugh behind the scenes, the heart of Mr.

Barclay gave a little pulse-beat of relief if not of joy.

But an instant later the blight of the indictment was over him again.

Hammer away, and scream away, and buzz away with all your might, you

noises of the playhouse; let us not hear John Barclay hastening across

the bridge just before the early winter sunset comes, that he may

intercept the _Index_ and the _Banner_ in the front yard of the

Barclay home, before his mother sees them. Always heretofore he has

been glad to have her read of his achievements, in the hope that she

would come to approve them, and to view things as he saw them--his

success and his power and his glory. But to-night he hides the paper

under his gray coat and slips into the house. She and her son sit down

to dinner alone. This must be a stage dinner they are eating--though

it is all behind the scenes; for Mr. Barclay is merely going through

the empty form of eating. "No, thank you," for the roast. "Why, Mr.

Barclay did not touch his soup!" "Well," says the cook, tasting it

critically, "that's strange." And "No, thank you" for the salad, and

"Not any pie to-night, Clara." "What--none of the mince pie, John?

Why, I went out in the kitchen and made it for you myself." "Well, a

little."

Heigh-ho! We sigh, and we drum on our table-cloth with our fingers,

and we are trying to find some way to tell something. We have been a

bad boy, maybe--a bad little boy, and must own up; that is part of

our punishment--the hardest part perhaps, even with the curtain down,

even with the noise in front, even with the maid gone, even when a

mother comes and strokes our head, as we sit idly at the organ bench,

unable to sound a key. Shall the curtain go up now? Shall we sit

gawking while a boy gropes his way out of a man's life, back through

forty years, and puts his head in shame and sorrow against a mother's

breast? How he stumbles and falters and halts, as the truth comes

out--and it must come out; on the whole the best thing there is to

say of John Barclay on that fateful December day in the year of our

Lord 1903 is that he did not let his mother learn the truth from any

lips but his. And so it follows naturally, because he was brave and

kind, that instead of having to strengthen her, she sustained

him--she in her seventies, he in his fifties.

"My poor dear child," she said, "I know--I know. But don't worry,

John--don't worry. I don't mind. Jane won't mind, I am sure, and I

know Jennie will understand. It isn't what even we who love you think

of you, John--it is what you are that counts. Oh, Johnnie, Johnnie,

maybe you could serve your country and humanity in jail--by showing

the folly and the utter uselessness of all this money-getting, just as

your father served it by dying. I would not mind if it made men see

that money isn't the thing--if it made you see it, my boy; if you

could come out of a jail with that horrible greed for money purged

from you--"

But no--we will not peep behind the curtain; we will not dwell with

John Barclay as he walked all night up and down the great living room

of his home. And see, the footlights have winked at the leader of the

orchestra, to let him know he is playing too long; observe, how

quickly the music dies down--rather too quickly, for the clatter of

cast iron is heard on the stage, and the sound of hurried footsteps is

audible, as of some one moving rapidly about behind the curtain. The

rattling iron you hear is the stove in Watts McHurdie's shop; they

have just set it up, and got it red hot; for it is a cold day, that

fifteenth day of December, 1903, and the footsteps you hear are those

of the members of the harness shop parliament.

Ah! There goes the curtain, and there sits Watts astraddle of his

bench, working with all his might, for he has an order to sew

sleigh-bells on a breast strap, for some festivity or another; and

here sits the colonel, and over there the general, and on his

home-made chair Jacob Dolan is tilted back, warming his toes at the

stove. They are all reading--all except Watts, who is working; on the

floor are the Chicago and St. Louis evening papers, and the Omaha and

Kansas City morning papers. And on the first pages of all of these

papers are pictures of John Barclay. There is John Barclay in the

_Bee_, taken in his Omaha office by the _Bee's_ own photographer--a

new picture of Mr. Barclay, unfamiliar to the readers of most

newspapers. It shows the little man standing by a desk, smiling rather

benignly with his sharp bold eyes fixed on the camera. There is a line

portrait of Mr. Barclay in the _Times_, one of recent date, showing

the crow's-feet about the eyes, the vertical wrinkle above the nose,

and the furtive mouth, hard and naked, and the square mean jaw, that

every cartoonist of Barclay has emphasized for a dozen years. And

there are other pictures of Mr. Barclay in the papers on the floor,

and the first pages of the papers are filled with the news of the

Barclay indictment. All over this land, and in Europe, the news of

that indictment caused a sensation. In the _Times_, there on the

floor, is an editorial comment upon the indictment of Barclay cabled

from London, another from Paris, and a third from Berlin. It was a big

event in the world, an event of more than passing note--this sudden

standing up of one of the richest men of his land, before the front

door of a county jail. Big business, and little business that apes big

business, dropped its jaw. The world is not accustomed to think of

might making wrong, so when a Charles I or a Louis XVI or a John

Barclay comes to harm, the traditions of the world are wrenched. Men

say: "How can these things be--if might makes right? Here is a case

where might and right conflict--how about it? Jails are for the poor,

not for the rich, because the poor are wrong and the rich are right,

and no just man made perfect by a million should be in jail."

And so while the members of the parliament in Watts McHurdie's shop

read and were disturbed at the strange twist of events, the whole

world was puzzled with them, and in unison with Jacob Dolan, half the

world spoke, "I see no difference in poisoning breakfast foods and

poisoning wells, and it's no odds to me whether a man pinches a few

ounces out of my flour sack, or steals my chickens."

And the other half of the world was replying with Colonel Culpepper,

"Oh, well, Jake, now that's all right for talk; but in the realms of

high finance men are often forced to be their own judges of right and

wrong, and circumstances that we do not appreciate, cannot understand,

in point of fact, nor comprehend, if I may say so, intervene, and make

what seems wrong in small transactions, trivial matters and

pinch-penny business, seem right in the high paths of commerce."

The general was too deeply interested in reading what purported to be

his son's testimony before Commissioner Smith, to break into the

discussion at this point, so Dolan answered, "From which I take it

that you think that Johnnie down at the mill keeps a private God in

his private car."

The colonel was silent for a time; he read a few lines and looked into

space a moment, and then replied in a gentle husky voice: "Jake, what

do we know about it? The more I think how every man differs from his

neighbour, and all our sins are the result of individual weakness at

the end of lonely struggles with lonely temptations--the more I think

maybe there is something in what you say, and that not only John but

each of us--each of us under this shining sun, sir--keeps his

private God."

"You'll have to break that news gently to the Pope," returned Dolan.

"I'll not try it. Right's right, Mart Culpepper, and wrong's wrong for

me and for Johnnie Barclay, white, black, brown, or yellow--'tis the

same."

"There's nothing in your theory, Mart," cut in the general, folding

his paper across his knee; "not a thing in the world. We're all parts

of a whole, and the only way this is an individual problem at

all--this working out of the race's destiny--is that the whole can't

improve so long as the parts don't grow. So long as we all are like

John Barclay save in John's courage to do wrong, laws won't help us

much, and putting John in jail won't do so very much--though it may

scare the cowards until John's kind of crime grows unpopular. But what

we must have is individual--"

Tinkle goes the bell over Watts McHurdie's head--the bell tied to a

cord that connects with the front door. Down jumps Watts, and note the

play of the lights from the flies, observe that spot light moving

toward R. U. E., there by the door of the shop. Yes, all ready; enter

John Barclay. See that iron smile on his face; he has not surrendered.

He has been clean-shaven, and entering that door, he is as spick and

span as though he were on a wedding journey. Give him a hand or a hiss

as you will, ladies and gentlemen, John Barclay has entered at the

Right Upper Entrance, and the play may proceed.

"Well," he grinned, "I suppose you are talking it over. Colonel, has

the jury come to a verdict yet?"

What a suave John Barclay it was; how admirably he held his nerve; not

a quiver in the face, not a ruffle of the voice. The general looked at

him over his spectacles, and could not keep the kindness out of his

eyes. "What a brick you are!" he said to himself, and Jake Dolan,

conquered by the simplicity of it, surrendered.

"Oh, well, John, I suppose we all have our little troubles," said

Jake. Only that; the rack of the inquisitor grew limp. And Colonel

Culpepper rose and gave Barclay his hand and spoke not a word. The

silence was awkward, and at the end of a few moments the colonel found

words.

"How," he asked in his thick asthmatic voice, mushy with emotion, "how

in the world did this happen, John? How did it happen?"

Barclay looked at the general; no, he did not glare, for John Barclay

had grown tame during the night, almost docile, one would say. But he

did not answer at first, and Watts McHurdie, bending over his work,

chuckled out: "Ten miles from Springfield, madam--ten miles from

Springfield." And then John sloughed off thirty years and laughed. And

the general laughed, and the colonel smiled, and Jake Dolan took John

Barclay's hand from the colonel, and said:--

"The court adjudges that the prisoner at the bar pay the assembled

company four of those cigars in his inside pocket, and stand committed

until the same is paid."

And then there was a scratching of matches, and a puffing, and Barclay

spoke: "I knew there was one place on earth where I was welcome. The

mill is swarming with reporters, and I thought I'd slip away. They'll

not find me here." The parliament smoked in silence, and again Barclay

said, "Well, gentlemen, it's pretty tough--pretty tough to work all

your life to build up an industry and in the end--get this."

"Well, John," said the general, as he rolled up his newspaper and put

it away, "I'm sorry--just as sorry as Mart is; not so much for the

indictment, that is all part of the inevitable consequence of your

creed; if it hadn't been the indictment, it would have been something

else, equally sad--don't you see, John?"

"Oh, I know what you think, General," retorted Barclay, bitterly. "I

know your idea; you think it's retribution."

"Not exactly that either, John--just the other side of the equation.

You have reaped what you sowed, and I am sorry for what you sowed. God

gave you ten talents, John Barclay--ten fine talents, my boy, and you

wrapped them in a napkin and buried them in the ground, buried them in

greed and cunning and love of power, and you are reaping envy and

malice and cruelty. You were efficient, John; oh, if I had been as

efficient as you, how much I could have done for this world--how

much--how much!" he mused wistfully.

Barclay did not reply, but his face was hard, and his neck was stiff,

and he was not moved. He was still the implacable Mr. Barclay, the

rich Mr. Barclay, and he would have no patronage from old Phil

Ward--Phil Ward the crank, who was a nation's joke. Ting-a-ling went

the bell over Watts McHurdie's head, and the little man climbed down

from his bench and hurried into the shop. But instead of a customer,

Mr. J. K. Mercheson, J. K. Mercheson representing Barber, Hancock, and

Kohn,--yes, the whip trust; that's what they call it, but it is

really an industrial organization of the trade,--Mr. J. K. Mercheson

of New York came in. No, McHurdie did not need anything at present,

and he backed into the shop. He had all of the goods in that line that

he could carry just now; and he sidled toward his seat. The members of

the parliament effaced themselves, as loafers do in every busy place

when business comes up; the colonel got behind his paper, Barclay hid

back of the stove, Dolan examined a bit of harness, and the general

busied himself picking up the litter on the floor, and folding the

papers with the pictures of Barclay inside so that he would not be

annoyed by them. But Mr. Mercheson knew how to get orders; he knew

that the thing to do is to stay with the trade.

So he leaned against the work bench and began:--

"This is a great town, Mr. McHurdie; we're always hearing from

Sycamore Ridge. When I'm in the East they say, 'What kind of a town is

that Sycamore Ridge where Watts McHurdie and your noted reformer,

Robert Hendricks, who was offered a place in the cabinet, and this man

John Barclay live?'"

Mr. Mercheson paused for effect. Mr. McHurdie smiled and went on with

his work.

"Say," said Mr. Mercheson, "your man Barclay is in all the papers this

morning. I was in the smoker of the sleeper last evening coming out of

Chicago, and we got to talking about him--and Lord, how the fellows

did roast him."

"They did?" asked Barclay, from his chair behind the stove.

"Sure," replied Mr. Mercheson; "roasted him good and brown. There

wasn't a man in the smoker but me to stand up for him."

"So you stood up for the old scoundrel, did you?" asked Barclay.

"Sure," answered the travelling man. "Anything to get up an argument,

you know," he went on, beginning to see which way sentiment lay in the

shop. "I've been around town this morning, and I find the people here

don't approve of him for a minute, any more than they did on the

train."

"What do they say?" asked Barclay, braiding a four-strand whip, and

finding that his cunning of nearly fifty years had not left his

fingers.

"Oh, it isn't so much what they say--but you can tell, don't you

know; it's what they don't say; they don't defend him. I guess they

like him personally, but they know he's a thief; that's the

idea--they simply can't defend him and they don't try. The government

has got him dead to rights. Say," he went on, "just to be arguing, you

know last evening I took a poll of the train--the limited--the

Golden State Limited--swell train, swell crowd--all rich old

roosters; and honest, do you know that out of one hundred and

twenty-three votes polled only four were for him, and three of those

were girls who said they knew his daughter at the state university,

and had visited at his house. Wasn't that funny?"

Barclay laughed grimly, and answered, "Well, it was pretty funny

considering that I'm John Barclay."

The suspense of the group in the shop was broken, and they laughed,

too.

"Oh, hell," said Mr. Mercheson, "come off!" Then he turned to McHurdie

and tried to talk trade to him. But Watts was obdurate, and the man

soon left the shop, eying Barclay closely. He stood in the door and

said, as he went out of the store, "Well, you do look some like his

pictures, Mister."

There was a silence when the stranger went, and Barclay, whose face

had grown red, cried, "Damn 'em--damn 'em all--kick a man when he is

down!"

Again the bell tinkled, and McHurdie went into the shop. Evidently a

customer was looking at a horse collar, for through the glass door

they could see Watts' hook go up to the ceiling and bring one down.

"John," said the colonel, when Barclay had spoken, "John, don't mind

it. Look at me, John--look at me! They had to put me in jail, you

know; but every one seems to have forgotten it but me--and I am a dog

that I don't."

John Barclay looked at the old, broken man, discarded from the

playing-cards of life, with the hurt, surprised look always in his

eyes, and it was with an effort that the suave Mr. Barclay kept the

choke in his throat out of his voice as he replied:--

"Yes, Colonel, yes, I know I have no right to kick against the

pricks."

Watts was saying: "Yes, he's in there now--with the boys; you better

go in and cheer him up."

And then at the upper right-hand entrance entered Gabriel Carnine,

president of the State Bank, unctuous as a bishop. He ignored the

others, and walking to Barclay, put out his hand. "Well, well, John,

glad to see you; just came up from the mill--I was looking for you.

Couldn't find Neal, either. Where is he?"

The general answered curtly, "Neal is in Chicago, working on the

_Record-Herald_."

"Oh," returned Carnine, and did not pursue the subject further. "Well,

gentlemen," he said, "fine winter weather we're having."

"Is that so?" chipped in Dolan. "Mr. Barclay was finding it a little

mite warm."

Carnine ignored Dolan, and Barclay grinned. "Well, John," Carnine

hesitated, "I was just down to see you--on a little matter of

business."

"Delighted, sir, delighted," exclaimed Dolan, as he rose to go; "we

were going, anyway--weren't we, General?" The veterans rose, and

Colonel Culpepper said as he went, "I told Molly to call for me here

about noon with the buggy--if she comes, tell her to wait."

All of life may not be put on the stage, and this scene has to be cut;

for it was at the end of half an hour's aimless, footless, foolish

talk that Gabriel Carnine came to the business in hand. Round and

round the bush he beat the devil, before he hit him a whack. Then he

said, as if it had just occurred to him, "We were wondering--some of

the directors--this morning, if under the circumstances--oh, say

just for the coming six months or such a matter--it might not be wise

to reorganize our board; freshen it up, don't you know; kind of get

some new names on it, and drop the old ones--not permanently, but

just to give the other stockholders a show on the board."

"So you want me to get off, do you?" blurted Barclay. "You're afraid

of my name--now?"

The screams of Mr. Carnine, the protesting screams of that oleaginous

gentleman, if they could have been vocalized in keeping with their

muffled, low-voiced, whispering earnestness, would have been loud

enough to be heard a mile away, but Barclay talked out:--

"All right, take my name off; and out comes my account. I don't care."

And thereupon the agony of Mr. Carnine was unutterable. If he had been

a natural man, he would have howled in pain; as it was, he merely

purred. But Barclay's skin was thin that day, sensitive to every

touch, and he felt the rough hand of Carnine and winced. He let the

old man whine and pur and stroke his beard awhile, and then Barclay

said wearily, "All right, just as you please, Gabe--I'll not move my

account. It's nothing to me."

In another minute the feline foot of Mr. Carnine was pattering gently

toward the front door. Barclay sat looking at the stove, and Watts

went on working. Barclay sighed deeply once or twice, but McHurdie

paid no heed to him. Finally Barclay rose and went over to the bench.

"Watts," cried Barclay, "what do you think about it--you, your own

self, what do you think way down in your heart?"

Watts sewed a stitch or two without speaking, and then put down his

thread and put up his glasses and said, "That's fairly spoken, John

Barclay, and will have a fair answer."

The old man paused; Barclay cried impatiently, "Oh, well, Watts, don't

be afraid--nothing can hurt me much now!"

"I was just a-thinking, lad," said Watts, gently, "just a-thinking."

"What?" cried Barclay.

"Just a-thinking," returned the old man, as he put his hand on the

younger man's shoulder, "what a fine poet you spoiled in your life,

just to get the chance to go to jail. But the Lord knows His business,

I suppose!" he added with a twinkle in his eye, "and if He thinks a

poet more or less in jail would help more than one out--it is all for

the best, John, all for the best. But, my boy," he cried earnestly,

"if you'll be going to jail, don't whine, lad. Go to jail like a

gentleman, John Barclay, go to jail like a gentleman, and serve your

Lord there like a man."

"Damn cheerful you are, Watts," returned Barclay. "What a lot of Job's

comforters you fellows have been this morning." He went on half

bitterly and half jokingly: "Beginning with the general, continuing

with your travelling salesman friend, and following up with Gabe, who

wants me to get off the board of directors of his bank for the moral

effect of it, and coming on down to you who bid me Godspeed to

jail--I have had a--a--a rather gorgeous morning."

The door-bell tinkled, and a woman's voice called, "Father, father!"

"Yes, Molly," the harness maker answered; "he'll be here pretty soon.

He said for you to wait."

"Come in, for heaven's sake, Molly," cried Barclay, "come back here

and cheer me up."

"Oh, all right--it's you, John? What are you doing back here? I'm so

glad to find you. I've just got the dearest letter from Jane. We won't

talk business or anything--you know how I feel, and how sorry I

am--so just let's read Jane's letter; it has something in it to cheer

you. She said she was going to write it to you the next day--but I'll

read it to you." And so Mrs. Brownwell took from her pocketbook the

crumpled letter and unfolded it. "It's so like Jane--just good hard

sense clear through." She turned the pages hastily, and finally the

fluttering of the sheets stopped. "Oh, yes," she said, "here's the

place--the rest she's told you. Let me see--Oh: 'And, Molly, what do

you think?--there's a duke after Jeanette--a miserable, little,

dried-up, burned-out, poverty-stricken Italian duke. And oh, how much

good it did us both to cut him, and let him know how ill-bred we

considered him, how altogether beneath any wholesome honest girl we

thought such a fellow.' And now, John, isn't this like Jane?"

interposed Mrs. Brownwell. "Listen; she says, 'Molly, do you know, I

am so happy about Jeanette and Neal. We run such an awful risk with

this money--such a horrible risk of unhappiness and misery for the

poor child--heaven knows she would be so much happier without it. And

to think, dear, that she has found the one in the world for her, in

the sweet simple way that a girl should always find him, and that the

money--the menacing thing that hangs like a shadow over her--cannot

by any possibility spoil her life! It makes me happy all the day, and

I go singing through life with joy at the thought that the money won't

hurt Jennie--that it can't take from her the joy that comes from

living with her lover all her life, as I have lived.' Isn't that fine,

John?" asked Mrs. Brownwell, and looking up, she saw John Barclay,

white-faced, with trembling jaw, staring in pain at the stove. Watts

had gone into the store to wait on a customer, and the woman, seeing

the man's anguish, came to him and said: "Why, John, what is it? How

have I hurt you?--I thought this would cheer you so."

The man rose heavily. His colour was coming back. "Oh, God--God," he

cried, "I needed that to-day--I needed that."

The woman looked at him, puzzled and nonplussed. "Why--why--why?"

she stammered.

"Oh, nothing," he smiled back at her bitterly, "except--" and his jaw

hardened as he snapped--"except that Neal Ward is a damned

informer--and I've sent him about his business, and Jeanette's got to

do the same."

Mollie Brownwell looked at him with hard eyes for a moment, and then

asked, "What did Neal do?"

"Well," replied Barclay, "under cross-examination, I'll admit without

incriminating myself that he gave the testimony which indicted me."

"Was it that or lie, John?" He did not reply. A silence fell, and the

woman broke it with a cry: "Oh, John Barclay, John Barclay, must your

traffic in souls reach your own flesh and blood? Haven't you enough

without selling her into Egypt, too? Haven't you enough money now?"

And without waiting for answer, Molly Brownwell turned and left him

staring into nothing, with his jaw agape.

It was noon and a band was playing up the street, and as he stood by

the stove in McHurdie's shop, he remembered vaguely that he had seen

banners flying and some "Welcome" arches across the street as he

walked through the town that morning. He realized that some lodge or

conclave or assembly was gathering in the town, and that the band was

a part of its merriment. It was playing a gay tune and came nearer and

nearer. But as he stood leaning upon his chair, with his heart

quivering and raw from its punishment, he did not notice that the band

had stopped in front of the harness shop. His mind went back wearily

to the old days, fifty years before, when as a toddling child in

dresses he used to play on that very scrap-heap outside the back door,

picking up bits of leather, and in his boyhood days, playing pranks

upon the little harness maker, and braiding his whips for the town

herd. Then he remembered the verses Watts had written about Bob

Hendricks and him in that very room, and the music he and Watts had

played together there. The old song Watts had made in his presence in

the hospital at St. Louis came back to his mind. Did it come because

outside the band had halted and was playing that old song to serenade

Watts McHurdie? Or did it come because John Barclay was wondering if,

had he made a poet of himself, or a man of spiritual and not of

material power, it would have been better for him?

Heaven knows why the old tune came into his head. But when he

recognized that they were serenading the little harness maker, and

that so far as they thought of John Barclay and his power and his

achievements, it was with scorn, he had a flash of insight into his

relations with the world that illumined his soul for a moment and then

died away. The great Mr. Barclay, alone, sitting in the dingy little

harness shop, can hear the band strike up the old familiar tune again,

and hear the crowd cheer and roar its applause at the little harness

maker, who stands shamefaced and abashed, coatless and aproned, before

the crowd. And he is only a poet--hardly a poet, would be a better

way to say it; an exceedingly bad poet who makes bad rhymes, and

thinks trite thoughts, and says silly and often rather stupid things,

but who once had his say, and for that one hour of glorious liberty of

the soul has moved millions of hearts to love him. John Barclay does

not envy Watts McHurdie--not at all; for Barclay, with all his

faults, is not narrow-gauged; he does not wish they would call for

him--not to-day--not at all; he could not face them now, even if

they cheered him. He says in his heart of pride, beneath his stiff

neck, that it is all right; that Watts,--poor little church-mouse of

a Watts, whom he could buy five times over with the money that has

dropped into the Barclay till since he entered the shop--that Watts

should have his due; but only--only--only--that is it--only, but

only--!

CHAPTER XXVI

And now as we go out into the busy world, after this act in the

dawning of John Barclay's life, let the court convene, and the

reporters gather, and the honourable special counsel for the

government rage, and the defendant sit nervous and fidgety as the

honourable counsel reads the indictment; let the counsel for the

defendant swell and strut with indignation that such indignities

should be put upon honest men and useful citizens, and let the court

frown, and ponder and consider; for that is what courts are for, but

what do we care for it all? We have left it all behind, with the

ragged programmes in the seats. So if the honourable court, in the

person of the more or less honourable Elijah Westlake Bemis, after the

fashion of federal judges desiring to do a questionable thing, calls

in a judge from a neighbouring court--what do we care? And if the

judge of the neighbouring court, after much legal hemming and judicial

hawing, decides in his great wisdom--that the said defendant Barclay

has been charged in the indictment with no crime, and instructs the

jury to find a verdict of not guilty for said defendant John Barclay,

upon the mere reading of the indictment,--what are the odds? What do

we care if the men in the packed courtroom hiss and the reporters put

down the hisses in their note-books and editors write the hisses in

headlines, and presses print the hisses all over the world? For the

fidgety little man is free now--entirely free save for fifty-four

years of selfish life upon his shoulders.

In the trial of nearly every cause it becomes necessary at some point

in the proceedings to halt the narrative and introduce certain

exhibits, records, and documents, upon which foregone evidence has

been based, and to which coming testimony may properly be attached.

That point has been reached in the case now before the reader. And as

"Exhibit A" let us submit a letter written by John Barclay, January

seventh, nineteen hundred and four, to Jane, his wife, at Naples.

"As I cabled you this afternoon, the case resulted exactly as I said

it would the day after the indictment. I had not seen or talked with

Lige since that day I talked with him over the telephone, before the

indictment was made public, but I knew Lige well enough to know how

he would act under fire. I had him out to dinner this evening, and

we talked over old times, and he tells me he wants to retire from

the bench. Jane, Lige has been my mainstay ever since this company

was organized. Sometimes I feel that without his help in

politics--looking to see that pernicious legislation was killed, and

that the right men were elected to administrative offices, and

appointed to certain judicial places--we never would have been able

to get the company to its present high standing. I feel that he has

been so valuable to us that we should settle a sum on him that will

make him a rich man as men go in the Ridge. Heaven knows that is

little enough, considering all that he has done. He may have his

faults, Jane, but he has been loyal to me.

"I hope, my dear, that Jeanette has ceased to worry about the other

matter; he is not worth her tears. Don't come home for a month or

two yet. The same conditions prevail that I spoke of in my first

cable the day of the indictment. The press and the public are

perfectly crazy. America is one great howling mob, and it would make

you and Jennie unhappy. As for me, I don't mind it. You know me."

And that the reader may know how truthful John Barclay is, let us

append herewith a letter written by Mrs. Mary Barclay, of Sycamore

Ridge, to her granddaughter at Naples, January 15, 1904. She writes

among other things:--

"Well, dear, it is a week now since your father's case was settled,

and he was at home for the first time last night. I expected that

his victory--such as it was--would cheer him up, but some way he

seems worse in the dumps than he was before. He does not sleep well,

and is getting too nervous for a man of his age. I have the

impression that he is forever battling with something. Of course the

public temper is bitter, dearie. You are a woman now, and should not

be shielded and pampered with lies, so I am going to tell you the

truth. The indignation of the people of this nation at your father,

as he represents present business methods, is past belief. And

frankly, dearie, I can't blame them. Your father and my son is a

brave, sweet, loving man; none could be finer in this world, Jennie.

But the head of the National Provisions Company is another person,

dear; and of him I do not approve, as you know so well. I am sending

you Neal Ward's statement which was published by the government the

day after the case was dismissed. I have not sent it to you before,

because I wanted to ask your father if it was true. Jennie, he

admits that Neal told the truth, and nothing but the truth--and did

not make it as bad as it was. You are entitled to the facts. You are

a grown woman now, dear, and must make your own decisions. But oh,

my dear little girl, I am heartsick to see your father breaking as

he is. He seems to be fighting--fighting--fighting all the time;

perhaps it is against the flames of public wrath, but some way I

think he is fighting something inside himself--fighting it back;

fighting it down--whatever it is."

Counsel also begs indulgence while he introduces and reads two

clippings from the Sycamore Ridge _Daily Banner_, of February 12,

1904. The first one reads:--

"Judge Bemis Retires

"Hon. E. W. Bemis has retired from the federal bench, and rumour has

it that he is soon to return with his estimable wife to our midst.

Our people will welcome the judge and Mrs. Bemis with open arms. He

retires from an honourable career, to pass his declining years in

the peace and quiet of the town in which he began his career over

fifty years ago. For as every one knows, he came West as a boy, and

before having been admitted to the bar dealt largely in horses and

cattle. He has always been a good business man, having with his

legal acumen the acquisitive faculty, and now he is looking for some

place to invest a modest competence here in the Ridge, and rumour

has it again that he is negotiating for the purchase of the Sycamore

Ridge Waterworks bonds, which are now in litigation. If so, he will

make an admirable head of that popular institution."

In this connection, and before introducing the other clipping from the

_Banner_, it would be entirely proper to introduce the manuscript for

the above, in the typewriting of the stenographer of Judge Bemis's

court, and a check for fifty dollars payable to Adrian Brownwell,

signed by Judge Bemis aforesaid; but those documents would only clog

the narrative and would not materially strengthen the case, so they

will be thrown out.

The second clipping, found in the personal column of the _Banner_ of

the date referred to, February 12, 1904, follows:--

"Mrs. John Barclay and Miss Barclay are on the steamer _Etruria_

which was sighted off Fire Island to-day. They will spend a few

weeks in New York, and early in March Miss Barclay will enter the

state university to do some post-graduate work in English, and Mrs.

Barclay will return to Sycamore Ridge. Mr. Barclay will meet them at

the pier, and they expect to spend the coming two weeks attending

German opera. Mrs. Mary Barclay left to-day for the East to join

them. She will remain a month visiting relatives near Haverhill,

Mass."

It becomes necessary to append some letters of Miss Jeanette

Barclay's, and they are set down here in the order in which they were

written, though the first one takes the reader back a few weeks to

December 5, 1903. It was posted at Rome, and in the body of it are

found these words:--

"My dear, I know you will smile when you hear I have been reading

all the Italian scientific books I can find, dealing with the human

brain--partly to help my Italian, but chiefly, I think, to see if I

can find and formulate some sort of a definition for love. It is so

much a part of my soul, dear heart, that I would like to know more

about it. And I am going to write down for you what I think it is as

we know it. I have been wearing your ring nearly three years, Neal,

and if you had only known it, I would have been happy to have taken

it a year sooner. In those four years I have grown from a girl to a

woman, and you have become a man full grown. In that time all my

thoughts have centred on you. In all my schoolbooks your face comes

back to me as I open them in fancy. As I think of the old room at

school, of my walk up the hill, as I think of home and my room

there, some thought of you is always between me and the picture. All

through my physical brain are little fibres running to every centre

that bring up images of you. You are woven into my life, and I know

in my heart that I am woven into your life. The thing is done; it is

as much apart of my being as my blood--those million fibres of my

brain that from every part of my consciousness bring thoughts of

you. We cannot be separated now, darling--we are united for life,

whether we unite in life or not. I am yours and you are mine. It is

now as inexorable as anything we call material. More than that--you

have made my soul. All the aspirations of my spiritual life go to

you for beginning and for being as truly as the fibres of my brain

thrill to the sound of your name or the mental image of your face.

My soul is your soul, because in the making the thought of you was

uppermost. I know that my love for you is immortal, ineffaceable,

and though I should live a hundred years, that love would still be

as much a part of my life as my hands or my eyes or my body. And the

best of it all is that I am so glad it is so. Divorce is as

impossible with a love like that as amputation of the brain. It is

big and vital in me, real and certain, and so long as I live on

earth, or dwell in eternity, my soul and your soul are knit

together."

Three weeks later, on December 28, 1903, Miss Barclay wrote to Mr.

Ward as follows:--

"Your letter and father's letter were on my desk when we returned

from our cruise. I have just finished writing to him, and I herewith

return your ring and your pin."

There was neither signature nor superscription--just those words. And

a month later, Miss Barclay wrote this letter to her Grandmother

Barclay in Sycamore Ridge:--

"MY DEAR, DEAR GRANNY: I have told mother what you wrote of father,

and we are coming home just as soon as we can get a steamer. We are

cabling him to-day, and hope to sail within a week or ten days at

the very farthest. But I cannot wait until I see you, dear, to come

close into your heart. And first of all I want you to know that I

share your views about the heart-break of all this money and the

miserable man-killing way it is being piled up. I know the two men

you speak of--father and the president of the N.P.C. But he is my

father, and I must stand by him, and brace him if I can. But, oh,

Granny, I don't want the old money! It has never made me

happy--never for one minute. The only happiness I have ever had was

when he was at home with us all, away from business--and--but you

know about that other happiness, and it hurts to speak of it now. I

have not read what you sent me. I can't. But I will keep it. That it

is true doesn't help me any. Nothing can help me. It is just one of

those awful things that I have read of coming to people, but which I

thought never could possibly come to me. Oh, Granny, Granny, you who

pray so much for others, now pray for me. Granny, you can't cut

something out of you--right out of the heart of you, by merely

saying so; it keeps growing back; it hurts, and hurts, and keeps

hurting; even if you know it is cut out and thrown away. They say

that men who have had legs cut off can feel them for months and even

years if they are cramped when they are buried. The nerves of the

old dead body reach through space and hurt. It is that way with me.

The old dead thing in my heart that is buried and gone keeps

cramping and hurting. You are the only one I can come to, Granny. It

hurts mother too much, and she is not strong this winter. I think it

is worry. She is growing thin, and her heart doesn't act right. I am

terribly worried about her; but she made me promise to say nothing

to father, and you must not, either; for he will see for himself

soon."

A few letters from Neal Ward to Jeanette Barclay, and a document some

twenty years old, which the reader may have forgotten, but which one

person connected with this narrative has feared would come to light

every day in that time--and then this tedious business of introducing

documentary evidence will be over. The letter from Neal Ward to

Jeanette Barclay is one of hundreds that he wrote and never mailed.

They were dated, sealed, addressed, and put away. This one was written

at midnight as the bells and whistles and pistols and fireworks were

welcoming the year 1904. It begins:--

"MY VERY DEAREST: Here I am sitting at the old desk again, in the

old office of the _Banner_. I could only scribble you a little note

on the train last night to tell you that my heart still was with

you, and I did not have the time to explain why I was coming. It is

a dead secret, little woman, and perhaps I shouldn't tell even you,

but I feel that I must bring everything to you. Bob Hendricks wired

me to come down. He has a mortgage on the _Banner_, and he feels

that things are not being properly managed, so he persuaded Mr.

Brownwell to give me a place as sort of manager of the paper at

twenty dollars a week--a sum that seems princely considering that I

was making only eighteen dollars in Chicago, and that it costs so

much less to live here. Hendricks guarantees my wages, so that

Adrian cannot stand me off. Hendricks has another motive for wanting

me to come here. The waterworks franchise will come up for renewal

June first of this year, and Mr. Hendricks is for municipal

ownership. Carnine and the State Bank are against municipal

ownership, because the water company does business with them, and as

they control the _Index_, they are preparing to make a warm fight

for the renewal of the old franchise. So there will be a hot time in

the old town this spring. But the miserable part of it is this. The

growth of the town has made it dangerous to use the present supply

station. The water must not come out of the mill-pond any longer, as

the town is tilted so that all the surface drainage goes into it,

and the sewers that drain into it, while they drain a few hundred

yards below the intake of the waterworks, cannot help tainting the

whole pond. Mr. Hendricks has had an expert here who declared that

both the typhoid and diphtheria epidemics here last fall were due

directly to the water supply, and Mr. Hendricks is going to make the

fight of his life to have the city buy the waterworks plant, and

move the intake six miles above town, where there is plenty of clean

water. Of course it will mean first a city election to get decent

councilmen, and then a bond election to vote money to buy the old

plant; the waterworks company are going to move heaven and earth to

get an anti-Hendricks council elected and to renew the franchise and

let things go as they are. So that is why I am here, dear heart, and

oh, my darling, you do not know how painful it all seems to be here

and not have you--I mean--you know what I mean. All my associations

with the work here in the office and on the street are with my heart

close to yours. Everything in the old town tells me of you. 'Saint

Andrews by the Northern sea, a haunted city is to me.' To-night I

hear the music of the New Year's dance, and I can shut my eyes and

feel you with me there. Oh, sweetheart, I have kept you so close, by

writing to you every night. I come and lay my heart and all its

thoughts at your shrine, and put all my day's work before you for

your approval, just as I used to do. It is so sweet a privilege.

"Last night I dreamed about you. It was so real and your voice

sounded so clearly, crying to me, that you have been with me all

day. I wonder if while we sleep, we whose souls would struggle to

meet through eternity, if through the walls of space they may not

find each other, and speak to each other through our dreams. It is

midnight here now, and you are just waking, perhaps, or just

sleeping that sleep of early morning wherein the soul sinks to

unknown depths. Oh--oh--oh, if I could but speak to you there, my

dear! I am going to sit here and close my eyes and try."

The next letter in the exhibit was written six weeks later and is

dated February 12, 1904. It says in part:--

"I must tell you what a bully fellow Bob Hendricks is. Judge Bemis

sent a highly laudatory article about himself to the office to-day

with a check for fifty dollars. In the article it develops that he

is going to retire from the federal bench and come down here and buy

the waterworks plant--on the theory that he will get a bargain

because of the expiring franchise and the prospective fight. That

fifty dollars looked as big as a barn to poor Adrian, so he trotted

off with the letter and the check to Hendricks. Of course, the

letter and the check together, just framed and put in the bank

window, would make great sport of the judge; but Bob is a

thoroughbred, and probably Bemis knows it, and figures on that in

his dealings with him. I was in the bank when Adrian came in with

the letter. He showed the check and the article to Hendricks, and

you could almost see Adrian wag his tail and hear him whine to keep

the check; Bob looked at the poor fellow's wistful eyes and handed

it back with a quizzical little smile and said, 'Oh, I guess I'd run

it; it can't hurt anything.' The light that came into Adrian's eyes

was positively beatific, and he shook Bob by the hand, and twirled

his cane, and waved his gloves in a sort of canine ecstasy, and

trotted to the cashier's window with the check like a dog with a

bone. It is the largest piece of real money he has had in six

months, the boys say, and he has spent it for clothes. To-morrow he

will hurry off to the first convention in the city like a comet two

centuries behind time. But that is beside the point; the thing I

don't like is the coming of Bemis. I know him; the things I have

seen him do in your father's business and when he was on the bench,

make me shudder for decent politics in this town. He is shrewd,

unscrupulous, and without any restraint on earth.

"I feel closer to you than I have felt since I put the barrier

between us. For you are in this country to-night--I could go to the

telephone there five feet away and reach you if I would. I looked

to-day in the papers and saw that they would be giving Lohengrin at

the Metropolitan Opera House, and knowing your father as I do, I

think he will take you there. I can hear the music rising and see

you drinking in the harmony, and as it swells into exquisite pain,

and thrills through the holy places of your soul where are old

memories of our love, sweetheart, maybe your spirit will go forth in

God's strange universe where we all dwell neighbours, loosed from

those material chains that bind our bodies, and will seek the heart

that is searching for you out there in the highway of heaven. I seem

to feel you now, dear soul--did the music fling your spirit free for

a second till it touched my own? I am so happy, Jeanette--even to

love you and to know that you have loved me, and must always love me

while you are you and I am I."

And now let us consider the final exhibit. It will be necessary to

turn back the action of this story a month and a half and sit with

John Barclay and his friend, former federal judge Elijah Westlake

Bemis, before the fire in the wide fireplace in the Barclay home, one

cold January night, a week after Barclay had gone free from the court

and the world had hissed him. They were talking of the judge's

business future, and the judge was saying:--

"John, how did Bob Hendricks ever straighten out that affair in the

treasurer's office in connection with the first year's taxes of the

old Wheat Company? What did he do with it finally?"

Barclay looked at the fire and then turned his searchlight eyes into

Bemis's. There was not a quiver. The man sat there without a muscle of

his parchment face moving. His eyes were squinted up, looking at the

tip of his long cigar.

"Why?" asked Barclay.

"Well," responded Bemis, impassive as an ox, "it would help me in my

business to know. Tell me."

He spoke the last two words as one in authority.

"Well," answered Barclay, "one day back in the seventies, I was

appointed to check up the treasurer's book, and I found where he had

fixed it on the county books--apparently between two administrations.

I recognized his hand; and it made the balance for the first time."

Bemis smoked awhile. "What time in the seventies?" he asked.

There was a pause. "In January, 1879."

Bemis grinned a wicked, mean little grin and said: "That settles it. I

believe I am safe in buying the waterworks."

"What are you going to do to Bob?" Barclay asked.

"Nothing, nothing--absolutely nothing, if he has any sense and drops

this municipal ownership tommyrot. Absolutely nothing."

Again the grin came over his face, and at the end of a pause Barclay

said:--

"Well, if not, what then?"

Bemis shut his eyes and crossed his gaunt legs, and began: "Think back

twenty years ago--more or less. Do you remember when I brought your

car down here for Watts McHurdie and his crowd to go to Washington in,

to the G.A.R. celebration? All right; do you remember that I came to

the office and told you I saw Bob Hendricks waiting for some one at

the Union Station, when the train got into the city that morning?"

"Yes," said Barclay, "you were so mysterious and funny about it, I

remember."

"Well," said Bemis, as he got up and poked a log that was annoying him

in the fireplace, "well, I have a little document in my desk at home,

that I got the night before in the Ridge, which will convince Bobbie,

if he has any sense, that this municipal ownership business isn't all

it's cracked up to be."

Barclay, who knew from Jane something of the truth, guessed the rest,

but he did not question Bemis further. "Oh, I don't know, Lige," he

began; "it seems to me I wouldn't drag that into it."

Bemis turned his old face, full of malicious passion, toward Barclay

and cried, "Maybe you wouldn't, John Barclay--you forget things; but

I never do; and you're a coward sometimes, and I am not."

The blaze of his wrath went out in a moment, and Barclay's mind went

back to that afternoon in the seventies when Hendricks picked Bemis up

and threw him bodily from the county convention and branded him as a

boodler. Barclay knew argument was useless. So he said nothing.

"He has the county officers--every man-jack of them from the

treasurer to Jake Dolan, the janitor--and I couldn't get hold of that

book by fair means without his knowing it. But I am going to have that

book, John--I'm going to have that book."

Barclay followed Bemis's mental processes, as if they were his own.

"Well--what if he does know it?" asked Barclay.

"Oh, if he knew I was after the book, he'd fix me,--have it destroyed

or something; he could do lots of things or beat me some way. I've got

to get that book--get it out of the court-house--and there's just

one way to get into the court-house, without using the doors and the

windows." When Bemis had finished speaking, he gazed steadily into

Barclay's eyes. And Bemis saw the fear that was in Barclay's face.

"Yes, I know a way into the court-house, John--it's mine by fifty

years' right of discovery. I'm going to have that book, and get an

expert opinion as to the similarity of the handwriting in the book and

the handwriting of my own little document. My own little document," he

mused, licking his chops like a hound at the prospect.

Now we will call that little document "Exhibit I" in the case of the

Larger Good _vs._ The People, and close thereby a long and tedious

chapter. But we will begin another chapter in which the wheels of

events spin rapidly in their courses toward that moral equilibrium

that deeds must find before they stop when they are started for the

Larger Good.

CHAPTER XXVII

The spring of 1904 in Sycamore Ridge opened in turmoil. The turmoil

came from the contest over the purchase of the town's water system.

Robert Hendricks as president of the Citizens' League was leading the

forces that advocated the purchase of the system by the town, as being

the only sure way to change the water supply from the polluted

mill-pond to a clean source. Six months before he had leased every

bill-board in town, and for the two months preceding the city election

that was to decide the question of municipal purchase he had hired

every available hall in town, for every vacant night during those

months, and had bought half of the first page of both the _Banner_ and

the _Index_ for those months--and all of this long before the town

knew the fight was coming. He covered the bill-boards and the first

pages of the newspapers with analyses of the water in the

mill-pond--badly infected from the outlet of the town sewers and its

surface drainage. The Citizens' League filled the halls with speakers

demanding the purchase of the plant and the removal of the pumping

station to a place several miles above the town, and four beyond the

mill-pond. Judge Bemis, with the aid and abetment of John Barclay, who

was in the game to help his old friend, put up banners denouncing

Hendricks as a socialist, accusing him of being the town boss, and

charged through the columns of the _Index_ that Hendricks' real motive

in desiring to have the city take over the waterworks system was to

make money on the sale of the city's bonds. So Hendricks was the

centre of the fight.

In the first engagement, a malicious contest, Hendricks lost. The town

refused to vote the bonds to buy the plant. But at the same election

the same people elected a city council overwhelmingly in favour of

municipal ownership and in favour of compelling the operating company

to move its plant from the mill-pond. The morning after the election

Hendricks began a lawsuit as a taxpayer and citizen to make the

waterworks company move its plant. The town could understand that

issue, and sentiment rallied to Hendricks again. Judge Bemis, at the

head of the company, although irritated, was not alarmed. For in the

courts he could promote delays, plead technicalities, and wear out his

adversary. It was an old game with him. Still, the suit disturbed the

value of his bonds, and having other resources, he gleefully decided

to use them.

And thus it fell out that one fine day in April, Trixie Lee, from the

bedraggled outer hem of the social garment down by the banks of the

Sycamore, called to the telephone Robert Hendricks of the town's

purple and fine linen, who dwelt on the hill. He did not recognize her

voice, the first time she called. But shrewd as Judge Bemis was, and

bad as he was, he did not know it all. He did not know that when

Hendricks had received the first anonymous letter three days before,

he had instructed the girls in the telephone office, which he

controlled, to make a record of every telephone call for his office or

his house, and when the woman's voice on the telephone that day

delivered Judge Bemis's message, the moment after she quit talking he

knew with whom he had been talking.

"Is this Mr. Hendricks?" the voice had begun, rather pleasantly. Yes,

it was Mr. Hendricks. "Well, I am your friend, but I don't dare to let

you know my name now; it would be all my life is worth." And Robert

Hendricks grinned pleasantly into the rubber transmitter as he

realized that his trap would work. "Yes, Mr. Hendricks, I am your

friend, and you have a powerful enemy." What with the insinuations in

the _Index_ and the venom that Lige Bemis had been putting into

anonymous circulars during the preliminary waterworks campaign, this

was no news to Mr. Hendricks; so he let the voice go on, "They want

you to dismiss that suit against the waterworks company that you

brought last week." There was a pause for a reply; but none came; then

the voice said, "Are you there, Mr. Hendricks--do you hear me?" And

Mr. Hendricks said that he heard perfectly. "And," went on the voice,

"as your friend I wish you would, too. Do you remember a letter you

once wrote to a woman, asking her to elope with you--a married woman,

Mr. Hendricks?" There was a pause for a reply, and again the voice

asked, "Do you hear, Mr. Hendricks?" and Mr. Hendricks heard; heard in

his soul and was afraid, but his voice did not quaver as he replied,

"Yes, I hear perfectly." Then the voice went on, "Well, they have that

letter--a little note--not over one hundred words, and with no date

on it, and the man who has it also has a photograph of page 234 of a

certain ledger in the county treasurer's office for 1879, and there is

an entry there in your handwriting, Mr. Hendricks; and he has had them

both enlarged to show that the handwriting of the note and of the

county book are the same; isn't that mean, Mr. Hendricks?" Hendricks

coughed into the transmitter, and she knew that he was there, so she

continued: "As your friend in this matter, I have got them to promise

that if you will come to the Citizens' League meeting that you have

called for to-morrow night at Barclay Hall and tell the people that

you think we need harmony in the Ridge worse than we need this

everlasting row, if you will merely say to Mr. Barclay as you pass

into the meeting, 'Well, John, I believe I'll dismiss that suit,' you

can have your letter back. He hasn't got the letter, but he will be

sure to tell the news to a friend who has." Here the voice faltered,

and said unconsciously, "Wait a minute, I've lost my place; oh, here

it is; all right. And if you don't come to the meeting and say that, I

believe they are going to spring those documents on the meeting to put

you in bad odour."

"Is that all?" asked Hendricks.

"Well--" a pause and then finally--"yes," came the voice.

"Well, my answer is no," said Hendricks, and while he was trying to

get central the voice called again and said:--

"Just one word more: if you still maintain your present decision, a

copy of that letter you wrote will be put into the hands of Mr.

Brownwell of the _Banner_ before the meeting; I tell you this to

protect you. He and Mrs. Brownwell and Mrs. Barclay will be in town

to-morrow evening on the Barclay car from the West on No. 6; you will

have until then to reconsider your decision; after that you act at

your own risk."

Again the voice ceased, and Hendricks learned from central who had

been talking with him. It was after banking hours, and he sat for a

time looking the situation squarely in the face. The reckoning had

come. He had answered "no" with much bravery over the telephone--but

in his heart a question began to rise, and his decision was clouded.

Hendricks walked alone under the stars that night, and as he walked he

turned the situation over and over as one who examines a strange

puzzle. He saw that his "no" could not be his own "no." Molly must be

partner in it. For to continue his fight for clean water he must risk

her good name. He measured Bemis, and remembered the old quarrel. The

hate in the face of the bribe-giver, thrown out of the county

convention a quarter of a century before, came to Hendricks, and he

knew that it was no vain threat he was facing. So he turned up the

other facet of the puzzle. There was Adrian. For an hour he considered

Adrian Brownwell, a vain jealous old man with the temper of a beast.

To see Molly, tell her of their common peril, get her decision, and be

with it at the meeting before Adrian saw the note, all in the two

hours between the arrival of the train bearing the Brownwells and Mrs.

Barclay, and the time of the meeting in Barclay Hall, was part of

Hendricks' puzzle. He believed that by using the telephone to make an

appointment he could manage it. Then he turned the puzzle over and saw

that to save Molly Brownwell's good name and his father's, human lives

must be sacrificed by permitting the use of foul water in the town.

And in the end his mind set. He knew that unless she forbade it, the

contest must go on to a righteous finish, through whatever perils,

over any obstacles. Yet as he walked back to the bank, determined not

to take his hand from the plough, he saw that he must prepare to go

into the next day as though it were his last. For in his consciousness

on the other side of the puzzle--always there was the foolish Adrian,

impetuous at best, but stark mad in his jealousy and wrath.

And Elijah Westlake Bemis, keeping account of the man's movements,

chuckled as he felt the struggle in the man's breast. For he was a

wise old snake, that Lige Bemis, and he had seduced many another man

after the brave impulsive "no" had roared in his face. Just before

midnight when he saw the electric light flash on in the private office

of the president of the Exchange National Bank, Lige Bemis, libertine

with men, strolled home and counted the battle won. "He's writing his

speech," he said to Barclay over the telephone at midnight. And John

Barclay, who had fought the local contest in the election with Bemis

to be loyal to a friend, and to help one who was in danger of losing

the profit on half a million dollars' investment in the Sycamore Ridge

waterworks, laughed as he walked upstairs in his pajamas, and said to

himself, "Old Lige is a great one--there is a lot of fight in the old

viper yet." It was nothing to Barclay that the town got its water from

a polluted pond. That phase of the case did not enter his

consciousness, though it was placarded on the bill-boards and had been

printed in the _Banner_ a thousand times during the campaign. To him

it was a fight by the demagogues against property interests, and he

was with property, even a little property--even a miserable little

dribble of property like half a million dollars' worth of waterworks

bonds.

And Robert Hendricks--playfellow of John Barclay's boyhood, partner

of his youth--sat working throughout the night, a brave man, going

into battle without a tremor. He went through his books, made out

statements of his business relations, prepared directions for the

heads of his different concerns, as a man would do who might be going

on a long journey. For above everything, Robert Hendricks was

foresighted. He prepared for emergencies first, and tried to avoid

them afterwards. And with the thought of the smallness of this life in

his soul, he looked up from his work to see the hard gray lines of the

dawn in the street outside of his office, bringing the ugly details

from the shadows that hid them during the day, and he sighed as he

wondered in what bourne he should see the next dawn break.

It was a busy day for Robert Hendricks, that next day, and through it

all his mind was planning every moment of the time how he could

protect Molly Brownwell. Did he work in the bank, behind his work his

mind was seeking some outlet from his prison. If he went over the

power-house at the electric plant, always he was looking among the

wheels for some way of refuge for Molly. When he spent an hour in the

office of the wholesale grocery house, he despatched a day's work, but

never for a second was his problem out of his head. He spent two hours

with his lawyers planning the suit against the water company, pointing

out new sources of evidence, and incidentally leaving a large check to

pay for the work. But through it all Molly Brownwell's good name was

ever before him, and when he thought how twenty years before he had

walked through another day planning, scheming, and contriving, all to

produce the climax of calamity that was hovering over her to-day, he

was sick and faint with horror and self-loathing.

But as the day drew to its noon, Hendricks began to feel a persistent

detachment from the world about him. It floated across his

consciousness, like the shadow anchor of some cloud far above him. He

began to watch the world go by. He seemed not to be a part of it. He

became a spectator. At four o'clock he passed Dolan on the street and

said, absently, "I want you to-night at the bank at seven o'clock

sharp--don't forget, it's very important."

As he walked down Main Street to the bank, the shadow anchor of the

cloud had ceased to flit across his consciousness. Life had grown all

gray and dull, and he was apart from the world. He saw the handbills

announcing the meeting that night as one who sees a curious passing

show; the men he met on the street he greeted as creatures from

another world. Yet he knew he smiled and spoke with them casually. But

it was not he who spoke; the real Robert Hendricks he knew was

separated from the pantomime about him. When he went into the bank at

five o'clock, the janitor was finishing his work. Hendricks called up

the depot on the telephone and found that No. 6 was an hour late. With

the realization that a full hour of his fighting time had been taken

from him and that the train would arrive only a scant hour before the

meeting, the Adrian face of his puzzle turned insistently toward

Hendricks. It was not fear but despair that seized him. The cloud was

over him. And for want of something to do he wrote. First he wrote

abstractedly and mechanically to John Barclay, then to Neal Ward--a

note for the _Banner_--and as the twilight deepened in the room, he

squared his chair to the table and wrote to Molly Brownwell; that

letter was the voice of his soul. That was real. Six o'clock struck.

Half-past six clanged on the town clock, and as Jake Dolan opened the

bank door, Hendricks heard the roar of the train crossing at the end

of Main Street.

"There goes Johnnie's private car, switching on the tail of her," said

Dolan, standing in the doorway.

Hendricks sent Dolan to a back room of the bank, and at seven-twenty

went to the telephone. "Give me 876, central," he called.

"Hello--hello--hello," he cried nervously, "hello--who is this?"

The answer came and he said, "Oh, I didn't recognize your voice." Then

he asked in a low tone, as one who had fear in his heart: "Do you

recognize me? If you do, don't speak my name. Where is Adrian?" Then

Mr. Dolan, listening in the next room, heard this: "You say Judge

Bemis phoned to him? Oh, he was to meet him at eight o'clock. How long

ago did he leave?" After a moment Hendricks' answer was: "Then he has

just gone; and will not be back?" Hendricks cut impatiently into

whatever answer came with: "Molly, I must see you within the next

fifteen minutes. I can't talk any more over the telephone, but I must

come up." "Yes," in a moment, "I must have your decision in a matter

of great importance to you--to you, Molly." There was a short

silence, then Dolan heard: "All right, I'll be there in ten minutes."

Then Hendricks turned from the telephone and called Dolan in. He

unlocked a drawer in his desk, and began speaking to Dolan, who stood

over him. Hendricks' voice was low, and he was repressing the

agitation in his heart by main strength.

"Jake," he said, talking as rapidly as he could, "I must be ungodly

frank with you. It doesn't make any difference whether he is right or

not, but Adrian Brownwell may be fooled into thinking he has reason to

be jealous of me." Hendricks was biting his mustache. "He's a raging

maniac of jealousy, Jake, but I'm not afraid of him--not for myself.

I can get him before he gets me, if it comes to that, but to do it

I'll have to sacrifice Molly. And I won't do that. If it comes to her

good name or my life--she can have my life." They were outside now

and Dolan was unhitching the horse. He knew instinctively that he was

not to reply. In a moment Hendricks went on, "Well, there is just one

chance in a hundred that it may turn that way--her good name or my

life--and on that chance I've written some letters here." He reached

in his coat and said, "Now, Jake, put these letters in your pocket and

if anything goes wrong with me, deliver them to the persons whose

names are on the envelopes--and to no one else. I must trust

everything to you, Jake," he said.

Driving up the hill, he met Bemis coming down town. He passed people

going to the meeting in Barclay Hall. He did not greet them, but drove

on. His jaw was set hard, and the muscles of his face were firm. As he

neared the Culpepper home he climbed from the buggy and hitched the

horse to the block in front of his own house. He hurried into the

Culpepper yard, past the lilac bushes heavy with blooms, and up the

broad stone steps with the white pillars looming above him. It was a

quarter to eight, and at that minute Bemis was saying to Adrian

Brownwell, "All right, if you don't believe it, don't take my word for

it, but go home right now and see what you find."

Molly Brownwell met Hendricks on the threshold with trembling steps.

"Bob, what is it?" she asked. They stood in the shadow of the great

white pillars, where they had parted a generation ago.

"It's this, Molly," answered Hendricks, as he put his hand to his

forehead that was throbbing with pain; "Lige Bemis has my letter to

you. Yes," he cried as she gasped, "the note--the very note, and to

get it I must quit the waterworks fight and go to the meeting to-night

and surrender. I had no right to decide that alone. It is our

question, Molly. We are bound by the old life--and we must take this

last stand together."

The woman shrank from Hendricks with horror on her face, as he

personified her danger. She could not reply at once, but stood staring

at him in the dusk. As she stared, the feeling that she had seen it

all before in a dream came over her, and the premonition that some

awful thing was impending shook her to the marrow.

"Molly, we have no time to spare," he urged. "I must answer Bemis in

ten minutes--I can do it by phone. But say what you think."

"Why--why--why--Bob--let me think," she whispered, as one trying

to speak in a dream, and that also seemed familiar to her. "It's

typhoid for my poor who died like sheep last year," she cried, "or my

good name and yours, is it, Bob? Is it, Bob?" she repeated.

He put his hand to his forehead again in the old way she remembered so

well--to temples that were covered with thin gray hair--and

answered, "Yes, Molly, that's our price."

Those were the last words that she seemed to have heard before; after

that the dialogue was all new to her. She was silent a few agonized

seconds and then said, "I know what you think, Bob; you are for my

poor; you are brave." He did not answer, fearing to turn the balance.

As she sank into a porch chair a rustling breeze moved the lilac

plumes and brought their perfume to her. From down the avenue came the

whir of wheels and the hurrying click of a horse's hoofs. At length

she rose, and said tremulously: "I stand with you, Bob. May God make

the blow as light as He can."

They did not notice that a buggy had drawn up on the asphalt in front

of the house. Hendricks put out his hand and cried, "Oh,

Molly--Molly--Molly--" and she took it in both of hers and pressed

it to her lips, and as Adrian Brownwell passed the lilac thicket in

the gathering darkness that is what he saw. Hendricks was halfway down

the veranda steps before he was aware that Brownwell was running up

the walk at them, pistol in hand, like one mad. Before the man could

fire, Hendricks was upon him, and had Brownwell's two hands gripped

tightly in one of his, holding them high in the air. The little man

struggled.

"Don't scream--for God's sake, don't scream," cried Hendricks to the

woman in a suppressed voice. Then he commanded her harshly, "Go in the

house--quick--Molly--quick."

She ran as though hypnotized by the force of the suggestion. Hendricks

had his free hand over Brownwell's mouth and around his neck. The

little old man was kicking and wriggling, but Hendricks held him. "Not

here, you fool, not here. Can't you see it would ruin her, you fool?

Not here." He carried and dragged Brownwell across the grass through

the shrubbery and into the Hendricks yard. No one was passing, and the

night had fallen. "Now," said Hendricks, as he backed against a pine

tree, still holding Brownwell, "I shall let you go if you'll promise

to listen to me just a minute until I tell you the whole truth. Molly

is innocent, man--absolutely innocent, and I'll show you if you'll

talk for a moment. Will you promise, man?"

Brownwell nodded his assent; Hendricks looked at him steadily for a

second and then said, "All right," and set the little man on his feet.

The glare of madness came into Brownwell's eyes, and as he turned he

came at Hendricks with his pistol drawn. An instant later there was a

shot. Brownwell saw the amazement flash into Hendricks' eyes, and then

Hendricks sank gently to the foot of the pine tree.

And Molly Brownwell, with the paralysis of terror still upon her,

heard the shot and then heard footsteps running across the grass. A

moment later her husband, empty-handed, chattering, shivering, and

white, stumbled into the room. Rage had been conquered by fear. For an

agonized second the man and woman stared at one another,

speechless--then the wife cried:--

"Oh--oh--why--why--Adrian," and her voice was thick with fear.--

The man was a-tremble--hands, limbs, body--and his mad eyes seemed

to shrink from the woman's gaze. "Oh, God--God--oh, God--" he

panted, and fell upon his face across the sofa. They heard a hurrying

step running toward the Hendricks house, there came a frightened,

choked cry of "Help!" repeated twice, another and another sound of

pattering feet came, and five minutes after the quaking man had

entered the door the whole neighbourhood seemed to be alive with

running figures hurrying silently through the gloom. The thud of feet

and the pounding of her heart, and the whimpering of the little man

who lay, face down, on the sofa, were the only sounds in her ears. She

started to go with the crowd. But Adrian screamed to her to stay.

"Oh," he cried, "he sank so softly--he sank so softly--he sank so

softly! Oh, God, oh, God--he sank so softly!"

And the next conscious record of her memory was that of Neal Ward

bursting into the room, crying, "Aunt Molly--Aunt Molly--do you know

Mr. Hendricks has committed suicide? They've found him dead with a

pistol by his side. I want some whiskey for Miss Hendricks. And they

need you right away."

But Molly Brownwell, with what composure she could, said, "Adrian is

sick, Neal--I can't--I can't leave him now." And she called after

Neal as he ran toward the door, "Tell them, Neal, tell them--why I

can't come." There was a hum of voices in the air, and the sound of a

gathering crowd. Soon the shuffle and clatter of a thousand feet made

it evident that the meeting at Barclay Hall had heard the news and was

hurrying up the hill. The crowd buzzed for an hour, and Molly and

Adrian Brownwell waited speechless together--he face downward on the

sofa, she huddled in a chair by the window. And then the crowd broke,

slowly, first into small groups that moved away together and then

turned in a steady stream and tramped, tramped, tramped down the hill.

When the silence had been unbroken a long time, save by the rumble of

a buggy on the asphalt or by the footsteps of some stray passerby, the

man on the sofa lifted his head, looked at his wife and spoke, "Well,

Molly?"

"Well, Adrian," she answered, "this is the end, I suppose?"

He did not reply for a time, and when he did speak, it was in a dead,

passionless voice: "Yes--I suppose so. I can't stay here now."

"No--no," she returned. "No, you should not stay here."

He sat up and stared vacantly at her for a while and then said,

"Though I don't see why I didn't leave years and years ago; I knew all

this then, as well as I do now." The wife looked away from him as she

replied: "Yes, I should have known you would know. I knew your secret

and you--"

"My secret," said Adrian, "my secret?"

"Yes--that you came North with your inherited money because when you

were in the Confederate army you were a coward in some action and

could not live among your own people."

"Who told you," he asked, "who told you?"

"The one who told you I have always loved Bob; life has told me that,

Adrian. Just as life has told you my story." They sat without speaking

for a time, and then the woman sighed and rose. "Two people who have

lived together twenty-five years can have no secrets from each other.

In a thousand, ways the truth comes out."

"I should have gone away a long time ago," he repeated, "a long time

ago; I knew it, but I didn't trust my instincts."

"Here comes father," she said, as the gate clicked.

They stood together, listening to the slow shuffle of the colonel

coming up the walk, and the heavy fall of his cane. The wife put out

her hand and said gently, "I think I have wronged you, Adrian, more

than any one else."

He did not take her hand but sighed, and turned and went up the wide

stairway. He was an old man then, and she remembered the years when he

tripped up gayly, and then she looked at her own gray hair in the

mirror and saw that her life was spent too.

As the colonel came in gasping asthmatically, he found his daughter

waiting for him. "Is Adrian better?" he asked excitedly. "Neal said

Adrian was sick."

"Yes, father, he's upstairs packing. He is going out on the four

o'clock train."

"Oh," said the colonel, and then panted a moment before asking, "Has

any one told you how it happened?"

"Yes," she replied, "I know everything. I think I'll run over there

now, father." As she stood in the doorway, she said, "Don't bother

Adrian--he'll need no help."

And so Molly Brownwell passed the last night with her dead lover.

About midnight the bell rang and she went to the door.

"Ah, madam," said Jacob Dolan, as he fumbled in his pockets, and tried

to breathe away from her to hide the surcease of his sorrow, "Ah,

madam," he repeated, as he suddenly thought to pull off his hat, "I

did not come for you--'twas Miss Hendricks I called for; but I have

one for you, too. He gave the bundle to me the last thing--poor lad,

poor lad." He handed her the letter addressed to Mrs. Brownwell, and

then asked, "Is the sister about?"

And when he found she could not be seen he went away, and Molly

Brownwell sat by the dead man's body and read:--

"My darling--my darling--they will let a dead man say that to

you--won't they? And yet, so far as any thought of mine could sin

against you, I have been dead these twenty years. Yet I know that I

have loved you all that time, and as I sit alone here in the bank, and

take the bridle off my heart, the old throb of joy that we both knew

as children comes back again. It is such a strange thing--this

life--such a strange thing." Then there followed a burst of

passionate regret from the man's very heart, and it is so sacred to a

manly love that curbed itself for a score of years, that it must not

be set down here.

Over and over Molly Brownwell read the letter and then crept out to

her lilac thicket and wept till dawn. She heard Adrian Brownwell go,

but she could not face him, and listened as his footsteps died away,

and he passed from her life.

And John Barclay kept vigil for the dead with her. As he tossed in his

bed through the night, he seemed to see glowing out of the darkness

before him the words Hendricks had written, in the letter that Dolan

gave Barclay at midnight. Sometimes the farewell came to him:--

"It is not this man of millions that I wish to be with a moment

to-night, John--but the boy I knew in the old days--the boy who ran

with me through the woods at Wilson's Creek, the boy who rode over the

hill into the world with me that September day forty years ago; the

boy whose face used to beam eagerly out of yours when you sat playing

at your old melodeon. I wish to be near him a little while to-night.

When you get this, can't you go to your great organ and play him back

into consciousness and tell him Bob says good-by?"

At dawn Barclay called Bemis out of bed, and before sunrise he and

Barclay were walking on the terrace in front of the Barclay home.

"Lige," began Barclay, "did you tell Adrian of that note last night?"

Bemis grinned his assent.

"And he went home, found Bob there conferring with Mrs. Brownwell

about his position in the matter, and Adrian killed him."

"That's the way I figured it out myself," replied Bemis, laconically,

"but it's not my business to say so."

"I thought you promised me you would just bluff with that note and not

go so far, Lige Bemis," said Barclay.

"Did he just bluff with me when he called me a boodler and threw me

downstairs in the county convention?"

"Then you lied to me, sir," snapped Barclay.

"Oh, hell, John--come off," sneered Bemis. "Haven't I got a right to

lie to you if I want to?"

The two men stared at each other like growling dogs for a moment, and

then Barclay turned away with, "What is there in the typhoid talk?"

"Demagogery--that's all. Of course there may be typhoid in the water;

but let 'em boil the water."

"But they won't."

"Well, then, if they eat too much of your 'Old Honesty' or drink too

much of my water unboiled, they take their own risk. You don't make a

breakfast food for hogs, and I can't run my water plant for fools."

"But, Lige," protested Barclay, "couldn't we hitch up the electric

plant--"

"Hitch up the devil and Tom Walker, John Barclay. When the wolves got

after you, did I come blubbering to you to lay down and take a light

sentence?" Barclay did not answer. Bemis continued: "Brace up,

John--what's turned you baby when we've got the whole thing won? We

didn't kill Hendricks, did we? Are you full of remorse and going to

turn state's evidence?"

Barclay looked at the ground for a time, and said: "I believe, Lige,

we did kill Bob--if it comes to that; and we are morally responsible

for--"

"Oh, bag your head, John; I'm going home. When you can talk some

sense, let me know."

And Bemis left Barclay standing in the garden looking at the sunrise

across the mill-pond. Presently the carrier boy with a morning paper

came around, and in it Barclay read the account of Hendricks' reported

suicide, corroborated by his antemortem statement, written and

delivered to Jacob Dolan an hour before he died.

"When I took charge of the Exchange National Bank," it read, "I found

that my father owed Garrison County nine thousand dollars for another

man's taxes, which he, my father, had agreed to pay, but had no money

to do so. The other man insisted on my father forging a note to

straighten matters up. It seemed at that time that the bank would

close and the whole county would be ruined if my father had not

committed that deed. I could not put the money back into the treasury

without revealing my father's crime, so I let the matter run for a few

years, renewing the forged note, and then, as it seemed an

interminable job of forgery, I forged the balance on the county books,

one afternoon between administrations in 1879. Mr. E. W. Bemis, who is

trying to force polluted water on Sycamore Ridge, has discovered this

forgery and has threatened to expose me in that and perhaps other

matters. So I feel that my usefulness in the fight for pure water in

the town is ended. I leave funds to fight the matter in the courts,

and I feel sure that we will win."

Barclay sat in the warm morning sun, reading and re-reading the

statement. Finally Jane Barclay, thin, broken and faded, on whom the

wrath of the people was falling with crushing weight, came into the

veranda, and put her hands on her husband's shoulders.

"Come in, John, breakfast is ready."

The woman whom the leprosy of dishonest wealth was whitening, walked

dumbly into the great house, and ate in silence. "I am going to

Molly," she said simply, as the two rose from their meal. "I think she

needs me, dear; won't you come, too?" she asked.

"I can't, Jane--I can't," cried Barclay. And when his wife had

pressed him, he broke forth: "Because Lige Bemis made Adrian kill Bob

and I helped--" he groaned, and sank into his chair, "and I helped."

When Neal Ward came to the office the next morning, he found Dolan

waiting for him. Ward opened the envelope that Dolan gave him, and

found in it the mortgage Hendricks had owned on the _Banner_ office,

assigned to Ward, and around the mortgage was a paper band on which

was written: "God bless you, my boy--keep up the fight; never say

die."

Then Ward read Adrian Brownwell's valedictory that was hanging on a

copy spike before him. It was the heart-broken sob of an old man who

had run away from failure and sorrow, and it need not be printed here.

On Memorial Day, when they came to the cemetery on the hill to

decorate the soldiers' graves, men saw that the great mound of lilacs

on Robert Hendricks' grave had withered. The seven days' wonder of his

passing was ended. The business that he had left prospered without

him, or languished and died; within a week in all but a dozen hearts

Hendricks' memory began to recede into the past, and so, where there

had been a bubble on the tide, that held in its prism of light for a

brief bit of eternity all of God's spectacle of life, suddenly there

was only the tide moving resistlessly toward the unknown shore. And

thus it is with all of us.

CHAPTER XXVIII

In the summer of 1904, following the death of Robert Hendricks, John

Barclay spent much time in the Ridge, more time than he had spent

there for thirty years. For in the City he was a marked man. Every

time the market quivered, reporters rushed to get his opinion about

the cause of the disturbance; the City papers were full of stories

either of his own misdeeds, or of the wrong-doings of other men of his

caste. His cronies were dying all about him of broken hearts or

wrecked minds, and it seemed to him that the word "indictment" was in

every column of every newspaper, was on every man's lips, and

literally floated in the air.

So he remained in Sycamore Ridge much of the time, and every fair

afternoon he rowed himself up the mill-pond to fish. He liked to be

alone; for when he was alone, he could fight the battle in his soul

without interruption. The combat had been gathering for a year; a

despair was rising in him, that he concealed from his womenkind--who

were his only intimate associates in those days--as if it had been a

crime. But out on the mill-pond alone, casting minnows for bass, he

could let the melancholy in his heart rage and battle with his sanity,

without let or hindrance. His business was doing well; the lawsuits

against the company in a dozen states were not affecting dividends,

and the department in charge of his charities was forwarding letters

of condolence and consolation from preachers and college presidents,

and men who under the old regime had been in high walks of life.

Occasionally some conservative newspaper or magazine would praise him

and his company highly; but he knew the shallowness of all the patter

of praise. He knew that he paid for it in one way or another, and he

grew cynical; and in his lonely afternoons on the river, often he

laughed at the whole mockery of his career, smiled at the thought of

organized religion, licking his boots for money like a dog for bones,

and then in his heart he said there is no God. Once, to relieve the

pain of his soul's woe, he asked aloud, who is God, anyway, and then

laughed as he thought that the bass nibbling at his minnow would soon

think he, John Barclay, was God. The analogy pleased him, and he

thought that his own god, some devilish fate, had the string through

his gills at that moment and was preparing to cast him into the fire.

Up in the office in the city, they went on making senators and

governors, and slipping a federal judge in where they could, but he

had little hand in it, for his power was a discarded toy. He sat in

his boat alone, rowing for miles and miles, from stump to stump, and

from fallen tree-top to tree-top, hating the thing he called God, and

distrusting men.

But when he appeared in the town, or at home, he was cheerful enough;

he liked to mingle with the people, and it fed his despair to notice

what a hang-dog way they had with him. He knew they had been abusing

him behind his back, and when he found out exactly what a man had

said, he delighted in facing the man down with it.

"So you think John Barclay could have saved Bob Hendricks' life, do

you, Oscar?" asked Barclay, as he overhauled Fernald coming out of the

post-office.

"Who said so?" asked Fernald, turning red.

"Oh," chuckled Barclay, "I got it from the hired girls' wireless news

agency. But you said it all right--you said it, Oscar; you said it

over to Ward's at dinner night before last." And Barclay grinned

maliciously.

Fernald scratched his head, and said, "Well, John, to be frank with

you, that's the talk all over town--among the people."

"The people--the people," snapped Barclay, impatiently, "the people

take my money for bridges and halls and parks and churches and statues

and then call me a murderer--oh, damn the people! Who started this

story?"

"See Jake Dolan, John--it's up to him. He can satisfy you," said

Fernald, and turned, leaving Barclay in the street.

Up the hill trudged the gray-clad little man, with his pugnacious

shoulders weaving and his bronzed face set hard and his mean jaw

locked. On the steps of the court-house he found Jake Dolan, smoking a

morning pipe with the loafers in the shade of the building.

"Here you, Jake Dolan," called Barclay, "what do you mean by accusing

me of murdering Bob Hendricks? What did I have to do with it?"

"Easy, easy, Johnnie, my boy," returned Dolan, knocking the ashes from

his pipe on the steps between his feet. "Gentlemen," said Dolan,

addressing the crowd, "you've heard what our friend says. All

right--come with me to my office, Johnnie Barclay, and I'll show

you." Barclay followed Dolan into the basement of the court-house,

with the crowd at a respectful distance. "Right this way--" and Dolan

switched on an electric light. "Do you see that break in the

foundation, Mr. Barclay? You do? And you know in your soul that it

opens into the cave that leads to the cellar of your own house. Well,

then, Mr. Johnnie Barclay--the book that contained the evidence

against Bob Hendricks did not go out of this court-house by the front

door, as you well know, but through that hole--stolen at night when I

was out; and the man who stole it was the horse thief that used to run

the cave--your esteemed friend, Lige Bemis."

The crowd was gaping at the rickety place in the foundation, and one

man pulled a loose stone out and let the cold air of the cave into the

room.

"Lige Bemis came to your house, Mr. Johnnie Barclay, got into the cave

from your cellar, broke through this wall, and stole the book that

contained the forgery made to cover General Hendricks' disgrace. And

who caused that disgrace but the overbearing, domineering John

Barclay, who made that old man steal to pay John Barclay's taxes, back

in the grasshopper year, when the sheriff and the jail were almost as

familiar to him as they are now,--by all counts. Ah, John Barclay,"

said the Irishman, turning to the crowd, "John Barclay, John

Barclay--you're a brave little man sometimes; I've seen you when I

was most ungodly proud of you; I've seen you do grand things, my

little man, grand things. But you're a coward too, Johnnie; sitting in

your own house while your horse-thief friend used your cellar to work

out the disgrace of the man who gave his good name to save your

own--that was a fine trick--a damn fine trick, wasn't it, Mr.

Barclay?"

Barclay started to go, but the crowd blocked his way. Dolan saw that

Barclay was trying to escape. "Turn tail, will you, my little man?

Wait one minute," cried Dolan. "Wait one minute, sir. For what was you

conniving against the big man? I know--to win your game; to win your

miserable little game. Ah, what a pup a man can be, Johnnie, what a

mangy, miserable, cowardly little pup a man can be when he tries--and

a decent man, too. Money don't mean anything to you--you got past

that, but it's to win the game. Why, man, look at yourself--look at

yourself--you'd cheat your own mother playing cards with matches for

counters--just to win the game." Dolan waved for the crowd to break.

"Let him out of here, and get out yourselves--every one of you. This

is public property you're desecrating."

Dolan sat alone in his office, pale and trembling after the crowd had

gone. Colonel Culpepper came puffing in and saw the Irishman sitting

with his head in his hands and his elbows on the table.

"What's this, Jake--what's this I hear?" asked the colonel.

"Oh, nothing," answered Dolan, and then he looked up at the colonel

with sad, remorseful eyes. "What a fool--what a fool whiskey in a

man's tongue is--what a fool." He reached under his cot for his jug,

and repeated as he poured the liquor into a glass, "What a fool, what

a fool, what a fool." And then, as he gulped it down and made a wry

face, "Poor little Johnnie at the mill; I didn't mean to hit him so

hard--not half so hard. What a fool, what a fool," and the two old

men started off for the harness shop together.

Neal Ward that night, in the _Banner_ office alone, wrote to his

sweetheart the daily letter that was never mailed.

"How sweet it is," he writes, "to have you at home. Sometimes I hear

your voice through the old leaky telephone, talking to Aunt Molly;

her phone and ours are through the same board, and your voice seems

natural then, and unstrained, not as it is when we meet. But I know

that some way we are meeting--our souls--in the infinite realm

outside ourselves--beyond our consciousness--either sleeping or

waking. Last night I dreamed a strange dream. A little girl, like

one of the pictures in mother's old family photograph album, seemed

to be talking with me,--dressed so quaintly in the dear old fashion

of the days when mother taught the Sycamore Ridge School. She seemed

to be playing with me in some way, and then she said: 'Oh, yes, I am

your telephone; she knows all about it. I tell her every night as we

play together.' And then she was no longer a little girl but a most

beautiful soul and she said with great gentleness: 'In her heart she

loves you--in her heart she loves you. This I know, only she is

proud--proud with the Barclay pride; but in her heart she loves you;

is not that enough?' What a strange dream! I wonder where we are--we

who animate our bodies, when we sleep. What is sleep, but the proof

that death is but a sleep? Oh, Jeanette, Jeanette, come into my soul

as we sleep."

He folded the letter, sealed and addressed it, and dated the envelope,

and put it in his desk--the desk before which Adrian Brownwell had

sat, eating his heart out in futile endeavour to find his place in the

world. Neal Ward had cleaned out one side of the desk, and was using

that for his own. Mrs. Brownwell kept her papers in the other side,

and one key locked them both. As he walked home that night under the

stars, his heart was full of John Barclay's troubles. Neal knew

Barclay well enough to know that the sensitive nature of the man, with

his strongly developed instinctive faculty for getting at the truth,

would be his curse in the turmoil or criticism through which he was

going. So a day or two later Neal was not surprised to find a long

statement in the morning press despatches from Barclay explaining and

defending the methods of the National Provisions Company. He proved

carefully that the notorious Door Strip saved large losses in transit

of the National Provisions Company's grain and grain produce, and

showed that in paying him for the use of these strips the railroad

companies were saving great sums for widowed and orphaned stockholders

of railroads--sums which would be his due for losses in transit if

the strips were not used.

Neal Ward knew what it had cost Barclay in pride to give out that

statement; so the young man printed it on the first page of the

_Banner_ with a kind editorial about Mr. Barclay and his good works.

That night when the paper was off, and young Ward was working on the

books of his office, he was called to the telephone.

"Is this you, Nealie Ward?" asked a woman's voice--the strong, clear,

deep voice of an old woman. And when he had answered, the voice went

on: "Well, Nealie, I wish to thank you for that editorial about John

to-night in the paper; I'm Mary Barclay. It isn't more than half true,

Nealie; and if it was all true, it isn't a fraction of what the truth

ought to be if John did what he could, but it will do him a lot of

good--right here in the home paper, and--Why, Jennie, I'm speaking

with Nealie Ward,--why, do you think I am not old enough to talk with

Nealie without breeding scandal?--as I was saying, my dear, it will

cheer John up a little, and heaven knows he needs something.

I'm--Jennie, for mercy sakes keep still; I know Nealie Ward and I

knew his father when he wasn't as old as Nealie--did his washing for

him; and boarded his mother four winters, and I have a right to say

what I want to to that child." The boy and the grandmother laughed

into the telephone. "Jennie is so afraid I'll do something improper,"

laughed Mrs. Barclay. "Oh, yes, by the way--here's a little item for

your paper to-morrow: Jennie's mother is sick; I think it's typhoid,

but you can't get John to admit it. So don't say typhoid." Then with a

few more words she rang off.

When the _Banner_ printed the item about Mrs. Barclay's illness, the

town, in one of those outbursts of feeling which communities often

have, seemed to try to show John Barclay the affection that was in

their hearts for the man who had grown up among them, and the family

that had been established under his name. Flowers--summer

flowers--poured in on the Barclays. Children came with wild flowers,

prairie flowers that Jane Barclay had not seen since she roamed over

the unbroken sod about Minneola as a girl; and Colonel Culpepper came

marching up the walk through the Barclay grounds, bearing his

old-fashioned bouquet, as grandly as an ambassador bringing a king's

gift. Jane Barclay sent word that she wished to see him.

"My dear," said the colonel, as he held the flowers toward her,

"accept these flowers from those who have shared your bounty--from

God's poor, my dear; these are God's smiles that they send you from

their hearts--from their very hearts, my dear, from their poor hearts

wherein God's smiles come none too often." She saw through glistening

eyes the broken old figure, with his coat tightly buttoned on that

July day to hide some shabbiness underneath. But she bade the colonel

sit down, and they chatted of old times and old places and old faces

for a few minutes; and the colonel, to whom any sort of social

function was a rare and sweet occasion, stayed until the nurse had to

beckon him out of the room over Mrs. Barclay's shoulder.

General Ward sent a note with a bunch of monthly blooming roses.

"MY DEAR JANE (he wrote): These roses are from slips we got from

John's mother when we planted our little yard. This red one is from

the very bush on which grew the rose John wore at his wedding. Pin

it on the old scamp to-night, and see how he will look. He was a

dapper little chap that night, and the years have hardly begun their

work on him; or perhaps he is such a tough customer that he dulls

the chisel of time. I do not know, and so long as it is so, you do

not care, but we both know, and are both glad that of all the many

things God has sent you in thirty years, he has sent you nothing so

fine as the joy that came with the day John wore this rose for

you--a joy that has grown while the rose has faded. And may this

rose renew your joy for another thirty years."

John read the note when he came in from the mill that evening, and

Jane watched the years slip off his face. He looked into the past as

it spread itself on the carpet near the bed.