"Well, well, well," he said, as he smiled into the picture he saw, "I

remember as well the general bringing that rose down to the office

that morning, wrapped in blue tissue paper from cotton batting rolls!

The package was tied with fancy red braid that used to bind muslin

bolts." He laughed quietly, and asked, "Jane, do you remember that old

red braid?" The sick woman nodded. "Well, with the little blue package

was a note from Miss Lucy, which said that my old teacher could not

give me a present that year--times were cruelly hard then, you

remember--but that she could and did put the blessing of her prayers

on the rose, that all that it witnessed at my wedding would bring me

happiness." He sat for a moment in silence, and, as the nurse was

gone, he knelt beside the sick woman and kissed her. And as the wife

stroked his head she whispered, "How that prayer has been answered,

John--dear, hasn't it?" And the great clock in the silent hall below

ticked away some of the happiest minutes it had ever measured.

But when he passed out of the sick room, the world--the maddening

press of affairs, and the combat in his soul--snapped back on his

shoulders with a mental click as though a load had fallen into its old

place. He stood before his organ, and could not press the keys. As he

sat there in the twilight made by the shaded electric lamps, the

struggle rose in his heart against the admission of anything into his

scheme of life but material things, and the conflict raged unchecked.

What a silliness, he said, to think that the mummery of a woman over a

rose could affect a life. Life is what the succession of the days

brings. The thing is or is not, he said to himself, and the gibber

about prayer and the moral force that moves the universe is for the

weak-minded. So he took his hell to bed with him as it went every

night, and during the heavy hours when he could not sleep, he tiptoed

into the sick room, and looked at the thin face of his wife, sleeping

a restless, feverish sleep, and a great fear came into his heart.

Once as the morning dawned he asked the nurse whom he met in the hall,

"Is it typhoid?"

She was a stranger to the town, and she said to him, "What does the

doctor tell you?"

"That's not the point," he insisted. "What do you think?"

She looked at him for an undecided moment and replied, "I'm not paid

to think, Mr. Barclay," and went past him with her work. But he knew

the truth. He went to his bed, and threw himself upon it, a-tremble

with remorse and fear, and the sneer in his heart stilled his lips and

he could not look outside himself for help. So the morning came, and

another day, bringing its thousand cares, faced him, like a jailer

with his tortures.

Time dragged slowly in the sick room and at the mill. One doctor

brought another, and the Barclay private car went far east and came

flying back with a third. The town knew that Mrs. John Barclay was

dangerously sick. There came hopeful days when the patient's mind was

clear; on one of these days Mrs. McHurdie called, and they let her see

the sick woman. She brought some flowers.

"In the flowers, Jane," she said, "you will find something from

Watts." Mrs. McHurdie smiled. "You know he sat up till 'way after

midnight last night, playing his accordion. Oh, it's been years since

he has touched it. And this morning when I got up, I found him sitting

by the kitchen table, writing. It's a poem for you." Mrs. McHurdie

looked rather sheepish as she said: "You know how Watts is, Jane; he

just made me bring it. You can read it when you get well."

They hurried Mrs. McHurdie out, and when Jane Barclay went to sleep,

they found tears on her pillow, and in her hand the verses,--the

limping, awkward verses of an old man, whose music only echoed back

from the past. The nurses and the young doctor from Boston had a good

laugh at it. Each of the four stanzas began with two lines that asked:

"Oh, don't you remember the old river road, that ran through the

sweet-scented wood?" To them it was a curious parody on something old

and quaint that they had long since forgotten. But to the woman who

lay murmuring of other days, whose lips were parched for the waters of

brooks that had surrendered to the plough a score of years ago, the

halting verses of Watts McHurdie were laden with odours of grape

blossoms, of wild cucumbers and sumach, of elder blossoms, and the

fragrance of the crushed leaves of autumn. And the music of distant

ripples played in her feverish brain and the sobbing voice of the

turtle dove sang out of the past for her as she slept. All through the

day and the night and for many nights and days she whispered of the

trees and the running water and the wild grass and the birds.

And so one morning when it was still gray, she woke and said to John,

who bent over her, "Why, dear, we are almost home; there are the

lights across the river; just one more hill, dearie, and then--" And

then with the water prattling in her ears at the last ford she turned

to the wall and sank to rest.

Day after day, until the days and nights became a week and the week

repeated itself until nearly a month was gone, John Barclay, dry-eyed

and all but dumb, paced the terrace before his house by night, and by

day roamed through the noisy mill or wandered through his desolate

house, seeking peace that would not come to him. The whole foundation

of his scheme of life was crumbling beneath him. He had built

thirty-five years of his manhood upon the theory that the human brain

is the god of things as they are and as they must be. The structure of

his life was an imposing edifice, and men called it great and

successful. Yet as he walked his lonely way in those black days that

followed Jane's death, there came into his consciousness a strong,

overmastering conviction, which he dared not accept, that his house

was built on sand. For here were things outside of his plans, outside

of his very beliefs, coming into his life, bringing calamity, sorrow,

and tragedy with them into his own circle of friends, into his own

household, into his own heart. As he walked through the dull, lonely

hours he could not escape the vague feeling, though he fought it as

one mad fights for his delusion, that all the tragedies piling up

about him came from his own mistakes. Over and over again he threshed

the past. Molly Brownwell's cry, "You have sold me into bondage, John

Barclay," would not be stilled, though at times he could smile at it;

and the broken body and shamed face of her father haunted him like an

obsession. Night after night when he tried to sleep, Robert Hendricks'

letter burned in fire before his eyes, and at last so mad was the

struggle in his soul that he hugged these things to him that he might

escape the greater horror: the dreadful red headlines in the

sensational paper they had sent him from the City office which

screamed at him, "John Barclay slays his wife--Aids a water

franchise grab that feeds the people typhoid germs and his own wife

dies of the fever." He had not replied to the letter from the law

department of the Provisions Company which asked if he wished to sue

for libel, and begged him to do so. He had burned the paper, but the

headlines were seared into his brain.

Over and over he climbed the fiery ladder of his sins: the death of

General Hendricks, the sacrifice of Molly Culpepper, the temptation

and fall of her father, the death of his boyhood's friend, and then

the headlines. These things were laid at his door, and over and over

again, like Sisyphus rolling the stones uphill, he swept them away

from his threshold, only to find that they rolled right back again.

And with them came at times the suspicion that his daughter's

unhappiness was upon him also. And besides these things, a hundred

business transactions wherein he had cheated and lied for money rose

to disturb him. And through it all, through his anguish and shame, the

faith of his life kept battling for its dominion.

Once he sent for Bemis and tried to talk himself into peace with his

friend. He did not speak of the things that were corroding his heart,

but he sat by and heard himself chatter his diabolic creed as a

drunkard watches his own folly.

"Lige," he said, "I'm sick of that infernal charities bureau we've

got. I'm going to abolish it. These philanthropic millionaires make me

sick at the stomach, Lige. What do they care for the people? They know

what I know, that the damn people are here to be skinned." He laughed

viciously and went on: "Sometimes I think we filthy rich are divided

into two classes: those of us who keep mistresses, and those of us who

have harmless little entanglements with preachers and college

presidents. Neither the lemon-haired women nor the college presidents

interfere with our business; they don't hamper us--not the slightest.

They just take our money, and for a few idle hours amuse us, and make

us feel that we are good fellows. As for me, I'll have neither women

nor college presidents purring around my ankles. I'm going to cut out

the philanthropy appropriation to-day."

And he was as good as his word. But that did not help. The truth kept

wrenching his soul, and his feet blindly kept trying to find a path to

peace.

It was late one night in August, and a dead moon was hanging in the

south, when, treading the terrace before his house, he saw a shadow

moving down the stairway in the hall. At first his racked nerves

quivered, but when he found that it was his mother, he went to meet

her, exclaiming as he mounted the steps to the veranda, "Why, mother,

what is it--is anything wrong?"

Though it was past midnight, Mary Barclay was dressed for the day. She

stood in the doorway with the dimmed light behind her, a tall, strong

woman, straight and gaunt as a Nemesis. "No, John--nothing is

wrong--in the house." She walked into the veranda and began as she

approached a chair, "Sit down, John; I wish to talk with you."

"Well, mother--what is it?" asked the son, as he sat facing her.

She paused a moment looking earnestly at his face and replied, "The

time has come when we must talk this thing out, John, soul to soul."

He shrank from what was coming. His instinct told him to fight away

the crisis. He began to palaver, but his mother cut him short, as she

exclaimed:--

"Why don't you let Him in, John?"

"Let who in?" asked her son.

"You know Whom, John Barclay; that was your grandfather speaking then,

the old polly foxer. You know, my boy. Don't you remember me bending

over the town wash-tub when you were a child, Johnnie? Don't you

remember the old song I used to sing--of course you do, child--as I

rubbed the clothes on the board: 'Let Him in, He is your friend, let Him

in, He is your friend; He will keep you to the end--let--Him--in!' Of

course you remember it, boy, and you have been fighting Him with all

your might for six months now, and since Jane went, the fight is driving

you crazy--can't you see, John?"

The son did not reply for a moment, then he said, "Oh, well, mother,

that was all right in that day, but--"

"John Barclay," cried the mother sternly, as she leaned toward him,

"the faith that bore your father a martyr to the grave, sustained me

in this wilderness, and kept me happy as I scrubbed for your bread,

shall not be scoffed in my presence. We are going to have this thing

out to-night. I, who bore you, and nursed you, and fed you, and staked

my soul on your soul, have some rights to-night. Here you are,

fifty-four years old, and what have you done? You've killed your

friend and your friend's father before him--I know that, John. You've

wrecked the life of the sister of your first sweetheart, and put fear

and disgrace in her father's face forever--forever, John Barclay, as

long as he lives. I know that too; I haven't been wrapped in pink

cotton all these years, boy--I've lived my own life since you left my

wing, and made my own way too, as far as that goes. And now you are

trying to quench the fires of remorse in your soul because your wife

died a victim of your selfish, ruthless, practical scheme of things.

More than that, my son--more than that, your child is suffering all

the agony that a woman can suffer because of your devilish system of

traffic in blood for money. You know what I mean, John. That boy told

the truth, as you admit, and he could either run or lie, and for being

a man you have broken up a God-sent love merely to satisfy your own

vanity. Oh, John--John," she cried passionately, "my poor, blind,

foolish boy--haven't you found the ashes in the core of your faith

yet--aren't you ready to quit?"

He began, "Don't you think, mother, I have suffered--"

"Suffered, boy? Suffered? Of course you have suffered, John," she

answered, taking his hands in hers. "I have seen the furnace fires

smoking your face, and I know you have suffered, Johnnie; that's why I

am coming to you--to ask you to quit suffering. Look at it, my

boy--what are you suffering for? Is it material power you want? Well,

you have never had it. The people are going right along running their

own affairs in spite of you. All your nicely built card houses are

knocked over. In the states and in the federal government, in spite of

your years of planning and piecing out your little practical system,

at the very first puff of God's breath it goes to pieces. The men whom

you bought and paid for don't stay bought--do they, my boy? Oh, your

old mother knows, John. Men who will sell are never worth buying; and

the house that relies on them, falls. You have built a sand dam,

son--like the dams you used to build in the spring stream when you

were a child. It melts under pressure like straw. You have no worldly

power. In this practical world you are a failure, and good old Phil

Ward, who went out into the field and scattered seeds of discontent at

your system--he is seeing his harvest ripen in his old age, John,"

she cried. "Can't you see your failure? Look at it from a practical

standpoint: what thing in the last thirty years have you advocated,

and Philemon Ward opposed, that to-day he has not realized and you

lost? His prescription for the evils may have been wrong many times,

but his diagnosis of them was always right, and they are being cured,

in spite of all your protest that they did not exist. Which of you has

won his practical fight in this practical world--his God or your God;

the ideal world or the material world, boy? Can't you see it?" The old

woman leaned forward and looked in her son's dull, unresponsive face.

"Can't you see how you have failed?" she pleaded.

They rose together and began to pace the long floor of the veranda.

"Oh, mother," he cried, as he put his arm about her, "I am so

lonely--so tired, so sick in the heart of me."

They didn't speak for a time, but walked together in silence. At

length the mother began again. "John," she said, as they turned at the

end of the porch, "I suppose you are saying that you have your

money--that it is material--solid, substantial, and undeniable. But

is it? Isn't it all a myth? Leave it where it is--in the shape of

securities and stocks and credits--what will it do? Will it bring

Jane back? Will it give Jeanette her heart's desire, and make her

happy all her life? You know, dear, that it will only make me

miserable. Has it made you happy, John? Turn it into gold and pile it

up in the front yard--and what will it buy that poor Phil Ward has

not had all of his life--good food, good clothing--good enough, at

least--a happy family, useful children, and a good name? A good name,

John, is rather to be chosen than great riches--than all your money,

my son--rather to be chosen than all your money. Can you buy that

with your millions piled on millions?"

They were walking slowly as she spoke, and they turned into the

terrace. There they stood looking at the livid moon sinking behind the

great house.

"Is there more joy in this house than in any other house in town,

John--answer me squarely, son--answer me," she cried. He shook his

head sadly and sighed. "A mother, whose heart bleeds every hour as she

sees her son torturing himself with footless remorse; that is one. A

heart-broken, motherless girl, whose lover has been torn away from her

by her father's vanity and her own pride, and whose mother has been

taken as a pawn in the game her father played with no motive, no

benefit, nothing but to win his point in a miserable little game of

politics; that is number two. And a man who should be young for twenty

years yet, who should have been useful for thirty years--and now what

is he? powerless, useless, wretched, lonely, who spends his time

walking about fighting against God, that he may prove his own wisdom

and nothing more."

"Mother," cried Barclay, petulantly, "I can't stand this--that you

should turn on me--now." He broke away from her, and stood alone.

"When I need you most, you reproach me. When I need sympathy, you

scorn all that I have done. You can't prove your God. Why should I

accept Him?"

The gaunt old woman stretched out her arms and cried: "Oh, John

Barclay, prove your god. Tell him to come and give you a moment's

happiness--set him to work to restore your good name; command him to

make Jeanette happy. These things my God can do! Let your Mammon," she

cried with all the passion of her soul, "let your Mammon come down and

do one single miracle like that." Her voice broke and she sobbed.

"What a tower of Babel--an industrial Babel, you are building,

John--you and your kith and kind. The last century gave us

Schopenhauers and Kants, all denying God, and this one gives us

Railroad Kings and Iron Kings and Wheat Kings, all by their works

proclaiming that Mammon has the power and the glory and the Kingdom. O

ye workers of iniquity!" she cried, and her voice lifted, "ye wicked

and perverse--"

She did not finish, but broken and trembling, her strength spent and

her faith scorned, she sank on her knees by a marble urn on the

terrace and sobbed and prayed. When she rose, the dawn was breaking,

and she looked for a moment at her son, who had been sitting near her,

and cried: "Oh, my boy, my little boy that I nursed at my breast--let

Him in, He is your friend--and oh, my God, sustain my faith!"

Her son came to her side and led her into the house. But he went to

his room and began the weary round, battling for his own faith.

As he stood by his open window that day at the mill, he saw Molly

Brownwell across the pond, going into his home. He watched her idly

and saw Jeanette meet her at the door, and then as his memory went

back to the old days, he tried to find tears for the woman who had

died, but he could only rack his soul. Tears were denied to him.

He was a rich man--was John Barclay; some people thought that, taking

his wealth as wealth goes, all carefully invested in substantial

things--in material things, let us say--he was the richest man in

the Mississippi Valley. He bought a railroad that day when he looked

through the office window at Molly Brownwell--a railroad three

thousand miles long. And he bought a man's soul in a distant city--a

man whom he did not know even by name, but the soul was thrown in "to

boot" in a bargain; and he bought a woman's body whose face he had

never seen, and that went as part of another trade he was making and

he did not even know they had thrown it in. And he bought a child's

life, and he bought a city's prosperity in another bargain, and bought

the homage of a state, and the tribute of a European kingdom, as part

of the day's huckstering. But with all his wealth and power, he could

not buy one tear--not one little, miserable tear to moisten his

grief-dried heart. For tears, just then, were a trifle high. So Mr.

Barclay had to do without, though the man whose soul he bought wept,

and the woman whose body came with a trade, sobbed, and the dead face

of the child was stained with a score of tears.

They went to Jeanette Barclay's room,--the gray-haired woman and the

girl,--and they sat there talking for a time--talking of things that

were on their lips and not in their hearts. Each felt that the other

understood her. And each felt that something was to be said. For one

day before the end Jeanette's mother had said to her: "Jennie, if I am

not here always go to Molly--ask her to tell you about her girlhood."

The mother had rested for a while, and then added, "Tell her I said

for you to ask her, and she'll know what I mean."

"Jeanette," said Molly Brownwell, "your mother and I were girls

together. Your father saw more of her at our house than he did at her

own home, until they married. Did you know that?" Jeanette nodded

assent. "So one day last June she said to me, 'Molly, sometime I wish

you would tell Jennie all about you and Bob.'"

Mrs. Brownwell paused, and Jeanette said, "Yes, mother told me to ask

you to, Aunt Molly." Tears came into the daughter's eyes, and she

added, "I think she knew even then that--"

And then it all came back, and after a while the elder woman was

saying, "Well, once upon a time there lived a princess, my dear. All

good stories begin so--don't they? She was a fat, pudgy little

princess who longed to grow up and have hoop-skirts like a real

sure-enough woman princess, and there came along a tall prince--the

tallest, handsomest prince in all the wide world, I think. And he and

the princess fell in love, as princesses and princes will, you know,

my dear,--just as they do now, I am told. And the prince had to go

away on business and be gone a long, long time, and while he was gone

the father of the princess and the friend of the prince got into

trouble--and the princess thought it was serious trouble. She thought

the father of the prince would have to go to jail and maybe the prince

and his friend fail. My, my, Jeanette, what a big word that word fail

seemed to the little fat princess! So she let a man make love to her

who could lend them all some money and keep the father out of jail and

the prince and his friend from the awful fate of failure. So the man

lent the money and made love, and made love. And the little princess

had to listen; every one seemed to like to have her listen, so she

listened and she listened, and she was a weak little princess. She

knew she had wronged the prince by letting the man make love to her,

and her soul was smudged and--oh, Jeanette, she was such a foolish,

weak, miserable little princess, and they didn't tell her that there

is only one prince for every princess, and one princess for every

prince--so she took the man, and sent away the prince, and the man

made love ever so beautifully--but it was not the real thing, my

dear,--not the real thing. And afterwards when she saw the

prince--so young and so strong and so handsome, her heart burned for

him as with a flame, and she was not ashamed; the wicked, wicked

princess, she didn't know. And so they walked together one night right

up to the brink of the bad place, dearie--right up to the brink; and

the princess shuddered back, and saved the prince. Oh, Jeanette,

Jeanette, Jeanette," sobbed the woman, in the girl's arms, "right in

this room, in this very room, which was your mother's room in the old

house, I came out of the night, as bad a woman as God ever sent away

from Him. And your mother and I cried it out, and talked it out, and I

fought it out, and won. Oh, I won, Jeanette--I won!"

The two women were silent for a time, and then the elder went on:

"That's what your mother wished you to know--that for every princess

there is just one real prince, and for every prince there is just one

real princess, my dear, and when you have found him, and know he is

true, nothing--not money, not friends, not father nor mother--when

he is honest, not even pride--should stand between you. That is what

your mother sent you, dearie. Do you understand?"

"I think I do, Aunt Molly--I think so," repeated the girl. She looked

out of the window for a moment, and then cried, "Oh, Aunt Molly--but

I can't, I can't. How could he, Aunt Molly--how could he?" The girl

buried her face in the woman's lap, and sobbed.

After a time the elder woman spoke. "You know he loves you, don't you,

dear?"

The girl shook her head and cried, "But how could he?" and repeated it

again and again.

"And you still love him--I know that, my dear, or you could not--you

would not care, either," she added.

And so after a time the tears dried, as tears will, and the two women

fell back into the pale world of surfaces, and as Molly Brownwell left

she took the girl's hand and said: "You won't forget about the little

pudgy princess--the dear, foolish, little weak princess, will you,

Jeanette? And, dearie," she added as she stood on the lower steps of

the porch, "don't--don't always be so proud--not about that, my

dear--about everything else in the world, but not about that." And so

she went back into the world, and ceased to be a fairy godmother, and

took up her day's work.

John Barclay went to the City that night for the first time in two

months, and Jeanette and her Grandmother Barclay kept the big house

alone. In ten days he came back; his face was still hard, and the red

rims around his eyes were dry, and his voice was sullen, as it had

been for many weeks. His soul was still wrestling with a spirit that

would not give up the fight. That night his daughter tried to sit with

him, as she had tried many nights before. They sat looking at the

stars in silence as was their wont. Generally the father had risen and

walked away, but that night he turned upon her and said:--

"Jeanette, don't you like to be rich? I guess you are the richest girl

in this country. Doesn't that sound good to you?"

"No, father," she answered simply, and continued, "What can I do with

all that money?"

"Marry some man who's got sense enough to double it, and double it,"

cried Barclay, harshly. "Then there'll be no question but that you'll

be the richest people in the world."

"And then what?" asked the girl.

"Then--then," he cried, "make the people in this world stand

around--that's what."

"But, father," she said as she put her hand on his arm, "what if I

don't want them to stand around? Why should I have to bother about

it?"

"Oh," he groaned, "your grandmother has been filling you full of

nonsense." He did not speak for a time, and at length she rose to go

to bed. "Jeanette," he cried so suddenly that it startled her, "are

you still moping after Neal Ward? Do you love him? Do you want me to

go and get him for you?"

The girl stood by her father's chair a moment and then answered

colourlessly: "No, father, I don't want you to get him for me. I am

not moping for him, as you call it."

Her desolate tone reached some chord in his very heart, for he caught

her hand, and put it to his cheek and said softly, "But she loves

him--my poor little girl loves him?"

She tried to pull away her hand and replied, in the same dead voice:

"Oh, well--that doesn't matter much, I suppose. It's all over--so

far as I am concerned." She turned to leave him, and he cried:--

"My dear, my dear--why don't you go to him?"

She stopped a moment and looked at her father, and even in the

starlight she could see his hard mouth and his ruthless jaw. Then she

cried out, "Oh, father, I can't--I can't--" After a moment she

turned and looked at him, and asked, "Would you? Would you?" and

walked into the house without waiting for an answer.

The father sat crumpled up in his chair, listening to the flames

crackling in his heart. The old negation was fighting for its own, and

he was weary and broken and sick as with a palsy of the soul. For

everything in him trembled. There was no solid ground under him. He

had visited his material kingdom in the City, and had seen its strong

fortresses and had tried all of its locks and doors, and found them

firm and fast. But they did not satisfy his soul; something within him

kept mocking them; refusing to be awed by their power, and the eternal

"yes" rushed through his reason like a great wind.

As he sat there, suddenly, as from some power outside, John Barclay

felt a creaking of his resisting timbers, and he quit the struggle.

His heart was lead in his breast, and he walked through the house to

his pipe organ, that had stood silent in the hall for nearly a year.

He stood hesitatingly before it for a second, and then wearily lay him

down to rest, on a couch beside it, where, when he had played the last

time, Jane lay and listened. He was tired past all telling, but his

soul was relaxed. He lay there for hours--until the tall clock above

his head chimed two. He could not sleep, but his consciousness was

inert and his mind seemed limp and empty, as one who has worked past

his limit. The hymn that the clock chimed through the quarter hours

repeated itself over and over again without meaning in his brain.

Something aroused him; he started up suddenly, and lying half on his

elbow and half on his side he stared about him, and was conscious of a

great light in the room: it was as though there was a fire near by and

he was alarmed, but he could not move. As he looked into space,

terrified by the paralysis that held him, he saw across the face of

the organ, "Righteousness exalteth a Nation, but sin is a reproach to

any people."

Quick as a flash his mind went back to the time that same motto stared

meaninglessly at him from above the pulpit in the chapel at West

Point, to which he had been appointed official visitor at Commencement

many years before. But that night as he gazed at the text its meaning

came rushing through his brain. It came so quickly that he could not

will it back nor reason it in. Righteousness, he knew, was not

piety--not wearing your Sunday clothes to church and praying and

singing psalms; it was living honestly and kindly and charitably and

dealing decently with every one in every transaction; and sin--that,

he knew--was the cheating, the deceiving, and the malicious greed

that had built up his company and scores of others like it all over

the land. That, he knew--that bribery and corruption and vicarious

stealing which he had learned to know as business--that was a

reproach to any people, and as it came to him that he was a miserable

offender and that the other life, the decent life, was the right life,

he was filled with a joy that he could not express, and he let the

light fail about him unheeded, and lay for a time in a transport of

happiness. He had found the secret.

The truth had come to him--to him first of all men, and it was his to

tell. The joy of it--that he should find out what righteousness

was--that it was not crying "Lord, Lord" and playing the

hypocrite--thrilled him. And then the sense of his sinning came over

him, but only with joy too, because he felt he could show others how

foolish they were. The clock stopped ticking; the chimes were silent,

and he lay unconscious of his body, with his spirit bathed in some new

essence that he did not understand and did not try to understand.

Finally he rose and went to his organ and turned on the motor, and put

his hands to the keys. As he played the hymn to the "Evening Star,"

John Barclay looked up and saw his mother standing upon the stair with

her fine old face bathed in tears. And then at last--

Tears? Tears for Mr. Barclay? All these months there have been no

tears for him--none, except miserable little corroding tears of rage

and shame. But now there are tears for Mr. Barclay, large, man's size,

soul-healing tears--tears of repentance; not for the rich Mr.

Barclay, the proud Mr. Barclay, the powerful, man-hating, God-defying

Mr. Barclay of Sycamore Ridge, but for John Barclay, a contrite man,

the humblest in all the kingdom.

And as John Barclay let his soul rise with the swelling music, he felt

the solace of a great peace in his heart; he turned his wet face

upward and cried, "Oh, mother, mother, I feel like a child!" Then Mary

Barclay knew that her son had let Him in, knew in her own heart all

the joy there is in heaven over one sinner that repenteth.

CHAPTER XXIX

It is written in the Book that holds the wisdom of our race that one

who is reborn into the Kingdom of God, enters as a little child. It is

there in black and white, yet few people get the idea into their

consciousnesses. They expect regeneration to produce an upright man.

God knows better than that. And we should know better too when it is

written down for us. And so you good people who expect to see John

Barclay turn rightabout face on the habits of a lifetime are to be

disappointed. For a little child stumbles and falls and goes the wrong

way many times before it learns the way of life. There came days after

that summer night of 1904, when John Barclay fell--days when he would

sneak into the stenographers' room in his office in the City and tear

up some letter he had dictated, when he would send a telegram

annulling an order, when he would find himself cheating and gouging

his competitors or his business associates,--even days when he had

not the moral courage to retrace his steps although he knew he was

wrong. Shame put her brand on his heart, and his face showed to those

who watched it closely--and there were scores of fellow-gamblers at

the game with him, whose profits came from watching his face--his

face showed forth uncertainty and daze. So men said, "The old man's

off his feed," or others said, "Barclay's losing his nerve"; and still

others said, "Can it be possible that the old hypocrite is getting a

sort of belated conscience?"

But slowly, inch by inch, the child within him grew; he gripped his

soul with the iron hand of will that had made a man of him, and when

the child fell and ached with shame, Barclay's will sustained the

weakling. We are so hidden by our masks that this struggle in the

man's soul, though guessed at by some of those about him, was unknown

to the hundreds who saw him every day. But for him the universe had

changed. And as a child, amazed, he looked upon the new wonder of

God's order about him and went tripping and stumbling and toppling

over awkwardly through it all as one learning some new equilibrium.

There were times when his heart grew sick, and he would have given it

all up. There were hours when he did surrender; when he did a mean

thing and gloried in it, or a cowardly thing and apologized for it.

But his will rose and turned him back to his resolve. He found the big

things easy, and the little things hard to do. So he kept at the big

things until they had pushed him so far toward his goal that the

little things were details which he repaired slowly and with anguish

of humiliation in secret, and unknown even to those who were nearest

to him.

And all this struggle was behind the hard face, under the broad, high

forehead, back of the mean jaw, beneath the cover of the sharp brazen

eyes. Even in Sycamore Ridge they did not suspect the truth until

Barclay had grown so strong in his new faith that he could look at his

yesterdays without shuddering.

The year of our Lord nineteen hundred and six was a slow year

politically in Sycamore Ridge, so in the parliament at McHurdie's shop

discussion took somewhat wider range than was usual. It may interest

metaphysicians in the world at large to know that the McHurdie

parliament that August definitely decided that this is not a material

world; that sensation is a delusion, that the whole phantasmagoria of

the outer and material world is a reaction of some sort upon the

individual consciousness. Up to this point the matter is settled, and

metaphysicians may as well make a record of the decision; for Watts

McHurdie, Jacob Dolan, Philemon Ward, Martin Culpepper, and sometimes

Oscar Fernald, know just exactly as much about it as the ablest

logician in the world. It is, however, regrettable that after deciding

that the external world is but a divine reaction upon the individual

consciousness, the parliament was unable to reach any sort of a

decision as to whose consciousness received the picture. Mr. Dolan

maintained vigorously that his consciousness was the one actually

affected, and that the colonel and the general and Watts were mere

hallucinations of his. The general held that Jake and the others were

accessory phantasms of his own dream, and Watts and the colonel, being

of more poetical temperament, held that the whole outfit was a chimera

in some larger consciousness, whose entity it is not given us to know.

As for Oscar, he claimed the parliament was crazy, and started to

prove it, when it was thought best to shift and modify the discussion;

and, therefore, early in September, when the upper currents of the

national atmosphere were vocal with discordant allegations, denials,

accusations, and maledictions, in Watts McHurdie's shop the question

before the house was, "How many people are there in the world?" For

ten days, in the desultory debate that had droned through the summer,

the general, true to his former contention, insisted that there was

only one person in the world. Mr. Dolan, with the Celtic elasticity of

reason, was willing to admit two.

"You and me and no more--all the rest is background for us," he

proclaimed. "If the you of the moment is the colonel--well and good;

then the colonel and I for it; but if it is the general and I--to the

trees with your colonel and Watts, and the three billion

others--you're merely stage setting, and become third persons."

"But," asked McHurdie, "if I exist this minute with you, and then you

focus your attention on Mart there, the next minute, and he exists,

what becomes of me when you turn your head from me?"

Dolan did not answer. He dipped into the _Times_ and read awhile; and

the colonel and the general got out the checkerboard and plunged into

a silent game. At length Dolan, after the fashion of debaters in the

parliament, came out of his newspaper and said:--

"That, Mr. McHurdie, is a problem ranging off the subject, into the

theories of the essence of time and space, and I refuse to answer it."

Me Hurdie kept on working, and the hands of the clock slipped around

nearly an hour. Then the bell tinkled and Neal Ward came in on his

afternoon round for news to print in the next day's issue of the

_Banner_.

"Anything new?" he asked.

"Mrs. Dorman is putting new awnings on the rear windows of her

store--did you get that?" asked McHurdie.

The young man made a note of the fact.

"Yes," added Dolan, "and you may just say that Hon. Jacob Dolan,

former sheriff of Garrison County, and a member of 'C' Company, well

known in this community, who has been custodian of public buildings

and grounds in and for Garrison County, state of Kansas, ss., is

contemplating resigning his position and removing to the National

Soldiers' Home at Leavenworth for the future."

Young Ward smiled, but did not take the item down in his note-book.

"It isn't time yet," he said.

"Why not?" asked Dolan.

"Only two months and a half since I printed that the last time. It

can't go oftener than four times a year, and it's been in twice this

year. Late in December will time it about right."

"What's the news with you, boy?" asked Dolan.

"Well," said the young man, pausing carefully as if to make a

selection from a large and tempting assortment, but really swinging

his arms for a long jump into the heart of the matter in his mind,

"have you heard that John Barclay has given the town his pipe organ?"

"You don't say!" exclaimed McHurdie.

"Tired of it?" asked Dolan, as though twenty-five-thousand-dollar pipe

organs were raining in the town every few days.

"It'll not be that, Jake," said Watts. "John is no man to tire of

things."

"No, it's not that, Mr. Dolan," answered Neal Ward. "He has sent word

to the mayor and council that he is going to have the organ installed

in Barclay Hall this week at his own expense, and he accompanied the

letter with fifty thousand dollars in securities to hire a permanent

organist and a band-master for the band; and a band concert and an

organ concert will alternate in the hall every week during the year. I

gather from reading his letter that Mr. Barclay believes the organ

will do more good in the hall than in his house."

The general and the colonel kept on at their game. Dolan whistled, and

Watts nodded his head. "That's what I would say he did it for," said

McHurdie.

"Are the securities N.P.C. stock?" asked Dolan, tentatively.

"No," replied Neal; "I saw them; they are municipal bonds of one sort

and another."

"Well, well--Johnnie at the mill certainly is popping open like a

chestnut bur. Generally when he has some scheme on to buy public

sentiment he endows something with N.P.C. stock, so that in case of a

lawsuit against the company he'd have the people interested in

protecting the stock. This new tack is certainly queer doings.

Certainly queer doings for the dusty miller!" repeated Dolan.

"Well, it's like his buying the waterworks of Bemis last month, and

that land at the new pumping station, and giving the council money to

build the new dam and power-house. He had no rebate or take back in

that--at least no one can see it," said the young man.

"Nellie says," put in Watts, "that she heard from Mrs. Fernald, who

got it from her girl, who got it from the girl who works in the Hub

restaurant, who had it from Mrs. Carnine's girl--so it come pretty

straight--that Lige made John pay a pretty penny for the waterworks,

and they had a great row because John would give up the fight."

"Yes," replied Dolan, "it come to me from one of the nigger prisoners

in the jail, who has a friend who sweeps out Gabe's bank, that he

heard John and Lige dickering, and that Lige held John up for a

hundred thousand cold dollars for his bargain."

"The Associated Press to-day," said young Ward, "has a story to the

effect that there is a great boom in certain railroad stocks owing to

some secret operations of Mr. Barclay. They don't know what he is

doing, but things are pretty shaky. He refuses to make a statement."

"He's a queer canny little man," explained Watts. "You never know

where he'll break out next."

"Well, he's up to some devilment," exclaimed Dolan; "you can depend on

that. Why do you suppose he's laying off the hands at the strip

factory?"

The young man shook his head. "Give it up. I asked Mr. Mason and the

best I could get out of him was a parrot-like statement that 'owing to

the oversupply of our commodity, we have decided to close operations

for the present. We have, therefore,' he said pompously, 'given each

of our employees unable to find immediate work here, a ticket for

himself and family to any point in the United States to which he may

desire to go, and have agreed to pay the freight on his household

goods also.' That was every word I could get out of him--and you know

Mr. Mason is pretty talkative sometimes."

"Queer doings for the dusty miller," repeated Dolan.

The group by the bench heard the slap of the checkerboard on its

shelf, and General Ward cut into the conversation as one who had never

been out of it. "The boy's got good blood in him; it will come out

some day--he wasn't made a Thatcher and a Barclay and a Winthrop for

nothing. Lizzie was over there the other night for tea with them, and

she said she hadn't seen John so much like himself for years."

Young Ward went about his afternoon's work and the parliament

continued its debate on miscellaneous public business. The general

pulled the _Times_ from Dolan's pocket and began turning it over. He

stopped and read for a few moments and exclaimed:--

"Boys--see here. Maybe this explains something we were talking

about." He began reading a news item sent out from Washington, D.C.

The item stated that the Department of Commerce and Labour had scored

what every one in official circles believed was the most important

victory ever achieved by the government outside of a war. The item

continued:--

"Within the last ten days, the head of one of the largest so-called

trusts in this country called at the department, and explained that

his organization, which controls a great staple commodity, was going

into voluntary liquidation. The organization in question has been

the subject of governmental investigation for nearly two years, and

investigators were constantly hampered and annoyed by attempts of

politicians of the very highest caste, outside of the White House,

trying to get inspectors removed or discredited, and all along the

line of its investigations the government has felt a powerful secret

influence shielding the trust. As an evidence of his good faith in

the disorganization, the head of the trust, while he was here,

promised to send to the White House, what he called his 'political

burglar's kit,' consisting of a card index, labelling and ticketing

with elaborate cross references and cabinet data, every man in the

United States who is in politics far enough to get to his state

legislature, or to be a nominee of his party for county attorney.

This outfit, shipped in a score of great boxes, was dumped at the

White House to-day, and it is said that a number of the cards

indicating the reputation of certain so-called conservative senators

and congressmen may be framed. There is a great hubbub in

Washington, and the newspaper correspondents who called at the White

House on their morning rounds were regaled by a confidential glimpse

into the cards and the cabinets. It is likely that the whole outfit

will be filed in the Department of Commerce and Labour, and will

constitute the basis of what is called around the White House

to-day, a 'National Rogues' Gallery.' The complete details of every

senatorial election held in the country during twelve years last

past, showing how to reach any Senator susceptible to any influence

whatsoever, whether political, social, or religious, are among the

trophies of the chase in the hands of the Mighty Hunter for Big Game

to-day."

When General Ward had finished reading, he lifted up his glasses and

said: "Well, that's it, boys; John has come to his turn of the road.

Here's the rest. It says: 'The corporation in question is practically

controlled by one man, the man who has placed the information above

mentioned in the hands of the government. It is a corporation owning

no physical property whatever, and is organized as a rebate hopper, if

one may so style it. The head of the corporation stated when he was

here recently that he is preparing to buy in every share of the

company's stock at the price for which it was sold and then--' Jake,

where is page 3 with the rest of this article on it?" asked the

general.

"Why, I threw that away coming down here," responded Dolan.

"Rather leaves us in the air--doesn't it?" suggested the colonel.

"Well, it's John. I know enough to know that--from Neal," said the

general.

The afternoon sun was shining in the south window of the shop. Dolan

started to go. In the doorway McHurdie halted him.

"Jake," he cried, pointing a lean, smutty finger at Dolan, "Jake

Dolan, if there are only two people in the world, what becomes of me

when you begin talking to Mart? If you knew, you would not dodge. In

philosophy no man can stand on his constitutional rights. Turn state's

evidence, Jake Dolan, and tell the truth--what becomes of me?"

"'Tis an improper question," replied Dolan, and then drawing himself

up and pulling down the front of his coat, he added, "'Tis not a

matter that may be discussed among gentlemen," and with that he

disappeared.

The front door-bell tinkled, and the parliament prepared to adjourn.

The colonel helped the poet close his store and bring in the wooden

horse from the sidewalk, and then Molly Brownwell came with her

phaeton and drove the two old men home. On the way up Main Street they

overhauled Neal Ward. Mrs. Brownwell turned in to the sidewalk and

called, "Neal, can you run over to the house a moment this evening?"

And when he answered in the affirmative, she let the old nag amble

gently up the street.

"How pretty you are, Aunt Molly," exclaimed Neal, as the gray-haired

woman who could still wear a red ribbon came into the room where he

sat waiting for her. The boy's compliment pleased her, and she did not

hesitate to say so. But after that she plunged into the subject that

was uppermost in her heart.

"Neal," she said, as she drew her chair in front of him so that she

could see his face and know the truth, no matter what his lips might

say, "we're partners now, aren't we, or what amounts to the same

thing?" She smiled good-naturedly. "I own the overdraft at the bank

and you own the mortgage at the court-house. So I am going to ask you

a plain question; and if you say it isn't any of my business, I'll

attempt to show you that it is. Neal," she asked, looking earnestly

into his face, "why do you write to Jeanette Barclay every day of your

life and not mail the letters?"

The youth flushed. "Why--Aunt Molly--how did you know?--I never

told--"

"No, Neal, you never told me; but this afternoon while you we're out I

was looking for Adrian's check-book; I was sure we paid Dorman's bill

last April, and that I took the check over myself. I was going through

the desk, and I got on your side, thinking I might have left the

check-book there by mistake, and I ran into the very midst of those

letters, before I knew what I was about. Now, Neal--why?"

The young man gazed at the woman seriously for a time and then parried

her question with, "Why do you care--what difference can it make to

you, Aunt Molly?"

"Because," she answered quickly, "because I wish to see my partner

happy. He will do better work so--if you desire to put it on a

cold-blooded basis. Oh, Nealie, Nealie--do you love her that

much--that you take your heart and your life to her without hope or

without sign or answer every day?"

He dropped his eyes, and turned his face away. "Not every day," he

answered, "not every day--but every night, Aunt Molly."

"Why don't you go to her, Neal, and tell her?" asked the woman. "Is it

so hopeless as that?"

"Oh, there are many reasons--why I don't go to her," he replied.

After a minute's silence he went on: "In the first place she is a very

rich girl, and that makes a difference--now. When she was just a

young girl of eighteen, or such a matter, and I only twenty or

twenty-one, we met so naturally, and it all came out so beautifully!

But we are older now, Aunt Molly," he said sadly, "and it's

different."

"Yes," admitted Mrs. Brownwell, "it is different now--you are right

about it."

"Yes," he continued, repeating a patter which he had said to himself a

thousand times. "Yes,--and then I can't say I'm sorry--for I'm not.

I'd do it again. And I know how Mr. Barclay feels; he didn't leave me

in any doubt about that," smiled the boy, "when I left his office that

morning after telling him what I was going to do. So," he sighed and

smiled in rather hopeless good humour, "I can't see my way out. Can

you?"

Molly Brownwell leaned back in her chair, and closed her eyes for a

minute, and then shook her head, and said, "No, Neal, not now; but

there is a way--somehow--I am sure of that."

He laughed for want of any words to express his hopelessness, and the

two--the youth in despair, and the woman full of hope--sat in

silence.

"Neal," she asked finally, "what do you put in those letters? Why do

you write them at all?"

The young man with his eyes upon the floor began, "Well--they're just

letters, Aunt Molly--just letters--such as I used to write

before--don't you know." His voice was dull and passionless, and he

went on: "I can't tell you more about them. They're just letters." He

drew in a quick long breath and exclaimed: "Oh, you know what they

are--I want to talk to some one and I'm going to. Oh, Aunt Molly," he

cried, "I'm not heart-broken, and all that--I'm infinitely happy.

Because I still hold it--it doesn't die. Don't you see? And I know

that always it will be with me--whatever may come to her. I don't

want to forget--and it is my only joy in the matter, that I never

will forget. I can be happy this way; I don't want to give any other

woman a warmed-over heart, for this would always be there--I know

it--and so I am just going to keep it." He dropped his voice again

after a sigh, and went on: "There, that's all there is to it. Do you

think I'm a fool?" he asked, as the colour came into his face.

"No, Neal, I don't," said Molly Brownwell, as she stood beside him.

"You are a brave, manly fellow, Neal, and I wish I could help you. I

don't see how now--but the way will come--sometime. Now," she added,

"tell me about the paper."

And then they went into business matters which do not concern us; for

in this story business conjures up the face of John Barclay--the

tanned, hard face of John Barclay, crackled with a hundred wrinkles

about the eyes, and scarred with hard lines about the furtive crafty

mouth; and we do not wish to see that face now; it should be hidden

while the new soul that is rising in his body struggles with that

tough, bronzed rind, gets a focus from the heart into those glaring

brass eyes, and teaches the lying lips to speak the truth, and having

spoken it to look it. And so while John Barclay in the City is daily

slipping millions of his railroad bonds into the market,--slipping

them in quietly yet steadily withal, mixing them into the daily

commerce of the country, so gently that they are absorbed before any

one knows they have left his long grasping fingers,--while he is

trading to his heart's content, let us forget him, and look at this

young man, that September night, after he left Molly Brownwell,

sitting at his desk in the office with the telephone at his elbow,

with the smell of the ink from the presses in his nostrils, with the

silence of the deserted office becalming his soul, and with his

heart--a clean, strong, manly heart--full of the picture of a

woman's face, and the vision without a hope. In his brain are recorded

a thousand pictures, and millions of little fibres run all over this

brain, conjuring up those pictures, and if there are blue eyes in the

pictures, and lips in the pictures, and the pressure of hands, and the

touch of souls in the pictures,--they are Neal Ward's pictures,

--they are Mr. Higgin's pictures, and Mrs. Wiggin's pictures, and Mr.

Stiggin's pictures, my dears, and alack and alas, they are the

pictures of Miss Jones and Miss Lewis and Miss Thomas and Miss Smith,

for that matter; and so, my dears, if we would be happy we should be

careful even if we can't be good, for it is all for eternity, and

whatever courts may say, and whatever churches may say, and whatever

comes back with rings and letters and trinkets,--there is no divorce,

and the pictures always stay in the heart, and the sum of the pictures

is life.

So that September night Neal Ward went back over the old trail as

lovers always will, and then his pen began to write. Now in the nature

of things the first three words are not for our eyes, and to-night we

must not see the first three lines nor the first thirty, nor the last

three words nor the last three lines nor the last thirty lines. But we

may watch him write; we may observe how longingly he looks at the

telephone, as if tempted to go to it, and tell it what is in his

breast. There it sits, all shiny and metallic; and by conjuring it

with a number and a word, he could have her with him. Yet he does not

take it up; because--the crazy loon thinks in the soul of him, that

what he writes, some way, in the great unknown system of receivers and

recorders and transmitters of thought that range through this

universe, is pouring into her heart, and so he writes and smiles, and

smiles and writes--no bigger fool than half the other lovers on the

planet who, talking to their sweethearts, holding their hands and

looking squarely into their eyes, deceive themselves that what they

say is going to the heart, and not going in one ear and out of the

other.

And now let us put on our seven-league boots and walk from September's

green and brown, through October's gold and crimson, into that season

of the year 1906 when Nature is shifting her scenery, making ready for

the great spring show. It is bleak, but not cold; barren, but not

ugly,--for the stage setting of the hills and woods and streams, even

without the coloured wings and flies and the painted trees and grass,

has its fine simplicity of form and grouping that are good to look

upon. Observe in the picture a small man sitting on a log in a wood,

looking at the stencil work of the brown and gray branches, as its

shadows waver and shimmer upon the gray earth. He is poking

reflectively in the earth with his cane. His boat is tied to some tree

roots, and he doesn't breathe as regularly as a man should breathe who

is merely thinking of his next dinner or his last dollar. He delves

into himself and almost forgets to breathe at all, so deep is his

abstraction. And so he sits for five minutes--ten minutes--half an

hour--and save that he edges into the sun as the shadow of the great

walnut tree above catches him, an hour passes and he does not move.

Poking, poking, poking his stick into the mould, he has dug up much

litter in an hour, and he has seen his whole life thrown up before

him. In those leaves yonder is a battle--a bloody battle, and things

are blistered into his boyish heart in that battle that never heal

over; that tuft of sod is a girl's face--a little girl's face that he

loved as a boy; there is his first lawsuit--that ragged pile of

leaves by the twig at the log's end; and the twig is his first ten

thousand dollars. All of it lies there before him, his victories and

his defeats, his millions come, and his millions going--going?--yes,

all but gone. Yonder that deep gash in the sod at the left hides a

woman's face--pale, wasted, dead on her pillow; and that clean black

streak on the ebony cane--that is a tear, and in the tear is a girl's

face and back of hers shimmers a boy's countenance. All of John

Barclay's life and hopes and dreams and visions are spread out before

him on the ground. So he closes his eyes, and braces his soul, and

then, having risen, whistles as he limps lightly--for a man past

fifty--down to the boat. He rows with a clean manly stroke--even in

an old flat-bottomed boat--through the hazy sunset into the dusk.

"Jeanette," he said to his daughter that evening at dinner, "I wish

you would go to the phone, pretty soon, and tell Molly Culpepper that

I want her to come down this evening. I am anxious to see her. The

colonel isn't at home, or I'd have him, mother," explained Mr Barclay.

And that is why Miss Barclay called "876, Please--yes, 8-7-6;" and

then said: "Hello--hello, is this 876? Yes--is Mrs. Brownwell in?

Oh, all right." And then, "54, please; yes, 5-4. Is this you, Aunt

Molly? Father is in town--he came in this morning and has spent the

afternoon on the river, and he told me at dinner to ask you if you

could run down this evening. Oh, any time. I didn't know you worked

nights at the office. Oh, is Mr. Ward out of town?--I didn't know.

All right, then--about eight o'clock--we'll look for you."

And that is why at the other end of the telephone, a pretty,

gray-haired woman stood, and looked, and looked, and looked at a plain

walnut desk, as though it was enchanted, and then slipped guiltily

over to that black walnut desk, unlocked a drawer, and pulled out a

whole apronful of letters.

And so the reader may know what Molly Brownwell had in that package

which she put in the buggy seat beside her when she drove down to see

the Barclays, that beautiful starry November night. She put the

package with her hat and wraps in Jeanette's room, and then came down

to the living room where John Barclay sat by the roaring fire in the

wide fireplace, with a bundle beside him also. His mother was there,

and his daughter took a seat beside him.

"Molly," said Barclay, with a deep sigh, "I sent for you, first,

because, of all the people in the world, it is but just that you

should be here, to witness what I am doing; and second, because Jane

would have had you, and I want you to be with Jeanette when I tell her

some things that she must know to-night--she and mother."

He was sitting in a deep easy chair, with one foot--not his lame

foot--curled under him, a wiry-looking little gray cat of a man who

nervously drummed on the mahogany chair arm, or kept running his hands

over the carving, or folding and unfolding them, and twirled his

thumbs incessantly as he talked. He smiled as he began:--

"Well, girls, father got off the chair car at Sycamore Ridge this

morning, after having had the best sleep he has had in twenty years."

He paused for the effect of his declaration to sink in. Jeanette

asked, "Where was the car?"

"What car?" teased the little gray cat.

"Why, our car?"

"My dear, we have no car," he smiled, with the cream of mystery on his

lips. Then he licked it off. "I sold the car three weeks ago, when I

left the Ridge the last time." He dropped into an eloquent silence,

and then went on: "I rode in the chair car to save three dollars. I

need it in my business."

His mother's blue eyes were watching him closely. She exclaimed,

"John, quit your foolishness. What have you done?"

He laughed as he said: "Mother, I have returned to you poor but

honest. My total assets at this minute are seventy-five million

dollars' worth of stock of the National Provisions Company, tied up in

this bundle on the floor here, and five thousand dollars in the

Exchange National Bank of Sycamore Ridge which I have held for thirty

years. I sold my State Bank stock last Monday to Gabe Carnine. I have

thirty-four dollars and seventy-three cents in my pocketbook, and that

is all."

The women were puzzled, and their faces showed it. So the little gray

cat made short work of the mice.

"Well, now, to be brief and plain," said Barclay, pulling himself

forward in his chair and thrusting out an arm and hand, as if to grip

the attention of his hearers, "I have always owned or directly

controlled over half the N.P.C. stock--representing a big pile of

money. I am trying to forget how much, and you don't care. But it was

only part of my holdings--about half or such a matter, I should say.

The rest were railroad bonds on roads necessary to the company,

mortgages on mills and elevators whose stock was merged in the

company, and all sorts of gilt-edged stuff, bank stock and insurance

company stock--all needed to make N.P.C. a dominant factor in the

commercial life of the country. You don't care about that, but it was

all a sort of commercial blackmail on certain fellows and interests to

keep them from fighting N.P.C." Barclay hitched himself forward to the

edge of his chair, and still held out his grappling-hook of a hand to

hold them as he smiled and went on: "Well, I've been kind of swapping

horses here for six months or so--trading my gilt-edged bonds and

stuff for cash and buying up N.P.C. stock. I got a lot of it

quietly--an awful lot." He grinned. "I guess that was square enough.

I paid the price for it--and a little better than the price--because

I had to." He was silent a few moments, looking at the fire. He

meditated pleasantly: "There was some good in it--a lot of good when

you come to think of it--but a fearful lot of bad! Well--I've saved

the good. I just reorganized the whole concern from top to

bottom--the whole blame rebate hopper. We had some patents, and we

had some contracts with mills, and we had some good ideas of

organization. And I've kept the good and chucked the bad. I put N.P.C.

out of business and have issued stock in the new company to our

minority whose stock I couldn't buy and have squeezed the water out of

the whole concern. And then I took what balance I had left--every

cent of it, went over the books for thirty years, and made what

restitution I could." He grinned as he added: "But I found it was

nearly whittlety whet. A lot of fellows had been doing me up, while I

had been doing others up. But I made what restitution I could and then

I got out. I closed up the City office, and moved the whole concern to

St. Paul, and turned it over to the real owners--the millers and

elevator men--and I have organized an industry with a capitalization

small enough to make it possible for them to afford to be honest for

thirty years--while our patents and contracts last, anyway." He put

an elbow in the hollow of his hand, and the knuckles on his knee as he

sat cross-legged, and drawled: "I wonder if it will work--" and

repeated: "I wonder, I wonder. There's big money in it; she's a dead

monopoly as she stands, and they have the key to the whole thing in

the Commerce Department at Washington. They can keep her straight if

they will." He paused for a while and went on: "But I'm tired of it.

The great hulk of a thing has ground the soul out of me. So I ducked.

Girls," he cried, as he turned toward them, "here's the way it is; I

never did any real good with money. I'm going to see what a man can do

to help his fellows with his bare hands. I want to help, not with

money, but just to be some account on earth without money. And so

yesterday I cleaned up the whole deal forever."

He paused to let it sink in. Finally Jeanette asked, "And are we poor,

father--poor?"

"Well, my dear," he expanded, "your grandmother Barclay has always

owned this house. An Omaha syndicate owns the mill. I own $5,000 in

bank stock, and the boy who marries you for your money right now is

going to get badly left."

"You aren't fooling me, are you, John?" asked his mother as she rose

from her chair.

"No, mother," answered the son, "I've got rid of every dirty dollar I

have on earth. The bank stock I bought with the money the Citizens'

Committee subscribed to pay me for winning the county-seat lawsuit. As

near as I can figure it out, that was about the last clean money I

ever earned."

The mother walked toward her son, and leaned over and kissed him again

and again as she sobbed: "Oh, John, I am so happy to-night--so

happy."

In a moment he asked, "Well, Jeanette, what do you think of it?"

"You know what I think, father--you know very well, don't you?"

He sighed and nodded his head. Then he reached for the package on the

floor and began cutting the strings. The bundle burst open and the

stock of the National Provisions Company, issued only in

fifty-thousand-dollar and one-hundred-thousand-dollar shares, littered

the floor.

"Now," cried Barclay, as he stood looking at the litter, "now, Molly,

here's what I want you to do: Burn it up--burn it up," he cried. "It

has burned the joy out of your life, Molly--burn it up! I have fought

it all out to-day on the river--but I can't quite do that. Burn it

up--for God's sake, Molly, burn it up."

When the white ashes had risen up the chimney, he put on another log.

"This is our last extravagance for some time, girls--but we'll

celebrate to-night," he cried. "You haven't a little elderberry wine,

have you, mother?" he asked. "Riley says that's the stuff for little

boys with curvature of the spine--and I'll tell you it put several

kinks in mine to watch that burn."

And so they sat for an hour talking of old times while the fire

burned. But Molly Brownwell's mind was not in the performance that

John Barclay had staged. She could see nothing but the package lying

on her cloak in the girl's room upstairs. So she rose to go early, and

the circle broke when she left it. She and Jeanette left John standing

with his arms about his mother, patting her back while she wept.

As she closed the door of Jeanette's room behind her, Molly Brownwell

knew that she must speak. "Jeanette," she said, "I don't know just how

to say it, dear; but, I stole those--I mean what is in that

package--I took it and Neal doesn't know I have it. It's for you,"

she cried, as she broke the string that tied it, and tore off the

wrapping.

The girl stared at her and asked: "Why, Aunt Molly--what is it? I

don't understand."

The woman in pulling her wrap from the chair, tumbled the letters to

the floor. She slipped into her cloak and kissed the bewildered girl,

and said as she stood in the doorway: "There they are, my dear--they

are yours; do what you please with them."

She hurried down the stairs, and finding John sitting alone before the

fire in the sitting room, would have bidden him good night as she

passed through the room, but he stopped her.

"There is one thing more, Molly," he said, as he motioned to a chair.

"Yes," she answered, "I wondered if you had forgotten it!"

He worried the fire, and renewed the blaze, before he spoke. "What

about Neal--how does he feel?"

"John," replied the woman, turning upon him a radiant face, "it is the

most beautiful thing in the world--that boy's love for Jennie! Why,

every night after his work is done, sitting there in the office alone,

Neal writes her a letter, that he never mails; just takes his heart to

her, John. I found a great stack of them in his desk the other day."

Barclay's face crinkled in a spasm of pain, and he exclaimed, "Poor

little kids--poor, poor children."

"John--" Molly Brown well hesitated, and then took courage and cried:

"Won't you--won't you for Ellen's sake? It is like that--like you

and Ellen. And," she stammered, "oh, John, I do want to see one such

love affair end happily before I die."

Barclay's hard jaw trembled, and his eyes were wet as he rose and

limped across the great room. At the foot of the stairs he called up,

"Don't bother with the phone, Jeanette, I'm going to use it." He

explained, "The branch in her room rings when we use this one," and

then asked, "Do you know where he is--at home or at the office?"

"If the ten o'clock train is in, he's at the office. If not, he's not

in town."

But Barclay went to the hall, and when he returned he said, "Well, I

got him; he'll be right out."

Molly was standing by the fire. "What are you going to say, John?" she

asked.

"Oh, I don't know. There'll be enough for me to say, I suppose," he

replied, as he looked at the floor.

She gave him her hand, and they stood for a minute looking back into

their lives. They walked together toward the door, but at the

threshold their eyes met and each saw tears, and they parted without

words.

Neal Ward found Barclay prodding the fire, and the gray little man,

red-faced from his task, limped toward the tall, handsome youth, and

led him to a chair. Barclay stood for a time with his back to the

fire, and his head down, and in the silence he seemed to try to speak

several times before the right words came. Then he exclaimed:

"Neal, I was wrong--dead wrong--and I've been too proud and mean all

this time--to say so."

Neal stared open-eyed at Barclay and moistened his lips before

language came to him. Finally he said: "Well, Mr. Barclay--that's all

right. I never blamed you. You needn't have bothered about--that is,

to tell me."

Barclay gazed at the young man abstractedly for a minute that seemed

interminable, and then broke out, "Damn it, Neal, I can't propose to

you--but that's about what I've got you out here to-night for."

He laughed nervously, but the young face showed his obtuseness, and

John Barclay having broken the ice in his own heart put his hands in

his pockets and threw back his head and roared, and then cried

merrily: "All we need now is a chorus in fluffy skirts and an

orchestra with me coming down in front singing, 'Will you be my

son-in-law?' for it to be real comic opera."

The young man's heart gave such a bound of joy that it flashed in his

face, and the father, seeing it, was thrilled with happiness. So he

limped over to Neal's chair and stood beaming down upon the

embarrassed young fellow.

"But, Mr. Barclay--" the boy found voice, "I don't know--the

money--it bothers me."

And John Barclay again threw his head back and roared, and then they

talked it all out. He told Neal the story of his year's work. It was

midnight when they heard the telephone ringing, and Barclay, curled up

like an old gray cat in his chair before the fire, said for old times'

sake, "Neal, go see who is ringing up at this unholy hour."

And while Neal Ward steps to the telephone, let us go upstairs on one

last journey with our astral bodies and discover what Jeanette is

doing. After Molly's departure, Jeanette stooped to pick up what Molly

had left. She saw her own name, "Jeanette Barclay," and her address

written on an envelope. She picked it up. It was dated: "Written

December 28," and she saw that the package was filled with letters in

envelopes similarly addressed in Neal Ward's handwriting. She dropped

the letter on her dressing-table and began to undo her hair. In a few

minutes she stopped and picked up another, and laid it down unopened.

But in half an hour she was sitting on the floor reading the letters

through her tears. The flood of joy that came over her drowned her

pride. For an hour she sat reading the letters, and they brought her

so near to her lover that it seemed that she must reach out and touch

him. She was drawn by an irresistible impulse to her telephone that

sat on her desk. It seemed crazy to expect to reach Neal Ward at

midnight, but as she rose from the floor with the letters slipping

from her lap and with the impulse like a cord drawing her, she saw, or

thought she saw, standing by the desk, a part of the fluttering

shadows, a girl--a quaint, old-fashioned girl in her teens,

with--but then she remembered the dream girl her lover had described

in the letter she had just been reading, and she understood the source

of her delusion. And yet there the vision moved by the telephone,

smiling and beckoning; then it faded, and there came rushing back to

her memory a host of recollections of her childhood, and of some one

she could not place, and then a memory of danger,--and then it was

all gone and there stood the desk and the telephone and the room as it

was.

She shuddered slightly, and then remembered that she had just been

through two great nervous experiences--the story of her father's

changed life, and the return of her lover. And she was a level-headed,

strong-nerved girl. So the joy of love in her heart was not dampened,

and the cord drawing her to the desk in the window did not loosen, and

she did not resist. With a gulp of nervous fear she rang the telephone

bell and called, "54, please!" She heard a buzzing, and then a faint

stir in the receiver, and then she got the answer. She sat a-tremble,

afraid to reply. The call was repeated in her ear, and then she said

so faintly that she could not believe it would be heard, "Oh,

Neal--Neal--I have come back."

The young man standing in the dimly lighted hall was startled. He

cried, "Is it really you, Jeanette--is it you?"

And then stronger than before the voice said, "Yes, Neal, it is I--I

have come back!"

"Oh, Jeanette--Jeanette," he cried.

But she stopped him with, "We must not talk any more--now, don't you

know--but I had to tell you that I had come back, Neal." And then she

said, "Good night." So there they stood, the only two people in the

universe, reunited lovers, each with the voice of the other sounding

in his ears. For Mr. Dolan was right. There are only two people in the

world, and for these two lovers earth and the stars and the systems of

suns that make up this universe were only background for the play of

their happiness.

As Neal Ward came back to John Barclay from the telephone, the young

man's face was burning with joy.

"Who was it?" asked Barclay.

The youth smiled bashfully as he said, "Well, it was Jeanette--she

was calling up another number and I cut in."

"What did she say?" asked her father.

"Oh, nothing--in particular," replied Neal.

Barclay looked up quickly, caught the young man's abashed smile, and

asked, "Does she know you're here?"

"No, she thinks I'm at the office."

Barclay rose from his chair, and limped across the room, calling back

as he mounted the stair, "Wait a minute."

It was more than a minute that Neal Ward stood by the fire waiting.

And now, gentle people, observe the leader of the orchestra fumbling

with his music. There is a faint stir among the musicians under the

footlights. And you, too, are getting restless; you are feeling for

your hat instinctively, and you for your hat-pins, and you for your

rubbers, while Neal Ward stands there waiting, and the great clock

ticks in the long silence. There is a rustle on the stairs, at the

right, and do you see that foot peeping down, that skirt, that slender

girlish figure coming down, that young face tear-stained, happy,

laughing and sobbing, with the arms outstretched as she nears the last

turn of the stairs? And the lover--he has started toward her. The

orchestra leader is standing up. And the youth, with God's holiest

glory in his face, has almost reached her. And there for an instant

stand Neal and Jeanette mingling tears in their kisses, for the

curtain, the miserable, unemotional, awkward curtain--it has stuck

and so they must stand apart, hand in hand, devouring each other's

faces a moment, and then as the curtain falls we see four feet close

together again, and then--and then the world comes in upon us, and we

smile and sigh and sigh and smile, for the journey of those four feet

is ended, the story is done.

CHAPTER XXX

BEING SOMEWHAT IN THE NATURE OF AN EPILOGUE

And now that the performance is finished and the curtain has been rung

down, we desire to thank you, one and all, for your kind attention,

and to express the hope that in this highly moral show you may have

found some pleasure as well as profit. But though the play is ended,

and you are already reaching for your hats and coats, the lights are

still dim; and as you see a great white square of light appear against

the curtain, you know that the entertainment is to conclude with a

brief exhibition of the wonders of that great modern invention, the

cinematograph of Time.

The first flickering shadows show you the interior of Watts McHurdie's

shop, and as your eyes take in the dancing shapes, you discern the

parliament in session. Colonel Martin F. Culpepper is sitting there

with Watts McHurdie, reading and re-reading for the fourth and fifth

time, in the peculiar pride that authorship has in listening to the

reverberation of its own eloquence, the brand-new copy of the second

edition of "The Complete Poetical and Philosophical Works of Watts

McHurdie, with Notes and a Biographical Appreciation by Martin F.

Culpepper, 'C' Company, Second Regiment K.V." The colonel, with his

thumb in the book, pokes the fire in the stove, and sits down again to

drink his joy unalloyed. Watts is working on a saddle, but his arms

and his hands are not what they were in the old days when his saddlery

won first prize year after year at the Kansas City Fair. So he puffs

and fusses and sighs his way through his morning's work. Sometimes the

colonel reads aloud a line from a verse, or a phrase from the

Biography--more frequently from the Biography--and exclaims,

"Genius, Watts, genius, genius!" But Watts McHurdie makes no reply. As

his old eyes--quicker than his old fingers--see the sad work they

are making, his heart sinks within him.

"Listen, Watts," cries the colonel. "How do you like this, you old

skeezicks?" and the colonel reads a stanza full of "lips" and "slips,"

"eyes" and "tries," "desires" and "fires," and "darts" and "hearts."

The little white-haired old man leans forward eagerly to catch it all.

But his shoulders slump, and he draws a long, tired breath when the

colonel has finished.

"Man--man," he cries, "what a saddle I could make when I wrote that!"

And he turns wearily to his task again.

Oscar Fernald paces in busily, and in half an hour Lycurgus Mason, who

has been thrown out of the current of life, drifts into his place in

the back-water, and the parliament is ready for business. They see

Gabriel Carnine totter by, chasing after pennies to add to his little

pile. The bell tinkles, and the postman brings a letter. McHurdie

opens it and says, as he looks at the heading:

"It's from old Jake. It is to all of us" he adds as he looks at the

top of the sheet of letter paper. He takes off his apron and

ceremoniously puts on his coat; then seats himself, and unfolding the

sheet, begins at the very top to read:--

"National Soldiers' Home,

Leavenworth, Kansas,

March 11, 1909.

"TO THE MEMBERS OF MCHURDIE'S PARLIAMENT,

"_Gents and Comrades_: I take my pen in hand this bright spring

morning to tell you that I arrived here safe, this side up with

care, glass, be careful, Saturday morning, and I am willing to

compromise my chances for heaven, which Father Van Saudt being a

Dutchman always regarded as slim, for a couple of geological ages of

this. I hope you are the same, but you are not. Given a few hundred

white nighties for us to wear by day, and a dozen or two dagoes

playing on harps, and this would be my idea of Heaven. The meals

that we do have--tell Oscar that when I realize what eating is, what

roast beef can be, cut thin and rare and dripping with gravy--it

makes me wonder if the days when I boarded at the Thayer House might

not be counted as part of the time I must do in the fireworks. And

the porcelean bath tubs, and the white clean beds, and the music of

the band, and the free tobacco--here I raise my Ebenezer, as the

Colonel sings down in his heretic church; here I put my standard

down.

"Well, Watts, I hear the news about Nelly. We've known it was coming

for a year, but that doesn't make it easier. Why don't you come up

here, Comrade--we are all lonesome up here, and it doesn't make the

difference. Well, John Barclay, the reformed pirate, President of

the Exchange National Bank, and general all-round municipal

reformer, was over in Leavenworth last week attending the Bankers'

Convention, or something, and he came to see me, as though he hadn't

bid me good-by at the train two days before. But he said things were

going on at the Ridge about the same, and being away from home, he

grew confidential, and he told me Lige Bemis had lost all his money

bucking the board of trade--did you know that? If not, it isn't so,

and I never told you. John showed me the picture of little John B.

Ward--as likely a looking yearling as I ever saw. Well, I must

close. Remember me to all inquiring friends and tell them Comrade

Dolan is lying down by the still waters."

And now the screen is darkened for a moment to mark the passage of

months before we are given another peep into the parliament. It is

May--a May morning that every one of these old men will remember to

his death. The spring rise of the Sycamore has flooded the lowlands.

The odour of spring is in the air. In the parliament are lilacs in a

sprinkling pot--a great armful of lilacs, sent by Molly Culpepper.

The members who are present are talking of the way John Barclay has

sloughed off his years, and Watts is saying:--

"Boys will be boys; I knew him forty years ago when he was at least a

hundred years older, and twice as wise."

"He hasn't missed a ball game--either foot-ball or baseball--for for

nearly two years now," ventures Fernald. "And yell! Say, it's

something terrible."

McHurdie turns on the group with his glasses on his forehead. "Don't

you know what's a-happening to John?" he asks. "Well, I know. Whoever

wrote the Bible was a pretty smart man. I've found that out in

seventy-five years--especially the Proverbs, and I've been thinking

some of the Testament." He smiles. "There's something in it. It says,

'Except ye come as a little child, ye shall in no wise enter the

Kingdom.' That's it--that's it. I don't claim to know rightly what

the kingdom may be, but John's entering it. And I'll say this: John's

been a long time getting in, but now that he's there, he's having the

de'el of a fine time."

And on the very words General Ward comes bursting into the room,

forgetful of his years, with tragedy in his face. The bustle and

clatter of that morning in the town have passed over the men in the

parliament. They have not heard the shouts of voices in the street,

nor the sound of footsteps running towards the river. But even their

dim eyes see the horror in the general's face as he gasps for breath.

"Boys, boys," he exclaims. "My God, boys, haven't you heard--haven't

you heard?" And as their old lips are slow to answer, he cries out,

"John's dead--John Barclay's drowned--drowned--gave his life trying

to save Trixie Lee out there on a tree caught in the dam."

The news is so sudden, so stunning, that the old men sit there for a

moment, staring wide-eyed at the general. McHurdie is the first to

find his voice.

"How did it happen?" he says.

"I don't know--no one seems to know exactly," replies the general.

And then in broken phrases he gives them the confused report that he

has gathered: how some one had found Trixie Lee clinging to a tree

caught in the current of the swollen river just above the dam, and

calling for help, frantic with fear; how a crowd gathered, as crowds

gather, and the outcry brought John Barclay running from his house

near by; how he arrived to find men discussing ways of reaching the

woman in the swift current, while her grip was loosening and her cries

were becoming fainter. Then the old spirit in John Barclay, that had

saved the county-seat for Sycamore Ridge, came out for the last time.

His skiff was tied to a tree on the bank close at hand. A boy was sent

running to the nearest house for a clothes-line. When he returned,

John was in the skiff, with the oars in hand. He passed an end of the

line to the men, and without a word in answer to their protests, began

to pull out against the current. It was too strong for him, and was

sweeping him past the woman, when he stood up, measured the distance

with his eye, and threw the line so it fell squarely across her

shoulders. Some one said that as the skiff shot over the dam, John,

still standing up, had a smile on his face, and that he waved his hand

to the crowd with a touch of his old bravado.

The general paused before going on with the story.

"They sent me to tell his mother--the woman who had borne him,

suckled him, reared him, lost him, and found him again."

"And what did she say?" asked Watts, as the general hesitated.

The general moistened his lips and went on. "She stood staring at me

for one dreadful minute, and then she asked, 'How did he die,

Philemon?' 'He died saving a woman from drowning,' I told her. 'Did he

save her?'--that was what she asked, still standing stiff and

motionless. 'Yes,' I said. 'She was only Trixie Lee--a bad woman--a

bad woman, Mrs. Barclay.' And Mary Barclay lifted her long, gaunt arms

halfway above her head and cried: 'Mine eyes have seen the glory of

the coming of the Lord. I must have an hour with God now, Philemon,'

she said over her shoulder as she left me; 'don't let them bother me.'

Then she walked unbent and unshaken up the stairs."

So John Barclay, who tried for four years and more to live by his

faith, was given the opportunity to die for it, and went to his duty

with a glad heart.

* * * * *

We will give our cinematograph one more whirl. A day, a week, a month,

have gone, and we may glimpse the parliament for the last time. Watts

McHurdie is reading aloud, slowly and rather painfully, a news item

from the _Banner_. Two vacant chairs are formally backed to the wall,

and in a third sits General Ward. At the end of a column-long article

Watts drones out:--

"And there was considerable adverse comment in the city over the fact

that the deceased was sent here for burial from the National Soldiers'

Home at Leavenworth, in a shabby, faded blue army uniform of most

ancient vintage. Surely this great government can afford better

shrouds than that for its soldier dead."

Watts lays down the paper and wipes his spectacles, and finally he

says:--

"And Neal wrote that?"

"And Neal wrote that," replies the general.

"And was born and bred in the Ridge," complains McHurdie.

"Born and bred in the Ridge," responds the general.

Watts puts on his glasses and fumbles for some piece of his work on

the bench. Then he shakes his head sadly and says, after drawing a

deep breath, "Well, it's a new generation, General, a new generation."

There follows a silence, during which Watts works on mending some bit

of harness, and the general reads the evening paper. The late

afternoon sun is slanting into the shop. At length the general speaks.

"Yes," he says, "but it's a fine town after all. It was worth doing. I

wake up early these days, and often of a fine spring morning I go out

to call on the people on the Hill."

McHurdie nods his comprehension.

"Yes," continues the general, "and I tell them all about the new

improvements. There are more of us out on the Hill now than in town,

Watts; I spent some time with David Frye and Henry Schnitzler and Jim

Lord Lee this morning, and called on General Hendricks for a little

while."

"Did you find him sociable?" asks the poet, grinning up from his

bench.

"Oh, so-so--about as usual," answers the general.

"He was always a proud one," comments Watts. "Will Henry Schnitzler be

stiff-necked about his monument there by the gate?" asks the little

Scotchman.

"Inordinately, Watts, inordinately! The pride of that man is something

terrible."

The two old men chuckle at the foolery of the moment. The general

folds away the evening paper and rises to go.

"Watts," he says, "I have lived seventy-eight years to find out just

one thing."

"And what will that be?" asks the harness maker.

"This," beams the old man, as he puts his spectacle case in his black

silk coat; "that the more we give in this world, the more we take from

it; and the more we keep for ourselves, the less we take." And smiling

at his paradox, he goes through the shop into the sunset.

The air is vocal with the home-bound traffic of the day. Cars are

crowded; delivery wagons rattle home; buggies clatter by on the

pavements; one hears the whisper of a thousand feet treading the hot,

crowded street. But Watts works on. So let us go in to bid him a

formal good-by. The tinkling door-bell will bring out a bent little

old man, with grimy fingers, who will put up his glasses to peer at

our faces, and who will pause a moment to try to recollect us. He will

talk about John Barclay.

"Yes, yes, I knew him well," says McHurdie; "there by the door hangs a

whip he made as a boy. We used to play on that accordion in the case

there. Oh, yes, yes, he was well thought of; we are a neighbourly

people--maybe too much so. Yes, yes, he died a brave death, and the

papers seemed to think his act of sacrifice showed the world a real

man--and he was that,--he was surely that, was John; yes, he was a

real man. You ask about his funeral? It was a fine one--a grand

funeral--every hack in town out--every high-stepping horse out; and

the flowers--from all over the world they came--the flowers were

most beautiful. But there are funerals and funerals. There was Martin

Culpepper's--not so many hacks, not so many high-stepping horses, but

the old buggies, and the farm wagons, and the little nigger

carts--and man, man alive, the tears, the tears!"

* * * * * *

Mr. ROBERT HERRICK'S NOVELS

_Cloth, extra, gilt tops, each $1.50_

The Gospel of Freedom

"A novel that may truly be called the greatest study of social life,

in a broad and very much up-to-date sense, that has ever been

contributed to American fiction."--_Chicago Inter-Ocean_.

The Web of Life

"It is strong in that it faithfully depicts many phases of American

life, and uses them to strengthen a web of fiction, which is most

artistically wrought out."--_Buffalo Express_.

Jock o' Dreams, or The Real World

"The title of the book has a subtle intention. It indicates, and is

true to the verities in doing so, the strange dreamlike quality of

life to the man who has not yet fought his own battles, or come into

conscious possession of his will--only such battles bite into the

consciousness."--_Chicago Tribune_.

The Common Lot

"It grips the reader tremendously.... It is the drama of a human soul

the reader watches ... the finest study of human motive that has

appeared for many a day."--_The World To-day_.

The Memoirs of an American Citizen. Illustrated with about fifty

drawings by F. B. Masters.

"Mr. Herrick's book is a book among many, and he comes nearer to

reflecting a certain kind of recognizable, contemporaneous American

spirit than anybody has yet done."--_New York Times._

"Intensely absorbing as a story, it is also a crisp, vigorous document

of startling significance. More than any other writer to-day he is

giving us _the_ American novel."--_New York Globe_.

Together

"The thing is straight from life.... The spirit of the book is in the

end bracing and quickening."--_Chicago Evening Post._

"An able book, remarkably so, and one which should find a place in the

library of any woman who is not a fool."--_New York American_.

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York

* * * * * *

Mr. WINSTON CHURCHILL'S NOVELS

_Each, cloth, gilt tops and titles, $1.50_

Mr. Crewe's Career Illustrated

"Another chapter in his broad, epical delineation of the American

spirit ... It is an honest and fair story ...It is very interesting:

and the heroine is a type of woman as fresh, original and captivating

as any that has appeared in American novels for a long time

past."--_The Outlook, New York._

"Shows Mr. Churchill at his best. The flavor of his humor is of that

stimulating kind which asserts itself just the moment, as it were,

after it has passed the palate ... As for Victoria, she has that

quality of vivid freshness, tenderness, and independence which makes

so many modern American heroines delightful."--_The Times_, London.

The Celebrity. An Episode

"No such piece of inimitable comedy in a literary way has appeared for

years... It is the purest, keenest fun."--_Chicago_ _Inter-Ocean_.

Richard Carvel Illustrated

"...In breadth of canvas, massing of dramatic effect, depth of

feeling, and rare wholesomeness of spirit, it has seldom, if ever,

been surpassed by an American romance."--_Chicago Tribune_.

The Crossing Illustrated

"'The Crossing' is a thoroughly interesting book, packed with exciting

adventure and sentimental incident, yet faithful to historical fact

both in detail and in spirit."--_The Dial_.

The Crisis Illustrated

"It is a charming love story, and never loses its interest ... The

intense political bitterness, the intense patriotism of both parties,

are shown understandingly."--_Evening Telegraph_, Philadelphia.

Coniston Illustrated

"'Coniston' has a lighter, gayer spirit and a deeper, tenderer touch

than Mr. Churchill has ever achieved before... It is one of the truest

and finest transcripts of modern American life thus far achieved in

our fiction."--_Chicago Record-Herald_.

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York

* * * * * *

By EDEN PHILLPOTTS

The Three Brothers _Cloth, $1.50_

"'The Three Brothers' seems to us the best yet of the long series of

these remarkable Dartmoor tales. If Shakespeare had written novels we

can think that some of his pages would have been like some of these.

Here certainly is language, turn of humor, philosophical play, vigor

of incident such as might have come straight from Elizabeth's day....

The story has its tragedy, but this is less dire, more reasonable than

the tragedy is in too many of Mr. Phillpotts's other tales. The book

is full of a very moving interest, and it is agreeable and

beautiful."--_The New York Sun_.

By Miss ELLEN GLASGOW

The Romance of a Plain Man _$1.50_

"From the first she has had the power to tell a strong story, full of

human interest, but as her work has continued it has shown an

increasing mellowness and sympathy. The atmosphere of this book is

fascinating indeed."--_Chicago Tribune_.

By FRANK DANBY

The Heart of a Child _Cloth, $1.50_

BEING PASSAGES FROM THE EARLY LIFE

OF SALLY SNAPE, LADY KIDDERMINSTER

"'Frank Danby' has found herself. It is full of the old wit, the old

humor, the old epigram, and the old knowledge of what I may call the

Bohemia of London; but it is also full of a new quality, the quality

of imaginative tenderness and creative sympathy. It is delightful to

watch the growth of human character either in life or in literature,

and in 'The Heart of a Child' one can see the brilliancy of Frank

Danby suddenly burgeoning into the wistfulness that makes cleverness

soft and exquisite and delicate.... It is a mixture of naturalism and

romance, and one detects in it the miraculous power ... of seeing

things steadily and seeing them wholly, with relentless humor and

pitiless pathos. The book is crowded with types, and they are all

etched in with masterly fidelity of vision and sureness of touch, with

feminine subtlety as well as virile audacity."--James Douglas in _The

Star_, London.

Sebastian. A Son of Dreams. _Cloth, $1.50_

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York

* * * * * *

NOVELS, ETC., BY "BARBARA"

(MABEL OSGOOD WRIGHT)

_Each, in decorated cloth binding, $1.50_

The Garden of a Commuter's Wife Illustrated

"Reading it is like having the entry into a home of the class that is

the proudest product of our land, a home where love of books and love

of nature go hand in hand with hearty, simple love of 'folks.' ... It

is a charming book."--_The Interior_.

People of the Whirlpool Illustrated

"The whole book is delicious, with its wise and kindly humor, its just

perspective of the true values of things, its clever pen pictures of

people and customs, and its healthy optimism for the great world in

general."--_Philadelphia Evening Telegraph_.

The Woman Errant

"The book is worth reading. It will cause discussion. It is an

interesting fictional presentation of an important modern question,

treated with fascinating feminine adroitness."--Miss Jeannette Gilder

in the _Chicago Tribune_.

At the Sign of the Fox

"Her little pictures of country life are fragrant with a genuine love

of nature, and there is fun as genuine in her notes on rural

character."--_New York Tribune_.

The Garden, You and I

"This volume is simply the best she has yet put forth, and quite too

deliciously torturing to the reviewer, whose only garden is in

Spain.... The delightful humor which pervaded the earlier books, and

without which Barbara would not be Barbara, has lost nothing of its

poignancy."--_Congregationalist_.

The Open Window. Tales of the Months.

"A little vacation from the sophistication of the

commonplace."--_Argonaut_.

Poppea of the Post Office

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York

* * * * * *

TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES

1. Punctuation has been changed to conform to contemporary standards.

2. Table of Contents not present in the original has been added.

3. Alternate spellings of "ecstacy" (inside quoted material, on page

318 and 361) and "ecstasy" (outside quoted material, on page 109)

retained.