[Illustration: HE TURNED TOWARD HER AND LOOKED LONG UPON THE FACE THAT
HAD BECOME HIS STAR]
UNDER THE
LAW
BY
EDWINA STANTON BABCOCK
Frontispiece by
RALPH P. COLEMAN
THE PENN PUBLISHING
COMPANY PHILADELPHIA
1923
COPYRIGHT
1922 BY
THE PENN
PUBLISHING
COMPANY
[Illustration]
Under the Law
Made in the U. S. A.
_Inscribed to the
Sards, Mingas and Dunstans
of this age_
"But if ye be led of the Spirit ye are not under the law."
--GALATIANS 5:18.
Contents
I. ACTION 7
II. UNDER THE LAW 15
III. BY-LAWS 19
IV. OTHER LAWS 26
V. FOR LIFE 32
VI. MINGA'S LAWS 43
VII. THE ORGAN BUILDER'S HOUSE 55
VIII. TRAITS 64
IX. WHOOPING IT UP 79
X. THE EXPEDITION 92
XI. TERMS 108
XII. THE MAN ON THE PLACE 120
XIII. PEARS AND POETRY 131
XIV. PINK PEARLS 147
XV. REVELATIONS 159
XVI. SOPHISTICATION 175
XVII. A GOOD NAME 194
XVIII. THE TAWNY TROOP METHOD 210
XIX. OLD LETTERS 233
XX. EXPLOSIVE DUST 249
XXI. AUTHORITY 267
XXII. SUSPICION 285
XXIII. THE PERCEPTIONS OF MINGA 305
XXIV. "TERRY!" 321
XXV. THE MEDE AND THE PERSIAN 326
XXVI. PENALTIES 335
XXVII. THE JUDGE IS IMPRESSED 347
Under the Law
CHAPTER I
ACTION
The streets between Willow Roads and the little town of Morris on the
Hudson were still corrugated with March thaw. But the sun shone warmly
and there was the wet smell of oncoming spring in the air. Women flung
open their coats at the neck; children skipped lightly to school. The
river took on an ethereal light that to the shadmen meant the time when
their soggy boats would be moored to the long lines of stakes near the
channel. The country highways were less hopeless with mud, and the
spring tramp began appearing at back doors.
A girl, driving her car rather absently through the unimaginative
streets of Morris, stopped suddenly at sight of a ring of loafers
gathered by the curb in a side street, jeering mildly and apparently
baiting a tumbled heap of something in the gutter. What was it? A dog?
A child? Sard Bogart, her brown eyes alert, sprang from her car and
went over to see.
As the girl approached the group, one or two of the older and better
dressed townspeople edged rather shamefacedly away. The village
postman, hailing the girl loquaciously, explained, "Just one of them
Gloomy Guses. They come out like turtles this time of the year. This
feller has likely stole a ride on a freight car and been dumped off at
West Morris. Seems he's trying to pertend he don't know who he is. That
ain't hard for a tramp; ain't nobody anyhow." The postman scratched his
head, wishing to cover all aspects of the matter. "Ef he's drunk, it's
a new kind of drunk. Vanilla extract, they tell me, is what this kind
boozes on nowadays." To the girl's indignant question, "Oh, they ain't
doing him no harm; just worrying him a little to see him act funny.
The authorities?" the postman looked a little vague. "Well, I should
say, it being about noon, that the authorities has gone home to their
dinners."
The young figure crossed the street and approached the jeering loafers
absorbed in prodding the helpless bundle of humanity in the gutter.
They shoved it from side to side as they demanded, "Say, where's yer
wife? Where'd ye come from? We'll tell yer where to get off! Say, Jack,
where do you keep the stuff? You tell me, I won't let anybody know."
More comments of a humorous nature were made for the benefit of the
girl approaching. "He ain't so handsome when ye come close up." One
wag hushed the others elaborately. "No, mebbe it's some friend of this
young lady's. Say, take him for a ride, Miss. I'll bet he ain't never
had one."
"Give him a shave first," urged one gum-chewing youth. There was
violent nudging from a rather stout woman in the group. "Shut up! Ain't
you got no sense? That's Judge Bogart's daughter." Then to railing
unbelief, "Sure it is. Ain't I washed down to her house a hundred
times? Hullo, Miss Bogart, ain't it terrible how these fellers is
treating that poor drunk?"
At the voice, the girl lifted her concerned gaze from the sight of
the wretched figure sitting now on the curbstone, both bleeding
shoe-wrecked feet in the gutter.
"Mrs. Croyder, this is pitiful. Why doesn't someone do something? Why
do the authorities permit people to be tormented like this?"
Mrs. Croyder, as one not accustomed to question the vagaries of the
authorities, was a little vague.
"Well, now, Mr. Snowgen, that's the policeman, wouldn't never hear to
anything like it, but he's gone home to his dinner."
"Then the traffic police?" The girl looked about her eagerly.
"They've gone home to their dinners,"
"But surely----" With an impatient exclamation the girl bent down
in the middle of the awed circle and looked keenly into the face of
the vagabond on the curb. She examined the bleeding feet and pale,
distraught face and spoke very gently. "Can I help you?"
The soft girlish tones seemed hardly to penetrate to the consciousness
of the tramp. He did not look up nor try to answer. At last, in
response to the prodding toe of a village gamin and his challenge,
"Say, ain't you got no manners? The lady is speakin' to yer," the
head, sunk between the shivering shoulders, was raised with a
sodden, uncomprehending look. Then the man, ragged, unshaven, with
an unspeakable look of abandoned misery, did a strange thing. He
struggled, shaking as with palsy, to his feet. There was a week's
reddish growth of beard on his white face; his voice, very feeble,
stammered and was lost in places, but he replied slowly, "Can--can you
read that name in my hat? Perhaps there is an address there, I don't
know. I can't remember." With a hand like a claw, the tramp pointed to
a wrinkled cap lying in the gutter.
Sard, seeing him sway as though he would pitch forward, put out an
arm to steady him. At this, a passer-by came up to her and, without a
word, supported the collapsing man on the other side. This youth smiled
sympathetically.
"Is there anything I can do, Miss Bogart?"
The girl turned sharply. "Mr. Lowden," then with a little air of
relief, "this man seems dazed, sick. Oughtn't we get help? Oughtn't we
to do something?"
"Wait till Snowgen gets back from his dinner," bawled the chorus of
loafers. A dozen voices advised, "Snowgen will put him in the lock-up,
and if he can't prove anything, they'll send him up for vagrancy.
Here's his hat. No, ma'am, I wouldn't touch it if I was you; that
ain't no hat fer a lady to hold." One of the group, with effects of
delicate shrinking, held the wretched headgear so that the girl could
read a name written with ink on a piece of tape stitched inside on the
lining. There were two initials smutted beyond recognition, but she
could distinguish the surname "Colter." With a curious little gesture
of courtesy, she bent to the pitiful figure she was helping support,
asking gravely and distinctly, "Mr. Colter, you are in trouble. Can we
help you? Is there anything we can do for you?"
This courtesy to the forlorn scarecrow the crowd found vastly amusing.
The thing brought laughter and the inevitable _double entente_ of
small-town comprehension. At last someone said wrathfully, "Shut up!
Don't you know nothing? That there's the Judge's daughter. She ain't no
fool!" The crowd, now avid for more sensation, watched to see how the
wastrel tottering there would take this thing.
The shaking hand was held out for the cap. Some bystander with rough
hand jammed it on the tumbled head of thick auburn hair, but the tramp
feebly removed it. He turned slowly, staring into the girl's face. His
eyes, of a very intense blue, were large and unnaturally bright, as
from fever.
"Thank you," he said weakly. Then with a swift glance full of
unnameable shame, "Please don't worry about me. I am only going to find
work--somewhere," The man closed his eyes, muttering,
"When I can forget--when I can remember----"
Sard Bogart turned to the youth who was helping her. "Will you come
with me?" she appealed. He nodded.
"I am going to drive this poor thing to that little boarding-house on
Norman Street. I know the woman who keeps it. It is quiet and clean."
The circle of loafers tittered. "Say, lady, wait till Snowgen gets
back from his dinner. Snowgen can take the feller to the right
boarding-house, all right."
The girl, for answer, smiled good-humoredly. "Mr. Snowgen can interview
this man after he has been fed and can speak for himself. Just at
present, Mr. Lowden and I will take charge."
Lowden, the young assistant of the Morris Bank, frowned on any more
suggestions, and together the man and girl supported the wretched
figure to the car. Together they somehow got it to a seat. Then the
young fellow watched Sard with admiration as she calmly drove with her
rather dubious-looking passenger through the staring streets of Morris.
The girl was silent, and the young banker made but one observation.
"Small town life breeds a thirst for sensation, doesn't it? It never
gets mentally to the economic questions lying back of the sensation."
"It is still the Binet Test, fourteen-year-old mind," laughed the girl.
As the car halted before the little boarding-house on Norman Street,
Lowden begged, "I wish you'd let me handle all the rest."
The girl turned her eyes on him. "You think I may meet with awkward
things?"
The young banker was evasive. "Let's remember we are rather a mean
little town," he said simply. "Please leave it all to me. I'll do
exactly as you say."
The girl's grave look rested on the wreck of a man sitting in a heap
beside her, his head sunk on his chest, his ragged coat open and
showing his bare, famished-looking chest, his white lips muttering
feebly.
"I want him put to bed and fed--very lightly at first. I want him
bathed and shaved, after a doctor has seen him. I want him either
sent to the hospital here at my expense or, when he is strong enough,
to come to my father for work. I want him to be sure, sure, he has
friends. I want him," the quick tears came into her young eyes, "to
feel that he has another chance."
The youth nodded, his eyes on hers. This was Sard Bogart, the Judge's
daughter, who had been back from college only a few months. It was
understood in the villages of Morris and Willow Roads that Miss Bogart
was a "queer," lonely girl, impatient of many things, apt to be
impulsive and to do impolitic and "unpopular" things. This was one of
the things--pulling a muddy gutter-snipe out of the gutter. Yet the
light in the girl's clear brown eyes was a new and grateful thing to
the young bank officer. Somehow he felt as if he had never looked into
a fine woman's eyes before. He took his orders gladly and with sober
admiration. "And keep me in touch, won't you?" The girl leaned from the
car, laying her commands on him. He lifted his hat gravely.
Lowden alighted and helped down the ragged vagrant. His gentleness was
like Sard's own. The girl, watching this gentleness, saw the broken
figure of the man try to turn once--try to look back at her. "Yes?"
said the girl "Yes?" Then her eyes, warm with pity, "Wait a moment,
please, Mr. Lowden. Yes, Colter, what is it you want to say?"
But she could not understand. She saw only a shaken, shivering man
muttering, "I can't remember," and again the stammering sentence, "I
can't remember."