PART III

JERRY AND EUGENE--AND JOE

XIII. HOW A GOOD MOTHER LIVES ON

XIV. JIM SWAIM'S WISH

XV. DRAWING OUT LEVIATHAN WITH A HOOK

XVI. A POSTLUDE IN "EDEN"

XVII. THE FLESH-POTS OF THE WINNWOC

XVIII. THE LORD HATH HIS WAY IN THE STORM

XIX. RECLAIMED

THE RECLAIMERS

I

JERRY

I

THE HEIR APPARENT

Only the good little snakes were permitted to enter the "Eden" that

belonged to Aunt Jerry and Uncle Cornie Darby. "Eden," it should be

explained, was the country estate of Mrs. Jerusha Darby--a wealthy

Philadelphian--and her husband, Cornelius Darby, a relative by marriage,

so to speak, whose sole business on earth was to guard his wife's wealth

for six hours of the day in the city, and to practise discus-throwing

out at "Eden" for two hours every evening.

Of course these two were never familiarly "Aunt" and "Uncle" to this

country neighborhood, nor to any other community. Far, oh, far from

that! They were Aunt and Uncle only to Jerry Swaim, the orphaned and

only child of Mrs. Darby's brother Jim, whose charming girlish presence

made the whole community, wherever she might chance to be. They were

cousin, however, to Eugene Wellington, a young artist of more than

ordinary merit, also orphaned and alone, except for a sort of cousinship

with Uncle Cornelius.

"Eden" was a beautifully located and handsomely appointed estate of two

hundred acres, offering large facilities to any photographer seeking

magazine illustrations of country life in America. Indeed, the place

was, as Aunt Jerry Darby declared, "summer and winter, all shot up by

camera-toters and dabbed over with canvas-stretchers' paints," much to

the owner's disgust, to whom all camera-toters and artists, except

Cousin Eugene Wellington, were useless idlers. The rustic little railway

station, hidden by maple-trees, was only three or four good

discus-throws from the house. But the railroad itself very properly

dropped from view into a wooded valley on either side of the station.

There was nothing of cindery ugliness to mar the spot where the dwellers

in "Eden" could take the early morning train for the city, or drop off

in the cool of the afternoon into a delightful pastoral retreat. Beyond

the lawns and buildings, gardens and orchards, the land billowed away

into meadow and pasture and grain-field, with an insert of leafy grove

where song-birds builded an Eden all their own. The entire freehold of

Aunt Jerry Darby and Uncle Cornie, set down in the middle of a Western

ranch, would have been a day's journey from its borders. And yet in it

country life was done into poetry, combining city luxuries and

conveniences with the dehorned, dethorned comfort and freedom of idyllic

nature. What more need be said for this "Eden" into which only the good

little snakes were permitted to enter?

In the late afternoon Aunt Jerry sat in the rose-arbor with her Japanese

work-basket beside her, and a pearl tatting-shuttle between her thumb

and fingers. One could read in a thoughtful glance all there was to know

of Mrs. Darby. Her alert air and busy hands bespoke the habit of

everlasting industry fastened down upon her, no doubt, in a far-off

childhood. She was luxurious in her tastes. The satin gown, the diamond

fastening the little cap to her gray hair, the elegant lace at her

throat and wrists, the flashing jewels on her thin fingers, all

proclaimed a desire for display and the means wherewith to pamper it.

The rest of her story was written on her wrinkled face, where the strong

traits of a self-willed youth were deeply graven. Something in the

narrow, restless eyes suggested the discontented lover of wealth. The

lines of the mouth hinted at selfishness and prejudice. The square chin

told of a stubborn will, and the stern cast of features indicated no

sense of humor whereby the hardest face is softened. That Jerusha Darby

was rich, intolerant, determined, unimaginative, self-centered,

unforgiving, and unhappy the student of character might gather at a

glance. Where these traits abide a second glance is unnecessary.

Outside, the arbor was aglow with early June roses; within, the

cushioned willow seats invite to restful enjoyment. But Jerusha Darby

was not there for pleasure. While her pearl shuttle darted in and out

among her fingers like a tiny, iridescent bird, her mind and tongue were

busy with important matters.

Opposite to her was her husband, Cornelius. It was only important

matters that called him away from his business in the city at so early

an hour in the afternoon. And it was only on business matters that he

and his wife ever really conferred, either in the rose-arbor or

elsewhere. The appealing beauty of the place indirectly meant nothing to

these two owners of all this beauty.

The most to be said of Cornelius Darby was that he was born the son of a

rich man and he died the husband of a rich woman. His life, like his

face, was colorless. He fitted into the landscape and his presence was

never detected. He had no opinions of his own. His father had given him

all that he needed to think about until he was married. "Was married" is

well said. He never courted nor married anybody. He was never courted,

but he was married by Jerusha Swaim. But that is all dried stuff now.

Let it be said, however, that not all the mummies are in Egyptian tombs

and Smithsonian Institutions. Some of them sit in banking-houses all day

long, and go discus-throwing in lovely "Edens" on soft June evenings.

And one of them once, just once, broke the ancient linen wrappings from

his glazed jaws and spoke. For half an hour his voice was heard; and

then the bandages slipped back, and the mummy was all mummy again. It

was Jerry Swaim who wrought that miracle. But then there is little in

the earth, or the waters under the earth, that a pretty girl cannot work

upon.

"You say you have the report on the Swaim estate that the Macpherson

Mortgage Company of New Eden, Kansas, is taking care of for us?" Mrs.

Darby asked.

"The complete report. York Macpherson hasn't left out a detail. Shall I

read you his description?" her husband replied.

"No, no; don't tell me a thing about it, not a thing. I don't want to

know any more about Kansas than I know already. I hate the very name of

Kansas. You can understand why, when you remember my brother. I've known

York Macpherson all his life, him and his sister Laura, too. And I never

could understand why he went so far West, nor why he dragged that lame

sister of his out with him to that Sage Brush country."

"That's because you won't let me tell you anything about the West. But

as a matter of business you ought to understand the conditions

connected with this estate."

"I tell you again I won't listen to it, not one word. He is employed to

look after the property, not to write about it. None of my family ever

expects to see it. When we get ready to study its value we will give due

notice. Now let the matter of description, location, big puffing up of

its value--I know all that Kansas talk--let all that drop here." Jerusha

Darby unconsciously stamped her foot on the cement floor of the arbor

and struck her thin palm flat upon the broad arm of her chair.

"Very well, Jerusha. If Jerry ever wants to know anything about its

extent, agricultural value, water-supply, crop returns, etc., she will

find them on file in my office. The document says that the land in the

Sage Brush Valley in Kansas is now, with title clear, the property of

the estate of the late Jeremiah Swaim and his heirs and assigns forever;

that York Macpherson will, for a very small consideration, be the Kansas

representative of the Swaim heirs. That is all I have to say about it."

"Then listen to me," Mrs. Darby commanded. And her listener--listened.

"Jerry Swaim is Brother Jim and Sister Lesa's only child. She's been

brought up in luxury; never wanted a thing she didn't get, and never

earned a penny in her life. She couldn't do it to save her life. If I

outlive you she will be my heir if I choose to make my will in her

favor. She can be taken care of without that Kansas property of hers.

That's enough about the matter. We will drop it right here for other

things. There's your cousin Eugene Wellington coming home again. He's a

real artist and hasn't any property at all."

A ghost of a smile flitted across Mr. Darby's blank face, but Mrs. Darby

never saw ghosts.

"Of course Jerry and Gene, who have been playmates in the same game all

their lives, will--will--" Mrs. Darby hesitated.

"Will keep on playing the same game," Cornelius suggested. "If that's

all about this business, I'll go and look after the lily-ponds over

yonder, and then take a little exercise before dinner. I'm sorry I

missed Jerry in the city. She doesn't know I am out here."

"What difference if you did? She and Eugene will be coming out on the

train pretty soon," Mrs. Darby declared.

"She doesn't know he's there, maybe. They may miss each other," her

husband replied.

Then he left the arbor and effaced himself, as was his custom, from his

wife's presence, and busied himself with matters concerning the

lily-ponds on the far side of the grounds where pink lotuses were

blooming.

Meantime Jerusha Darby's fingers fairly writhed about her tatting-work,

as she waited impatiently for the sound of the afternoon train from the

city.

"It's time the four-forty was whistling round the curve," she murmured.

"My girl will soon be here, unless the train is delayed by that bridge

down yonder. Plague on these June rains!"

Mrs. Darby said "my girl" exactly as she would have said "my bank

stock," or "my farm." Hers was the tone of complete possession.

"She could have come out in the auto in half the time, the four-forty

creeps so, but the roads are dreadfully skiddy after these abominable

rains," Mrs. Darby continued.

The habit of speaking her thoughts aloud had grown on her, as it often

does on those advanced in years who live much alone. The little vista of

rain-washed meadows and growing grain that lay between tall lilac-trees

was lost to her eyes in the impatience of the moment's delay. What

Jerusha Darby wanted for Jerusha Darby was vastly more important to her

at any moment than the abstract value of a general good or a common

charm.

As she leaned forward, listening intently for the rumble of the train

down in the valley, a great automobile swung through the open gateway of

"Eden" and rounded the curves of the maple-guarded avenue, bearing down

with a birdlike sweep upon the rose-arbor.

"Here I am, Aunt Jerry," the driver's girlish voice called. "Uncle

Cornie is coming out on the train. I beat him to it. I saw the old

engine huffing and puffing at the hill beyond the third crossing of the

Winnowoc. It is bank-full now from the rains. I stopped on that high

fill and watched the train down below me creeping out on the trestle

above the creek. When it got across and went crawling into the cut on

this side I came on, too. I had my hands full then making this big gun

of a car climb that muddy, slippery hill that the railroad cuts through.

But I'd rather climb than creep any old day."

"Jerry Swaim," Mrs. Darby cried, staring up at her niece in amazement,

"do you mean to say you drove out alone over that sideling, slippery

bluff road? But you wouldn't be Lesa Swaim's daughter if you weren't

taking chances. You are your mother's own child, if there ever was one."

"Well, I should hope I am, since I've got to be classified somewhere. I

came because I wanted to," Jerry declared, with the finality of complete

excuse in her tone. All her life what Jerry Swaim had wanted was

abundant reason for her having. "It was dreadfully hot and sticky in the

city, and I knew it would be the bottom deep of mugginess on that

crowded Winnowoc train. The last time I came out here on it I had to sit

beside a dreadful big Dutchman who had an old hen and chickens in a

basket under his feet. He had had Limburger cheese for his dinner and

had used his whiskers for a napkin to catch the crumbs. Ugh!" Jerry gave

a shiver of disgust at the recollection. "An old lady behind us had

'_sky_-atick rheumatiz' and wouldn't let the windows be opened. I'd

rather have any kind of 'rheumatiz' than Limburger for the same length

of time. The Winnowoc special ought to carry a parlor coach from the

city and set it off at 'Eden' like it used to do. The agent let me play

in it whenever I wanted to when I was a youngster. I'm never going to

ride on any train again unless I go in a Pullman."

The girl struck her small gloved fist, like a spoiled child, against the

steering-wheel of her luxuriously appointed car, but her winsome smile

was all-redeeming as she looked down at her aunt standing in the doorway

of the rose-arbor.

"Come in here, Geraldine Swaim. I want to talk to you." Mrs. Darby's

affectionate tones carried also a note of command.

"Means business when she 'Geraldine Swaims' me," Jerry commented,

mentally, as she gave the car to the "Eden" man-of-all-work and followed

her aunt to a seat inside the blossom-covered retreat, where the pearl

shuttle began to grow tatting again beneath the thin, busy fingers.

It always pleased Jerusha Darby to be told that there was a resemblance

between these two. But, although the older woman's countenance was an

open book holding the story of inherited ideas, limited and intensified,

and the young face unmistakably perpetuated the family likeness, yet

Jerry Swaim was a type of her own, not easy to forejudge. In the shadows

of the rose-arbor her hair rippled back from her forehead in dull-gold

waves. One could picture what the sunshine would do for it. Her big,

dark-blue eyes were sometimes dreamy under their long lashes, and

sometimes full of sparkling light. Her whole atmosphere was that of

easeful, dependent, city life; yet there was something contrastingly

definite in her low voice, her firm mouth and square-cut chin. And

beyond appearances and manner, there was something which nobody ever

quite defined, that made it her way to walk straight into the hearts of

those who knew her.

"Where were you in the city to-day?" Mrs. Darby asked, abruptly, looking

keenly at the fair-faced girl much as she would have looked at any other

of her goodly possessions.

"Let me see," Jerry Swaim began, meditatively. "I was shopping quite a

while. The stores are gorgeous this June."

"Yes, and what else?" queried the older woman.

"Oh, some more shopping. Then I lunched at _La Senorita_, that beautiful

new tea-house. Every room represents some nationality in its decoration.

I was in the Delft room--Holland Dutch--whiskers and Limburger"--there

was a gleam of fun in the dark-blue eyes--"but it is restful and

charming. And the service is perfect. Then I strolled off to the Art

Gallery and lost myself in the latest exhibit. Cousin Gene would like

that, I'm sure. It was so cool and quiet there that I stayed a long

time. The exhibit is mostly of landscapes, all of them as beautiful as

'Eden' except one."

There was just a shade of something different in the girl's tone when

she spoke her cousin's name.

"And that one?" Mrs. Darby inquired. She did not object to shopping and

more shopping, but art was getting outside of her dominion.

"It was a desert-like scene; just yellow-gray plains, with no trees at

all. And in the farther distance the richest purples and reds of a

sunset sky into which the land sort of diffused. No landscape on this

earth was ever so yellow-gray, or any sunset ever so like the Book of

Revelation, nor any horizon-line so wide and far away. It was the

hyperbole of a freakish imagination. And yet, Aunt Jerry, there was a

romantic lure in the thing, somehow."

Jerry Swaim's face was grave as she gazed with wide, unseeing eyes at

the vista of fresh June meadows from which the odor of red clover,

pulsing in on the cool west breeze of the late afternoon, mingled with

the odor of white honeysuckle that twined among the climbing rose-vines

above her.

"Humph! What else?" Aunt Jerry sniffed a disapproval of unpleasant

landscapes in general and alluring romances in particular. Love of

romance was not in her mental make-up, any more than love of art.

"I went over to Uncle Cornie's bank to tell him to take care of my

shopping-bills. He wasn't in just then and I didn't wait for him. By

the way"--Jerry Swaim was not dreamy now--"since all the legal

litigations and things are over, oughtn't I begin to manage my own

affairs and live on my own income?"

Sitting there in the shelter of blossoming vines, the girl seemed far

too dainty a creature, too lacking in experience, initiative, or

ability, to manage anything more trying than a big allowance of

pin-money. And yet, something in her small, firm hands, something in the

lines of her well-formed chin, put the doubt into any forecast of what

Geraldine Swaim might do when she chose to act.

Aunt Jerry wrapped the lacy tatting stuff she had been making around the

pearl shuttle and, putting both away in the Japanese work-basket,

carefully snapped down the lid.

"When Jerusha Darby quits work to talk it's time for me to put on my

skid-chains," Jerry said to herself as she watched the procedure.

"Jerry, do you know why I called you your mother's own child just now?"

Mrs. Darby asked, gravely.

"From habit, maybe, you have said it so often." Jerry's smile took away

any suggestion of pertness. "I know I am like her in some ways."

"Yes, but not altogether," the older woman continued. "Lesa Swaim was a

strange combination. She was made to spend money, with no idea of how to

get money. And she brought you up the same way. And now you are grown,

boarding-school finished, and of age, you can't alter your bringing up

any more than you can change your big eyes that are just like Lesa's,

nor your chin that you inherited from Brother Jim. I might as well try

to give you little black eyes and a receding chin as to try to reshape

your ways now. You are as the Lord made you, and Providence molded you,

and your mother spoiled you."

"Well, I don't want to be anything different. I'm happy as I am."

"You won't need to be, unless you choose. But being twenty-one doesn't

make you too old to listen to me--and your uncle Cornie."

In all her life Jerry had never before heard her uncle's name brought in

as co-partner of Jerusha Darby's in any opinion, authority, or advice.

It was an unfortunate slip of the tongue for Uncle Cornie's wife, one of

those simple phrases that, dropped at the right spot, take root and grow

and bear big fruit, whether of sweet or bitter taste.

"Your mother was a dreamer, a lover of romance, and all sorts of

adventures, although she never had a chance to get into any of them.

That's why you went skidding on that sideling bluff road to-day; that

and the fact that she brought you up to have your own way about

everything. But, as I say, we can't change that now, and there's no need

to if we could. Lesa was a pretty woman, but you look like the Swaims,

except right across here."

Aunt Jerry drew her bony finger across the girl's brows, unwilling to

concede any of the family likeness that could possibly be retained. She

could not see the gleam of mischief lurking under the downcast eyelashes

of Lesa Swaim's own child.

"Your father was a good business man, level-headed, shrewd, and

honest"--Mrs. Darby spoke rapidly now--"but things happened in the last

years of his life. Your mother took pneumonia and died, and you went

away to boarding-school. Jim's business was considerably involved. I

needn't bother to tell you about that. It doesn't matter now, anyhow.

And then one night he didn't come home, and the next morning your uncle

found him sitting in his office, just as he had left him the evening

before. He had been dead several hours. Heart failure was what the

doctor said, but I reckon everybody goes of heart failure sooner or

later."

A bright, hard glow came into Jerry Swaim's eyes and the red lips were

grimly pressed together. In the two years since the loss of her parents

the girl had never tried to pray. As time went on the light spirit of

youth had come back, but something went out of her life on the day of

her father's death, leaving a loss against which she stubbornly

rebelled.

"To be plain, Jerry," Mrs. Darby hurried on, "you have your inheritance

all cleared up at last, after two whole years of legal trouble."

"Oh, it hasn't really bothered me," Jerry declared, with seeming

flippancy. "Just signing my name where somebody pointed to a blank line,

and holding up my right hand to be sworn--that's all. I've written my

full name and promised that the writing was mine, 's'welp me Gawd,' as

the court-house man used to say, till I could do either one under the

influence of ether. Nothing really bothersome about it, but I'm glad

it's over. Business is so tiresome."

"It's not so large a fortune, by a good deal, as it would have been if

your father had listened to me." Mrs. Darby spoke vaguely. "But you will

be amply provided for, anyhow, unless you yourself choose to trifle with

your best interest. You and I are the only Swaims living now. Some day,

if I choose, I can will all my property to you."

The square-cut chin and the deep lines around the stern mouth told

plainly that obedience to this woman's wishes alone could make a

beneficiary to that will.

"You may be a dreamer, and love to go romancing around into new scrapes

like your mother would have done if she could. But she was as

soft-hearted as could be, with all that. That's why she never denied you

anything you wanted. She couldn't do a thing with money, though, as I

said, except spend it. You are a good deal like your father, too, Jerry,

and you'll value property some day as the only thing on earth that can

make life anything but a hard grind. If you don't want to be like that

bunch of everlasting grubs that ride on the Winnowoc train every

afternoon, or the poor country folks around here that never ride in

anything but a rickety old farm-wagon, you'll appreciate what I--and

Uncle Cornie--can do for you."

Uncle Cornie again, and he never had shared in any equal consideration

before. It was a mistake.

"There's the four-forty whistling for the curve at last. It's time it

was coming. I must go in and see that dinner is just right. You run down

and meet it. Cousin Eugene is coming out on it. Your uncle Cornie is

here on the place somewhere. He came out after lunch on some business we

had to fix up. No wonder you missed him. But, Jerry"--the stern-faced

woman put a hand on the girl's shoulder with more of command than caress

in the gesture--"Eugene is a real artist with genius, you know."

"Yes, I know," Jerry replied, a sudden change coming into her tone.

"What of that?"

"You've always known him. You like him very much?" Jerusha Darby was as

awkward in sentiment as she was shrewd in a bargain.

The bloom on the girl's cheek deepened as she looked away toward the

brilliantly green meadows across which the low sun was sending rays of

golden light.

"Oh, I like him as much as he likes me, no doubt. I'll go down to the

station and look him over, if you say so."

Beneath the words lay something deeper than speech--something new even

to the girl herself.

As Jerry left the arbor Mrs. Darby said, with something half playful,

half final, in her tone: "You won't forget what I've said about

property, you little spendthrift. You will be sensible, like my sensible

brother's child, even if you are as idealizing as your sentimental

mother."

"I'll not forget. I couldn't and be Jerry Darby's niece," the last added

after the girl was safely out of her aunt's hearing. "My father and

mother both had lots of good traits, it seems, and a few poor ones. I

seem to be really heir to all the faulty bents of theirs, and to have

lost out on all the good ones. But I can't help that now. Not till after

the train gets in, anyhow."

Her aunt watched her till the shrubbery hid her at a turn in the walk.

Young, full of life, dainty as the June blossoms that showered her

pathway with petals, a spoiled, luxury-loving child, with an adventurous

spirit and a blunted and undeveloped notion of human service and divine

heritage, but with a latent capacity and an untrained power for doing

things, that was Jerry Swaim--whom the winds of heaven must not visit

too roughly without being accountable to Mrs. Jerusha Darby, owner and

manager of the universe for her niece.

II

UNCLE CORNIE'S THROW

Jerry was waiting at the cool end of the rustic station when the train

came in. How hot and stuffy it seemed to her as it puffed out of the

valley, and how tired and cross all the bunch of grubs who stared out of

the window at her. It made them ten times more tired and cross and hot

to see that girl looking so cool and rested and exquisitely gowned and

crowned and shod. The blue linen with white embroidered cuffs, the

rippling, glinting masses of hair, the small shoes, immaculately white

against the green sod--little wonder that, while the heir apparent to

the Darby wealth felt comfortably indifferent toward this uninteresting

line of nobodies in particular, the bunch of grubs should feel only envy

and resentment of their own sweaty, muscle-worn lot in life.

Jerry and Eugene Wellington were far up the shrubbery walk by the time

the Winnowoc train was on its way again, unconscious that the passengers

were looking after them, or that the talk, as the train slowly got under

way, was all of "that rich old codger of a Darby and his selfish old

wife"; of "that young dude artist, old Wellington's kid, too lazy to

work"; of "that pretty, frivolous girl who didn't know how to comb her

own hair, Jim Swaim's girl--poor Jim!" "Old Corn Darby was looking

yellow and thin, too. He would dry up and blow away some day if his

money wasn't weighting him down so he couldn't."

At the bend in the walk, the two young people saw Uncle Cornie crossing

the lawn.

"Going to get his discus. He'll have no appetite for dinner unless he

gets in a few dozen slings," the young man declared. "Let's turn in here

at the sign of the roses, Jerry. I'm too lazy to take another step."

"You should have come out with me in the car," Jerry replied as they sat

down in the cool arbor made for youth and June-time. "I didn't know you

were in the city."

"Well, little cousin girl, I'll confess I didn't dare," the young man

declared, boldly. "I've been studying awfully hard this year, and, now

I'm needed to paint The Great American Canvas, I can't end my useful

career under a big touring-car at the bottom of an embankment out on the

Winnowoc bluff road. So when I saw you coming into Uncle Cornie's office

in the bank I slipped away."

"And as to my own risk?" Jerry asked.

"Oh, Jerry Swaim, you would never have an accident in a hundred years.

There's nobody like you, little cousin mine, nobody at all."

Eugene Wellington put one well-formed hand lightly on the small white

hand lying on the wicker chair-arm, and, leaning forward, he looked down

into the face of the girl beside him. A handsome, well-set up, artistic

young fellow he was, fitted to adorn life's ornamental places. And if a

faint line of possible indecision of character might have suggested

itself to the keen-eyed reader of faces, other traits outweighed its

possibility. For his was a fine face, with a sort of gracious gentleness

in it that grows with the artist's growth. A hint of deeper

spirituality, too, that marks nobility of character, added to a winning

personality, put Eugene Wellington above the common class. He fitted the

rose-arbor, in "Eden" and the comradeship of good breeding. When a man

finds his element, all the rest of the world moves more smoothly

therefor.

"Nobody like me," Jerry repeated. "It's a good thing I'm the only one of

the kind. You'd say so if you knew what Aunt Jerry thinks of me. She has

been analyzing me and filing me away in sections this afternoon."

"What's on her mind now?" Eugene Wellington asked, as he leaned

easefully back in his chair.

"She says I am heir--" Jerry always wondered what made her pause there.

Years afterward, when this June evening came back in memory, she could

not account for it.

"Heir to what?" the young artist inquired, a faint, shadowy something

sweeping his countenance fleetly.

"To all the sphere,

To the seven stars and the solar year;

also to my father's entire estate that's left after some two years of

litigation. I hate litigations."

"So do I, Jerry. Let's forget them. Isn't 'Eden' beautiful? I'm so glad

to be back here again." Eugene Wellington looked out at the idyllic

loveliness of the place which the rose-arbor was built especially to

command. "Nobody could sin here, for there are no serpents busy-bodying

around in such a dream of a landscape as this. I'm glad I'm an artist,

if I never become famous. There's such a joy in being able to see, even

if your brush fails miserably in trying to make others see."

Again the man's shapely hand fell gently on the girl's hand, and this

time it stayed there.

"You love it all as much as I do, don't you, Jerry?" The voice was deep

with emotion. "And you feel as I do, how this lifts one nearer to God.

Or is it because you are here with me that 'Eden' is so fair to-night?

May I tell you something, Jerry? Something I've waited for the summer

and 'Eden' to give me the hour and the place to say? We've always known

each other. We thought we did before, but a new knowing came to me the

day your father left us. Look up, little cousin. I want to say

something to you."

June-time, and youth, and roses, and soft, sweet air, and nobody there

but blossoms, and whispering breezes, and these two. And they had known

each other always. Oh, always! But now--something was different now,

something that was grander, more beautiful in this place, in this day,

in each other, than had ever been before--the old, old miracle of a man

and a maid.

Suddenly something whizzed through the air and a snakelike streak of

shadow cut the light of the doorway. Out in the open, Uncle Cornie came

slowly stepping off the space to where his discus lay beside the

rose-arbor--one of the good little snakes. Every Eden has them, and some

are much better than others.

The discus-ground was out on a lovely stretch of shorn clover sod. Why

the discus should wander from the thrower's hand through the air toward

the rose-arbor no wind of heaven could tell. Nor could it tell why Uncle

Cornie should choose to follow it and stand in the doorway of the arbor

until the "Eden" dinner-hour called all three of the dwellers, Adam and

Eve and this good little snake, to the cool dining-room and what goes

with it.

Twilight and moonlight were melting into one, and all the sweet odors

of dew-kissed blossoms, the good-night twitter of homing birds, the

mists rising above the Winnowoc Valley, the shadows of shrubbery on the

lawn, and the darkling outline of the tall maples made "Eden" as

beautiful now as in the full sunlight.

Jerry Swaim sat in the doorway of the rose-arbor, watching Uncle Cornie

throwing his discus again along the smooth white clover sod. Aunt Jerry

had trailed off with Eugene to the far side of the spacious grounds to

see the lily-ponds where the pink lotuses were blooming.

"Young folks mustn't be together too much. They'll get tired of each

other too quickly. I used to get bored to death having Cornelius forever

around." Aunt Jerry philosophized, considering herself as wise in the

affairs of the heart as she was shrewd in affairs of the pocketbook. She

would make Jerry and Gene want to be together before they had the chance

again.

So Jerry Swaim sat alone, watching the lights and shadows on the lawn,

only half conscious of Uncle Cornie's presence out there, until he

suddenly followed his discus as it rolled toward the arbor and lay flat

at her feet. Instead of picking it up, he dropped down on the stone step

beside his niece and sat without speaking until Jerry forgot his

presence entirely. It was his custom to sit without speaking, and to be

forgotten.

Jerry's mind was full of many things. Life had opened a new door to her

that afternoon, and something strange and sweet had suddenly come

through it. Life had always opened pleasant doors to her, save that one

through which her father and mother had slipped away--a door that closed

and shut her from them and God, whose Providence had robbed her so

cruelly of what was her own. But no door ever showed her as fair a vista

as the one now opening before her dreamy gaze.

She glanced unseeingly at the old man sitting beside her. Then across

her memory Aunt Jerry's words came drifting, "Being twenty-one doesn't

make you too old to listen to me--and your uncle Cornie," and, "You'll

appreciate what I--and Uncle Cornie--can do for you."

Uncle Cornie was looking at her with a face as expressionless as if he

were about to say, "The bank doesn't make loans on any such security,"

yet something in his eyes drew her comfortably to him and she

mechanically put her shapely little hand on his thin yellow one.

"I want to talk to you before anything happens, Jerry," he began, and

then paused, in a confused uncertainty that threatened to end his

wanting here.

And Jerry, being a woman, divined in an instant that it was to talk to

her before anything happened that he had thrown that discus out of its

way when she and Gene had thought themselves alone in the arbor before

dinner. It was to talk to her that the thing had been rolled purposely

to her feet now. Queer Uncle Cornie!

"I'm not too old to listen to you. I appreciate what you can do for me."

Jerry was quoting her aunt's admonitions exactly, which showed how

deeply they had unconsciously impressed themselves on her mind. Her

words broke the linen bands about Uncle Cornie's glazed jaws, and he

spoke.

"Your estate is all settled now. What's left to you after that rascally

John--I mean after two years of pulling and hauling through the courts,

is a 'claim,' as they call it, in the Sage Brush Valley in Kansas. It

has never been managed well, somehow. There's not been a cent of income

from it since Jim Swaim got hold of it, but that's no fault of the man

who is looking after it--a York Macpherson. He's a gentleman you can

trust anywhere. That's all there is of your own from your father's

estate."

Jerry Swaim's dark-blue eyes opened wide and her face was lily white

under the shadow of dull-gold hair above it.

"You are dependent on your aunt for everything. Well, she's glad of

that. So am I, in a way. Only, if you go against her will you won't be

her heir any more. You mightn't be, anyhow, if she--went first. The

Darby estate isn't really Jerusha Swaim's; it's mine. But she thinks

it's hers and it's all right that way, because, in the end, I do control

it." Uncle Cornie paused.

Jerry sat motionless, and, although it was June-time, the little white

hand on the speaker's thin yellow one was very cold.

"If you are satisfied, I'm glad, but I won't let Jim Swaim's child think

she's got a fortune of her own when she hasn't got a cent and must

depend on the good-will of her relatives for everything she wants. Jim

would haunt me to my grave if I did."

Jerry stared at her uncle's face in the darkening twilight. In all her

life she had never known him to seem to have any mind before except what

grooved in with Aunt Jerry's commanding mind. Yet, surprised as she was,

she involuntarily drew nearer to him as to one whom she could trust.

"We agreed long ago, Jim and I did, when Jim was a rich man, that some

day you must be shown that you were his child as well as Lesa's--I mean

that you mustn't always be a dependent spender. You must get some Swaim

notions of living, too. Not that either of us ever criticized your

mother's sweet spirit and her ideal-building and love of adventure.

Romance belongs to some lives and keeps them young and sweet if they

live to be a million. I'm not down on it like your Aunt Jerry is."

Romance had steered wide away from Cornelius Darby's colorless days. And

possibly only this once in the sweet stillness of the June twilight at

"Eden" did that hungering note ever sound in his voice, and then only

for a brief space.

"Jim would have told you all this himself if he had got his affairs

untangled in time. And he'd have done that, for he had a big brain and a

big heart, but God went and took him. He did. Don't rebel always, Jerry.

God was good to him--you'll see it some day and quit your ugly

doubting."

Who ever called anything ugly about Jerry Swaim before? That a creature

like Cornelius Darby should do it now was one of the strange,

unbelievable things of this world.

"I just wanted to say again," Uncle Cornie continued, "if I go first

you'd be Jerusha's heir. We agreed to that long ago. That is, if you

don't cross her wishes and start her to make a will against you, as

she'd do if you didn't obey her to the last letter in the alphabet. If I

go after she does, the property all goes by law to distant relatives of

mine. That was fixed before I ever got hold of it--heirs of some

spendthrifts who would have wasted it long ago if they'd lived and had

it themselves."

The sound of voices and Eugene Wellington's light laughter came faintly

from the lily-pond.

"Eugene is a good fellow," Uncle Cornie said, meditatively. "He's got

real talent and he'll make a name for himself some day that will be

stronger, and do more good, and last longer than the man's name that's

just rated gilt-edged security on a note, and nowhere else. Gene will

make a decent living, too, independent of any aunts and uncles. But he's

no stronger-willed, nor smarter, nor better than you are, Jerry, even if

he is a bit more religious-minded, as you might say. You try awfully

hard to think you don't believe in anything because just once in your

life Providence didn't work your way. You can't fool with your own

opinions against God Almighty and not lose in the deal. You'll have to

learn that some time. All of us do, sooner or later."

"But to take my father--all I had--after I had given up mother, I can't

see any justice nor any mercy in it," Jerry broke out.

Uncle Cornie was no comforter with words. He had had no chance to

practise giving sympathy either before or after marriage. Mummies are

limited, whether they be in sealed sarcophagi or sit behind roller-top

desks and cut coupons. Something in his quiet presence, however, soothed

the girl's rebellious spirit more than words could have done. Cornelius

Darby did not know that he could come nearer to the true measurement of

Jerry's mind than any one else had ever done. People had pitied her when

her mother passed away and her father died a bankrupt--which last fact

she must not be told--but nobody understood her except Uncle Cornie, and

he had never said a word until now. He seemed to know now just how her

mind was running. The wisdom of the serpent--even the good little

snakes, of this "Eden"--is not to be misjudged.

"Jerry"--the old man's voice had a strange gentleness in that hour,

however flat and dry it was before and afterward--"Jerry, you understand

about things here."

He waved his hand as if to take in "Eden," Aunt Jerry and Cousin Eugene

strolling leisurely away from the lily-pond, himself, the Darby

heritage, and the unprofitable Swaim estate in the Sage Brush Valley in

far-away Kansas.

"You've never been crossed in your life except when death took Jim. You

don't know a thing about business, nor what it means to earn the money

you spend, and to feel the independence that comes from being so strong

in yourself you don't have to submit to anybody's will." Cornelius Darby

spoke as one who had dreamed of these things, but had never known the

strength of their reality. "And last of all," he concluded, "you think

you are in love with Eugene Wellington."

Jerry gave a start. Uncle Cornie and love! Anybody and love! Only in her

day-dreams, her wild flights of adventure, up to castles builded high in

air, had she really thought of love for herself--until to-day. And

now--Aunt Jerry had hinted awkwardly enough here in the late afternoon

of what was on her mind. Cousin Gene had held her hand and said, "I want

to say something to you." How full of light his eyes had been as he

looked at her then! Jerry felt them on her still, and a tingle of joy

went pulsing through her whole being. Then the discus had hurtled across

the doorway and Uncle Cornie had come, not knowing that these two would

rather be alone. At least he didn't look as if he knew. And now it was

Uncle Cornie himself who was talking of love.

"You think you are in love with Eugene Wellington," Uncle Cornie

repeated, "but you're not, Jerry. You're only in love with Love. Some

day it may be with Gene, but it's not now. He just comes nearer to what

you've been dreaming about, and so you think you are in love with him.

Jerry, I don't want you to make any mistakes. I've lived a sort of

colorless life"--the man's face was ashy gray as he spoke--"but once in

a while I've thought of what might be in a man's days if things went

right with him and if he went right with himself."

How often the last words came back to Jerry Swaim when she recalled the

events of this evening--"if he went right himself."

"And I don't want any mistakes made that I can help."

Uncle Cornie's other hand closed gently about the little hand that lay

on one of his. How firm and white and shapely it was, and how determined

and fearless the grip it could put on the steering-wheel when the big

Darby car skidded dangerously! And how flat and flabby and yellow and

characterless was the hand that held it close!

"Come on, folks, we are going to the house to have some music," Aunt

Jerry called, as she and Eugene Wellington came across the lawn from the

lily-pond.

Mrs. Darby, sure of the fruition of her plans now, was really becoming

pettishly jealous to-night. A little longer she wanted to hold these two

young people under her absolute dominion. Of course she would always

control them, but when they were promised to each other there would

arise a kingdom within a kingdom which she could never enter. The angry

voice of a warped, misused, and withered youth was in her soul, and the

jealousy of loveless old age was no little fox among her vines to-night.

Let them wait on her a little while. One evening more wouldn't matter.

As the two approached the rose-arbor Jerry's hand touched Uncle Cornie's

cheek in a loving caress--the first she had ever given him.

"I won't forget what you have said, Uncle Cornie," she murmured, softly,

as she rose to join her aunt and Eugene.

The moonlight flooding the lawn touched Jerry's golden hair, and the

bloom of love and youth beautified her cheeks, as she walked away beside

the handsome young artist into the beauty of the June night.

"Come on, Cornelius." Mrs. Darby's voice put the one harsh note into the

harmony of the moment.

"As soon as I put away my discus. That last throw was an awkward one,

and a lot out of line for me," he answered, in his dry, flat voice,

stooping to pick up the implement of his daily pastime.

Up in the big parlor, Eugene and Jerry played the old duets they had

learned together in their childhood, and sang the old songs that Jerusha

Darby had heard when she was a girl, before the lust for wealth had

hardened her arteries and dimmed her eyes to visions that come only to

bless. But the two young people forgot her presence and seemed to live

the hours of the beautiful June night only for each other.

It was nearly midnight when a peal of thunder boomed up the Winnowoc

Valley and the end of a perfect day was brilliant in the grandeur of a

June shower, with skies of midnight blackness cloven through with long

shafts of lightning or swept across by billows of flame, while the storm

wind's strong arms beat the earth with flails of crystal rain.

"Where is Uncle Cornie? I hadn't missed him before," Jerry asked as the

three in the parlor watched the storm pouring out all its wrath upon the

Winnowoc Valley.

"Oh, he went to put up his old discus, and then he went off to bed I

suppose," Aunt Jerry replied, indifferently.

Nothing was ever farther from his wife's thought than the presence of

Cornelius Darby. The two had never lived for each other; they had lived

for the accumulation of property that together they might gather in.

It was long after midnight before the family retired. The moon came out

of hiding as the storm-cloud swept eastward. The night breezes were cool

and sweet, scattering the flower petals, that the shower had beaten off,

in little perfumy cloudlets about the rose-arbor and upon its stone

door-step.

It was long after Jerry Swaim had gone to her room before she slept.

Over and over the events of the day passed in review before her mind:

the city shopping; the dainty lunch in the Delft room at _La Senorita_;

the art exhibit and that one level gray landscape with the flaming,

gorgeous sunset so unlike the green-and-gold sunset landscape of "Eden";

the homeward ride with all its dangerous thrills; the talk with Aunt

Jerry; Eugene, Eugene, Eugene; Uncle Cornie with his discus, at the door

of the rose-arbor, and all that he had said to her; the old, old songs,

and the thunder-storm's tremendous beauty, and Uncle Cornie again--and

dreams at last, and Jim Swaim, big, strong, shrewd; and Lesa,

sweet-faced, visionary; and then sound slumber bringing complete

oblivion.

Last to sleep and first to waken in the early morning was Jerry. Happy

Jerry! Nobody as happy as she was could sleep--and yet--Uncle Cornie's

last discus-throw had brought new thoughts that would not slip away as

the storm had slipped up the Winnowoc into nowhere. A rift in the lute,

a cloud speck in a blue June sky, was the memory of what Uncle Cornie

had told her when he let his discus roll up to her very feet by the door

of the rose-arbor. Jerry Swaim must not be troubled with lute rifts and

cloud specks. The call of the early morning was in the air, the dewy,

misty, rose-hued dawning of a beautiful day in a beautiful "Eden" where

only beautiful things belong. And loveliest among them all was Jerry

Swaim in her pink morning dress, her glorious crown of hair agleam in

the sun's early rays, her blue eye full of light.

The sweetest spot to her in all "Eden" on this morning was the

rose-arbor. It belonged to her now by right of Eugene and--Uncle Cornie.

The snatches of an old love-ballad, one of the songs she had sung with

Eugene the night before, were on her lips as she left the veranda and

passed with light step down the lilac walk toward the arbor. The very

grass blades seemed to sing with her, and all the rain-washed world

glowed with green and gold and creamy white, pink and heliotrope and

rose.

At the turn of the walk toward the arbor Jerry paused to drink in the

richness of all this colorful scene. And then, for no reason at all, she

remembered what Uncle Cornie had said about his colorless life. Strange

that she had never, in her own frivolous existence, thought of him in

that way before. But with the alchemy of love in her veins she began to

see things in a new light. His had been a dull existence. If Aunt Jerry

ever really loved him she must have forgotten it long ago. And he made

so little noise in the world, anyhow, it was easy to forget that he was

in it. She had forgotten him last night even after all that he had said.

He had had no part in their music, nor the beauty of the storm.

But here he was up early and sitting at the doorway of the rose-arbor

just as she had left him last night. He was leaning back in the angle of

the slightly splintered trellis, his colorless face gray, save where a

blue line ran down his cheek from a blue-black burn on his temple, his

colorless eyes looking straight before him; the discus he had stooped to

pick up in the twilight last night clasped in his colorless hands; his

colorless life race run. His clothing, soaked by the midnight storm,

clung wet and sagging about his shrunken form. But the rain-beaten

rose-vines had showered his gray head with a halo of pink petals, and

about his feet were drifts of fallen blossoms flowing out upon the rich

green sod. Nature in loving pity had gently decked him with her

daintiest hues, as if a world of lavish color would wipe away in a sweep

of June-time beauty the memory of the lost drab years.

III

HITCHING THE WAGON TO A STAR

Behind the most expensive mourner's crape to be had in Philadelphia

Jerusha Darby hid the least mournful of faces. Not that she had not been

shocked that one bolt out of all that summer storm-cloud, barely

splintering the rose-arbor, should strike the head leaning against it

with a blow so faint and yet so fatal; nor that she would not miss

Cornelius and find it very inconvenient to fill his place in her

business management. Every business needs some one to fetch and carry

and play the watch-dog. And in these days of expensive labor watch-dogs

come high and are not always well trained. But everybody must go

sometime. That is, everybody else. To Mrs. Darby's cast of mind the

scheme of death and final reckoning as belonging to a general experience

was never intended for her individually. After all, things work out all

right under Providential guidance. Eugene Wellington was a fortunate

provision of an all-wise Providence. Eugene had some of his late

cousin's ability. He would come in time to fill the vacant chair by the

roll-top desk in the city banking and business house. Moreover, to the

eyes of age he was a thousandfold more interesting and resourceful than

the colorless quiet one whose loss would be felt of course, of course.

The reddest roses of "Eden" bloomed the next June on Cornelius Darby's

grave, the brightest leaves of autumn covered him warmly from the

winter's snows, and the places that had never felt his living presence

missed him no more forever.

There was a steady downpour of summer rain on the day following the

funeral at "Eden." Mrs. Darby was very busy with post-mortem details and

Eugene Wellington's services were in constant demand by her, while Jerry

Swaim wandered aimlessly about the house with a sense of the uselessness

of her existence forcing itself upon her for the first time. Late in the

afternoon, when the big rooms with all their luxurious appointments

seemed unbearable, she slipped down the sodden way to the rose-arbor.

There was a shower of new buds showing now under the beneficence of the

warm rain, and all the withered petals of fallen blossoms were swept

from sight.

As Jerry dropped into an easy willow rocker her eye fell on the

splintered angle of the trellis by the doorway where Uncle Cornie had

sat when the last summons came to him. A folded paper lay under the

seat, inside the door, as if it had been blown from his pocket by a

whirl of wind in that midnight thunder-storm.

Jerry stared at the paper a long time before it occurred to her to pick

it up. At last, in a mechanical way, she took it from under the seat and

spread it out on the broad arm of her chair. As she read its contents

her listlessness fell away, the dreamy blue eyes glowed with a new

light, the firm mouth took on a bit more of firmness, and the strong

little hands holding the paper did not tremble.

"A claim in the Sage Brush Valley in Kansas." Jerry spoke slowly. "It

lies in Range--Township--Oh, that's all Greek to me! They must number

land out there like lots in the potter's-field corner of the cemetery

that we drove by yesterday. Maybe they may all be dead ones, paupers at

that, in Kansas. It is controlled, or something, by York Macpherson of

the Macpherson Mortgage Company of New Eden--_New Eden_--Kansas. Uncle

Cornie told me it hadn't brought any income, but that wasn't York

Macpherson's fault. Strange that I remember all that Uncle Cornie said

here the other night."

The girl read the document spread out before her a second time. When she

lifted her face again it was another Jerry Swaim who looked out through

the dark-blue eyes. The rain had ceased falling. A cool breeze was

playing up the Winnowoc Valley, and low in the west shafts of sunlight

were piercing the thinning gray clouds.

"Twelve hundred acres! A prince's holdings! Why 'Eden' has only two

hundred! And that is at _New_ Eden. It 'hasn't been well managed.' I

know who's going to manage it now. I'm the daughter of Jim Swaim. He was

a good business man. And Aunt Darby--" A smile broke the set line about

the red lips. "I'd never dare to say she didn't understand how to manage

things, Chief of Staff to the General who runs the Universe, she is."

Then the serious mood came back as the girl stared out at the meadows

and growing grain of the "Eden" farmland. A sudden resolve had formed in

her mind--Jerry Swaim the type all her own, not possible to forecast.

"Father wanted me to know what it means to be independent. I'll find

out. If this 'Eden' can be so beautiful and profitable, what can I not

make out of twelve hundred acres, in a New Eden? And it will be such a

splendid lark, just the kind of thing I have always dreamed of doing.

Aunt Jerry will say that I'm crazy, or that I'm Lesa Swaim's own child.

Well, I am, but there's a big purpose back of it all, too, the purpose

my father would have approved. He was all business--all money-making--in

his purposes, it seemed to some folks, but I think mother knew how to

keep him sweet. Maybe her adventurous spirit, and all that, kept her

interesting to him, and her romancing kept him her lover, instead of

their growing to be like Uncle Cornie and Aunt Jerry. There's something

else in the world besides just getting property--'if a man went right

with himself,' Uncle Cornie said. There was a good sermon in those seven

words. Uncle Cornie preached more to me than the man who officiated at

the funeral yesterday could ever do. 'If a man went right with himself.'

And Eugene." A quick change swept Jerry Swaim's countenance. "He said he

wanted to say something to me. I think I know what he wanted to say.

Maybe he will say it some day, but not yet, not yet. Here he comes now."

There was a something new, unguessable, and very sweet in Jerry Swaim's

face as Eugene Wellington came striding down the walk to the rose-arbor.

"I'm through at last, little cousin," he declared, dropping into a seat

beside her. "Really, Aunt Jerry is a wonderful woman. She seems to know

most of the details of Uncle Cornie's business since he began in

business. But now and then she runs against something that takes her

breath away. Evidently Uncle Cornie knew a lot of things he didn't tell

her or anybody else. She doesn't like to meet these things. It makes her

cross. She sent me away just now in a huff because she was opening up a

new line that I think she didn't want me to know anything about.

Something that took her breath away at first glance. But she didn't have

to coax me off the place. I ran out here when the chance came."

How handsome and well-groomed he was sitting there in the easy willow

seat! And how good he had been to Mrs. Darby in these trying days! A

dozen little services that her niece had overlooked had come naturally

to his hand and mind.

The words of Uncle Cornie came into Jerry Swaim's mind as she looked at

him: "He's a good fellow, with real talent, and he'll make a name for

himself some day. He'll make a decent living, too, independent of

anybody's aunts and uncles, but he's no stronger-willed nor smarter nor

better than you are." A thrill of pleasure quickened her pulse at the

recollection, making this new decision of hers the more firm.

"It has seemed like a month since we sat here the evening before Uncle

Cornie passed away," Eugene began. "He made a bad discus-throw and came

over here just as I began to tell you something, Jerry. Do you remember

what we were saying when he appeared on the scene?"

"Yes, I remember." Jerry's voice was low, but there was no quaver in it.

Her face, as she lifted it, seemed to his eyes the one face he could

never paint. For him it was the fulfilment of a man's best dream.

"There's only one grief in my heart at this minute--that I can never put

your face as it is now on any canvas. But let me tell you some things

that Aunt Jerry has been telling me. She seems so fond of you, and she

says that after all the claims against your father's estate are settled

there is really no income left for you. But she assures me that it makes

no difference, because you can go on living with her exactly as you have

always done. She told me she had never failed in the fruition of a

single plan of hers, and she is too old to fail now. She has some plan

for you--" The young artist hesitated.

Jerry had never thought much about his good looks until in these June

days in "Eden" when Love had come noiselessly down the way to her. And

yet--a little faint, irresolute line in the man's face--a mere shadow, a

ghost of nothing at all, fixed itself in her image of his countenance. A

quick intuition flashed into her mind with the last words.

"Aunt Jerry is too old for lots of things besides the failure of her

plans. I know what she said, Gene, because I know what she thinks. She

isn't exactly fond of me; she wants to control me. I believe there are

only two planes of existence with her--one of absolute rule, and the

other of absolute submission. She couldn't conceive of me in the first

plane, of course, so I must be in the second."

"Why, Geraldine Swaim, I never heard you speak so of your aunt before!"

Eugene Wellington exclaimed. He had caught a new and very real line in

the girl's face as she spoke.

"Maybe not. But don't go Geraldine-ing me. It's too Aunt Jerry-ish. I'm

coming to understand her better because I'm doing my own thinking now,"

Jerry replied.

"As if you hadn't always done that, you little tyrant! I bear the scars

of your teeth on my arms now--or I would bear them if I hadn't given up

to you a thousand times years ago," Eugene declared, laughingly.

"That's just it," Jerry replied. "I've been let to have my own way until

Aunt Jerry thinks I must go on having just what she thinks I want, and

to do that I must be dependent on her. And--Wait a minute, Gene--you

will be dependent on her, too. You have only your gift. So both of us

are to be pensioners of hers. That's her plan."

"I won't be," Eugene Wellington declared, stoutly. And then, in loving

thought of Jerry, he added: "I don't want to, Jerry. I want to do great

things, the best that God has given me to do, not merely for myself, but

for your sake--and for all the world. That seems to me to be what

artists are for."

"And I won't be, either," Jerry insisted. "I won't. You needn't look so

incredulous. Let me tell you something. The evening before Uncle Cornie

died--" Jerry broke off suddenly.

It seemed unfair to betray the one burst of confidence that the

colorless old man had given up to on the last evening of his earthly

life. Jerry knew that it was to her, and for her alone, that he had

spoken.

"This is what I want to tell you. I have no income now. Aunt Jerry is

right, although she never told me that herself. But I have a plan to

make a living for myself."

Eugene Wellington leaned back and laughed aloud. "You, Miss Geraldine

Swaim, who never earned a dollar in your precious life! I always knew

you were a dreamer, but you are going wrong now, Jerry. You must look

out for belfry bats under that golden thatch of yours. Only artists dare

those wild flights so far--and they do it only on canvas and then get

rejected by the hanging committee."

Jerry paid no heed to his bantering words as she went on with serious

earnestness: "My estate--from my father--is a claim out at New Eden,

Kansas. Twelve hundred acres. It has never been managed well,

consequently it has never paid well. Look at 'Eden' here"--Jerry lifted

a hand for silence as Eugene was about to speak--"it has only two

hundred acres. Now multiply it by six and you'll have New Eden out in

Kansas. And I own it. And I am going to manage it. And I am not going to

be dependent on anybody. Won't it be one big lark for me to go clear to

the Sage Brush Valley? If it is as beautiful as the Winnowoc, just think

of its possibilities. It will be perfectly grand to feel oneself so free

and self-reliant. And when we have won out, you by your brush and I by

my Kansas farm, then, oh, Gene, how splendid life will be!"

The big, dreamy eyes were full of light. The level beams of the sun

stretched far across green meadows and shaven lawns, between tall

lilac-trees, to the rose-arbor, just to glorify that rippling mass of

brown-shadowed golden hair.

"Jerry"--Eugene Wellington's voice trembled--"you are the most wonderful

girl in the world. I am so proud of you. But, dear girl, it is an old,

threadbare fancy, this going to Kansas to get rich. My father tried it

years ago. He had a vision of great things, too. He failed. Not only

that, he ruined everybody connected with him. That's why I'm poor

to-day. Truly, little cousin mine, I don't believe the good Lord, who

makes Edens like this in the Winnowoc Valley, ever intended for

well-bred people to leave them and go New-Eden-hunting in the Sage Brush

Valley. We belong here where all the beauty of nature is about us and

the care of a loving God is over us. Why do you want to go to Kansas? I

wouldn't know how to pray out there where my father made such a botch of

living. I really wouldn't."

"I don't know how to pray here, Gene," Jerry said, softly, with no trace

of flippant irreverence in her tone. "I forgot how to do that when God

took my father away. But listen to me." The imperious power of the

uncontrolled will was Jerry's always. "You don't _live_ here; you _stay_

here. And you take a piece of canvas and go to the ends of the earth on

it, or down to the deeps, or into the heavens. You make what never did

and never will be, with your free brush. And folks call it good and you

earn a living by it. You are an artist. I am a foolish dreamer, but I am

going out to Kansas and work my dreams into reality and beauty--and

money--in a New Eden. If the Lord isn't there, I shall not mind any more

than I do here. I am going to Kansas, though, because I _want_ to."

"Look, Jerry, at the sunset yonder," Eugene said, gently, knowing of old

what "I want" meant. "They couldn't have such pictures of green and gold

out West as we see framed in here by the lilacs. You always have been a

determined little girl, so you will have your own way now, I suppose. We

can try it, anyhow, for a while. And if you find your way a rocky road

you must come back to 'Eden.' When your new playthings fail, you can

play with the old ones. But I really love your spirit of self-reliance.

I don't want you ever to be dependent. I don't want any other Jerry than

I have always known. And I want to work hard and make my little talent

pay me big, and make you proud of me."

"We are living a real romance, Gene. And we'll be true to our word to

make the best of ourselves and not let Aunt Jerry frighten us into

changing our plans, will we, Gene? My father's wish for me was that I

should not always be a spender of other folks's incomes, but that I

would find out what it means to live my own life. I never knew that

until last week. Everything seems changed for me since Uncle Cornie

died. Isn't it strange how suddenly we drop off one life and take up

another?" Jerry's eyes were on the deepening gold of the sunset sky.

"Yes, we have been two idlers. I'm glad to quit the job. But, somehow,

for you I could wish that you would stay here, if you were only

satisfied to do it," Eugene replied.

"I don't wish it." Jerry spoke decisively. "I couldn't be happy, now

I've this splendid Kansas thing to think about. Let's go and tell Aunt

Jerry and have it out with her."

"And if she says no?" the young man queried.

Jerry Swaim paused in the doorway and looked straight into Eugene

Wellington's face, without saying a word.

"Geraldine Swaim, there was a big mistake made in your baptismal

ceremony. You should have been christened 'The Sphinx.' Some day I'll

make a canvas of the Egyptian product and put your face on it. After

all, _are_ you really in earnest about this Sage Brush Valley New Eden?

It is so lovely here, I want you to stay here."

Again Jerry looked at him without speaking, and that faint line of

indecision that scarcely hinted at its own existence fixed itself in the

substratum of her memory.

Mrs. Darby met the young people in the parlor, where only a few nights

ago the three had watched the summer storm, not knowing that it was

beating down on the unconscious form of Cornelius Darby. Mrs. Darby felt

sure that the young people would be coming to her to-night. Well--the

end of her plan was in sight now. Really, it may have been better for

Cornelius to have gone when he did, since we must all go sometime.

Indeed, it would have been better--only Jerusha Darby never knew

that--if Cornelius had gone before that discus-throw. Everything might

have been different if he had gone earlier. But he lost the opportunity

of his life to serve his wife by staying over and making one awkward

fling too many.

The June evening was cool after the long rains. Aunt Jerry had a tiny

wood fire burning in the parlor grate, and the tall lamps with the

rose-colored shades lighted to add a touch of twilight charm to the

place, when the young lovers came in.

"Aunt Jerry, we want to tell you what we have been talking about,"

Eugene began, when the three were seated together. "Jerry and I have

decided that we must look on life differently now since--" Eugene

hesitated.

"Yes, I know." Mrs. Darby spoke briskly. "We must face the truth now and

speak of Cornelius freely. He was fond of both of you. Poor Cornelius!"

"Poor Cornelius," Jerry Swaim repeated, under her breath.

"Of course I know it is difficult for a girl reared as Jerry has been--"

Eugene began again.

"She can go on living just as she has been. This will be her home

always," Mrs. Darby broke in, abruptly.

"And I know that I have nothing but the prospect of earning a living and

winning to a successful career in my line--" the young man went on.

"Hasn't Jerry the prospect of enough for herself? I'll need you to help

me for several months. You know, Eugene, that I must have some one who

understands Cornelius's way of doing things." There was more of command

than request in the older woman's voice.

"I'll be glad to help you as long as I am needed, but I am speaking now

of my life-work. When I cannot serve you any longer I must begin on my

own career. I have some hopes and plans for the future."

"Humph! What's the use of talking about it? I tell you Jerry will have

enough for all her needs, and I want you here. I shall not consider any

more such notions, Eugene. You are both going to stay right here as you

have done. Let's talk of something else."

"We can't yet, Aunt Jerry, because I have not enough for myself, even if

Gene would accept a living from you," Jerry Swaim declared.

Jerusha Darby opened her narrow eyes and stared at her niece. If the

older woman had made one plea of loneliness, if she had even hinted at

sorrow for the loss of the companion of her business transactions, Jerry

Swaim would have felt uncomfortable, even though she knew her aunt too

well to be deceived by any such demonstration.

"Geraldine Swaim, what are you saying?" Mrs. Darby demanded, in a hard,

even voice. Something in her manner and face could always hold even the

brave-spirited in frightened awe of her.

Eugene Wellington lost courage to go on, and the same thing came again

that Jerry Swaim had twice seen on his face in the rose-arbor this

evening. The two were looking straight at the girl now. The firelight

played with the golden glory of her hair and deepened the rose hue of

her round cheeks. The dark-blue eyes seemed almost black, with a gleam

in their depths that meant trouble, and there was a strength in the low

voice as Jerry went on:

"I'm talking about what I know, Aunt Jerry. All there is of my heritage

from my father is a 'claim,' they call it, at New Eden, in the Sage

Brush Valley in Kansas; twelve hundred acres. I'm going out there to

manage it myself and support myself on an income of my own."

For a long minute Jerusha Darby looked steadily at her niece, her own

face as hard and impenetrable as if it were carven out of flint. Then

she said, sharply:

"Where did you find out all this?"

"It is all in a document here that I found in the rose-arbor this

afternoon," the girl replied. "Aunt Jerry, I must use what is mine. I

wouldn't be a Swaim if I didn't."

"You won't stay there two weeks." Mrs. Darby fairly clicked out the

words. Her face was very pale and something like real fright looked

through her eyes as she took the paper from her niece's hand.

"And then?" Jerry inquired, demurely.

"And then you will come back here where you belong and live as you

always have lived, in comfort."

"And if I do not come?"

Jerusha Darby's face was not pleasant to see just then. The firelight

that made the girl more winsomely pretty seemed to throw into relief all

the hard lines of a countenance which selfishness and stubbornness and a

dictatorial will had graven there.

"Jerry Swaim, you are building up a wild, adventurous dream. You are

Lesa Swaim over and over. You want a lark, that's what you want. And

it's you who have put Eugene up to his notions of a career and all that.

Listen to me. Nothing talks in this world like money. That you have to

have for your way of living, and that he's got to have if he wants to be

what he should be. Well, go on out to Kansas. You know more of that

prosperous property out there than I do. I'll let you find it out to the

last limit. But when you come back you must promise me never to take

another such notion. I won't stand this foolishness forever. I'll give

you plenty of money to get there. You can write me when you need funds

to come back. It won't take long to get that letter here."

"And if I shouldn't come?" Jerry asked, calmly.

"Look what you are giving up. All this beautiful home, to say nothing of

the town house--and Eugene--and other property."

"No, no; you don't count him as your property, do you?" Jerry cried,

turning to the young artist, whose face was very pale.

"Jerry, must you make this sacrifice?" he asked, in a voice of

tenderness.

"It isn't a sacrifice; it's just what I want to do," Jerry declared,

lightly.

Jerusha Darby's face darkened. The effect of a long and absolute

exercise of will, coupled with ample means, can make the same kind of a

tyrant out of a Kaiser and a rich aunt. The determination to have her

own way in this matter, as she had had in all other matters, became at

once an unbreakable purpose in her. She wanted to keep fast hold of

these young people for her own sake, not for theirs. For a little while

she sat measuring the two with her narrow, searching eyes.

"I can manage him best," she concluded to herself. At last she asked,

plaintively, "With all you have here, Jerry, why do you go hunting

opportunities in Kansas?"

"Because I want to," Jerry replied, and her aunt knew that, so far as

Jerry was concerned, everything was settled.

"Then we'll drop the matter here. I can wait for you to come to your

senses. Eugene, if you can give her up, when you've always been chums, I

certainly can."

With these words Mrs. Darby rose and passed out, leaving the two alone

under the rose-colored lights of the richly furnished parlor.

It was not like Jerusha Darby to make such a concession, and Jerry Swaim

knew it, but Eugene Wellington, who was of alien blood, did not know it.

The room was much more beautiful without her presence; and her sordid

hinting at the Darby wealth which Jerry must count on, and Eugene must

meekly help to guard for future gain, rasped harshly against their

souls, for they were young and more sentimental than practical. Left

alone to their youth, and strength, and nobler ideals, they vowed that

night to hold to better things. Together they builded a dream of a

rainbow-tinted world which they were going bravely forth to create. Of

what should follow that they did not speak, yet each one guessed what

was in the other's mind, as men and maidens have always guessed since

love began. And on this night there were no serpents at all in their

Eden.

IV

BETWEEN EDENS

The sun of a mid-June day glared down pitilessly on the little station

at the junction of the Sage Brush branch with the main line. There was

not a tree in sight. The south wind was raving across the prairie,

swirling showers of fine sand before it. Its breath came hot against

Jerry Swaim's cheek as she stood in the doorway of the station or

wandered grimly down between the shining rails that stretched toward a

boundless nowhere whither the "through" train had vanished nearly two

hours ago. As Jerry watched it leaving, a sudden heaviness weighed down

upon her. And when the Pullman porter's white coat on the rear platform

of the last coach melted into the dull, diminishing splotch on the

western distance, she felt as if she were shipwrecked in a pathless

land, with the little red station house, reefed about by cinders, as the

only resting-place for the soles of her feet. When her eyes grew weary

of the monotonous landscape, Jerry rested them with what she called "A

Kansas Interior." The rustic station under the maples at "Eden" was

always clean and comfortably appointed. Big flower-beds outside, Uncle

Cornie's gift, belonged to the station and its guests, with the spacious

grounds of "Eden," at which the travelers might gaze without cost, lying

just beyond it.

This "Kansas Interior" seemed only a degree less inviting than the whole

monotonous universe outside. The dust of ages dimmed the windows that

were propped and nailed and otherwise secured against the entrance of

cool summer breezes, or the outlet of bad, overheated air in winter.

Iron-partitioned seats, invention of the Evil One himself, stalled off

three sides of the room, intending to prove the principle that no one

body can occupy two spaces at the same time. In the center of the room a

"plain, unvarnished" stove, bare and bald, stood on a low pedestal

yellowed with time and tobacco juice. A dingy, fly-specked map of the

entire railway system hung askew on the wall--very fat and foreshortened

as to its own extent, very attenuated and ill-proportioned as to other

insignificant systems cutting spidery lines across it.

Behind a sealed tomb of a ticket-window Jerry could hear the "tick-tick,

tick-a-tick-tick, tick-tick" of a telegraph-wire. Somebody must be in

there who at set times, like a Saint Serapion from his hermit cell,

might open this blank wall and speak in almost human tones. Just now the

solitude of the grave prevailed, save for that everlasting "tick-a-tick"

behind the wall.

When Jerry Swaim gripped her hands on the plow handles, there would be

no looking back. She persuaded herself that she wasn't going to die of

the jiggermaroos in the empty nothingness here. It would be very

different at New Eden, she was sure of that. And this York Macpherson

must be a nice old man, honest and easy-going, because he had never

realized any income from her big Kansas estate. She pictured York

easily--a short, bald-headed old gentleman with gray burnsides and

benevolent pale-blue eyes behind gold-rimmed glasses, driving a fat

sorrel nag to an easy-going old Rockaway buggy, carrying a gold-headed

cane given him by the Sunday-school. Jerry had seen his type all her

life in the business circles of Philadelphia and among the better-to-do

country-dwellers around "Eden."

At last it was only fifteen minutes till the Sage Brush train would be

due; then she could find comfort in her Pullman berth. She wondered what

Aunt Jerry and Eugene were doing now. She had slipped away from "Eden"

on her wild adventure in the early dawn. She had taken leave of Aunt

Jerry the night before. Old women need their beauty sleep in the

morning, even if foolish young things are breaking all the laws by

launching out to hunt their fortunes. Eugene had been hurriedly sent

away on Darby estate matters without the opportunity of a leave-taking,

two days before Jerry was ready to start for Kansas. Everything was

prearranged, evidently, to make this going a difficult one. So, without

a single good-by to speed her on her quest, the young girl had gone out

from a sheltering Eden of beauty and idleness. But the tears that had

dimmed her eyes came only when she left the lilac walk to the station to

slip around by Uncle Cornie's grave beside the green-coverleted

resting-places of Jim and Lesa Swaim.

"Maybe mother would glory in what I am doing, and father might say I had

the right stuff in me. And Uncle Cornie--'If a man went right with

himself'--Uncle Cornie might have said 'if a woman went right with

herself,' too. I'm going to put that meaning into his words, even if he

never seemed to think much of women. Oh, father! Oh, mother! You _lived_

before you died, anyhow, and I'm going to do the same. Uncle Cornie died

before he ever really lived."

Jerry stretched out her hands to the one good-by in "Eden" coming to her

from these silent ripples of dewy green sod. Then youth and the June

morning and the lure of adventure into new lands came with their triple

strength to buoy her up to do and dare. Behind her were her lover to

be--for Eugene must love her--her home ties, luxury, dependent

inactivity. Before her lay the very ends of the earth, the Kansas end

especially. The spirit of Sir Galahad, of Robinson Crusoe, of Don

Quixote, combined with the spirit of a self-willed, inexperienced girl,

but dimly conscious yet of what lay back of her determination to go

forth--_because she wanted to go_.

Chicago and Kansas City offered easy ports for clearing. And the Kaw

Valley, unrolling its broad acres along the way, gave larger promise

than Jerry had yet dared to dream of for the New Eden farther west. The

train service, after the manner of a Pacific Coast limited, had been

perfect in every appointment. And then--this junction episode.

Two eternity-long hours before the Sage Brush branch could take her to

New Eden were almost ended.

"It's not so terrifying, after all." Jerry was beginning to "see things

again." "It's all in the game--and I am going to be as 'game' as the

thing I am playing. Things always come round all right for me. _They

must._"

The square white chin was very much a family feature just now. And the

shapely hands had no hint of weakness in their grip on the iron arms of

the station seat.

The door which the wind had slammed shut was slammed open again as three

prospective passengers for the Sage Brush train slammed through it laden

with luggage. At the same time the sealed-up ticket-window flew open,

showing the red, grinning face of the tick-tick man behind its iron

bars. If Jerry had never paid the slightest heed to the bunch of grubs

on the Winnowoc branch, except as they kept down the ventilation, or

crowded their odors of Limburger on her offended senses, the Sage Brush

grubs were a thousandfold less worthy of her consideration. As the

three crowded to the ticket-window, laughing among themselves, she

stared through the doorway, unconsciously reading the names on the cars

of a freight-train slowly heaving down alongside the station. Who

invented freight-cars, anyhow? The most uninteresting and inartistic

thing ever put on wheels by the master mechanic of the unbeautiful,

created mainly to shut off the view of mankind from what is really worth

looking at. Jerry read the dulled lettering mechanically: "Santa Fe"

with its symbol of a fat cross in a circle, "Iron Mountain," "Great

Northern," "Rock Island," "Frisco," "Union Pacific," "Grand Trunk," came

creeping by. "New York Central," "Lehigh Valley," "Pennsylvania Line."

These took her back to "Eden" and the Winnowoc country. The station

building shook; the ugly old cars slam-banged a bit faster back and

forth; the engine, with the breath almost knocked out of it, was puffing

down by the switch, and the whole body behind it quivered to a

standstill. But Jerry Swaim's tear-blurred eyes were seeing only the

green fields of the Darby country-place and the rose-arbor and Eugene

Wellington. A voice loud, but not unpleasant, and a laugh, a merry,

catching, giggling guffaw, drove the picture of "Eden" and all that

belonged to it into "viewless air" that went flapping and flaring across

the Kansas landscape.

"You don't mean it! He, he! Haw!" Everybody must smile now. "The old

Sage Brush local is locoed 'way up toward S'liny. Engine shortage, car

shortage, common sense shortage. He, he! And we must ride in that

sunflower de luxe limited standing out there. Come on, Thelmy. You can

take lower nothin', car one-half. We'll soar in now while the soarin's

good."

Jerry looked at the bunch of grubs for the first time. One had to see

where that big gloom-chasing giggle came from. Thelma was a spotlessly

clean, well-made country product, wherein the girl had easily given

place to the woman, erect, full-bosomed, strong of frame. The hazel eyes

were arched over by heavy brown brows. There was no rosebud curve to the

rather wide mouth that showed a set of magnificent white teeth. The

brown hair wound braid on braid about the head was proof of the glory of

Saint Paul's scriptural decree. Not that Jerry Swaim really noted any of

these features. She merely saw a country girl--a not offensive native.

The native's comrade, he with the big-laugh fixtures, was short and

stout, with a round face on the front side of a round head, set on top

of a tight-built body. Grub though he was, Jerry involuntarily smiled

with him. That far the fat little man controlled everybody. But the

funny little strut in his gait as he walked was irresistible. The third

passenger, the grubbiest of the three grubs, was a nondescript of whose

presence Jerry was not even aware until she heard his voice. It was a

thin, high, unused voice, and its pitch wabbled up and down.

"Be you goin' on the Sage Bresh train, lady?"

The questioner had turned back after the country girl and the fat man

had passed out.

Jerry looked at him without taking his question to herself. His shoes,

draped with wrinkled-down hose, were very much worn. His overalls

flapping around his legs, his shirt and neck and face and hair and hat,

were all of one complexion, a fuzzy, yellow brown.

"Be you goin' on this train, too?"

It was a humble, kindly voice, and the scaly old hand holding the door

open against the high prairie wind was only a fisherman's hand. The

deep-set eyes in the yellow-brown old face were trained to read the

river; the patient mouth set to wait for the catch of lines and nets.

Jerry had never in her life spoken to such a creature. So far as she was

concerned, he did not exist.

"This is the only train on the Sage Bresh to-day, lady. The reg'lar

train's busted through a culbert out yander," the high, quavering voice

persisted.

A sharp tooting from the engine down the line emphasized the statement,

and Jerry saw the grinning red-faced tick-tick man hastily wheeling

mail-sacks and sundry other parcels by the door. In a bewildered way she

rose and passed out, giving no recognition to the shabby old man who had

been thoughtful of her ignorance.

"We gotta go to the last car down yander, lady," the old man squeaked

out, as he started down the cinder-paved way with a bearlike, shuffling,

sidewise sort of gait.

Jerry followed him slowly to "the last car down yander."

A plain day coach, the sixtieth and last vertebra in this long

mechanical spine, was already crowded with a bunch of grubs, none of

whom could belong to Jerry Swaim's sphere. Moreover, they were all

tightly packed in and wedged down so that it was impossible to detect

the leaving off of the full-fare passenger and the beginning of

suit-cases, old-style telescopes, baskets, bundles, boxes, half-fare

children, bags of fruit, lunch-crates, pieces of farming tools, babes in

arms, groceries--everything to cabbages and kings. Jerry wondered where

all these _things_ came from. Every object in that car, human being or

salt pork, crying baby or kingbolt, was a _thing_ to Jerry Swaim. And

all of them were very warm and nervously tense, as if the hot June wind

had blown them all inside, that the hot June sun, through the closed

windows, might stew them stinkily; or, through the open windows, grime

their sweaty faces with hot dust off the hot prairie. There was only one

vacant seat left. It was on the shady side, facing the rear of the car,

and was half occupied already by the humble grub of the squeaky voice.

The girl, Thelma, and the fat little man had taken the seat opposite

him. As Jerry entered the car the little man was on his feet, bowing and

strutting and insisting that a woman with a babe in arms should exchange

seats with him, putting her on the cool side, while he took her place in

the sun across the aisle from Thelma. In the transfer he did not see

Jerry, who was looking in vain for an opening in that mass of "human

various." It was the humble grub who saw her standing there. Evidently

his little yellow-green eyes took her measure at a glance, but he did

not spread out his effects and stare out of the window as some other men

were doing, nor gather himself and his into his own half of the seat to

make room for her beside him. He rose, and in a shrill little quaver he

bade her take his place. It did not occur to Jerry to tell him that

there was room for two, as she saw him shuffle down the aisle with a

queer, limping hitch. In the same impersonal way she watched him through

the open door, sitting on the rear platform during the long afternoon,

humpbacked against the cinders and dust that beat upon him, swaying with

the rocking car, jerked along over a sun-baked, treeless prairie at the

tail of a long jerky freight-train. He meant nothing to this dainty city

product; his kind had never entered her world; no more had the

red-faced, tow-headed young mother, with white eyebrows and hat knocked

rakishly aslant, with her big, restless, bald-headed baby rolling over

her in waves, sprawling about Thelma, and threatening to bump its head

off as it overflowed all the narrow space, aimlessly and persistently.

But if Jerry Swaim felt out of her element in this company, her

fellow-passengers felt much more embarrassed by her presence. Thelma's

neat gingham dress became limp and mussy and common. The tired mother's

yellow lawn was rumpled into a dish-rag. And with every jerk of the

train she lost a hair-pin from her tow hair that was already stringing

down in long wisps on her neck. The baby, really a happy, white,

blue-veined infant, became a fussy flushed impossibility.

All this, it seemed, just because of the presence of a faultlessly

dressed, fair-faced stranger who awed everybody by not seeing them, but

whose very daintiness and beauty drew them hungrily to her. Nobody could

be in Jerry Swaim's presence and not feel the spell of her inherent

magnetism.

The laughter and complaints of the passengers dulled down to endurance.

Only the face of the short man wore a smile. But his mouth was made with

that kind of a curve, and he couldn't help it. Breathing deeply and

perspiring healthfully, he sat against the heat streaming into his side

of the car, and forgot his troubles in his unbreakable good nature. For

a long time he and Thelma had talked across the aisle above and through

the train's noises. Their talk was all of Paul and Joe's place, and the

crops; of how glad Thelma was to be at home again on Paul's account; and

how long it would take her yet if the alfalfa and wheat turned out well.

Jerry heard it all without knowing it, as she looked at the monotonous

landscape without knowing it. And then the dry prairies began to deepen

to a richer hue. Yellow wheat-fields and low-growing corn and stretches

of alfalfa broke into the high plains where cattle grazed. And then came

the gleam of a river, sometimes shallow along sandy levels, sometimes

deep, with low overhanging brush on either side. And there were

cottonwood-trees and low twisted elms and scrubby locust and oak

saplings, and the faint, fresh scent of moisture livening the air.

The train jerked itself to a standstill, thought better of it, and

hunched along again for a rod or two, then jostled itself quiet again.

Jerry was very drowsy now, but she was conscious of hearing the fat man

calling out, cheerfully:

"Home at last, Thelmy. There's Paul waiting for you. Well, good-by."

And of Thelma's "Good-by" in a louder tone than was necessary. Of more

strutting and bowing and no end of luggage clearing itself away.

Through the window Jerry caught sight of a tall, fair-haired boy, who

looked like Thelma, except that in his white face was the pathos of the

life-cripple. She saw Thelma kiss him, and then the two started down the

sunny, cindery side-track together. In the distance, close to the river,

there was a small plain house under a big cottonwood-tree. The glimpse

of red about a little porch meant that the crimson ramblers were in

bloom there. Oh, the roses of "Eden," and the cool rose-arbor! Jerry

must have dreamed then, for "Eden" was about her again. Through it the

limping grub came humbly to claim his sundry own from behind and under

the seat. Even in "Eden" she thought how much like a clumsy bear his

gait was. And when the little man called him "Teddy" she knew he was not

a fisherman sort of creature, but a real bear in yellow-brown overalls,

and that the general fuzziness of his make-up was fur, and that his

stubby, scaly hands were claws. He dropped off somewhere when the

freight took a siding very near the river. It was the Sage Brush, but it

ran through the "Eden" grounds and Uncle Cornie was throwing his discus

beside it. The rose-arbor was just across the aisle. The little fat man

was sitting in its doorway, with a new moon of a smile on the smooth

side of his round head where his face was, a half-quizzical,

half-sympathetic smile with no guile in it. Jerry really liked him for

that kind of a smile. It belonged to him. The rose-arbor was very warm,

for the man was sweating more copiously than ever.... Uncle Cornie was

gone. The limping Teddy Bear was gone.... It was very, very hot and

sunny in "Eden." The big maples and cool lilacs were gone.... "Eden" was

gone. In its stead came the art exhibit in the cool gallery in the city.

And that yellow-gray desert landscape with the flaming afterglow and

purple mists. The flames seemed almost real, and the yellow gray almost

real, and the art-gallery was getting warmer as "Eden" had done. It was

positively hot.... And then the Sage Brush freight was laboring slowly

and painfully through a desert with clack and roar and cloud of cindery

dust.... Jerry sat up, wide awake, and looked up at the fat stranger who

was looking at her, the smile on the inside of his face, as it were,

showing only in the eyes.

Outside, the river was gone, taking with it all the cool-breathing

alfalfa, and elm and cottonwood shade, and leaving in their stead only

bare earth-ridges and low dunes. As far as Jerry could see, there was

nothing but a hot yellow plain, wrinkled here and there in great barren

folds, with wave and crest and hollow of wind-shifted sand crawling

endlessly back and forth along the face of the landscape. A few spiny

green shrubs struggled through at intervals, but their presence only

intensified the barrenness about them.

The train was entering a deep wrinkle not unlike that cut beyond the

third crossing of the Winnowoc. Jerry remembered the day she had watched

that other train from the bluff road, and her exultation in pounding her

big car up the steep way instead of crawling through, as Eugene was

doing. Later she had found out that Eugene really preferred that to the

more daring climb. Jerry involuntarily gripped the car seat with a

subconscious longing to get out and drive over the whole thing. Across

the aisle, the smile on the fat man's face was coming outside as he

watched the stranger passenger.

They were deep in now--a valley-like thing that was hotter than any

other inch of the whole way they had come. On either side tall slabs of

timber, planted upright, closed in the right of way. They were barely

moving through this narrow lane. The engine was gasping for breath, and

the cars dragged themselves after it by inches. Then all came to a dead

stop.

"Everybody turn out and help," somebody in uniformed authority called

through the car door, and all the men passengers stirred to action.

"_The_ dickens!" the short fat man exclaimed to everybody. "Stuck in a

sand-drift in that danged blowout. That's what comes of letting this

wind go all day. I told 'em up at the junction to stop it, but they

wouldn't listen to me. Now we've got to soar out of here and shovel for

our lives."

When he laughed everybody else had to laugh, too, and it was a really

good-natured company of men that piled down from the train to help the

cause of railway transportation.

The fat man had been last to leave the car.

"Let me close all these windows," he urged, strutting from seat to seat.

"It'll be hot with 'em shut, but you'll be buried in sand in here if we

leave 'em open, and we men don't want to dig you and the engine all out

in one day. We mightn't find all the children, you know, and leave some

of 'em in here covered up. He, he! Haw!" He struggled with the last

windows until they were sealed down, then turned away to lend his aid in

a good cause.

The tow-headed woman and her little perpetual-motion baby, who had been

sleeping wearily for a few miles, roused at the jolly man's loud laugh.

"It's the blowout," the mother said, as Jerry looked at her for the

first time. "Them timbers is driv in to keep out all that sand. See how

it's heaped up ag'in' 'em on the outside. On awfully windy days it blows

over and fills the tracks and stops the train, and then the men all get

out and help to shovel it off. Gee whiz! but it's hot in here! We'd be

just smothered in sand if we left the windows open, though. There!

There!"

The last to the big baby, stirring uneasily, whom the mother patted off

to slumber again.

Jerry walked to the rear door and looked out at the narrow space walled

in by palisades, and at glimpses of sand waves on either side of the

road beyond them; at the little hot-looking green shrubs clinging for

life to their shifting depths, and the heat-quivering air visible above

them. In all her life she had never felt so uncomfortable as now; never

realized what it means to _endure_ physical misery. She had seen the

habitable globe features--lake-shore, and seaside, and mountain resorts;

big navigable rivers; big forests; narrow little valleys; sheer cliffs

and wonderful waterfalls. She didn't know that the world held such a

place as this that anybody but a Hottentot was supposed to inhabit.

Through a long hour and a half the train was held back by the sand of

what Jerry heard was a "blowout." She did not know nor care what the

term meant. _She wanted to get_ out of it and go on, and what Jerry

Swaim _wanted_ she had always had the right to have.

The sun was getting low in the west when the local freight labored up

the Sage Brush Valley to its terminal in the yards at New Eden. All of

the passengers except Jerry tumbled out, much as tired boys rush from

the church door after a long doctrinal sermon. The car was stopped at

the freight-station, some distance down the line from the

passenger-station, which was itself a long way out from New Eden, after

the manner of Western small towns. The middle '80's, when railroad

branch lines were building, found road directors and town councils

falling out over technicalities, with the result that the railroad

seldom secured the ground it wanted and the town was seldom given a

convenient station site.

The buses filled rapidly, and the mail and express wagons were rattling

off ahead of buses and foot passengers, and still the young stranger sat

in the car. A sudden sense of loneliness had enveloped her like a cloud.

She was not a novice abroad. She had gone to strange towns alone before.

She knew all the regulations of hotel service. She knew why she had come

here and what she had to do, and she had abundant means for all her

needs. But with all these points in her favor a helplessness swept over

her, and the "what next" for the moment perplexed her. The engine was

getting restless again. However long it may require a local freight to

get from one given point to another, the engine, like an ill-broken

colt, will keep stepping up or pulling back through every halt of the

train. Jerry sat inside, watching the last bus, loaded and hung-on-to,

swinging off down the dusty road toward the town, a full half-mile

across the prairie from the station. Life was getting a trifle too

interesting in this foreign clime, and when the short man appeared in

the doorway, even the full-moon face and half-moon smile, the profound

bow and comical strut, could not out-weigh the genuine comfort his

presence seemed to bring.

"Pardon me, Miss--Miss--"

"Miss Swaim," Jerry informed him, sure of herself and unafraid again.

"Oh, Miss Swaim! My name is Ponk--Junius Brutus Ponk. Pardon again if I

seem to intrude. This is the Sage Brush terminal. Excuse me if I say

thank the Lord for the end of _this_ day's journey! The buses are all

gone. May I take you to your destination here in my little gadabout? You

want to stop somewhere in New Eden overnight, anyhow."

"Thank you very much."

Jerry looked at him gratefully, even if he was only one of the bunch of

grubs she had been forced to ride with all this long afternoon, she who

had once repudiated the Winnowoc train and all trains without Pullman

accommodations. "The smile on her face was mightily winsome," Ponk

declared afterward, "and just took all my ramparts and citadels and

moats and drawbridges at one fell swoop."

He gathered up her bags and helped her off the car pompously, saying:

"Here she is, Miss Swaim. Step right in." And then with a flourish of

arms he had Jerry and her belongings stored inside a shiny gray runabout

and was off down the grassy road with a dash.

"Where shall I take you to, Miss Swaim?" he inquired, when the little

car had glided gracefully around the lumbering buses and rattling

wagons.

"To the best hotel, please," Jerry replied. "Do you know which one that

is?"

"Yes'm. There isn't but one. The Commercial Hotel and Gurrage. I'm the

proprietor, so I know." The smile that broke around the face of the

speaker was too good-natured to make his words seem presumptuous.

Jerry smiled, too, finding herself in the grasp of a strange and

complete confidence in the pompous little unknown chauffeur.

"Do you know an old gentleman here named York Macpherson, a Mortgage

Company man?" she asked, looking at him directly for the first time.

Ponk seemed to gulp down a smile before he replied: "Ye-es, I do know

York very well. He's prob'bly older than he looks. His office is right

across the street from the Commercial Hotel and Gurrage."

Afterward he declared: "From the minute that girl turned her eyes full

on me and I saw how blue them orbs were, I begun to wish I had a gold

button instead of a bone one in the back of my collar. I knew she could

see that cheap bone thing right through my neck and I was willing right

then to lay down and play dead if she wanted me to, and I'm never going

to recover, never."

"Would you do--me a favor?" Jerry asked, hesitatingly.

Asking favors was a new line for her and she followed it prettily.

"Wouldn't I!" Mr. Ponk exclaimed. "Try me."

"Even his voice has a strut in it," Jerry thought. Aloud she said: "I

have business with this old gentleman and I would be much obliged if you

would tell him that Miss Geraldine Swaim is in the city and would like

to meet him."

"Why, I'll soar right over there as soon as we get to the hotel and

gurrage."

Junius Brutus Ponk looked slyly at the face of his companion as he

spoke. What he was thinking just then it would have been hard to guess.

With a flourish and curve that were wholly Ponkish the fat little man

swung the gray car up to the brick-paved porch of the "Commercial Hotel

and Gurrage."

"Why, there's York now, reading his mail! I'll go right over and tell

him," Mr. Ponk declared. "Here, George, tell Georgette to give Miss

Swaim number seven."

George assisted Miss Swaim to the hotel register and Georgette led her

to room No. 7. Georgette wanted to linger a minute, for this guest was

so unlike the usual commercial-traveler kind of ladies who sold books,

or canvassed for extracts, or took orders for crayon portraits enlarged

from little photographs; but Miss Swaim's manner gave no excuse for

lingering. Alone, Jerry closed her door and turned, with a smile on her

lips, to face her surroundings. The room was clean and cool, with a big

window overhanging the street. Jerry sat down before it, realizing how

weary the long journey had made her. Across the street, the sign of the

Macpherson Mortgage Company in big gold letters hung above a plate-glass

window. Mr.

Ponk, who had just "soared" across, was sitting in his car before it.

Jerry saw a man inside at a desk very much like Uncle Cornie's in the

Philadelphia banking-house where Eugene Wellington was busy now helping

Aunt Jerry to settle things. This man was reading letters when the Ponk

car tooted before the big window. He waved a hand to the tooter, then

put his letters away and came leisurely outside. Jerry saw a tall,

finely proportioned man, the set of whose clothes had a city air, and

there was something in his whole manner that would have distinguished

him from every other man in New Eden.

The fat little man talked earnestly, with a flourish of the hand now and

then toward the room where Jerry sat watching the two. York Macpherson

rested one foot on the running-board, and leaned his arms on the side of

the car, listening intently to what Mr. Ponk was saying.

"So that is this York Macpherson who was never responsible for my estate

not making any returns. And I called him an old man. The hotel

proprietor must be telling him that now." Jerry laughed as she saw the

two men chuckling together. "Well, I hope the pompous little fellow

tells him I'm an old woman. It would even things up wonderfully."

Ten minutes later Jerry was shaking hands with York Macpherson and

promising him to go to his home and meet his sister as soon as she had

cleared her eyes of dust sufficiently to see anybody.

It must have been the dust in her eyes, Jerry thought, that made York

Macpherson appear so unlike the benevolent, inefficient old gentleman

she had pictured to herself. The hotel parlor was in twilight shadows,

which helped a little to conceal the surprise of these two when they met

there. Jerry knew what she had been anticipating. Whether York

Macpherson knew or not, he was clearly not expecting what he found in

the hotel parlor.

"I'll soar down to your shack with the lady as soon as she has had her

supper and got herself rightly in hand," Ponk declared to York when he

came into the hotel office. "You see, we got stuck in that danged,

infernal blowout, and it was as hard on the womenkind who had to sit

inside and swelter as on us men who nobly dug. 'Specially this Miss

Swaim. She must have 'wept to see such quantities of sand,' same as them

oysters and walruses and carpenters. We'll be along by and by, though.

Have a cigar. What do you make of her, anyhow, York?"

"I don't make anything. I leave that job to you," York replied, with a

smile, as he turned abruptly and left the hotel.

"Unless you see eight per cent. interest coming your way, I see. There

might be a bigger interest in this investment than any you ever made in

your life," Ponk called after him.

But York only waved off the words without looking back. Outside, the

sunset's splendor was filling the western sky--the same old prairie

sunset that he had seen many a time in his years in Kansas. And yet, on

this evening it did not seem quite the same; nor were the sunsets, New

Eden, and the Sage Brush Valley from this evening ever quite as they had

been before, to York Macpherson.

V

NEW EDEN'S PROBLEM

Because of a broken "culbert" out toward "S'liny" the afternoon train on

the Sage Brush branch was annulled for the day. Because of this

annulment the mail for the Sage Brush Valley was brought up on the local

freight, which is always behind time when it reaches its terminal, which

accounted for the late delivery of the mail at the New Eden post-office,

which made York Macpherson's dinner late because of a big batch of

letters to be read, and an important business call at the Commercial

Hotel following the reading and the delivery of Mr. Ponk's message.

Purple shadows were beginning to fold down upon the landscape, while

overhead the sky was still heliotrope and gold, but York Macpherson,

walking slowly homeward, saw neither the shadows nor the glory that

overhung them. It was evident to his sister Laura, who was waiting for

him in the honeysuckle corner of the big front porch, that his mind was

burdened with something unusual to-night.

York Macpherson was a "leading citizen" type of the Middle West.

Wholesome, ruggedly handsome, prosperous, shrewd to read men's minds,

quick to meet their needs, full of faith in the promise of the Western

prairies, with the sort of culture no hardship of the plains could ever

overcome--that was York. Although he was on the front edge of middle

life in years, with a few gray streaks in his wavy brown hair, he had

the young-looking face, the alert action, and vigorous atmosphere of a

young-hearted man just entered into his full heritage of manhood.

"The train was delayed down the river on account of sand drifted over

the track by the south wind, and that made the mail late," York

explained, when he reached the porch. "I'll bet you have had the house

shut up tight as wax and have gone about all day with a dust-cloth in

your hand. Given a south wind and Laura Macpherson, and you have a home

industry in no time. Let's hurry up the dinner" (it was always dinner to

the Macphersons and supper to the remainder of New Eden) "and get

outside again as soon as possible. I can't think in shut-up rooms."

"When there is a south wind it makes little difference whether or not

one does any thinking. I postpone that job to the cool of the evening,"

Laura Macpherson declared, as she led the way to the dining-room.

When the two came outside again the air off the prairie was delicious,

and there was promise of restfulness later in the black silence of the

June night that made them forget the nervous strain of the windy day.

The Macphersons had no problems that they could not talk over in the

shadowy stillness of that roomy porch on summer evenings.

York had been a bachelor boarder at the "Commercial Hotel and Garage"

for some years before the coming of his sister Laura, who was at once

his housekeeper, companion, and counselor. When he first went to the

hotel New Eden was in its infancy, and the raw beginnings of things were

especially underdone in this two-dollars-a-day, one-towel-a-week

establishment. It was through York that Junius Brutus Ponk had given up

an unprofitable real-estate business to become proprietor of the

Commercial Hotel--"and Gurrage" was added later with the advent of

automobiles, the "Gurrage" part being a really creditably equipped

livery for public service. By this change of occupation for Ponk, the

Macpherson Mortgage Company accomplished several things. It got rid of

an inefficient competitor whose very inefficiency would have made him a

more disagreeable enemy than a successful man would have been. Further,

it placed the ambitious little man where his talents could flourish

(flourish is the right word for J. B. Ponk), and it put into the growing

little town of New Eden a hotel with city comforts that brought business

to the town and added mightily to its reputation and respectability.

York Macpherson's business had grown with the town he had helped to

build. Long before other towns in this part of Kansas had dreamed it

possible for them, New Eden was lighted with electricity. Water-works

and a sewer system fore-ran cement sidewalks and a mile of paving, not

including the square around the court-house. And before any of these had

come the big stone school-house on the high ridge overlooking the Sage

Brush Valley for miles. That also was York Macpherson's task, which he

had carried out almost single-handed, and had the satisfaction of

bringing desirable taxpaying residents to live in New Eden who would

never have come but for the school advantages. Then Junius Brutus Ponk,

who had learned to couple with York, got himself elected to the board of

education and began to pay higher salaries to teachers than was paid by

any other town in the whole Sage Brush Valley; to the end that better

schools were housed in that fine school-building, and a finer class of

young citizens began to put the good name of New Eden above everything

else. The hoodlum element was there, of course, but it was not the

leading element. Boys stuck to the high-school faithfully and followed

it up with a college course, even though a large per cent. of them

worked for every dollar that the course cost them. Girls went to

college, too, until it became a rare thing to find a teacher in the

whole valley who had not a diploma from some institution of higher

learning.

It was only recently that Laura Macpherson had come to New Eden to make

her home with her brother. An accident a few years before had shortened

one limb, making her limp as she walked. She was some years older than

York, with a face as young and very much like her brother's; a comely,

companionable sort of woman, popular alike with men and women, young

folks and children.

Some time before her coming York had bought the best building-site in

New Eden, a wooded knoll inside the corporation limits, the only natural

woodland in the vicinity, that stood directly across the far end of

Broad Avenue, the main business street, whose mile of paving ended in

York's driveway. In one direction, this site commanded a view far down

Sage Brush Valley; in the other, it overlooked the best residence and

business portion of New Eden. Here York had, as he put it, "built a

porch, at the rear of which a few rooms were attached." The main glory

of the place, however, was the big porch.

York had named their home "Castle Cluny," and his big farm joining it

just outside the town limits "Kingussie," after some old Macpherson-clan

memories. There were no millionaires in the Sage Brush Valley, and this

home was far and away the finest, as well as the most popular, home in a

community where thrift and neatness abounded in the homes, and elegance

was very much lacking, as was to be expected in a young town on the far

edge of the Middle West.

"Joe Thomson came in to-day to see me about putting a mortgage on his

claim this side of the big blowout. Looks like a losing game for Joe.

His land is about one-third sand now," York commented, thoughtfully, as

he settled himself comfortably in his big porch chair.

"Well, why not let the sand have its own third, while he uses the other

two-thirds himself? They ought to keep him busy," Laura suggested.

The country around New Eden was still new to her. Although she

overflowed the town with her sunny presence, her lameness had kept her

nearer to "Castle Cluny" than her brother had comprehended. She did not

understand the laws, nor lawlessness, of what her brother called the

"blowout," nor had she ever seen the desolation that marked its

broadening path.

"A blowout is never satisfied until it has swallowed all the land in the

landscape," York explained. "I remember a few years ago there was just a

sandy outcrop along a little draw below Joe's claim, the line of some

prehistoric river-bed, I suppose. That was the beginning of the thing

Joe is fighting to-day. Something started the sand to drifting. It

increased as the wind blew away the soil; the more wind, the more sand;

the more sand, the more wind. They worked together until what had been a

narrow belt spread enormously, gradually overlapping Joe's claim, making

acres of waste ground. I hate to see Joe shoulder a mortgage to try to

drive back that monstrous thing. But Joe is one of those big,

self-contained fellows who takes the bit in his teeth and goes his own

gait in spite of all the danger signals you wigwag at him."

"Why do you loan him money if you know he can't succeed?" Laura

inquired.

"Making farm loans is the business of the Macpherson Mortgage Company.

That's how we maintain our meager existence," York replied, teasingly.

"Joe wants to fight back the blowout creeping over his south border

farther and farther each year. Our company gets its commission while he

fights. See?"

"Oh, you grasping loan shark! If I didn't know how easy it is for you to

lie I'd disown you," Laura declared, flinging a chair pillow at her

brother, who was chuckling at her earnestness.

But York was serious himself in the next minute.

"Our company doesn't want the prairie; it wants prosperity. A foreclosed

mortgage is bad business. It brings us responsibility and ill-will. What

we want is good-will and interest money. I have put the thing up to Joe

just as it is. Man is a free agent to choose or let alone. I have a

bigger problem than Joe to handle now. I had a letter this evening from

Miss Geraldine Swaim, of Philadelphia. Do you remember her, Laura? She

used to come up to Winnowoc when she was a little girl."

"I remember little Jerry Swaim, Jim and Lesa's only child," York's

sister declared. "She was considerably younger than I. I pushed her in

her baby-cab when I wasn't very big myself. When I went away to college

she was a little roly-poly beauty of ten or eleven, maybe. Wasn't she

named for her father's rich sister, Mrs. Darby? I never knew that Mrs.

Darby's name was Geraldine."

"It wasn't; it was Jerusha; and Jim's name was Jeremiah; and Lesa's was

plain Melissa," York explained. "But Lesa changed all of their names to

make them sound more romantic. Romance was Lesa's strong suit. She

called her daughter 'Jerry,' to please Mrs. Darby, but the child was

christened Geraldine--never Jerusha. Lesa wouldn't stand for that."

"And now what does this Geraldine want from my respected brother?" Laura

inquired, leaning back on the cushions of her chair to listen.

York's face was hidden by the darker shadows of the porch, but his

sister knew by his grave tone, when he spoke again, that something

deeper than a business transaction lay back of this message from

Philadelphia.

"It's an old story, Laura. The story of parents rearing a child in

luxury and then dying poor and leaving this child unprovided for and

unfitted to provide for herself. Jim Swaim was as clear-headed as his

wife was soft-hearted and idealizing. Every angle of his was a right

angle, even if he did grow a bit tight-fisted sometimes for his family's

sake. But a leech of a fellow, a sort of relative by marriage, got his

claws into Jim some way, and in the end got him, root and branch. Then

Lesa contracted pneumonia and died after a short illness. And just when

Jim was most needed to hold up his business interests and tide things

over, as well as look after his daughter, they found him dead in his

office one morning. Heart failure, the doctors said, the kind that gets

a brain-fagged business man. The estate has been in litigation for two

years. Now it is settled, and all that is left for Geraldine is a claim

her father held out here in the Sage Brush Valley. She thinks she is

going to live on that. She came in on the afternoon train and is

stopping at the Commercial Hotel. I called to see her a minute on my way

home. That was why I ate a cold dinner this evening. I asked her to come

here at once, but she refused. Some one from the hotel will bring her

over later. That means Ponk, of course. He's the whole Commercial Hotel

'and Gurrage.' We must have her here to stay with us awhile, of course."

"York Macpherson!" his sister fairly gasped. "Coming to call this

evening! Will stay with us awhile, of course. All right. I'm willing

she should stay with us awhile, but how can _she_ live on a Sage Brush

claim? Why doesn't her rich aunt Darby provide for her? What does she

look like?"

"I don't know," York drawled, provokingly. Then he added: "Mrs. Darby

also writes, saying that she hopes we will look after Jerry while she is

here, but that she herself can do nothing for her niece, because a

relative of her dear deceased husband, an artist of merit but no means,

is dependent on her, and she owes it to her dear deceased's memory to

look after this young man. I've a notion that there is something back of

both letters, but I haven't had time to read behind the lines yet."

"Turns out her own flesh and blood, a girl, too, to shift for herself,

and coddles this man, this artist thing, for her dear deceased's sake.

What _do_ you think of that?" Laura burst out.

"I don't think of that," York replied. "Not really knowing any woman but

my sister, I can't judge them by the sample. Besides, this 'girl thing'

may have elected to come to the Sage Brush herself; that would be like

Jim Swaim. Or she may be making a lark of the trip; that's her mother's

child. And, anyhow, she has property in her own name, you see."

"Property, bosh! Where is this precious claim that is to sustain this

luxuriously reared child?" Laura Macpherson insisted.

"It is an undeveloped claim down the Sage Brush, in a part of the

country you haven't seen yet. That is what this child of luxury has come

out for to live upon," York said, with a minor chord of anxiety in his

voice.

Then a silence fell, for Laura Macpherson felt that something tragical

must be bound up in the course of coming events.

It was the poet's hour of "nearly dark." The "high lights" were

beginning to gleam from the cupola of the court-house and high-school,

and station tower out across the open stretch that lay between it and

the town. New Eden was unusually well lighted for its size. York

Macpherson had forced that provision into the electric company's

franchise. But New-Edenites were still rural in their ways, and never

burned up the long summer twilight with bug-alluring street lights.

Homes, too, were mostly shadowy places, with the dwellers resting in

porch swings or lawn chairs. Moreover, although there was a little

leakage somewhere through which things disappeared occasionally, nobody

in town except bankers, postmasters, and mortgage companies locked their

doors. The jail was usually empty on the Saturday night, and the

churches were full on Sunday, as is the normal condition of Middle West

towns in a prohibition state.

"The wind is in the east. It will rain to-morrow," York said, after a

pause. "I had planned to go to the upper Sage Brush country for a

couple of days. I'll wait till after Sunday now."

Laura Macpherson did not know whether the last meant relief or anxiety.

York was not readable to-night.

"What are you staring at?" York asked, presently, from his

vine-sheltered angle, as he saw his sister looking intently down into

the street.

"Humans," Laura replied, composedly.

"Not the Big Dipper, I hope. Isn't the town big enough without her

ranging all over 'Kingussie'?"

"Oh, York, you will call Mrs. Bahrr 'the Big Dipper' to her face some

day, if you don't quit your private practice," Laura declared.

"Well, her name is Stella Bahrr. 'Stellar,' she calls it, and she

pronounces her surname just plain 'Bear.' If that isn't starry enough I

don't know my astronomy. And she is always dipping into other folks's

business and stirring up trouble with a high hand. Laura, once and for

all, never tie up with that little old hat-trimmer. She'll trim you if

you do."

"Don't be uneasy about our getting chummy. I'm positively rude to her

most of the time. She isn't coming here. She has veered off toward the

Lenwells'. But look who is coming, York."

York shifted his chair into line with the street.

"It's the fair Philadelphian and her pompous gentleman in waiting," York

declared.

"Look at little Brother Ponk strut, would you? 'A charge to keep I

have.' But, York, Miss Swaim appears a bit too Philadelphian for our New

Eden scenery!" Laura exclaimed.

"She is a type all her own, I would say. Jim Swaim's determined chin and

Lesa's dreamy eyes. She will be an interesting study, at least. I wonder

which parent will win in her final development," York replied, as the

two approached the house.