It was a white night--a night so brilliant that the village lights far
below in the hollow all but lost their own identity in the radiance of
that huge, pale moon; so white that the yellow flare of the single
lamp in its bracket, in the back kitchen of the old Bolton place on
the hill seemed shabbily dull by contrast.
Standing at the window in the dark front room of the house, peering
out from under cupped palms that hid her eyes, Dryad could almost pick
out each separate picket of the straggling old fence that bounded the
garden of the little drab cottage across from her. In that searching
light she could even make out great patches where the rotting
sheathing of the house had been torn away, leaving the framework
beneath naked and gaunt and bare.
It was scarcely two months since the day when she had gone herself to
Judge Maynard with her offer to sell that unkempt acre or so which he
had fought so long and bitterly to force into the market. And it had
been a strange one, too--that interview. His acceptance had been
quick--instantaneously eager--but the girl was still marvelling a
little over his attitude throughout that transaction, whenever her
mind turned back to it.
When she mentioned the mortgage which Young Denny had secured only a
few days before, he had seemed to understand almost immediately why
she had spoken of it, without the explanation which she meant to
give.
Once again she found him a different Judge Maynard from all the others
she had known, and he had in the years since she could remember, been
many different men to her imagination. It puzzled her almost as much
as did his opinion upon the value of the old place, which, somehow,
she could not bring herself to believe was worth all that he insisted
upon paying. But then, too, she did not know either that the town's
great man had been riding a-tilt at his own soul, for several days on
end, and just as Old Jerry had done, was seizing upon the first
opportunity to salve the wounds resultant.
And yet this was the first day that the girl had seen him so much as
inspect his long-coveted property; the first time she had known him to
set foot within the sagging gate since he had placed in her hands that
sum of money which was greater than any she had ever seen before.
Under his directions men had commenced clearing away the rank
shrubbery that afternoon--commenced to tear down the house itself.
Time after time since morning she had entered the front room to stand
and peer out across the valley at this new activity which the Judge
himself was directing with an oddly suppressed lack of his usual
violent gestures. There was something akin to apology in his every
move.
It brought a little homesick ache into the girl's throat; it set her
lips to curving--made her eyes go damp with pity and tenderness for
the little white-haired figure bending over his bench. He had clung so
bravely, so stubbornly, to that battered bit of a house; to his garden
which he had never realized had long since ceased to be anything but a
plot of waist-high bushes and weeds. Once when she recollected those
countless rows of poignantly wistful faces on the shelves of that
back-room workshop she wondered if she had not been disloyal, after
all. And she had argued it out with herself aloud as she went from
task to task in that afternoon's gathering twilight.
"But it was because of her that he stayed," she reassured herself. "It
was because of her that he kept it, all these years. And--and so he
couldn't mind--not very much, I think, now that they don't need it any
longer, if I sold it so that I could keep this place--for him!"
They had been long, those hours of waiting. Not a minute of those
entire two days since Old Jerry's departure but had dragged by on
laggard feet. And yet now, with nightfall of that third day she
became jealous of every passing minute. She hated to have them pass;
dreaded to watch the creeping hands of the clock on the kitchen wall
as they drew up, little by little, upon that hour which meant the
arrival of the night train in the village.
One moment she wondered if he would come--wondered and touched dry
lips with the tip of her tongue. And the very next, when somehow she
was so very, very sure that there was no room for doubt, she even
wondered whether or not he would be glad--glad to find her there. The
gaunt skeleton of a framework showing through the torn sides of John
Anderson's cottage almost unnerved her whenever that thought came, and
sent her out again into the lighted back room.
"What if he isn't?" she whispered, over and over again. "Why, I--I
never thought of that before, did I? I just thought I had to be here
when he came. But what if he--isn't glad?"
An hour earlier, when the thought had first come to her, she had
carried a big, square package out to the table before the kitchen
window and untied with fluttering fingers the string that bound it.
The little scarlet blouse and shimmering skirt, alive with tinsel
that glinted under the light, still lay there beside the thin-heeled
slippers and filmy silk stockings. She bent over them, patting
them lovingly with a slim hand, her eyes velvety dark while she
considered.
"Oh, you're pretty--pretty--pretty!" she said in a childishly hushed
voice, "the prettiest things in the world!"
The next instant she straightened to scan soberly the old shiny black
skirt she was wearing, and the darned stockings and cracked shoes.
"And--and you would help, I think," she went on musing. "I know you
would, but then--then it wouldn't be _me_. It would be easy for any
one to care for you--almost too easy. I--I think I'll wear them for
him--some other time, maybe--if he wants me to."
But she turned the very next moment and crossed to the mirror on the
wall--that square bit of glass before which Young Denny had stood and
stared back into his own eyes and laughed. Oblivious to everything
else she was critically scanning her own small reflection--great,
tip-tilted eyes, violet in the shadow, and then cheeks and pointed
chin--until, even in spite of her preoccupation, she became aware of
the hungry tremulousness of the mouth of that reflected image--until
the hoarse shriek of an engine's whistle leaped across the valley and
brought her up sharp, her breath going in one long, quavering gasp
between wide lips.
It was that moment toward which she had been straining every hour of
those two days; the one from which she had been shrinking every minute
of those last two hours since dark. She hesitated a second, head
thrown to one side, listening; she darted into that dark front room
and pressed her face to the cold pane, and again that warning note
came shrilling across the quiet from the far side of town.
There in the darkness, a hand on either side of the frame holding her
leaning weight, she stood and waited. Below her the house roofs lay
like patches of jet against the moon-brightness. She stood and watched
its whole length, and no darker figure crept into relief against its
lighter streak of background. Minutes after she knew that he had had
time to come, and more, she still clung there, staring wide-eyed,
villageward.
It wasn't a recollection of that half dismantled wreck of a house
under the opposite ridge that finally drew her dry-lipped gaze from
the road; she did not even think of it that moment. It was simply
because she couldn't watch any longer--not even for a minute or
two--that her eyes finally fluttered that way. But when she did turn
there was a bigger, darker blot there against the leaning picket
fence--a big-shouldered figure that had moved slowly forward until it
stood full in front of the sagging gate.
And even as she watched Denny Bolton swung around from a long
contemplation of that half-torn-down building to peer up at his own
dark place on the hill--to peer straight back into the eyes of the
girl whom he could not even see.
She saw the bewilderment in that big body's poise; even at that
distance she sensed his dumb, numbed uncomprehension. From bare white
throat to the mass of tumbled hair that clustered across her forehead
the blood came storming up into her face; and with the coming of that
which set the pulses pounding in her temples and brought an
unaccountable ache to her throat, all the doubt which had squired her
that day slipped away.
Before he had had time to turn back again she had flown on mad feet
into the kitchen, swept the lamp from its bracket on the wall with
heedless haste and raced back to that front window. And she placed it
there behind a half-drawn shade--that old signal which they had agreed
upon without one spoken word, years back.
Crouching in the semi-gloom behind the lamp she watched.
He stepped forward a pace and stopped; lifted one hand slowly, as
though he did not believe what he saw. Bareheaded he waited an instant
after that arm went back to his side. When he swung around and
disappeared into the head of the path that led from the gate into the
black shadow of the thicket in the valley's pit she lifted both arms,
too, and stood poised there a moment, slender and straight and vividly
unwavering as the lamp-flame itself, before she wheeled and ran.
It was dark in the thick of the underbrush; dark and velvety quiet,
save for the little moon-lit patch of a clearing where he waited. He
stood there in the middle of that spot of light and heard her coming
long before she reached him--long before he could see her he heard her
scurrying feet and the whip of bushes against her skirt.
But when she burst through the fringe of brush he had no time to move
or speak, or more than lift his arms before her swift rush carried her
to him. When her hands flashed up about his neck and her damp mouth
went searching softly across his face and he strained her nearer and
even nearer to him, he felt her slim body quivering just as it had
trembled that other night when she had raced across the valley to
him--the night when Judge Maynard's invitation had failed to come.
After a time he made out the words that were tumbling from her lips,
all incoherent with half hysterical bits of sobs, and he realized,
too, that her words were like that of that other night.
"Denny--Denny," she murmured, her small, gold-crowned head buried in
his shoulder. "I'm here--I've come--just as soon as I could; Oh, I've
been afraid! I knew you'd come, too--I knew you would tonight! I was
sure of it--even when I was sure that you wouldn't."
For a long time he was silent, because dry lips refused to frame the
words he would have spoken. Minutes he stood and held her against him
until the rise and fall of her narrow shoulders grew quieter, before
he lifted one hand and held her damp face away, that he might look
into it. And gazing back at him, in spite of all the wordless wonder
of her which she saw glowing in his eyes, she read, too, the grave
perplexity of him.
"Why--you--you must have known I'd come," he said, his voice
ponderously grave. "I--I told you so. I left word for you that I would
be back--as soon as I could come."
He felt her slim body slacken--saw the lightning change flash over her
face which always heralded that bewildering swift change of mood. It
wiped out all the tenseness of lip and line.
There in the white light in spite of the shadows of her lashes which
turned violet eyes to great pools of satin shadow, he caught the flare
of mischief behind half-closed lids, before she tilted her head back
and laughed softly, with utter joyous abandon straight up into his
face.
"He--he didn't deliver it," she stated naively. "It wasn't his fault
entirely, though, Denny--although I did give him lots of chances, at
first anyway. I almost made him tell--but he--he's stubborn."
She stopped and laughed again--giggled shamelessly as she remembered.
But her eyes grew grave once more.
"I think he didn't quite approve of my attitude," she explained to him
as he bent over her. "He thought I wasn't--sorry enough--to deserve it
at first. And then--and then I never gave him any opportunity to
speak. I would have stopped him if he had tried. You--you see, I just
wanted to--wait."
Head bowed she paused a moment before she continued.
"But--but I sent him to you--two days ago, Denny. I sent something
that I asked him to give you--when--when it was over. Didn't you--get
it?"
He fumbled in the pocket of his smooth black suit after she had
disengaged herself and dropped to the ground at his feet. With her
ankles curled up under her she sat in a boyish heap watching him,
until he drew out the bit of a spangled crimson bow and held it out
before him in the palm of one big hand. Then he swung down to the
ground beside her.
"I thought it must have been Old Jerry who brought it. I didn't see
him, and no one could remember his name or knew where he had gone when
they thought to look for him. They--they just described him to me."
He turned the bow of silk over, touching it almost reverently.
"Some one gave it to me," he continued slowly. "I don't know exactly
how or when. It--it was just put into my hand--when I needed it most.
I wasn't sure Old Jerry had brought it, but I knew it came from you,
knew it when I didn't--know--much--else!"
She was very, very quiet, content merely in his nearness. Even then
she didn't understand it--the reason for his going that night, weeks
before--for the papers which had told her a little had told her
nothing of his brain's own reason. The question was on her lips when
her narrow fingers, searching the shadow for his, found that bandaged
wrist and knuckles. Almost fiercely she drew that hand up into the
light. From the white cloth her gaze went to the discolored, bruised
patches on face and chin--the same place where that long, ugly cut had
been which dripped blood on the floor the night she had run from him
in the dark--went to his face, and back again, limpid with pity. And
she lifted it impulsively and tucked it under her chin, and held it
there with small hands that trembled a little.
"Then--then if you haven't seen Old Jerry--why--why you--he couldn't
have told you anything at all yet, about me."
The words trailed off softly and left the statement hanging
interrogatively in midair.
Denny nodded his head in the direction of John Anderson's house that
had been.
"About that?" he asked.
She nodded her head. And then she told him; she began at the very
beginning and told him everything from that night when she had watched
him there under cover of the thicket. Once she tried to laugh when she
related Old Jerry's panic, a week or two later, when he had come to
find her packing in preparation to leave. But her mirth was waveringly
unsteady. And when she tried to explain, too, how she had chanced to
buy up the mortgage on his own bleak house on the hill, her voice
again became suddenly, diffidently small.
There was a new, sweet confusion in her refusal to meet his eyes and
Denny, reaching out with his bandaged hand, half lifted her and swung
her around until she needs must face him.
"You--you mean you--bought it, yourself?" he marvelled.
Then, face uplifted, brave-eyed, she went on a little breathlessly.
"I bought it, myself," she said, "the week you went away." And, in a
muffled whisper: "Denny, I didn't have faith--not much, at first. But
I meant to be here when you did come, just--just because I thought you
might need me--mighty badly. And waiting is hard, too, when one hasn't
faith. And I did wait! That was something, wasn't it, Denny?
Only--only now, today, I--I think I realized that my own need of you
is greater than yours could ever be for me!"
She sat, lips apart, quiet for his answer.
An odd smile edged the boy's lips at her wistful earnestness. It was a
twisted little smile which might have been born of the pain of
stinging lids and dryer, aching throat. He could not have spoken at
that moment had he tried. Instead he lifted her bodily and drew her
huddled little figure into his arms. It was his first face to face
glimpse of the wonder of woman.
But he knew now something which she had only sensed; he knew that the
big, lonesome, bewildered boy whom she had tried to comfort in his
bitterness that other night when she had hidden her own hurt
disappointment with the white square card within her breast, had come
back all man.
He looked down at her--marvelled at her very littleness as though it
were a thing he had never known before.
"And--and you still--would stay?" he managed to ask, at last. "You'd
stay--even if it did mean being like them," he inclined his head
toward the distant village, "like them, old and wrinkled and worn-out,
before they have half lived their lives?"
She nodded her head vehemently against his coat. He felt her thin arms
tighten and tighten about him.
"I'll stay," she repeated after him in a childishly small voice.
"You--you see, I _know_ what it is now to be alone, even just for a
week or two. I think I'll stay, please!"
There had been a bit of a teasing lilt in her half smothered words. It
disappeared now.
"I--I'd be pretty lonesome, all the rest of my life--man--if I
didn't!"
And long afterward she lifted her head from his arm and blinked at him
from sleepy, heavy-lidded eyes.
"Why, Denny?" she asked in drowsy curiosity. "Why did you go--why,
really? Don't you realize that you haven't told me even yet?"
He rose and lifted her to her feet, but that did not cover the slow
flush that stained his face--the old, vaguely embarrassed flush that
she knew so well. He groped awkwardly for words while he stared again
at the bit of silk in his hand, before his searching fingers found the
thick, crisp packet that had lain with it in his pocket.
"The Pilgrim's share of the receipts amounted to $12,000," had been
the tale of Morehouse's succinct last paragraph.
Then, "It--took me almost two months to save fifteen dollars," Young
Denny explained in painful self-consciousness.
She understood. She remembered the scarlet blouse and shimmering skirt
with its dots of tinsel, and the stockings and slim-heeled slippers.
Her fingers touched his chin--the barest ghost of a caressing
contact.
"Denny--Denny," she murmured, "I told you that night that you didn't
understand. And yet--and yet I'm glad that you couldn't. It was for
me--you went. Don't you--didn't you know it was--just because of
you--that I wanted them--at--all?"
* * * * *
The circle in the Boltonwood tavern convened early that night, and
long after hope had all but died a death of stagnation the regulars
stuck stubbornly to their places about the cheerlessly cold,
fat-bellied stove.
It was a session extraordinary, for even Dave Shepard, the patriarch
of the circle itself, could not recall an occasion when they had
foregathered there in such fashion so long after the last spring snow
had surrendered to summer. Yet it was largely mild-voiced Dave's
doing--this silent, sober gathering.
For he alone of all of them had heeded Old Jerry's parting admonition
that night, weeks before, when the servant of the Gov'mint had turned
from his shrill defiance of the Judge to whip their whole ranks with
scorn. Since then Dave had been following the papers with faithful and
painstaking care--not merely the political news of the day which
invariably furnished the key for each night's debate--but searching
every inch of type, down to the last inconsequential advertisement.
And he had been rewarded; he had penetrated, with the aid of that
small picture inset at the column-head, the disguise of the colorful
sobriquet which Morehouse had fastened upon Young Denny Bolton. More
than that, he had been reading for weeks each step in that campaign of
publicity which had so harrowed Old Jerry's peace of mind--and somehow
he had kept it religiously to himself.
Not until two days before, when Old Jerry's desertion from duty had
become a town-wide sensation had he opened his mouth. The route back
in the hills went mailless that day, and for that reason there were
more than enough papers to go around when he finally gave the old
guard which was waiting in vain for Old Jerry's appearance upon the
top step of the post-office, the benefits of his wider reading.
There had been a fierce factional debate raging when he came up
late to take his unobtrusive place upon the sidewalk, but even before
he added his voice to the din those who argued that the old
mail-carrier's disappearance could be in no way connected with that
of Young Denny Bolton, who had gone the way of all the others of
his line, were in a hopeless minority.
Their timidest member's announcement stunned them all to silence--left
them hushed and speechless--not for an hour or two, but for the days
that followed as well. Even the red-headlined account which had come
with that morning's batch of news of Young Denny's victory and the
fall of Jed The Red, whom they had championed under the Judge's able
leadership, failed to stir up any really bitter wrangle.
They sat in an apathetic circle, waiting for Old Jerry to come.
But no one, not even Morehouse, knew when Old Jerry disappeared that
night after Jed Conway had come hurtling from his corner, only to lift
and whirl and go crashing back before the impact of The Pilgrim's
leaping gloves. At first the plump newspaper man believed that the
surging, shouting wave of humanity which had broken comber-like over
the ropes to hail a newer favorite had separated the little,
bird-faced man from him. Only a recollection of those vice-like
fingers clinging to his arm a moment before made that probability seem
unbelievable.
It was a long time before The Pilgrim's brain had again become clear
enough to grasp the meaning of the questions which Morehouse put to
him, but Denny did not know even as much as did the round-faced
reporter himself. He only recognized the description of the shrill
voiced, beady-eyed mail carrier.
To Old Jerry belonged the only comprehensive explanation for his
sudden withdrawal from the scene, just at that moment when his own
share in it might have been not inconsequential. And more than that,
his resolution to keep it strictly and privately his own grew firmer
and firmer, the more thought he gave to it.
In those hours which intervened between the impulse which had resulted
in his modest retreat from Morehouse's side, under cover of the
crowd's wild demonstration, and the next morning when he boarded the
train which was to carry him back to the hills, after a cautious
reconnaissance that finally located Denny in the coach ahead of him,
he once or twice sought to analyze his actions for an explanation less
derogatory to his own self-respect.
"They wan't no real sense ner reason in my hangin' around, jest
gittin' under foot," he stated thoughtfully. "I done about all I was
called on to do, didn't I? Why, I reckon when all's said and done, I
jest about won that fight myself! For if I hadn't a-come he wouldn't
never a-got that ribbon. And Godfrey, but didn't that wake him!"
There was more than a little satisfaction to be gained in viewing
himself in that light. With less to occupy his mind and unlimited
leisure for elaboration it could have served as the entire day's theme
for thought. But so far as explaining his almost panic haste to get
away the reasoning was palpably unsatisfactory--so unsatisfactory that
he cringed guiltily behind the back of the seat in front of him
whenever anyone entered the front door of the car.
He gave quite the entire day to the problem and long before night hid
the flying fences outside his window he decided that eventually there
could be only one way out of it. Sooner or later he had to face the
issue: he had to tell Young Denny that he had betrayed his trust. Even
that damp wad of bills which the boy had pressed into his hand, that
night before he left, still burned within his coat.
Once or twice he rose, during the return journey and advanced with
forced jauntiness as far as the door of the car ahead. But he always
stopped there, after a moment's uneasy contemplation of Denny's back,
turned a little sadly to the water-cooler, and returned slowly and
unenthusiastically to his seat. Twice when it was necessary to change
trains he made the transfer with a lightning precision that would have
done honor to any prestidigitator. And when, hours after nightfall,
the train came to a groaning standstill before Boltonwood's deserted
station shed he waited his opportunity and dropped off in the dark--on
the wrong side of the track!
Denny had already become a dark blur ahead of him when he, too, turned
in and took the long road toward town.
Old Jerry followed the big-shouldered figure that night with heavily
lagging feet--he followed heavy in spirit and bereft of hope. He was
still behind him when Denny finally paused before the sagging gate of
John Anderson's half-stripped house. Then, watching the boy's dumb
lack of understanding, the enormity of the whole horrible complication
dawned upon him for the first time. He had forgotten Dryad Anderson's
going--forgotten that the house upon the ridge was no longer the
property of the man who had entrusted it to him.
When the light behind that half-drawn shade flared up, far across on
the crest of the opposite hill, and Young Denny wheeled to plunge into
the black mouth of the path that led deeper into the valley, he too
started swiftly forward. He swept off in desperate haste up the long
hill road that led to the Bolton homestead.
The light was still there in that front room when he poked a
tentatively inquiring head in at the open door; he paused in a
dull-eyed examination of the silken garments draped over the table top
in the kitchen after he had roamed vaguely through the silent house.
But he was too tired in mind to give them much attention just then.
Outside, buried in the shadow of Young Denny's squat, unpainted barn,
he still waited doggedly--he waited ages and ages, a lifetime of
apprehension. And then he saw them coming toward him, up out of the
shadow of the valley into the moonlight that bathed the hill in
silver.
They paused and stood there--stood and stared out across the valley at
Judge Maynard's great box of a house on the hill and that bit of a
wedge-shaped acre of ruin that clung like an unsightly burr to the hem
of his immaculate pastures.
Slender and boy-like in her little blouse and tight, short skirt the
girl was half-hidden in the hollow of his shoulder. Once, watching
with his head cocked pertly, sparrowlike, on one side, the old man's
eyes went to the white-bandaged knuckles of Denny's right hand; once
while he waited Old Jerry saw her lift her face--saw the big,
shoulder-heavy figure fold her in his arms and bend and touch the
glory of her hair with his lips while she clung to him, before she
turned and went slowly toward the open kitchen door.
Then he started. He shrank farther back into the shadow and edged a
noiseless way around the building. But with the tavern lights
beckoning to him he waited an introspective moment or two.
"Godfrey 'Lisha," he sighed thunderously, "but that takes a load offen
my mind!"
And he ruminated.
"But what's the use of my tryin' to explain now? What's the use--when
they ain't nothing to explain! It's all come out all right, ain't it?
Well, then, hedn't I jest as well save my breath?"
He straightened his thin shoulders and stretched his arms.
"It couldn't a-been handled much neater, either," that one-sided
conversation went on, "not anyway you look at it. I always did think
that the best thing to do in them matters was to kinda let 'em take
their own course. And now--now I guess I'll be gittin' along down!"
* * * * *
Before he opened the door of the Tavern office a scant half hour
later, Denny Bolton stopped there on the steps a moment and, his hand
on the latch, listened to the thin, falsetto voice that came from
within. A slow smile crept up and wrinkled the corners of the boy's
eyes after a while when he had caught the drift of those strident
words.
They had been waiting for him--the regulars. They had been waiting for
him longer than Old Jerry knew. In the chair that had been the
throne-seat of the town's great man the servant of the Gov'mint sat
and faced his loyal circle.
He had reached his climax--had hammered it home. Now he was rounding
out his conclusion for those who hung, hungry-eyed, upon his
eloquence.
"I ain't begun to do it jestice yet," he apologized. "I ain't more'n
jest teched on a good many things that needs to be gone into a
trifle. Jest a trifle! It'll take weeks and weeks to do that. But
as I was a-sayin'--I got there! I got there just when I was needed
almighty bad. I ain't done that part of it jestice--but you'll see it
all in the papers in a day or two--Sunday supplement, maybe--and
pictures--and colors, too, I reckon!"
THE END
GROSSET & DUNLAP'S
DRAMATIZED NOVELS
THE KIND THAT ARE MAKING THEATRICAL HISTORY
May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap's list.
WITHIN THE LAW. By Bayard Veiller & Marvin Dana.
Illustrated by Wm. Charles Cooke.
This is a novelization of the immensely successful play which ran for two
years in New York and Chicago.
The plot of this powerful novel is of a young woman's revenge directed
against her employer who allowed her to be sent to prison for three years
on a charge of theft, of which she was innocent.
WHAT HAPPENED TO MARY. By Robert Carlton Brown.
Illustrated with scenes from the play.
This is a narrative of a young and innocent country girl who is suddenly
thrown into the very heart of New York, "the land of her dreams," where
she is exposed to all sorts of temptations and dangers.
The story of Mary is being told in moving pictures and played in theatres
all over the world.
THE RETURN OF PETER GRIMM. By David Belasco.
Illustrated by John Rae.
This is a novelization of the popular play in which David Warfield, as Old
Peter Grimm, scored such a remarkable success.
The story is spectacular and extremely pathetic but withal, powerful, both
as a book and as a play.
THE GARDEN OF ALLAH. By Robert Hichens.
This novel is an intense, glowing epic of the great desert, sunlit
barbaric, with its marvelous atmosphere of vastness and loneliness.
It is a book of rapturous beauty, vivid in word painting. The play has
been staged with magnificent cast and gorgeous properties.
BEN HUR. A Tale of the Christ. By General Lew Wallace.
The whole world has placed this famous Religious-Historical Romance on a
height of pre-eminence which no other novel of its time has reached. The
clashing of rivalry and the deepest human passions, the perfect
reproduction of brilliant Roman life, and the tense, fierce atmosphere of
the arena have kept their deep fascination. A tremendous dramatic success.
BOUGHT AND PAID FOR. By George Broadhurst and Arthur Hornblow.
Illustrated with scenes from the play.
A stupendous arraignment of modern marriage which has created an interest
on the stage that is almost unparalleled. The scenes are laid in New York,
and deal with conditions among both the rich and poor.
The interest of the story turns on the day-by-day developments which show
the young wife the price she has paid.
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JOHN FOX, JR'S.
STORIES OF THE KENTUCKY MOUNTAINS
May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset and Dunlap's list.
THE TRAIL OF THE LONESOME PINE.
Illustrated by F. C. Yohn.
The "lonesome pine" from which the story takes its name was a tall tree
that stood in solitary splendor on a mountain top. The fame of the pine
lured a young engineer through Kentucky to catch the trail, and when he
finally climbed to its shelter he found not only the pine but the
foot-prints of a girl. And the girl proved to be lovely, piquant, and the
trail of these girlish foot-prints led the young engineer a madder chase
than "the trail of the lonesome pine."
THE LITTLE SHEPHERD OF KINGDOM COME
Illustrated by F. C. Yohn.
This is a story of Kentucky, in a settlement known as "Kingdom Come." It
is a life rude, semi-barbarous; but natural and honest, from which often
springs the flower of civilization.
"Chad," the "little shepherd" did not know who he was nor whence he
came--he had just wandered from door to door since early childhood,
seeking shelter with kindly mountaineers who gladly fathered and mothered
this waif about whom there was such a mystery--a charming waif, by the
way, who could play the banjo better than anyone else in the mountains.
A KNIGHT OF THE CUMBERLAND.
Illustrated by F. C. Yohn.
The scenes are laid along the waters of the Cumberland, the lair of
moonshiner and feudsman. The knight is a moonshiner's son, and the heroine
a beautiful girl perversely christened "The Blight." Two impetuous young
Southerners fall under the spell of "The Blight's" charms and she learns
what a large part jealousy and pistols have in the love making of the
mountaineers.
Included in this volume is "Hell fer-Sartain" and other stories, some of
Mr. Fox's most entertaining Cumberland valley narratives.
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STORIES OF RARE CHARM BY
GENE STRATTON-PORTER
May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset and Dunlap's list.
THE HARVESTER.
Illustrated by W. L. Jacobs
"The Harvester," David Langston, is a man of the woods and fields, who
draws his living from the prodigal hand of Mother Nature herself. If the
book had nothing in it but the splendid figure of this man, with his sure
grip on life, his superb optimism, and his almost miraculous knowledge of
nature secrets, it would be notable. But when the Girl comes to his
"Medicine Woods," and the Harvester's whole sound, healthy, large outdoor
being realizes that this is the highest point of life which has come to
him--there begins a romance, troubled and interrupted, yet of the rarest
idyllic quality.
FRECKLES.
Decorations by E. Stetson Crawford
Freckles is a nameless waif when the tale opens, but the way in which he
takes hold of life; the nature friendships he forms in the great
Limberlost Swamp; the manner in which everyone who meets him succumbs to
the charm of his engaging personality; and his love-story with "The Angel"
are full of real sentiment.
A GIRL OF THE LIMBERLOST.
Illustrated by Wladyslaw T. Brenda.
The story of a girl of the Michigan woods; a buoyant, lovable type of the
self-reliant American. Her philosophy is one of love and kindness towards
all things; her hope is never dimmed. And by the sheer beauty of her soul,
and the purity of her vision, she wins from barren and unpromising
surroundings those rewards of high courage.
It is an inspiring story of a life worth while and the rich beauties of
the out-of-doors are strewn through all its pages.
AT THE FOOT OF THE RAINBOW.
Illustrations in colors by Oliver Kemp. Design and decorations by Ralph
Fletcher Seymour.
The scene of this charming, idyllic love story is laid in Central Indiana.
The story is one of devoted friendship, and tender self-sacrificing love;
the friendship that gives freely without return, and the love that seeks
first the happiness of the object. The novel is brimful of the most
beautiful word painting of nature, and its pathos and tender sentiment
will endear it to all.
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STORIES OF WESTERN LIFE
May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap's list.
RIDERS OF THE PURPLE SAGE, By Zane Grey.
Illustrated by Douglas Duer.
In this picturesque romance of Utah, of some forty years ago, we are
permitted to see the unscrupulous methods employed by the invisible hand
of the Mormon Church to break the will of those refusing to conform to its
rule.
FRIAR TUCK, By Robert Alexander Wason.
Illustrated by Stanley L. Wood.
Happy Hawkins tells us, in his humorous way, how Friar Tuck lived among
the Cowboys, how he adjusted their quarrels and love affairs and how he
fought with them, and for them when occasion required.
THE SKY PILOT, By Ralph Connor.
Illustrated by Louis Rhead.
There is no novel, dealing with the rough existence of cowboys, so
charming in the telling, abounding as it does with the freshest and the
truest pathos.
THE EMIGRANT TRAIL, By Geraldine Bonner.
Colored frontispiece by John Rae.
The book relates the adventures of a party on its overland pilgrimage, and
the birth and growth of the absorbing love of two strong men for a
charming heroine.
THE BOSS OF WIND RIVER, By A. M. Chisholm.
Illustrated by Frank Tenney Johnson.
This is a strong, virile novel with the lumber industry for its central
theme and a love story full of interest as a sort of subplot.
A PRAIRIE COURTSHIP, By Harold Bindloss.
A story of Canadian prairies in which the hero is stirred, through the
influence of his love for a woman, to settle down to the heroic business
of pioneer farming.
JOYCE OF THE NORTH WOODS, By Harriet T. Comstock.
Illustrated by John Cassel.
A story of the deep woods that shows the power of love at work among its
primitive dwellers. It is a tensely moving study of the human heart and
its aspirations that unfolds itself through thrilling situations and
dramatic developments.
Ask for a complete free list of G. & D. Popular Copyrighted Fiction
Grosset & Dunlap, 526 West 26th St., New York