But just at this moment the green baize doors of the court-room swung

inward and suddenly all the people in the court-room--Dalrymple, Fallen,

Wilkison, Marriott, Gibbs, the clerks and the reporters, the bailiff and

the group Gibbs had brought up with him from the under world--forgot the

distinctions and prejudices and hatreds that separated them, yielded to

the claims of their common humanity and became as one in the eager

curiosity which concentrated all their interest on the entering

prisoners.

They came in a row, chained together by handcuffs, in charge of deputy

marshals. They were marched within the bar, still wearing the hats they

could not remove. The United States marshal himself and another deputy

came forward and joined the deputies in charge of the prisoners. The

officers took off their hats for them, and when they took chairs at the

table, stood close beside them, as if to give the impression that the

prisoners were most dangerous and desperate characters, and that they

themselves were officials with the highest regard for their duty.

Wilkison, with great deliberation, was seating himself at the clerk's

desk. Ordinarily he held hearings in an anteroom, but as this hearing

would be reported in the newspapers he felt justified in using the

court-room; besides, he could then test some of the sensations of a

judge.

"Aren't you going to unhandcuff these men?" said Marriott to the

marshal.

The marshal merely smiled in a superior official way, and the smile

completed the rage that had seized on Marriott when the deputies

stationed themselves behind the prisoners. Marriott felt in himself all

the evil and all the hatred that were in the hearts of these officers;

he felt all the hatred that was gathering about these prisoners; it

seemed that every one there wished to revenge himself personally on

them. Fallen, sitting beside Dalrymple, had an air of directing the

whole proceeding, as if his duties did not end with the apprehension of

his prisoners, but required him to see that the assistant district

attorney, the commissioner and the rest did their whole duty. He sat

there with the two rosy spots on his plump cheeks glowing a deeper red,

his blue eyes gloating. Marriott restrained himself by an effort; he

needed all his faculties now.

"The case of the United States _versus_ Dillon and others." Wilkison

was officially fingering the papers on his desk. "Are the defendants

ready for hearing?"

"We're ready, yes," said Marriott, plainly excluding from his words and

manner any of the respect for the court ordinarily simulated by lawyers.

Mason, sitting beside him, and Dillon and the rest followed with eager

glances every movement, listened to every word. They forgot the

handcuffs, and fastened their eyes on Fallen standing up to be sworn.

When the oath had been administered, Dalrymple put the stereotyped

preliminary questions and then asked him who the defendants were. Fallen

pointed to them one after another and pronounced their names as he did

so. When he had done this Dalrymple turned, looked at Marriott with his

chin in the air, and said pertly:

"Take the witness."

Marriott was surprised and puzzled; the suspicions that he had all along

held were increased.

"How many witnesses will you have?" he asked.

"This is all," said Dalrymple with an impertinent movement of the lip,

"except this." He held up a legal document. "This certified copy of an

indictment--"

At the word "indictment" the truth flashed on Marriott. He understood

now; this explained the delay, the stealth, the subterfuge of which he

had been dimly conscious for days; this explained the conduct of the

officials; this explained Fallen's absence--he had gone to Illinois,

secured the indictment of the four men, and returned. And this was not

a preliminary hearing at all; it was a mere formality for the purpose of

removing the prisoners to the jurisdiction in which the crime had been

committed. He saw now that he would not be allowed to offer any

testimony; nothing could be done. The men would be tried in Illinois,

where they could have no witnesses, for the law, as he remembered,

provided that process for witnesses to testify on behalf of defendant

could not be issued beyond a radius of one hundred miles of the court

where they were tried; they were poor, they could not pay to transport

witnesses, and now the alibis for Dillon and Squeak and Mandell could

not be established, and Mason could not have the benefit of Wales's

testimony, unless depositions were used, and he knew what a farce

depositions are. He had been tricked. It was all legal, of course, but

he had been tricked, that was all, and he was filled with mortification

and shame and rage.

"Mr. Marriott," Wilkison was saying in his most impartial tone, "do you

wish to examine this witness?"

Marriott was recalled. He looked at Fallen, waiting there in the

witness-chair, pulling at his little mustache, the pink spots in his

cheeks glowing, and his eyes striving for an expression of official

unconcern. Marriott questioned Fallen, but without heart. He tried to

break the force of his identification, but Fallen was positive. They

were Joseph Mason, James Dillon, Louis Skinner, alias Squeak, and

Stephen Mandell. When Marriott had finished, Dalrymple rose and said:

"Your Honor, we offer as evidence a certified copy of an indictment

returned by the grand jury at this present term, and the government

rests."

He looked in triumph at Marriott.

The prisoners were leaning eagerly over the table under which they hid

their shackled hands, not understanding in the least the forces that

were playing with them. Dillon's long, unshaven face was suspended

above the green felt, his eyes, bright with excitement and deepest

interest, shifting quickly from Dalrymple to Marriott and then back

again to Dalrymple. Mason's eyes went from one to the other of the

lawyers, but his gaze was easier, not so swift, hardly so interested. A

slight smile lurked beneath the mask he wore, and the commissioner

decided with pleasure that this smile proved Mason's guilt, a conclusion

which he found it helpful to communicate to Dalrymple after the hearing.

Mandell and Squeak wore heavy expressions; the realization of their fate

had not yet struggled to consciousness. In fact, they did not know what

had happened, and they were trying to learn from a study of the

expressions of Dalrymple and Marriott.

Dalrymple continued to look at Marriott in the pride he felt at having

beaten him. Because he had really been unfair and had practised a sharp

trick on Marriott, he disliked him. This dislike showed now in

Dalrymple's glance, as it had been expressed in the sharp, important

voice in which he had put his questions during the hearing. He had

spoken with an affected accent, and had objected to every question that

Marriott asked on cross-examination. He had learned to speak in this

affected accent at college, where he had spent four years, after which

he had spent three other years at a law school; consequently, he knew

little of that life from which he had been withdrawn for those seven

years, knew nothing of its significance, or meaning, or purpose, and, of

course, nothing of human nature. The stern and forbidding aspect in

which he tried to mask a countenance that might have been good-looking

and pleasing, had it worn a natural and simple expression, was amusing

to those who, like Dillon and Mason, were older and wiser men.

Dalrymple had no views or opinions or principles of his own; those he

had, like his clothes and his accent, had been given him by his parents

or the teachers his parents had hired; he had accepted all the ideas and

prejudices of his own class as if they were axioms. He felt it a fine

thing to be there in the United States court in an official capacity

that made every one look at him, and, as he supposed, envy him; that

gave an authority to anything he said. He thought it an especially fine

thing to represent the government. He used this word frequently, saying

"the government feels," or "the government wishes," or "the government

understands," speaking, indeed, as if he were the government himself.

The power behind him was tremendous; an army stood ready at the last to

back up his sayings, his opinions, and his mistakes. Against such a

power, of course, Dillon and Mason, who were poor, shabby men, had no

chance. Dalrymple, to be sure, had no notion of what he was doing to

these men; no notion of how he was affecting their lives, their futures,

perhaps their souls. He was totally devoid of imagination and incapable

of putting himself in the place of them or of any other men, except

possibly those who were dressed as he was dressed and spoke with similar

affectation. He did not consider Dillon and Mason men, or human beings

at all, but another kind of organism or animate life, expressed to him

by the word "criminal." He did not consider what happened to them as

important; the only things that were important to him were, first, to be

dressed in a correct fashion, and modestly, that is, to be dressed like

a gentleman; secondly, to see to it that his sympathies and influence

were always on the side of the rich, the well-dressed, the respectable

and the strong, and to maintain a wide distinction between himself and

the poor, disreputable and ill-clad, and, thirdly, to bear always,

especially when in court or about the government building, an important

and wise demeanor. He felt, indeed, that in becoming an assistant

United States district attorney, he had become something more than a

mere man; that because a paper had been given him with an eagle printed

on it and a gilt seal, a paper on which his name and the words by which

he was designated had been written, he had become something more than a

mere human being. The effect of all this was revealed in the look with

which he now regarded Marriott.

Marriott, however, did not look at Dalrymple; he wished Dalrymple to

feel the contempt he had for him, and after a moment he rose and

addressed the commissioner.

The commissioner straightened himself in his chair; his face was very

long and very solemn. He did not listen to what Marriott was saying;

having conferred with Dalrymple before the hearing and read a decision

which Dalrymple had pointed out to him in a calf-bound report, he was

now arranging in his mind the decision he intended to give presently.

Marriott, of course, realized the hopelessness of his case, but he did

not think it becoming to give in so easily, or, at least, without making

a speech. He began to argue, but Wilkison interrupted him and said:

"This whole question is fully discussed in the Yarborough case, where

the court held that in a removal proceeding no testimony can be

presented in behalf of the defense."

Then Wilkison announced his decision, saying that Marriott's witnesses

could be heard at the proper time and place, that is, on the trial,

where he said the rights of the defendants would be fully conserved.

Feeling that his use of this word "conserved" was happy and appropriate

and had a legal sound, he repeated it several times, and concluded by

saying:

"The defendants will be remanded to the custody of the marshal for

removal."

The marshal and his deputies tapped the prisoners on the shoulders.

Just then there was a slight commotion; Gibbs had pushed by the bailiff

and was coming forward. He came straight up to the men. The marshal

put out a hand to press him back, but Marriott said:

"Oh, let him talk to them a minute. Good God--!"

The marshal glared at Marriott, and then gave way.

"But he wants to be quick about it," he threatened.

Gibbs leaned over Mason's shoulder.

"Well, Joe," he said.

"I'm kangarooed, Dan," said Mason.

"It looks that way," said Gibbs.

"Dan, I want you to do something for me--I want you to send me some

tobacco. You know you can get those clippings in pound packages; they

only cost a quarter."

Gibbs looked hurt.

"Joe," he said, "I've known you for forty years, and that's the only

mean thing you ever said to me."

"Well, don't get sore, Dan," Mason said. "I knew you would--only--"

The marshal cut them short and marched the prisoners out of the

court-room. Outside in the street the prison-van was waiting, the van

that had been ordered before the hearing, to take the prisoners to the

station.

IX

It was several days before Marriott saw Gibbs again, and then he

appeared at Marriott's office with a companion and leaned for an instant

unsteadily against the door he had carefully closed. Marriott saw that

he was changed, and that it was the change drink makes in a man. Gibbs

sank helplessly into a chair, and stared at Marriott blankly. He was

not the clean, well-dressed man Marriott had beheld in him before. He

was unshaven, and the stubble of his beard betrayed his age by its

whiteness; the pupils of his eyes were dilated, his lips stained with

tobacco. His shoes were muddy, one leg of his trousers was turned up;

and his lack of a collar seemed the final proof of that moral

disintegration he could not now conceal. When he had been there a

moment the atmosphere was saturated with the odor of alcohol.

"My friend, Mr. McDougall," said Gibbs, toppling unsteadily in his

chair, as he waved one fat hand at his companion, a heavy blond fellow,

six feet tall, well dressed and dignified.

"I've gone to the bad," said Gibbs. Marriott looked at him in silence.

The fact needed no comment.

"The way those coppers jobbed Mason was too much for me," Gibbs went on.

"Worst I ever seen. I couldn't stand for it, it put me to the bad."

"Well, you won't do him any good, at that--" McDougall began.

"Aw, to hell with you!" said Gibbs, waving McDougall aside with a sweep

of his arm. The movement unsettled him in his chair, and he steadied

himself by digging his heels into the rug. Then he drew a broken cigar

from his coat pocket, struck a match, and held it close to his nose; it

took him a long time to light his cigar; he puffed hurriedly, but could

not keep the cigar in the flame; before he finished he had burned his

fingers, and Marriott felt a pain as Gibbs shook the match to the floor.

"He hasn't touched a drop for five years," said McDougall indulgently.

"But when they kangarooed Mason--"

McDougall looked at Gibbs, not in regret or pity, nor with disapproval,

but as one might look at a woman stricken with some recent grief. To

him, getting drunk seemed to be as natural a way of expressing emotion

as weeping or wringing the hands. Marriott gazed on the squalid little

tragedy of a long friendship, gazed a moment, then turned away, and

looked out of his window. Above the hideous roofs he could see the

topmasts of schooners, and presently a great white propeller going down

the river. It was going north, to Mackinac, to the Soo, to Duluth, and

the sight of it filled Marriott with a longing for the cold blue waters

and the sparkling air of the north.

Gibbs evidently had come to talk about Mason's case, but when he began

to speak his voice was lost somewhere in his throat; his head sank, he

appeared to sink into sleep. McDougall glanced at him and laughed. Then

he turned seriously to Marriott.

"It was an outrage," he said. "Mason has been right here in town--I saw

him that day. He ought to be alibied."

"Couldn't you testify?" asked Marriott.

McDougall looked at Marriott with suspicion, and hesitated. But

suddenly Gibbs, whom they had supposed to be asleep, said impatiently,

without opening his eyes:

"Oh, hell!--go on and tell him. He's a right guy, I tell you. He's

wise to the gun." And Gibbs slumbered again.

"Well," said McDougall with a queer expression, "my business is

unfortunately of such a nature that it can't stand much investigation,

and I don't make the best witness in the world."

Gibbs suddenly sat up, opened his eyes, and drew an enormous roll of

money from his pocket.

"How much do I owe you?" he asked, unrolling the bills. "It comes out

of me," he said. Marriott was disappointed in this haggling appeal, not

for his own sake, but for Gibbs's; it detracted from the romantic figure

he had idealized for the man, just as Gibbs's intoxication had done.

Marriott hesitated in the usual difficulty of appraising professional

services, but when, presently, he rather uncertainly fixed his fee,

Gibbs counted out the amount and gave it to him. Marriott took the

money, with a wonder as to where it had come from, what its history was;

he imagined in a flash a long train of such transactions as McDougall

must be too familiar with, of such deeds as had been involved in the

hearing before the commissioner, of other transactions, intricate,

remote, involved, confused in morals--and he thrust the bills into his

pocket.

"It comes out of me," Gibbs explained again. "They hadn't any fall

money."

"Have you heard from them?" asked Marriott, who did not know what fall

money was, and wished to change the subject.

"No," said Gibbs, shaking his head. "I'm going out to the trial. I'll

take along that newspaper guy and some witnesses for the others. I'll

get 'em a mouthpiece. Maybe we can spring 'em."

But, as Marriott learned several days later, Gibbs could not spring

them. He went to the trial with an entourage of miserable witnesses,

but he did not take Wales, for Wales's newspaper would not give him

leave of absence, and there was no process to compel his attendance.

But Kouka and Quinn went, and they gave Gibbs such a reputation that his

testimony was impeached. He could not, of course, take Dean. Dean's

business, like McDougall's, was unfortunately of such a nature that it

did not stand investigation, and he did not make the best witness in the

world. Mason and Dillon and Mandell and Squeak were sentenced to the

penitentiary at Fort Leavenworth for five years. At about the same time

Archie Koerner pleaded guilty to stealing the revolver and was sentenced

to prison for a year.

Marriott left at last for his vacation, but he could not forget Mason

taking his unjust fate so calmly and philosophically. He had great pity

for him, just as he had for Archie, though one was innocent and the

other guilty. He had pity for Dillon, too, and, yes, for Mandell and

Squeak. He thought of it all, trying to find some solution, but there

was no solution. It was but one more knot in the tangle of injustice

man has made of his attempts to do justice; a tangle that Marriott could

not unravel, nor any one, then or ever.

X

Like most of the great houses along Claybourne Avenue, the dwelling of

the Wards wore an air of loneliness and desolation all that summer.

With Mrs. Ward and Elizabeth in Europe, the reason for maintaining the

establishment ceased to be; and the servants were given holidays.

Barker was about for a while each day looking after things, and Gusta

came to set the house in order. But these transient presences could not

give the place its wonted life; the curtains were down, the furniture

stood about in linen covers, the pictures were draped in white cloth.

At evening a light showed in the library, where Ward sat alone, smoking,

trying to read, and, as midnight drew on, starting now and then at the

strange, unaccountable sounds that are a part of the phenomena of the

stillness of an empty house. He would look up from his book, listen,

wait, sigh, listen again, finally give up, go to bed, worry a while,

fall asleep, be glad when morning came and he could lose himself for

another day in work. Dick never came in till long after midnight, and

Ward seldom saw him, save on those few mornings when the boy was up

early enough to take breakfast with him at the club. Such mornings made

the whole day happy for Ward.

But the few hours she spent each day in the empty house were happy hours

for Gusta Koerner. She was not, of course, a girl in whom feeling could

become thought, or sensation find the relief of expression; she belonged

to the class that because it is dumb seems not to suffer, but she had a

sense of change in the atmosphere. She missed Elizabeth, she missed the

others, she missed the familiar figures that once had made the place all

it had been to her. But she loved it, nevertheless, and if it seemed to

hold no new experiences for her, there were old experiences to be lived

over again.

At first the loneliness and the emptiness frightened her, but she grew

accustomed; she no longer started at the mysterious creakings and

tappings in the untenanted rooms, and each morning, after her work was

done, she lingered, and wandered idly about, looked at herself in the

mirrors, gazed out of the windows into Claybourne Avenue, sometimes

peeped into the books she could so little understand.

Occasionally she would have chats with Barker, but she did not often see

him; he was always busy in the stables. Ward and Dick were gone before

she got there. But the peace and quiet of the deserted mansion were

grateful, and Gusta found there a sense of rest and escape that for a

long time she had not known. She found this sense of escape all the more

grateful after Archie's trouble. He had not been at home in a long

time, and they had heard nothing of him; then, one evening she learned

of his latest trouble in those avid chroniclers of trouble, the

newspapers. Her father, who would not permit the mention of his son's

name, nevertheless plainly had him on his mind, for he grew more than

ever gloomy, morose and irritable. And then, to make matters worse, one

Saturday evening Charlie Peltzer threw it up to Gusta, and they parted

in anger. On Sunday afternoon she went to see Archie at the jail, and

stayed so late that it was twilight before she got to the Wards'. She

had never had the blues so badly before; her quarrel with Peltzer, her

father's scolding, her mother's sighs and furtive tears, her own visit

to the prison, all combined to depress her, and now, in the late and

lonesome Sunday afternoon she did her work hurriedly, and was just about

to let herself out of the door when it opened suddenly, and Dick Ward,

bolting in, ran directly against her.

"Hello! Beg pardon--is that you, 'Gusta?" he said.

"Oh!" she exclaimed, leaning against the wall, "you scared me!"

Dick laughed.

"Well, that's too bad; I had no idea," he said.

She had raised her clasped hands to her chin, and still kept the

shrinking attitude of her fright. Dick looked at her, prettier than

ever in her sudden alarm, and on an impulse he seized her hands.

"Don't be scared," he said. "I wouldn't frighten you for the world."

She was overwhelmed with weakness and confusion. She shrank against the

wall and turned her head aside; her heart was beating rapidly.

"I--I'm late to-day," she said. "I ought to have been here this

morning."

"I'm glad you weren't," said Dick, looking at her with glowing eyes.

"I must hurry"---she tried to slip away. "I--must be going home, it's

getting late; you--you must let me go."

She scarcely knew what she was saying; she spoke with averted face, her

cheeks hot and flaming. He gazed at her steadily a moment; then he

said:

"Never mind. I'll take you home in my machine. May I?"

She looked at him in wonderment. What did he mean? Was he in earnest?

"May I?" he pressed her hands for emphasis, and gazed into her eyes

irresistibly.

"Yes," she said, "if you'll--let me--go now."

Suddenly he kissed her on the lips; there was a rustle, a struggle, he

kissed her again, then released her, left her trembling there in the

hall, and bounded up the stairs.

"Wait a minute!" he called. "I came home to get something. You'll

wait?"

Gusta was dazed, her mind was in a whirl, she felt utterly powerless;

but instinctively she slipped through the door and out on to the

veranda. The air reassured and restored her. She felt that she should

run away, and yet, there was Dick's automobile in the driveway; she had

never been in an automobile, and-- She thought of Charlie

Peltzer--well, it would serve him right. And then, before she could

decide, Dick was beside her.

"Jump in," he said, glancing up and down the avenue, now dusky in the

twilight. They went swiftly away in the automobile, but they did not go

straight to Bolt Street--they took a long, roundabout course that ended,

after all, too suddenly. The night was warm and Gusta was lifted above

all her cares; she had a sensation as of flying through the soft air.

Dick stopped the machine half a block from the house, and Gusta got out,

excited from her swift, reckless ride. But, troubled as she was, she

felt that she ought to thank Dick. He only laughed and said:

"We'll go again for a longer ride. What do you say to to-morrow night?"

She hesitated, tried to decide against him, and before she could decide,

consented.

"Don't forget," he said, "to-morrow evening." He leaned over and

whispered to her. He was shoving a lever forward and the automobile was

starting.

"Don't forget," he said, and then he was gone and Gusta stood looking at

the vanishing lights of the machine. Just then Charlie Peltzer stepped

out of the shadows.

"So!" he said, looking angrily into her face. "So that's it, is it?

Oh--I saw you!"

"Go away!" she said.

He snatched at her, caught her by the wrist.

"Go away, is it?" he exclaimed fiercely. "I've caught you this time!"

"Let me alone!"

"Yes, I will! Oh, yes, I'll let you alone! And him, too; I'll fix

him!"

"Let me go, I tell you!" she cried, trying to escape. "Let me go!" She

succeeded presently in wrenching her wrist out of his grasp. "You hurt

me!" She clasped the wrist he had almost crushed. "I hate you! I don't

want anything more to do with you!"

She left him standing there in the gloom. She hurried on; it was but a

few steps to the door.

"Gusta!" he called. "Gusta! Wait!"

But she hurried on.

"Gusta! Wait a minute!"

She hesitated. There was something appealing in his voice.

"Oh, Gusta!" he repeated. "Won't you wait?"

She felt that he was coming after her. Then something, she knew not

what, got into her, she felt ugly and hateful, and hardened her heart.

She cast a glance back over her shoulder and had a glimpse of Peltzer's

face, a pale, troubled blur in the darkness. She ran into the house,

utterly miserable and sick at heart.

Gusta could not thereafter escape this misery; it was with her all the

time, and her only respite was found in the joy that came to her at

evening, when regularly, at the same hour, under the same tree, at the

same dark spot in Congress Street, she met Dick Ward. And so it began

between them.

XI

The way from the station to the penitentiary was long, but Sheriff

Bentley, being a man of small economies, had decided to walk, and after

the long journey in the smoking-car, Archie had been glad to stretch his

legs. The sun lay hot on the capital city; it was nearly noon, and

workmen, tired from their morning's toil, were thinking now of

dinner-buckets and pipes in the shade. They glanced at Archie and the

sheriff as they passed, but with small interest. They saw such sights

every day and had long ago grown used to them, as the world had;

besides, they had no way of telling which was the criminal and which the

custodian.

Archie walked rapidly along, his head down, and a little careless smile

on his face, chatting with the sheriff. On the way to the capital,

Bentley had given him cigars, let him read the newspapers, and told him

a number of vulgar stories. He was laughing then at one; the sheriff

had leaned over to tell him the point of it, though he had difficulty in

doing so, because he could not repress his own mirth. They were passing

under a viaduct on which a railroad ran over the street. A switch-engine

was going slowly along, and the fireman leaned out of the cab window.

He wore, oddly enough, a battered old silk hat; he wore it in some

humorous conceit that caricatured the grandeur and dignity the hat in

its day had given some other man, whose face was not begrimed as was the

comical face of this fireman, whose hands were not calloused as was the

hand that slowly, almost automatically, pulled the bell-cord. That old

plug hat gave the fireman unlimited amusement and consolation, as he

thrust it from his cab window while he rode up and down the railroad

yards. Archie looked up and caught the fireman's eye; the fireman

winked drolly, confidentially, and waved his free arm with a graceful,

abandoned gesture that conveyed a salutation of brotherliness and

comradeship; Archie smiled and waved his free arm in recognition.

And then they stepped out of the shade of the viaduct into the sun

again, and Archie's smile went suddenly from his face. They were at the

penitentiary. The long wall stretched away, lifting its gray old stones

twelve feet above their heads. Along its coping of broad overhanging

flags was an iron railing; coming to the middle of a man, and at every

corner, and here and there along the wall, were the sentry-boxes, black

and weather-beaten, and sinister because no sentry was anywhere in

sight. Archie looked, and he did not hear the denouement of the

sheriff's story, which, after all, was just as well.

Midway of the block the wall jutted in abruptly and joined itself to a

long building of gray stone, with three tiers of barred windows, but an

ivy vine had climbed over the stones and hidden the bars as much as it

could. A second building lifted its Gothic towers above the center of

the grim facade, and beyond was another building like the first, wherein

the motive of iron bars was repeated; then the climbing ivy and the gray

wall again, stretching away until it narrowed in the perspective.

Before the central building were green lawns and flower-beds, delightful

to the eyes of the warden's family, whose quarters looked on the free

world outside; delightful, too, to the eyes of the legislative

committees and distinguished visitors who came to preach and give advice

to the men within the walls, who never saw the flowers.

Archie and the sheriff turned into the portico. In the shade, several

men were lounging about. They wore the gray prison garb, but their

clothes had somehow the effect of uniforms; they were clean, neatly

brushed, and well fitted. They glanced up as Archie and the sheriff

entered, and one of them sprang to his feet. On his cap Archie saw the

words, "Warden's Runner." He was young, with a bright though pale face,

and he stepped forward expectantly, thinking of a tip. He was about to

speak, but suddenly his face fell, and he did not say what had been on

his lips. He uttered, instead, a short, mistaken,

"Oh!"

The sheriff laughed, and then with the knowledge and familiarity men

love so much to display, he went on:

"Thought we wanted to see the prison, eh? Well, I've seen it, and the

boy here'll see more'n he wants."

The warden's runner smiled perfunctorily and was about to turn away,

when Bentley spoke again:

"How long you in for?" he asked.

"Life," said the youth, and then went back to his bench. He did not

look up again, though Archie glanced back at him over his shoulder.

"Trusties," Bentley explained. "They've got a snap."

In the office, where many clerks were busy, they waited; presently a

sallow young man came out from behind a railing. The sheriff unlocked

his handcuffs and blew on the red bracelet the steel had left about his

wrist.

"Hot day," said the sheriff, wiping his brow. The sallow clerk, on whom

the official air sat heavily, ignored this and said:

"Let's have your papers."

He looked over the commitments with a critical legal scowl that seemed

to pass finally on all that the courts had done, and signaled to a

receiving guard.

"Good-by, Archie." Bentley held out his hand.

"Good-by," said Archie.

"Come on," said the receiving guard, tossing his long club to his

shoulder in a military way. The great steel door in the guard-room

swung open; the guard sitting lazily in a worn chair at the double inner

gates threw back the lever, and the receiving guard and Archie entered

the yard.

It was a large quadrangle, surrounded by the ugly prison houses, with

the chapel and the administration building in the center. Archie

glanced about, and presently he discerned in the openings between the

buildings companies of men, standing at ease. A whistle blew heavily,

the companies came to attention, and then began to march across the

yard. They marched in sets of twos, with a military scrape and shuffle,

halted now and then to dress their intervals, marked time, then went on,

massed together in the lock-step. As they passed, the men looked at

Archie, some of them with strange smiles. But Archie knew none of them;

not Delaney, with the white hair; not the Pole, who had been convicted

of arson; not the Kid, nor old Deacon Sammy, who still wore his

gold-rimmed glasses, nor Harry Graves. Their identity was submerged,

like that of all the convicts in that prison, like that of all the

forgotten prisoners in the world. The men marched by, company after

company, until enough to make a regiment, two regiments, had passed

them. A guard led Archie across the yard to the administration

building. As they entered, a long, lean man, whose lank legs stretched

from his easy chair half-way across the room, it seemed, to cock their

heels on a desk, turned and looked at them. He was smoking a cigar very

slowly, and he lifted his eyelids heavily. His eyes were pale blue--for

some reason Archie shuddered.

"Here's a fresh fish, Deputy," said the guard.

The deputy warden of the prison, Ball, flecked the ashes from his cigar.

"Back again, eh?" he said.

Archie stared, and then he said:

"I've never stirred before."

"The hell you haven't," said the deputy. "The bull con don't go in this

dump! I know you all!" The receiving guard looked Archie over, trying

to recall him.

The deputy warden let his heavy feet fall to the floor, leaned forward,

took a cane from his desk, got up, hooked the cane into the awkward

angle of his left elbow, and shambled into the rear office, his long

legs unhinging with a strange suggestion of the lock-step he was so

proud of being able to retain in the prison by an evasion of the law. A

convict clerk heaved an enormous record on to his high desk, then in a

mechanical way he dipped a pen into the ink, and stood waiting.

"What's your name?" asked the deputy.

Archie told him.

"Age?"

"Twenty-three."

"Father and mother living?"

"Yes."

"Who shall we notify if you die while you're with us?"

Archie started; and the deputy laughed.

"Notify them."

"Ever convicted before? No? Why, Koerner, you really must not lie to

me like that!"

When the statistical questions were finished the deputy said:

"Now, Koerner, you got a stretch in the sentence; you'll gain a month's

good time if you behave yourself; don't talk; be respectful to your

superiors; mind the rules; you can write one letter a month, have

visitors once a month, receive all letters of proper character addressed

to you. Your number is 48963. Take him and frisk him, Jimmy."

The deputy warden hooked his cane over his arm and shambled out. Archie

watched him, strangely fascinated. Then the guard touched him on the

shoulder, tossed a bundle of old clothing over his arm, and said:

"This way."

They made him bathe, then the barber shaved him, and he donned his

prison clothes, which were of gray like those worn by the trusties he

had seen at the gate of the prison. But the clothes did not fit him;

the trousers were too tight at the waist and far too long, and they took

a strange and unaccountable shape on him, the shape, indeed, of the

wasted figure of an old convict who had died of consumption in the

hospital two days before.

The guard took Archie to the dining-room, deserted now, and he sat down

at one of the long tables and ate his watery soup and drank the coffee

made of toasted bread--his first taste of the "boot-leg" he had heard

his late companions talk about.

And then the idle house, stark and gloomy, with silent convicts ranged

around the wall. On an elevated chair at one end, where he might have

the scant light that fell through the one high window, an old convict,

who once had been a preacher, read aloud. He read as if he enjoyed the

sound of his own voice, but few of the prisoners listened. They sat

there stolidly, with heavy, hardened faces. Some dozed, others

whispered, others, whom the prison had almost bereft of reason, simply

stared. The idle house was still, save for the voice of the reader and

the constant coughing of a convict in a corner. Archie, incapable, like

most of them, of concentrated attention, sat and looked about. He was

dazed, the prison stupor was already falling heavily on his mind, and he

was passing into that state of mental numbness that made the blank in

his life when he was in the workhouse with Mason. He thought of Mason

for a while, and wondered what his fate and that of Dillon had been; he

thought of Gusta, and of his mother and father, of Gibbs and Curly,

wondering about them all; wondered about that strange life, already dim

and incredible, he had so lately left in what to convicts is represented

by the word "outside." He wished that he had been taken with Mason and

Dillon. Then he thought of Kouka--thought of everything but the theft

of the revolver, which bore so small a relation to his real life.

The entrance of a contractor brought diversion. The contractor, McBride,

a man with a red face and closely-cropped white hair, smoking a cigar

the aroma of which was eagerly sniffed in by the convicts, came with the

receiving guard. At the guard's command, Archie stood up, and the

contractor, narrowing his eyes, inspected him through the smoke of his

cigar. After a while he nodded and said:

"He'll do--looks to me like he could make bolts. Ever work at a

machine?" he suddenly asked.

Archie shook his head.

"Put him on Bolt B," said the contractor; "he can learn."

The day ended, somehow; the evening came, with supper in the low-ceiled,

dim dining-hall, then the cells.

"You'll lock in G6," said the guard.

Archie marched to the cell-house, where, inside the brick shell, the

cells rose, four tiers of them. The door locked on Archie, and he

looked about the bare cell where he was to spend a year. For an hour,

certain small privileges were allowed; favored convicts, in league with

officials, peddled pies and small fruits at enormous commissions;

somewhere a prisoner scraped a doleful fiddle. Near by, a guard haggled

with a convict who worked in the cigar shop and stole cigars for the

guard to sell on the outside. The guard, it seemed, had recently raised

his commission from fifty to sixty per cent., and the convict

complained. But when the guard threatened to report him for his theft,

the convict gave in.

At seven o'clock the music ceased, and hall permits expired. Then there

was another hour of the lights, when some of the convicts read. Then,

at eight, it grew suddenly dark and still. Presently Archie heard the

snores of tired men. He could not sleep himself; his pallet of straw

was alive with vermin; the stillness in the great cell-house was awful

and oppressive; once in a while he heard some one, somewhere, from a

near-by cell, sigh heavily. Now, he thought, he was doing his bit at

last; "buried," the guns called it. Finally, when the hope had all gone

from his heart, he fell asleep.

The summer night fell, and the prison's gray wall merged itself in the

blackness; but it still shut off the great world outside from the little

world inside. The guards came out and paced the walls with their

rifles, halting now and then with their backs to the black forms of the

cell-houses, and looked out over the city, where the electric lights

blazed.

XII

Elizabeth had gone abroad feeling that she might escape the

dissatisfaction that possessed her. This dissatisfaction was so very

indefinite that she could not dignify it as a positive trouble, but she

took it with her over Europe wherever she went, and she finally decided

that it would give her no peace until she took it home again. She could

not discuss it with her mother, for Mrs. Ward was impatient of

discussion. She could do no more than feel Elizabeth's dissatisfaction,

and she complained of it both abroad and at home. She told her husband

and her son that Elizabeth had practically ruined their trip, that

Elizabeth hadn't enjoyed it herself, nor allowed her to enjoy it.

Elizabeth, however, if unable to realize the sensations she had

anticipated in their travels, gave her mother unexpected compensation by

recalling and vivifying for her after they had returned in the fall, all

their foreign experiences, so that they enjoyed them in retrospect.

Ward, indeed, said that Elizabeth had seen everything there was to see

in Europe. He only laughed when Elizabeth declared that, now she was at

home again, she intended to do something; just what, she could not

determine.

"Perhaps I'll become a stenographer or a trained nurse."

"The idea!" exclaimed Mrs. Ward. "To talk like that! You should pay

more attention to your social duties."

"Why?" demanded Elizabeth, looking at her mother with clear, sober eyes.

Mrs. Ward, in her habitual avoidance of reasons, could not think of one

instantly.

"You owe it to your station," she declared presently, and then, as if

this were, after all, a reason, she added, "that's why."

Dick showed all the manly indignation of an elder brother.

"You don't know what you're talking about, Bess," he said in the husky

voice he had acquired. He had not changed; he bore himself importantly,

wore a scowl, dressed extravagantly, and always in the extreme of the

prevailing fashion; he seemed to have an intuition in such matters; he

wore a new collar or a new kind of cravat two weeks in advance of the

other young men in town, and they did not seem to follow him so much as

he seemed to anticipate them. He lunched at the club, and Elizabeth

divined that he spent large sums of money, and yet he was constant in

his work; he was always at the Trust Company's office early; he did not

miss a single day. No, Dick had not changed; nothing had changed, and

this thought only increased Elizabeth's discontent, or vague uneasiness,

or vague dissatisfaction, or whatever it was.

"I don't know what it is," she confided to Marriott the first time she

saw him. "I ought to be of some use in the world, but I'm not--Oh,

don't say I am," she insisted when she caught his expression; "don't

make the conventional protest. It's just as I told you before I went

away, I'm useless." She glanced over the drawing-room in an inclusive

condemnation of the luxury represented by the heavy furniture, the

costly bric-a-brac, and all that. Her face wore an expression of

weariness. She knew that she had not expressed herself. What she was

thinking, or, rather, what she was feeling was, perhaps, the

disappointment that comes to a spirited, imaginative, capable girl, who

by education and training has developed ambitions and aspirations toward

a real, full, useful life, yet who can do nothing in the world because

the very conditions of that existence which give her those advantages

forbid it. Prepared for life, she is not permitted to live; an

artificial routine called a "sphere" is all that is allowed her; she may

not realize her own personality, and, in time, is reduced to utter

nothingness.

"By what right--" she resumed, but Marriott interrupted her.

"Don't take that road; it will only make you unhappy."

"Before I went abroad," she went on, ignoring the warning, "I told you

that I would do something when I came back--something to justify myself.

That's selfish, isn't it?" She ended in a laugh. "Well, anyway," she

resumed, "I can look up the Koerners. You see the Koerners?"

"I haven't tried that case yet," Marriott said with a guilty expression.

"How dreadful of you!"

"Reproach me all you can," he said. "I must pay some penance. But, you

know--I--well, I didn't try it at the spring term because Ford wanted to

go to Europe, and then--well--I'm going to try it right away--soon."

The next morning, as Marriott walked down town, he determined to take up

the Koerner case immediately. It was one of those mild and sunny days

of grace that Nature allows in the mellow autumn, dealing them out one

by one with a smile that withholds promise for another, so that each

comes to winter-dreading mortals as a rare surprise. The long walk in

the sun filled Marriott with a fine delight of life; he was pleased with

himself because at last he was to do a duty he had long neglected. He

sent for Koerner, and the old man came on a pair of new yellow crutches,

bringing his wife and his enormous pipe.

"Well, Mr. Koerner," said Marriott, "I'm glad you're about again. How

are you getting along?"

"Vell, ve get along; I bin some goodt yet, you bet. I can vash--I sit

up to dose tubs dere undt help der oldt voman."

Marriott's brows knotted in a perplexity that took on the aspect of a

mild horror. It required some effort for him to realize this old man

sitting with a wash-tub between his knees; the thought degraded the

leonine figure. He wished that Koerner had not told him, and he

hastened to change the subject.

"Your case will come on for trial now," he said; "we must talk it over

and get our evidence in shape."

"Dot bin a long time alreadty, dot trial."

"Yes, it has," said Marriott, "but we'll get to it now in two weeks."

"Yah, dot's vat you say."

He puffed at his pipe a moment, sending out the thin wreaths of smoke in

sharp little puffs. The strong face lifted its noble mask, the white

hair--whiter than Marriott remembered it the last time--glistening like

frost.

"You vait anoder year and I grow out anoder leg, maybe," Koerner smoked

on in silence. But presently the thin lips that pinched the amber

pipe-stem began to twitch, the blue eyes twinkled under their

shaggy-white brows; his own joke about his leg put him in good humor,

and he forgot his displeasure. Marriott felt a supreme pity for the old

man. He marveled at his patience, the patience everywhere exhibited by

the voiceless poor. There was something stately in the old man,

something dignified in the way in which he accepted calamity and joked

it to its face.

Marriott found relief in turning to the case. As he was looking for the

pleadings, he said carelessly:

"How's Gusta?"

And instantly, by a change in the atmosphere, he felt that he had made a

mistake. Koerner made no reply. Marriott heard him exchange two or

three urgent sentences with his wife, in his harsh, guttural German.

When Marriott turned about, Koerner was smoking in stolid silence, his

face was stone. Mrs. Koerner cast a timid glance at her husband, and,

turning in embarrassment from Marriott, fluttered her shawl about her

arms and gazed out the windows. What did it mean? Marriott wondered.

"Well, let's get down to business," he said. He would ask no more

questions, at any rate. But as he was going over the allegations of the

petition with Koerner, finding the usual trouble in initiating the

client into the mysteries of evidence, which are as often mysteries to

the lawyers and the courts themselves, he was thinking more of Gusta

than of the case. Poor Gusta, he thought, does the family doom lie on

her, too?

XIII

Elizabeth kept to her purpose of doing something to justify her

continuing in existence, as she put it to her mother, and there was a

period of two or three weeks following a lecture by a humanitarian from

Chicago, when she tortured the family by considering a residence in a

social settlement. But Mrs. Ward was relieved when this purpose

realized itself in a way so respectable as joining the Organized

Charities. The Organized Charities was more than respectable, it was

eminently respectable, and when Mrs. Russell consented to become its

president, it took on a social rank of the highest authority. The work

of this organization was but dimly understood; it was incorporated, and

so might quite legally be said to lack a soul, which gave it the

advantage of having the personal equation excluded from its dealings

with the poor. Business men, by subscribing a small sum might turn all

beggars over to the Organized Charities, and by giving to the hungry,

who asked for bread, the stone of a blue ticket, secure immediate relief

from the disturbing sense of personal responsibility. The poor who were

thus referred might go to the bureau, file their applications, be

enrolled and indexed by the secretary, and have their characters and

careers investigated by an agent. All this was referred to as organized

relief work, and it had been so far successful as to afford relief to

those who were from time to time annoyed by the spectacles of poverty

and disease that haunted their homes and places of business.

When the Organized Charities resumed in the fall the monthly meetings

that had been discontinued during the heated term, Elizabeth was on

hand. Mrs. Russell was in the president's chair, and promptly at three

o'clock, consulting the tiny jeweled watch that hung in the laces at her

bosom, she called the meeting to order. After the recording secretary

had read the minutes of the last meeting, held in the spring, and these

had been approved, the corresponding secretary read a report, and a list

of the new members. Then a young clergyman, with a pale, ascetic face,

and a high, clerical waistcoat against which a large cross of gold was

suspended by a cord, read his report as treasurer, giving the names of

the new members already reported by the corresponding secretary, but

adding the amount subscribed by each, the amount of money in the

treasury, the amount expended in paying the salaries of the clerks, the

rent of the telephone, printing, postage, and so on. Then the agents of

the organization reported the number of cases they had investigated,

arranging them alphabetically, and in the form of statistics. Then the

clerk reported the number of meal tickets that had been distributed and

the smaller number that had been gastronomically redeemed. After that

there were reports from standing committees, then from special

committees, and when all these had been read, received and approved,

they were ordered to be placed on file. These preliminaries occupied an

hour, and Elizabeth felt the effect to be somewhat deadening. During

the reading of the reports, the members, of whom there were about forty,

mostly women, had sat in respectful silence, decorously coughing now and

then. When all the reports had been read a woman rose, and addressing

Mrs. Russell as "Madame President," said that she wished again to move

that the meetings of the society be opened with prayer. At this the

faces of the other members clouded with an expression of weariness. The

woman who made the motion spoke to it at length, and with the only zeal

that Elizabeth had thus far observed in the proceedings. Elizabeth was

not long in discerning that this same woman had made this proposal at

former meetings; she knew this by the bored and sometimes angry

expressions of the other members. The young curate seemed to feel a

kind of vicarious shame for the woman. When the woman had finished, the

matter was put to a vote, and all voted no, save the woman who had made

the proposal, and she voted "aye" loudly, going down to defeat in the

defiance of the unconvinced.

Then another woman rose and said that she had a matter to bring before

the meeting; this matter related to a blind woman who had called on her

and complained that the Organized Charities had refused to give her

assistance. Now that the winter was coming on, the blind woman was

filled with fear of want. Elizabeth had a dim vision of the blind woman,

even from the crude and inadequate description; she felt a pity and a

desire to help her, and, at the same time, with that condemnation which

needs no more than accusation, a kind of indignation with the Organized

Charities. For the first time she was interested in the proceedings,

and leaned forward to hear what was to be done with the blind woman.

But while the description had been inadequate to Elizabeth, so that her

own imagination had filled out the portrait, it was, nevertheless,

sufficient for the other members; a smile went round, glances were

exchanged, and the secretary, with a calm, assured and superior

expression, began to turn over the cards in her elaborate system of

indexed names. There was instantly a general desire to speak, several

persons were on their feet at once, saying "Madame President!" and Mrs.

Russell recognized one of them with a smile that propitiated and

promised the others in their turn. From the experiences that were then

related, it was apparent that this blind woman was known to nearly all

of the charity workers in the city; all of them spoke of her in terms of

disparagement, which soon became terms of impatience. One of the ladies

raised a laugh by declaring the blind woman to be a "chronic case," and

then one of the men present, a gray-haired man, with a white mustache

stained yellow by tobacco, rose and said that he had investigated the

"case" and that it was not worthy. This man was the representative of a

society which cared for animals, such as stray dogs, and mistreated

horses, and employed this agent to investigate such cases, but it seemed

that occasionally he concerned himself with human beings. He spoke now

in a professional and authoritative manner, and when he declared that

the case was not worthy, the blind woman, or the blind case, as it was

considered, was disposed of. Some one said that she should be sent to

the poorhouse.

When the blind woman had been consigned, so far as the bureau was

concerned, to the poorhouse, Mrs. Russell said in her soft voice:

"Is there any unfinished business?"

Elizabeth, who was tired and bored, felt a sudden hope that this was the

end, and she started up hopefully; but she found in Mrs. Russell's

beautiful face a quick smile of sympathy and patience. And Elizabeth

was ashamed; she was sorry she had let Mrs. Russell see that she was

weary of all this, and she felt a new dissatisfaction with herself. She

told herself that she was utterly fickle and hopeless; she had entered

upon this charity work with such enthusiasm, and here she was already

tiring of it at the first meeting! Elizabeth looked at Mrs. Russell,

and for a moment envied her her dignity and her tact and her patience,

all of which must have come from her innate gentleness and kindness.

The face of this woman, who presided so gracefully over this long,

wearying session, was marked with lines of character, her brow was

serene and calm under the perfectly white hair massed above it. The

eyes were large, and they were sad, just as the mouth was sad, but there

dwelt in the eyes always that same kindness and gentleness, that

patience and consideration that gave Mrs. Russell her real distinction,

her real indisputable claim to superiority. Elizabeth forgot her

impatience and her weariness in a sudden speculation as to the cause of

the sadness that lay somewhere in Mrs. Russell's life. She had known

ease and luxury always; she had been spared all contact with that world

which Elizabeth was just beginning to discover beyond the confines of

her own narrow and selfish world. Mrs. Russell surely never had known

the physical hunger which now and then was at least officially

recognized in this room where the bureau met; could there be a hunger of

the soul which gave this look to the human face? Elizabeth Ward had not

yet realized this hunger, she had not yet come into the full

consciousness of life, and so it was that just at a moment, when she

seemed very near to its recognition, she lost herself in the luxury of

romanticizing some sorrow in Mrs. Russell's life, some sorrow kept

hidden from the world. Elizabeth thought she saw this sorrow in the

faint smile that touched Mrs. Russell's lips just then, as she gave a

parliamentary recognition to another woman--a heavy, obtrusive woman who

was rising to say:

"Madame President."

Elizabeth had hoped that there would be no unfinished business for the

society to transact, but she had not learned that there was one piece of

business which was always unfinished, and that was the question of

raising funds. And this subject had no interest for Elizabeth; the

question of money was one she could not grasp. It affected her as

statistics did; it had absolutely no meaning for her; and now, when she

was forced to pay attention to the heavy, obtrusive woman, because her

voice was so strong and her tone so commanding, she was conscious only

of the fact that she did not like this woman; somehow the woman

over-powered Elizabeth by mere physical proportions. But gradually it

dawned on Elizabeth that the discussion was turning on a charity ball,

and she grew interested at once, for she felt herself on the brink of

solving the old mystery of where charity balls originate. She had

attended many of them, but it had never occurred to her that some one

must have organized and promoted them; she had found them in her world

as an institution, like calls, like receptions, like the church. But now

a debate was on; the little woman, who had urged the society to open its

sessions with prayer, was opposing the ball, and Elizabeth forgot Mrs.

Russell's secret romance in her interest in the warmth with which the

project of a charity ball was being discussed.

XIV

The debate over the charity ball raged until twilight, and it served for

unfinished business at two special sessions. The spare little woman who

had proposed that the meetings be opened with prayer led the opposition

to the charity ball, and, summoning all her militant religion to her

aid, succeeded in arraying most of the evangelical churches against it.

In two weeks the controversy was in the newspapers, and when it had

waged for a month, and both parties were exhausted, they compromised on

a charity bazaar.

The dispute had been distressing to Mrs. Russell, whose nature was too

sensitive to take the relish most of the others seemed to find in the

controversy, and it was through her tact that peace was finally

established. Even after the bazaar was decided on, the peace was

threatened by dissension as to where the bazaar should be held. The

more sophisticated and worldly-minded favored the Majestic Theater, and

this brought the spare little woman to her feet again, trembling with

moral indignation. To her the idea of a bazaar in a theater was even

more sacrilegious than a ball. But Mrs. Russell saved the day by a

final sacrifice--she offered her residence for the bazaar.

"It was beautiful in you!" Elizabeth exclaimed as they drove homeward

together in the graying afternoon of the November day. "To think of

throwing your house open for a week--and having the whole town tramp

over the rugs!"

"Oh, I'll lay the floors in canvas," said Mrs. Russell, with a little

laugh she could not keep from ending in a sigh.

"You'll find it no light matter," said Elizabeth; "this turning your

house inside out. Of course, the fact that it is your house will draw

all the curious and vulgar in town."

This was not exactly reassuring and Elizabeth felt as much the moment

she had said it.

"You must help me, dear!" Mrs. Russell said, squeezing Elizabeth's hand

in a kind of desperation. Elizabeth had never known her to be in any

wise demonstrative, and her own sympathetic nature responded

immediately.

"Indeed I shall!" she said.

The bazaar was to be held the week before Christmas, and the ladies

forgot their differences to unite in one of those tremendous and

exhausting labors they seem ever ready to undertake, though the end is

always so disproportionate to the sacrifice and toil that somehow bring

it to pass. Elizabeth was almost constantly with Mrs. Russell; they

were working early and late. Mrs. Russell appointed her on the

committee on arrangements, and the committee held almost daily meetings

at the Charities. And here Elizabeth at last found an opportunity of

seeing some of the poor for whom she was working.

The fall had prolonged itself into November; the weather was so perfect

that Dick could daily speed his automobile, and the men who, like

Marriott, still clung to golf, could play on Saturdays and Sundays at

the Country Club. But December came, and with it a heavy rain that in

three days became a sleet; then the snow and a cold wave. The wretched

winter weather, which seems to have a spite almost personal for the lake

regions, produced its results in the lives of men--there were suicides

and crimes for the police, and for the Organized Charities, the poor,

now forced to emerge from the retreats where in milder weather they

could hide their wretchedness. They came forth, and when Elizabeth and

Mrs. Russell entered the Charities one morning, there they were, ranged

along the wall. They sat bundled in their rags, waiting in dumb patience

for the last humiliation of an official investigation, making no sound

save as their ailments compelled them to sneeze or to cough now and

then; and as Elizabeth and Mrs. Russell passed into the room, they were

followed by eyes that held no reproach or envy, but merely a mild

curiosity. The poor sat there, perhaps glad of the warmth and the rest;

willing to spend the day, if necessary; with hopes no higher than some

mere temporary relief that would help them to eke out their lives a few

hours longer and until another day, which should be like this day,

repeating all its wants and hardships. The atmosphere of the room was

stifling, with an odor that sickened Elizabeth, the fetor of all the

dirt and disease that poverty had accumulated and heaped upon them.

At the desk Mrs. Rider, the clerk, and the two agents of the society

were interrogating a woman. The woman was tall and slender, and her

pale face had some trace of prettiness left; her clothing was better

than that of the others, though it had remained over from some easier

circumstance of the summer.

The woman was hungry, and she was sick. She had reported her condition

to the agent of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty, but as this

man could think of nothing better than to arrest somebody and have

somebody punished, he had had the woman's husband sent to the workhouse

for six months, thus removing the only hope she had.

To Elizabeth it seemed that the three inquisitors were trying, not so

much to discover some means of helping this woman, as to discover some

excuse for not helping her; they took turns in putting to her, with a

professional frankness, the most personal questions,--questions that

made Elizabeth blush and burn with shame, even as they made the woman

blush. But just then a middle-aged woman appeared, and Elizabeth

instantly identified her when Mrs. Rider pleasantly addressed her by a

name that appeared frequently in the newspapers in connection with deeds

that took on the aspect of nobility and sacrifice.

"I'm so glad you dropped in, Mrs. Norton," said Mrs. Rider. "We have a

most perplexing case."

The clerk lifted her eyebrows expressively, and somehow indicated to

Mrs. Norton the woman she had just had under investigation. Mrs. Norton

glanced at the hunted face and smiled.

"You mean the Ordway woman? Exactly. I know her case thoroughly. Mr.

Gleason 'phoned me from the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty and I

looked her up. You should have seen her room--the filthiest place I

ever saw--and those children!" She raised her hands, covered with

gloves, and her official-looking reticule slid up her forearm as if to

express an impossibility. "The woman was tired of farm life--determined

to come to town--fascinated by city life--she complained of her husband,

and yet--what do you think?--she wanted me to get him out of the

work-house!"

Mrs. Norton stopped as if she had made an unanswerable argument and

proved that the woman should not be helped; and Mrs. Rider and the two

agents seemed to be relieved. Presently Mrs. Rider called the woman,

and told her that her case was not one that came within the purview of

the society's objects, and when the hope was dying out of the woman's

face Mrs. Norton began to lecture her on the care of children, and to

assure her the city was filled with pitfalls for such as she. The

woman, beaten into humility, listened a while, and then she turned and

dragged herself toward the door. The eyes of the waiting paupers

followed her with the same impersonal curiosity they had shown in the

entrance of Mrs. Russell and Elizabeth and Mrs. Norton.

The limp retreating figure of the woman filled Elizabeth with distress.

When, at the door, she saw the woman press to her eyes the sodden

handkerchief she had been rolling in her palm during the interview, she

ran after her; in the hall outside, away from others, she called; the

woman turned and gazed at her suspiciously.

"Here!" said Elizabeth fearfully.

She opened her purse and emptied from it into the woman's hand all the

silver it held.

"Where do you live?" she asked, and as the woman gave her the number of

the house where she rented a room, Elizabeth realized how inappropriate

the word "live" was. Elizabeth returned to the office with a glow in

her breast, though she dreaded Mrs. Norton, whom she feared she had

affronted by her deed. But Mrs. Norton received her with a smile.

"It seemed hard to you, no doubt," Mrs. Norton said, and Mrs. Rider and

the two agents looked up with smiles of their own, as if they were about

to shine in Mrs. Norton's justification, "but you'll learn after a

while. We must discriminate, you know; we must not pauperize them.

When you've been in the work as long as I have,"--she paused with a

superior lift of her eyebrows at the use of this word "work,"--"you'll

understand better."

Elizabeth felt a sudden indignation which she concealed, because she had

her own doubts, after all. The ladies were gathering for the committee

meeting and just then Mrs. Russell beckoned her into an inner room.

"The air is better in here," she said.

XV

Every day Elizabeth went to the Organized Charities. The committee on

arrangements divided itself into subcommittees, and these, with other

committees that were raised, must have meetings, make reports, receive

instructions, and consider ways and means. The labor entailed was

enormous. The women were exhausted before the first week had ended; the

rustling of their skirts as they ran to and fro, their incessant

chatter---they all spoke at once--their squealing at each other as their

nerves snapped under the strain, filled the rooms with clamor. But all

this endless confusion and complication were considered necessary in

order to effect an organization. If any one doubted or complained, it

was only necessary to speak the word "organization," and criticism was

immediately silenced.

It had been discovered very early in the work of this organization that

Mrs. Russell's great house would be too small for the bazaar, and it had

been a relief to her when a certain Mrs. Spayd offered to place at the

disposal of the committee the new mansion her husband had just built on

Claybourne Avenue and named with the foreign-sounding name of

"Bellemere." Mrs. Spayd privately conveyed the information that the

young people might have the ball-room at the top of the house, where the

most exclusive, if they desired, could dance, and she commissioned a

firm of decorators to transform Bellemere into a bazaar. Mrs. Spayd was

to bear the entire expense, and her charity was lauded everywhere,

especially in the society columns of the newspapers. The booths were to

represent different nations, and it was suddenly found to be desirable

to dress as peasants. The women who were to serve in these booths flew

to costumers to have typical clothing made. And this occasioned still

greater conflict and confusion, for each woman wished to represent that

country whose inhabitants were supposed to wear the most picturesque

costumes.

Meanwhile the cold weather held and the poor besieged the Charities. No

matter how early Elizabeth might arrive, no matter how late she might

leave, they were always there, a stolid, patient row along the wall, or

crowding up to the railing, or huddling in the hall outside. For a

while Elizabeth, regarding them in the mass, thought that the same

persons came each day, but she discovered that this was not the case.

As she looked she noted a curious circumstance: the faces gradually took

on individuality, slight at first, but soon decided, until each stood

out among the others and developed the sharpest, most salient

characteristics. She saw in each face the story of a single life, and

always a life of neglect and failure, as if the misery of the world had

been distributed in a kind of ironical variation. These people all were

victims of a common doom, presenting itself each time in a different

aspect; they were all alike--and yet they were all different, like

leaves of a tree.

One afternoon Elizabeth suddenly noted a face that stood out in such

relief that it became the only face there for her. It was the face of a

young man, and it wore a strange pallor, and as Elizabeth hurried by she

was somehow conscious that the young man's eyes were following her with

a peculiar searching glance. When she sat down to await the women of the

committee with which she was to meet, the young man still gazed at her

steadily; she grew uncomfortable, almost resentful. She felt this

continued stare to be a rudeness, and then suddenly she wondered why any

rudeness of these people should be capable of affecting her; surely they

were not of her class, to be judged by her standards. But she turned

away, and determined not to look that way again, for fear that the young

man might accost her.

And yet, though she persistently looked away, the face had so impressed

her that she still could see it. In her first glimpse it had been

photographed on her mind; its pallor was remarkable, the skin had a

damp, dead whiteness, as if it had bleached in a cave, curls of thin

brown hair clung to the brows; on the boy's neck was a streak of black

where the collar of his coat had rubbed its color. In his thin hands he

held a plush cap. And out of his pale face his wan eyes looked and

followed her; she could not escape them, and for relief she finally fled

to the inner room.

"We have made arrangements," said one of the women, "to hold our

committee meetings hereafter at Mrs. Spayd's. She has kindly put her

library at our disposal. This place is unbearable!"

She flung up a window and let the fresh air pour in.

"Yes," sighed another woman, "the air is sickening. It gives me a

headache. If the poor could only be taught that cleanliness is akin to

godliness!"

Elizabeth's head ached, too; it would be a relief to be delivered out of

this atmosphere. But still the face of the young man pursued her. She

could not follow the deliberations of the committee; she could think of

nothing but that face. Where, she continually asked herself, had she

seen it before? She sat by a window, and looked down into the street,

preoccupied by the effort to identify it. She gave herself up to the

pain of the process, as one does when trying to remember a name. Now

and then she caught phrases of the sentences the women began, but seemed

never able to finish:--"Oh, I hardly think that--" "As a class, of

course--" "Oriental hangings would be best--" "Cheese-cloth looks

cheap--" "Of course, flags--" "We could solicit the merchants--" "My

husband was saying last night--"

But where had she seen that face before? Why should it pursue and worry

her? What had she ever done? Finally, after two hours of the mighty

effort and patience that are necessary to bring a number of minds to

grasp a subject and agree even on the most insignificant detail, two

hours in which thoughts hovered and flitted here and there, and could

not find expression, when minds held back, and continually balked at the

specific, the certain, the definite, and sought refuge from decision in

the general and the abstract, the committee exhausted itself, and

decided to adjourn. Then, although it had reached no conclusions

whatever, the matron who presided smiled and said:

"Well, I feel that we're making progress."

"I don't feel as if we'd done much," some one else said. "And I can not

come on Friday."

"Do you know, I really haven't got a single one of my Christmas presents

yet."

"I have to give sixty-seven! Just think! What a burden it all is!"

Elizabeth dreaded the sight of that boy's face again, but it was growing

late, the early winter twilight was expanding its gloom in the room.

She made haste, and walked swiftly through the outer office. The young

man was no longer there. But though this was a relief, his face still

followed her. Who could he be?

The air out of doors was grateful. It soothed her hot cheeks, and,

though her head throbbed more violently for an instant from the exertion

of coming down the steps, she drew in great drafts of the winter air

with a comforting sense that it was cleansing her lungs of all that foul

atmosphere of poverty she had been breathing for two days. She walked

hurriedly to the corner, to wait for a car; beside her, St. Luke's, as

with an effort, lifted its Gothic arches of gray stone into the dark

sky; across the street the City Hall loomed, its windows bright with

lights. The afternoon crowds were streaming by on the sidewalk, wagons

and heavy trucks jolted and rumbled along the street; she saw the

drivers of coal-wagons, the whites of their eyes flashing under the

electric lights against faces black as negroes with the grime.

Politicians were coming from the City Hall; here and there, in and out

of the crowd, newsboys darted, shouting "All 'bout the murder!" The

shops were ablaze, their windows tricked out for the holidays; throngs

of people hurried by, intent, preoccupied, selfish. As Elizabeth stood

there, the constant stream of faces oppressed her with an intolerable

gloom; the blazing electric lights, signs of theaters and restaurants,

were mere mockeries of pleasure and comfort. And always the roar of the

city. It was the hour when the roar became low and dull, a deep, ugly

note of weariness and discontent was in it, the grumble of a city that

was exhausted from its long day of confusion and wearing, complicated

effort. On the City Hall corner, a man with the red-banded cap of the

Salvation Army stood beside an iron kettle suspended beneath a tripod,

swaying from side to side, stamping his huge feet in the cold, jangling

a little hand-bell, and constantly crying in a bass voice:

"Remember the poor! Remember the poor!"

She recalled, suddenly, that the outcasts at the Charities invariably

sneered whenever the Salvation Army was suggested, and she was impatient

with this man in the cap with the red band, his enormous sandy mustache

frozen into repulsive little icicles. Why must he add his din to this

tired roar of the worn-out city?

Her car came presently, jerking along, stopping and starting again in

the crowded street. The crowd sweeping by brushed her now and then, but

suddenly she felt a more personal contact--some one had touched her.

She shrank; she shuddered with fear, then she ran out to her car.

Inside she began again that study of faces. She tried not to do so, but

she seemed unable to shake off the habit--that face seemed always to be

looking out at her from all other faces, white and sensitive, with the

black mark on the neck where the coat collar had rubbed its color. And

the eyes more and more reproached her, as if she had been responsible

for the sadness that lay in them. The car whirred on, the conductor

opened the door with monotonous regularity, and called out the

interminable streets. The air in the car, overheated by the little

coal-stove, took on the foul smell of the air at the Charities.

Elizabeth's head ached more and more, a sickness came over her. At last

she reached the street which led across to Claybourne Avenue, and got

off. She crossed the little triangular park. The air had suddenly

taken on a new life, it was colder and clearer. The dampness it had

held in suspense for days was leaving it. Looking between the black

trunks of the trees in the park she saw the western sky, yellow and red

where the sun had gone down; and she thought of her home, with its

comfort and warmth and light, and the logs in the great fireplace in the

library. She hastened on, soothed and reassured. In the sense of

certain comfort she now confidently anticipated, she could get the poor

out of her mind, and feel as she used to feel before they came to annoy

her. The clouds were clearing, the sky took on the deep blue it shows

at evening; one star began to sparkle frostily, and, just as peace was

returning, that young man's face came back, and she remembered

instantly, in a flash, that it was the face of Harry Graves.

XVI

Elizabeth was right; it was Harry Graves. Four weeks before he had been

released from the penitentiary. On the day that he was permitted to go

forth into the world again as a free man, the warden gave him a railroad

ticket back to the city, a suit of prison-made clothes, a pair of

prison-made brogans, and a shirt. These clothes were a disappointment

and a chagrin to Graves. When he went into the prison, the fall before,

he had an excellent suit of clothes and a new overcoat, and during the

whole year he had looked forward to the pleasure he would experience in

donning these again. He had felt a security in returning to the world

well-habited and presentable. But one of the guards had noticed

Graves's clothes when he entered the penitentiary and had stolen them,

so that when he was released, Graves was forced to go back wearing a

suit of the shoddy clothes one of the contractors manufactured in the

prison, and sold to the state at a profit sufficient to repay him and to

provide certain officials of the penitentiary with a good income as

well. These clothes were of dull black. A detective could recognize

them anywhere. Before Graves had reached the city, the collar had

rubbed black against his neck.

Things, of course, had changed while he was in prison. His mother had

died and he had no home to go to. Besides this, he had contracted

tuberculosis in the penitentiary, as did many of the convicts unless

they were men of exceptionally strong constitutions. Nevertheless Graves

was glad to be free on any terms, and glad to be back in the city in

which he had been born and reared. And yet, no sooner was he back than

the fear of the city lay on him. He dreaded to meet men; he felt their

eyes following him curiously. He knew that he presented an uncouth

figure in those miserable clothes and the clumsy prison brogans.

Besides, he had so long walked in the lock-step that his gait was now

constrained, awkward and unnatural; having been forbidden to speak for

more than a year, and having spoken at all but surreptitiously, he found

it impossible to approach men with his old frankness; having been

compelled to keep his gaze on the ground, he could not look men in the

eyes, and so he seemed to be a surly, taciturn creature with a hang-dog

air.

During the three weeks Graves had been confined in jail, prior to his

plea and sentence, he had thought over his misdeeds, recognized his

mistakes and formed the most strenuous resolutions of betterment. He

was determined, then, to live a better life; but as he could not live

while in prison, but merely "do time," he was compelled, of course, to

wait a year before he could begin life anew. During the eleven months

he spent in the penitentiary he had tried to keep these resolutions

fresh, strong and ever clear before him. This was a difficult thing to

do, for his mind was weakened by the confinement, and his moral sense

was constantly clouded by the examples that were placed before him. On

Sundays, in the chapel, he heard the chaplain preach, but during the

week the guards stole the comforts his mother sent to him before she

died, the contractors and the prison officials were grafting and

stealing from the state provisions, household furniture, liquors, wines,

and every other sort of thing; one of the prison officials supplied his

brother's drug store with medicines and surgical appliances from the

prison hospital. Besides all this, the punishments he was compelled at

times to witness--the water-cure, the paddle, the electric battery, the

stringing up by the wrists, not to mention the loathsome practices of

the convicts themselves--benumbed and appalled him, until he shuddered

with terror lest his mind give way. But all these things, he felt,

would be at an end if he could keep his reason and his health, and live

to the end of his term. Then he could leave them all behind and go out

into the world and begin life anew.

Graves came back to town during those last glorious days of the autumn,

and the fact that he had no place to go was not so much a hardship. He

did not care to show himself to his old friends until he had had

opportunity to procure new clothes, and he felt that he was started on

the way to this rehabilitation when almost immediately he found a place

trucking merchandise for a wholesale house in Front Street. He felt

encouraged; his luck, he told himself, was good, and for three days he

was happy in his work. Then, one morning, he noticed a policeman; the

policeman stood on the sidewalk, watching Graves roll barrels down the

skids from a truck. The policeman stood there a good while, and then he

spoke to the driver, admired the magnificent horses that were hitched to

the truck, patted their glossy necks, picked up some sugar that had been

spilled from a burst barrel and let the horses lick the sugar from the

palm of his hand. The horses tossed their heads playfully as they did

this, and, meanwhile, the policeman glanced every few minutes at Graves.

Presently, he went into the wholesale house, and through the window

Graves saw him talking to the manager. That evening the manager paid

Graves for his three days' work and discharged him.

On this money, four dollars and a half, Graves lived for a week,

meanwhile hunting another job. He could do nothing except manual labor,

for he was not properly clothed for any clerical employment. He walked

along the entire river front, seeking work on the wharves as a

stevedore, but no one could work there who was not a member of the

Longshoremen's Union, and no one could be a member of the Longshoremen's

Union who did not work there; so this plan failed. He visited

employment bureaus, but these demanded fees and deposits. Graves read

the want advertisements in the newspapers, but none of these availed

him; each prospective employer demanded references which Graves could

not give.

The snow-storm brought him a prosperity as fleeting as the snow itself;

he went into the residence district--where as yet he had not had the

heart to go because of memories that haunted it--and cleaned the

sidewalks of the well-to-do. After a day or so, the sidewalks of the

well-to-do were all cleaned,--that is, the sidewalks of those who

respected the laws sufficiently to have their sidewalks cleaned. Then

the rain came, and Graves tramped the slushy streets. His prison-made

shoes were as pervious to water as paper, of which substance, indeed,

they were made; he contracted a cold, and his cough grew rapidly worse.

He had no place to sleep. He spent a night in each of the two

lodging-houses in the city, then he "flopped" on the floor of a police

station. In this place he became infested with vermin, though this was

no new experience to him after eleven months in the cells of the

penitentiary. Meanwhile, he had little to eat. Once or twice, he

visited hotel kitchens and the chefs gave him scraps from the table;

then he did what for days he had been dreading--he tried to beg. After

allowing twenty people to go by, he found the courage to hold out his

hand to the twenty-first; the man passed without noticing him; a dozen

others did likewise. Then a policeman saw him and arrested him on a

charge of vagrancy. At the police station the officers, recognizing his

prison clothes, held him for three days as a suspicious character. Then

he was arraigned before Bostwick, who scowled and told him he would give

him twenty-four hours in which to leave the city.

It was now cold. The wind cut through Graves's clothing like a saw; he

skulked and hid for two days; then, intolerably hungry, he went to the

Organized Charities. He sat there for two hours that afternoon, glad of

the delay because the room was warm. He thought much during those two

hours, though his thoughts were no longer clear. He was able, however,

to recall a belief he had held before coming out of the penitentiary,--a

belief that he had paid the penalty for his crime, that, having served

the sentence society had imposed on him, his punishment was at an end.

This view had seemed to be confirmed by the certificate that had been

issued to him, under the Great Seal of State and signed by the governor,

restoring him to citizenship. But now he realized that this belief had

been erroneous, that he had not at all paid the penalty, that he had not

served his sentence, that his punishment was not at an end, and that he

had not been restored to citizenship. The Great Seal of State had

attested an hypocrisy and a lie, and the governor had signed his name to

this lie with a conceited flourish at the end of his pen. Graves

formulated this conclusion with an effort, but he grasped it finally,

and his mind clung to it and revolved about it, finding something it

could hold to.

And then, suddenly, Elizabeth Ward entered the room. He knew her

instantly, and his heart leaped with a wild desperate hope. He watched

her; she was beautiful in the seal-skin jacket that fitted her slender

figure so well; her hat with its touch of green became her dark hair.

He noted the flush of her cheek, the sparkle of her eyes behind the

veil. He remembered her as he had seen her that last day she came into

her father's office; he remembered how heavy his own heart had been

under its load of guilty fears. He recalled the affection her father

had shown, how his tired face had smiled when he saw her. Graves

remembered that the smile had filled him with a pity for Ward; he seemed

once more to see Ward fondly take her little gloved hand and hold it

while he looked up at her, and how he had laughed and evidently joked

her as he swung about to his desk and wrote out a check. And then, as

she went out, she had smiled at the clerks and spoken to them; she had

smiled on him and spoken to him; would she smile now, this day? The hope

leaped wild in his heart. If she did! She was the apple of her

father's eye--he would do anything for her; if she would but see and

recognize him now, give him the least hint of encouragement or

permission, he would tell her, she would speak to her father and he

would help him. His whole being seemed to melt within him--he half

started from his chair--his eyes were wide with the excitement of this

hope. He never once took them from her; he must not permit an instant

to escape him, lest she look his way. He watched her as she sat by the

window; she made a picture he never could forget. Once she turned. Ah!

it was coming now!--but no--yes, she was moving! She had gone into the

other room. He hoped now that his case would be one of the last. He

must see her. After a while the agent beckoned him, looked at him

suspiciously, and said:

"How long have you been out?"

"A month," said Graves.

"Well, I haven't got no use for convicts," said the agent.

Graves waited in the hall. He waited until it was dark, but not so dark

that the agent could not recognize him.

"You needn't hang around," he said; "there's nothing to steal here."

Graves waited, then, outside. He feared he would miss Elizabeth in the

dark, or confuse her among the other women. The thought made him almost

frantic. The women came out, and finally--yes, it was Elizabeth! He

could nowhere mistake that figure. He pressed up, he spoke, he put

forth a hand to touch her--she turned with a start of fright. He saw a

policeman looking at him narrowly. And then he gave up, slunk off, and

was lost in the crowd.

XVII

Seated in the library at the Wards', Eades gave himself up to the

influences of the moment. The open fire gave off the faint delicious

odor of burning wood, the lamp filled the room with a soft light that

gleamed on the gilt lettering of the books about the walls, the pictures

above the low shelves--a portrait of Browning among them--lent to the

room the dignity of the great souls they portrayed. Eades, who had just

tried his second murder case, was glad to find this refuge from the

thoughts that had harassed him for a week. Elizabeth noticed the

weariness in his eyes, and she had a notion that his hair glistened a

little more grayly at his temples.

"You've been going through an ordeal this week, haven't you?" She had

expressed the thought that lay on their minds. He felt a thrill. She

sympathized, and this was comfort; this was what he wanted!

"It must have been exciting," Elizabeth continued. "Murder trials

usually are, I believe. I never saw one; I never was in a court-room in

my life. Women do go, I suppose?"

"Yes--women of a certain kind." His tone deprecated the practice.

"We've had big audiences all the week; it would have disgusted you to

see them struggling and scrambling for admission. Now I suppose they'll

be sending flowers to the wretch, and all that."

Eades chose to forget how entirely the crowd had sympathized with him,

and how the atmosphere of the trial had been wholly against the wretch.

"Well, I'll promise not to send him any flowers," Elizabeth said

quickly. "He'll have to hang?"

"No, not hang; we don't hang people in this state any more; we

electrocute them. But I forgot; Gordon Marriott told me I mustn't say

'electrocute'; he says there is no such word."

"Gordon is particular," Elizabeth observed with a laugh.

Eades thought she laughed sympathetically; and he wanted all her

sympathy for himself just then.

"He calls it killing." Eades grasped the word boldly, like a nettle.

"Gordon doesn't believe in capital punishment."

"So I understand."

"I don't either."

Her tone startled him. He glanced up. She was looking at him steadily.

"Did you read of this man's crime?" he asked.

"No, I don't read about crimes."

"Then I'll spare you. Only, he shot a man down in cold blood; there

were eye-witnesses; there is no doubt of his guilt. He made no

defense."

"Then it couldn't have been hard to convict him."