"But I'm going."

"Then I'll go along."

"No, I'll go alone."

He had protested, of course, but his very next words showed that he was

ready to give in.

"When shall you go?" he asked.

"Now. There isn't much time. The grand jury--what is it the grand jury

does?"

"It sits next week, and Eades will lay the case before it

then--unless--"

"Unless I can stop him."

There had been a little intense, dramatic moment when the waiter was out

of the room and she had risen, buttoning her jacket and drawing on her

gloves, and her father had stood before her.

"Bess," he said, "tell me, are you contemplating some--horrible

sacrifice?" He had put his finger under her chin and elevated it, in

the effort to make her look him in the eyes. She had paled slightly and

then smiled--and kissed him.

"Never mind about me, papa."

And then she had hastened away--and here she was.

The tall door lettered "The Prosecuting Attorney" was closed, but she

did not have to wait long before it opened and three men came out,

evidently hurried away by Eades, who hastened to Elizabeth's side and

said:

"Pardon me if I kept you waiting,"

They entered the private office, and, at her sign, he closed the door.

She took the chair beside his desk, and he sat down and looked at her

expectantly. He was plainly ill at ease, and this encouraged her. She

was alive to the strangeness of this visit, to the strangeness of the

place and the situation; her heart was in her throat; she feared she

could not speak, but she made a great effort and plunged at once into

the subject.

"You know what brings me here."

"I presume--"

"Yes," she said before he could finish. He inclined his head in an

understanding that would spare painful explanation. His heart was going

rapidly. He would have gloried in having her near him in any other

place; but here in this place, on this subject! He must not forget his

position; he must assume his official personality; the separation of his

relations had become a veritable passion with him.

"I came," she said, "to ask a favor--a very great favor. Will you grant

it?"

She leaned forward slightly, but with a latent intensity that showed all

her eagerness and concern. He was deeply troubled.

"You know I would do anything in my power for you," he said. His heart

was sincere and glowing--but his mind instantly noted the qualification

implied in the words, "my power."

And Elizabeth, with her quick intelligence, caught the significance of

those words. She closed her eyes an instant. How hard he made it!

Still, he was certainly within his rights.

"I want you to let my brother go," she said,

[Illustration: "I want you to let my brother go," she said]

He compressed his lips, and she noted how very thin, how resolute they

were.

"It does not altogether rest with me."

"You evade," she said. "Don't treat me--as if I were some politician."

She was surprised at her own temerity. With some little fear that he

might mistake her meaning, she, nevertheless, kept her gray eyes fixed

on him, and went on:

"I came to ask you not to lay his case before the grand jury. I believe

that is the extent of your power. I really don't know about such

things." Her eyes fell, and she gently stroked the soft gray fur of her

muff, as she permitted herself this woman's privilege of pleading

weakness. "No one need be the loser--my father will make good

the--shortage. All will be as if it never had been--all save this

horrible thing that has come to us--that must remain, of course, for

ever."

Then she let the silence fall between them.

"You are asking me to do a great deal."

"It seems a very little thing to me, so far as you are concerned; to

us--to me--of course, it is a great thing; it means our family, our

name, my father, my mother, myself--leaving Dick out of it altogether."

Eades turned away in pain. It was evident that she had said her all,

and that he must speak.

"You forget one other thing," he said presently.

"What?"

"The rights of society." He was conscious of a certain inadequacy in

his words; they sounded to him weak, and not at all as it seemed they

should have sounded. She did not reply at once, but he knew that she

was looking at him. Was that look of hers a look of scorn?

"I do not care one bit for the rights of society," she said. He knew

that she spoke with all her spirit. But she softened almost instantly

and added, "I do care, of course, for its opinion."

Eades was not introspective enough to realize his own superlative regard

for society's opinion; it was easier to cover this regard with words

about its rights.

"But society has rights," he said, "and society has placed me here to

see those rights conserved."

"What rights?" she asked.

"To have the wrong-doer punished."

"And the innocent as well? You would punish my mother, my father and

_me_, although, of course, we already have our punishment." She waited

a moment and then the cry was torn from her.

"Can't you see that merely having to come here on such an errand is

punishment enough for me?"

She was bending forward, and her eyes blinked back the tears. He had

never loved her so; he could not bear to look at her sitting there in

such anguish.

"My God, yes!" he exclaimed. He got up hastily, plunging his hands in

his pockets, and walking away to his window, looked out a moment, then

turned; and as he spoke his voice vibrated:

"Don't you know how this makes me suffer? Don't you know that nothing I

ever had to face troubles me as this does?"

She did not reply.

"If you don't," he added, coming near and speaking in a low, guarded

tone, "you don't know how--I love you."

She raised her hand to protest, but she did not look up. He checked

himself. She lowered her gloved hand, and he wondered in a second of

great agitation if that gesture meant the withdrawal of the protest.

"Then--then," she said very deliberately, "do this for me."

She raised her muff to hide the face that flamed scarlet. He took one

step toward her, paused, struggled for mastery of himself. He

remembered now that the principle--the principle that had guided him in

the conduct of his office, required that he must make his decisions

slowly, calmly, impersonally, with the cold deliberation of the law he

was there to impersonate. And here was the woman he loved, the woman

whom he had longed to make his wife, the wife who could crown his

success--here, at last, ready to say the word she had so long refused to

say--the word he had so long wished to hear.

"Elizabeth," he said simply, "you know how I have loved you, how I love

you now. This may not be the time or the place for that--I do not wish

to take an advantage of you--but you do not know some other things. I

have never felt at all worthy of you. I do not now, but I have felt

that I could at least offer you a clean hand and a clean heart. I have

tried in this office, with all its responsibilities, to do my duty

without fear or favor; thus far I have done so. It has been my pride

that nothing has swerved me from the path of that plain duty. I have

consoled myself ever since I knew I loved you--and that was long before

I dared to tell you--that I could at least go to you with that record.

And now you ask me to stultify myself, to give all that up! It is

hard--too hard!" He turned away. "I don't suppose I make it clear.

Perhaps it seems a little thing to you. To me it is a big thing; it is

all I have."

Elizabeth was conscious for an instant of nothing but a gratitude to him

for turning away. She pressed her muff against her face; the soft fur,

a little cold, was comforting to her hot cheeks. She felt a humiliation

now that she feared she never could survive; she felt a regret, too,

that she had ever let the situation take this personal and intimate

turn. For an instant she was disposed to blame Eades, but she was too

just for that; she knew that she alone was to blame; she remembered that

it was this very appeal she had come to make, and she contemned

herself--despised herself. And then in a desperate effort to regain her

self-respect, she tried to change the trend of the argument, to restore

it to the academic, the impersonal, to struggle back to the other plane

with him, and she said:

"If it could do any good! If I could see what good it does!"

"What!" he exclaimed, turning to her. "What good? What good does any

of my work do?"

"I'm sure I don't know." As she said this, she looked up at him, met

his eye with a boldness she despised in herself. Down in her heart she

was conscious of a self-abasement that was almost complete; she realized

the histrionic in her attitude, and in this feeling, determined now to

brave it out; she added bitterly: "None, I should say."

"None!" He repeated the word, aghast. "None! Do you say that all this

work I have been doing for the betterment, the purification of society

does no good?"

"No good," she said; "it does no good; it only makes more suffering in

the world." And she thought of all she was just then suffering.

"Where--" he could not catch his breath--"where did you get that idea?"

"In the night--in the long, horrible night." Though she was alive to

the dramatic import of her words and this scene, she was speaking with

sincerity, and she shuddered.

Eades stood and looked at her. He could do nothing else; he could say

nothing, think nothing.

In Elizabeth's heart there was now but one desire, and that was to get

away, to bring this horror to an end. She had come to save her brother;

now she was conscious that she must save herself; she felt that she had

hopelessly involved the situation; it was beyond remedy now, and she

must get away. She rose.

"I have come here, I have humiliated myself to ask you to do a favor for

me," she said. "You are not ready to do it, I see." She was glad; she

felt now the dreadful anxiety of one who is about to escape an awful

dilemma. "To me it seems a very simple little thing, but--"

She was going.

"Elizabeth!" he said, "let me think it over. I can not think straight

just now. You know how I want to help you. You know I would do

anything--anything for you!"

"Anything but this," she said. "This little thing that hurts no one, a

thing that can bring nothing but happiness to the world, that can save

my father and my mother and me--a thing, perhaps the only thing that can

save my poor, weak, erring brother--who knows?"

"Let me think it over," he pleaded. "I'll think it over to-night--I'll

send you word in the morning."

She turned then and went away.

XXVII

Elizabeth let the note fall in her lap. A new happiness suddenly

enveloped her. She felt the relief of an escape. The note ran:

DEAR ELIZABETH:

I have thought it all over. I did not sleep all night, thinking of it,

and of you. But--I can not do what you ask; I could not love you as I

do if I were false to my duty. You know how hard it is for me to come

to this conclusion, how hard it is for me to write thus. It sounds

harsh and brutal and cold, I know. It is not meant to be. I know how

you have suffered; I wish you could know how I have suffered and how I

shall suffer. I can promise you one thing, however: that I shall do only

my duty, my plain, simple duty, as lightly as I can, and nothing now can

give me such joy as to find the outcome one perhaps I ought not to

wish--one which in any other case would be considered a defeat for me.

But I ask you to think of me, whatever may come to pass, as

Your sincere

JOHN EADES.

She leaned back in her chair, and closed her eyes; a sense of rest and

comfort came to her. She was content for a while simply to realize that

rest and comfort. She opened her eyes and looked out of the window over

the little triangular park with its bare trees; the sky was solid gray;

there was a gray tone in the atmosphere, and the soft light was grateful

and restful to her eyes, tired and sensitive as they were from the loss

of so much sleep. She felt that she could lie back then and sleep

profoundly. Yet she did not wish to sleep--she wished to be awake and

enjoy this sensation of relief, of escape. After that night and that

day and this last night of suspense, it was like a reprieve--she started

and her face darkened,--the thought of reprieve made her somehow think

of Archie Koerner. This event had quite driven him out of her mind,

coming as it had just at the climax. She had not thought of him

for--how long? And Gusta! It brought the thought of her, too.

Suddenly she remembered, with a dim sense of confusion that, at some

time long ago, she and Gusta had talked of Archie's first trouble. Had

they mentioned Dick? No, but she had thought of him! How strange! And

then her thoughts returned to Eades, and she lifted the note, and

glanced at it. She recalled the night at the Fords', and his proposal,

her hesitation and his waiting. She let the note fall again and sighed

audibly--a sigh that expressed her content. Then suddenly she started

up! She had forgotten Dick--the trouble--her father!

Marriott knew what she had to say almost before the first sentence had

fallen from her lips.

"I'll not pretend to be surprised, Elizabeth," he said. "I haven't

expected it, but now I can see that it was inevitable."

He looked away from her.

"Poor boy!" he said. "How I pity him! He has done nothing more than to

adopt the common standard; he has accepted the common ideal. He has

believed them when they told him by word and deed that

possession--money--could bring happiness and that nothing else can!

Well--it's too bad."

Elizabeth's head was drooping and the tears were streaming down her

cheeks. He pretended not to see.

"Poor boy!" he went on. "Well, we must save him, that's all."

She looked up at him, her gray eyes wide and their lashes drenched in

their tears.

"How, Gordon?"

"Well, I don't know, but some way." He studied a moment. "Eades--well,

of course, he's hopeless."

She could never tell him of her visit to Eades; she had told him merely

of Hunter's interview with the prosecutor. But she was surprised to see

how Marriott, instantly, could tell just what Eades would do.

"Eades is just a prosecutor, that's all," Marriott went on. "Heavens!

How the business has hardened him! How it does pull character to

shreds! And yet--he's like Dick--he's pursuing another ideal that's

very popular. They'll elect Eades congressman or governor or something

for his severity. But let's not waste time on him. Let's think." He

sat there, his brows knit, and Elizabeth watched him.

"I wish I could fathom old Hunter. He had some motive in reporting it

to Eades so soon. Of course, if it wasn't for that it would be easy.

Hm--" He thought. "We'll have to work through Hunter. He's our only

chance. I must find out all there is to know about Hunter. Now,

Elizabeth, I'll have to shut myself up and do some thinking. The grand

jury doesn't meet for ten days--we have time--"

"They won't arrest Dick?"

"Oh, it's not likely now. Tell him to stay close at home--don't let him

skip out, whatever he does. That would be fatal. And one thing

more--let me do the worrying." He smiled.

Marriott had hoped, when the murder trial was over, that he could rest;

he had set in motion the machinery that was to take the case up on

error; he had ordered his transcripts and prepared the petition in error

and the motions, and he was going to have them all ready and file them

at the last moment, so that he might be sure of delay. Archie had been

taken to the penitentiary, and Marriott was glad of that, for it

relieved him of the necessity of going to the jail so often; that was

always an ordeal. He had but one more visit to make there,--Curly had

sent for him; but Curly never demanded much. But now--here was a task

more difficult than ever. It provoked him almost to anger; he resented

it. It was always so, he told himself; everything comes at once--and

then he thought of Elizabeth. It was for her!

He thought of nothing else all that day. He inquired about Hunter of

every one he met. He went to his friends, trying to learn all he could.

He picked up much, of course, for there was much to be told of such a

wealthy and prominent man as Amos Hunter, especially one with such

striking personal characteristics. But he found no clue, no hint that he

felt was promising. Then he suddenly remembered Curly.

He found him in another part of the jail, where he had been immured away

from Archie in order that they might not communicate with each other.

With his wide knowledge and deeper nature Curly was a more interesting

personality than Archie. He took his predicament with that philosophy

Marriott had observed and was beginning to admire in these fellows; he

had no complaints to make.

"I'm not worried," he said. "I'll come out all right. Eades has nothing

on me, and he knows it. They're holding me for a bluff. They'll keep

me, of course, until they get Archie out of the way, then they'll put me

on the street. It wouldn't do to drop my case now. They'll just stall

along with it until then. Of course--there's one danger--" he looked up

and smiled curiously, and to the question in Marriott's eyes, he

answered:

"You see they can't settle me for this; but they might dig up something

somewhere else and put me away on that. You see the danger."

Marriott nodded, not knowing just what to say.

"But we must take the bitter with the sweet, as Eddie Dean used to say."

Curly spoke as if the observation were original with Dean. "But, Mr.

Marriott, there's one or two things I want you to attend to for me."

"Well," consented Marriott helplessly, already overburdened with others'

cares.

"I don't like to trouble you, but there's no one I like to trust, and

they won't let me see any one."

He hesitated a moment.

"It's this way," he presently went on. "I've got a woman--Jane, they

call her. She's a good woman, you see, though she has some bad tricks.

She's sore now, and hanging around here, and I want her to leave. She's

even threatened to see Eades, but she wouldn't do that; she's too

square. But she has a stand-in with McFee, and while he's all right in

his way, still he's a copper, and you can't be sure of a copper. She

can't help me any here, and she might queer me; the flatties might pry

something out of her that could hurt me--they'll do anything. If you'll

see Danny Gibbs and have him ship her, I'll be much obliged. And say,

Mr. Marriott, when you're seeing him, tell him to get that thing fixed

up and send me my bit. He'll understand. I don't mind telling you, at

that. There's a man here, a swell guy, a banker, who does business with

Dan. He's handled some of our paper--and that sort of thing, you know,

and I've got a draw coming there. It ain't much, about twenty-five

case, I guess, but it'd come in handy. Tell Dan to give the woman a

piece of it and send the rest to me here. I can use it just now buying

tobacco and milk and some little things I need. Dan'll understand all

about it."

"Who is this swell guy you speak of--this banker?"

Curly looked at Marriott with the suspicion that was necessarily

habitual with him, but his glance softened and he said:

"I don't know him myself. I never saw him--his name's Hunt, no, Hunter,

or some such thing. Know him?"

Marriott's heart leaped; he struggled to control himself.

"Course, you understand, Mr. Marriott," said Curly, fearing he had been

indiscreet, "this is all between ourselves."

"Oh, of course, you can depend on me."

He was anxious now to get away; he could scarcely observe the few

decencies of decorum that the place demanded. And when he was once out

of the prison, he called a cab and drove with all speed to Gibbs's

place. On the way his mind worked rapidly, splendidly, under its

concentration. When he reached the well-known quiet little saloon in

Kentucky Street, Gibbs took him into the back room, and there, where

Gibbs had been told of the desperate plights of so many men, Marriott

told him of the plight of Dick Ward. When he had done, he leaned across

the table and said:

"And you'll help me, Dan?"

Gibbs made no reply, but instead smoked and blinked at Marriott

curiously. Just as Marriott's hopes were falling, Gibbs broke the

silence:

"It's the girl you're interested in," he said gruffly, "not the kid."

He looked at Marriott shrewdly, and when Marriott saw that he looked not

at all unkindly or in any sense with that cynical contempt of the

sentimental that might have been expected of such a man, Marriott

smiled.

"Well, yes, you're right. I am interested in her."

Gibbs threw him one look and then tilted back, gazed upward to the

ceiling, puffed meditatively at his cigar, and presently said, as if

throwing out a mere tentative suggestion:

"I wonder if it wouldn't do that old geezer good to take a sea-voyage?"

Marriott's heart came into his throat with a little impulse of fear. He

felt uneasy--this was dangerous ground for a lawyer who respected the

ethics of his profession, and here he was, plotting with this go-between

of criminals. Criminals--and yet who were the criminals he went

between? These relations, after all, seemed to have a high as well as a

low range--was there any so-called class of society whom Gibbs could

not, at times, serve?

"Let's see," Gibbs was saying, "where is this now? Canada used to do,

but that's been put on the bum. Mexico ain't so bad, they say, and some

of them South American countries does pretty well, though they complain

of the eatin', and there's nothing doing anyway. A couple of friends of

mine down in New York went to a place somewhere called--let's

see--called Algiers, ain't it?"

Marriott did not like to speak, but he nodded.

"Is that a warm country?"

"Yes."

"Where is it?"

"It's on the shores of the Mediterranean."

"Now that don't tell me any more than I knew before," said Gibbs, "but

if the climate's good for old guys with the coin, that's about all we

want. It'll make the front all right, especially at this time o' year."

Marriott nodded again.

"All right, that'll do. An old banker goes there for his health--just

as if it was Hot Springs."

Gibbs thought a moment longer.

"Now, of course, the kid's father'll make it good, won't he? He'll put

up?"

"Yes," said Marriott. He was rather faint and sick about it all--and

yet it was working beautifully, and it must be done. Even then Ward was

pacing the floor somewhere--and Elizabeth, she was waiting and depending

on him. "Shall I bring you his check?"

"Hell, no!" exclaimed Gibbs. "We'll want the cash. I'll get it of him.

The fewer hands, the better."

Marriott was wild to get away; he could scarcely wait, but he remembered

suddenly Curly's commissions, and he must attend to them, of course. He

felt a great gratitude just now to Curly.

When Marriott told Gibbs of Curly's request, Gibbs shook his head

decidedly and said:

"No, I draw the line at refereeing domestic scraps. If Curly wants to go

frame in with a moll, it's his business; I can't do anything." And then

he dryly added: "Nobody can, with Jane; she's hell!"

XXVIII

One morning, a week later, as they sat at breakfast, Ward handed his

newspaper across to Elizabeth, indicating an item in the social column,

and Elizabeth read:

"Mr. Amos Hunter, accompanied by his daughter, Miss Agnes Hunter, sailed

from New York yesterday on the steamer _King Emanuel_ for Naples. Mr.

Hunter goes abroad for his health, and will spend the winter in Italy."

Elizabeth looked up.

"That means--?"

"That it's settled," Ward replied.

She grew suddenly weak, in the sense of relief that seemed to dissolve

her.

"Unless," Ward added, and Elizabeth caught herself and looked at her

father fearfully, "Hunter should come back."

"But will he?"

"Some time, doubtless."

"Oh, dear! Then the suspense isn't over at all!"

"Well, it's over for the present, anyway. Eades can do nothing, so

Marriott says, as long as Hunter is away, and even if he were to return,

the fact that Hunter accepted the money and credited it on his books--in

some fashion--would make it exceedingly difficult to prove anything, and

of course, under any circumstances, Hunter wouldn't dare--now."

Elizabeth sat a moment idly playing with a fork, and her father studied

the varying expressions of her face as the shades came and went in her

sensitive countenance. Her brow clouded in some little perplexity, then

cleared again, and at last she sighed.

"I feel a hundred years old," she said. "Hasn't it been horrible?"

"I feel like a criminal myself," said Ward.

"We are criminals--all of us," she said, dealing bluntly, cruelly with

herself. "We ought all of us to be in the penitentiary, if anybody

ought."

"Yes," he acquiesced.

"Only," she said, "nobody ought. I've learned that, anyway."

"What would you do with them?" he asked, in the comfort of entering the

realm of the abstract.

"With us?"

"Well--with the criminals."

"Send us to the penitentiary, I suppose."

"You are delightfully illogical, Betsy," he said, trying to laugh.

"That's all we can be," she said. "It's the only logical way."

Then they were silent, for the maid entered.

"Have we really committed a crime?" she asked, when the door swung on

the maid, who came and went so unconsciously in the midst of these

tragic currents. "Don't tell me--if we have."

"I don't know," said Ward. "I presume I'd rather not know. I know I've

gone through enough to make me miserable the rest of my life. I know

that we have settled nothing--that we have escaped nothing--except what

people will say."

"Yes, mama, after all, was the only one wise enough to understand and

appreciate the real significance."

"Well, there's nothing more we can do now," he replied.

"No, we must go on living some way." She got up, went around the table

and kissed him on the forehead. "We'll just lock our little skeleton in

the family closet, papa, and once in a while go and take a peep at him.

There may be some good in that--he'll keep us from growing proud,

anyway."

Ward and Marriott had decided to say as little to Elizabeth as possible

of their transaction. Ward had gone through a week of agony. In a day

or two he had raised the little fortune, and kept it ready, and he had

been surprised and a bit perturbed when Gibbs had come and in quite a

matter-of-fact way asked for the amount in cash. Ward had helplessly

turned it over to him with many doubts and suspicions; but he knew no

other way. Afterward, when Gibbs returned and gave him Hunter's

receipt, he had felt ashamed of these doubts and had hoped Gibbs had not

noticed them, but Gibbs had gone away without a word, save a gruff:

"Well, that's fixed, Mr. Ward."

And yet Elizabeth had wondered about it all. Her conscience troubled

her acutely, so acutely that when Marriott came over that evening for

the praise he could not forego, and perhaps for a little spiritual

corroboration and comfort, she said:

"Gordon, you have done wonders. I can't thank you."

"Don't try," he said. "It's nothing."

She looked troubled. Her brows darkened, and then, unable to resist the

impulse any longer, she asked:

"But, Gordon, was it right?"

"What?" he asked, quite needlessly, as they both knew.

"What you--what we--did?"

"Yes, it was right."

"Was it legal?"

"N-no."

"Ah!" She was silent a moment. "What is it called?"

"What?"

"You know very well--our crime. I _must_ know the worst. I must know

just how bad I am."

"You wish to have it labeled, classified, as Doctor Tilson would have

it?"

"Yes, tell me."

"I believe," said Marriott looking away and biting his upper lip, "that

it's called compounding a felony, or something of that sort."

He was silent and she was silent. Then he spoke again.

"They disbarred poor old Billy Gale for less than that."

She looked at him, her gray eyes winking rapidly as they did when she

was interested and her mind concentrated on some absorbing problem.

Then she impulsively clasped her white hands in her lap, and, leaning

over, she asked out of the psychological interest the situation must

soon or late have for her:

"Tell me, Gordon, just how you felt when you were--"

"Committing it?"

She nodded her head rapidly, almost impatiently.

"Well," he said with a far-away expression, "I experienced, especially

when I was in Danny Gibbs's saloon, that pleasant feeling of going to

hell."

"You just _won't_ reassure me," she said, relaxing into a hopeless

attitude.

"Oh, yes, I will," he replied. "Don't you remember what Emerson says?"

He looked up at the portrait of the beautiful, spiritual face above the

mantel.

She looked up in her vivid literary interest.

"No; tell me. He said everything."

"Yes, everything there is to say. He said, 'Good men must not obey the

laws too well.'"

XXIX

When Eades read the announcement of Hunter's departure for Italy he was

first surprised, then indignant, then relieved. Hunter had reported

Dick's crime in anger, the state of mind in which most criminal

prosecutions are begun. The old man had trembled until Eades feared for

him; as he sat there with pallid lips relating the circumstances, he was

not at all the contained, mild and shrewd old financier Eades so long

had known.

"We must be protected, Mr. Eades,"--he could hear the shrill cry for

days--"we must be protected from these thieves! They are the worst of

all, sir; the worst of all! I want this young scoundrel arrested and

sent to the penitentiary right away, sir, right away!"

Eades had seen that the old man was in fear, and that in his fear he had

turned to him as toward that ancient corner-stone of society, the

criminal statute. And now he had fled!

Eades knew, of course, that some one had tampered with him; and, of

course, the defalcation had been made good, and now Hunter would be an

impossible witness. Even Eades could imagine Hunter on the stand, not

as he had been in his office that day, angry, frightened, keenly

conscious of his wrong and recalling minutely all the details; but

senile, a little deaf, leaning forward with a hand behind his ear, a

grin on his withered face, remembering nothing, not cognizant of the

details of his bookkeeping--sitting there, with his money safe in his

pocket, while the case collapsed, Dick was acquitted in triumph--and he,

John Eades, made ridiculous.

But what was he to do? After all, in the eye of the law, Hunter was not

a witness; and, besides, it was possible that, technically, the felony

might not have been compounded. At any rate, if it had been he could

not prove it, and as for proceeding now against Ward, that was too much

to expect, too much even for him to exact of himself. When a definite

case was laid before him with the evidence to support it, his duty was

plain, but he was not required to go tilting after wind-mills, to

investigate mere suspicions. It was a relief to resign himself to this

conclusion. Now he could only wait for Hunter's return, and have him

brought in when he came, but probably, in the end, it would come to

nothing. Yes, it was a relief, and he could think hopefully once more

of Elizabeth.

The fourteenth of May--the date for the execution of the sentence of

death against Archie--was almost on him before Marriott filed his

petition in error in the Appellate Court and a motion for suspension of

sentence. He had calculated nicely. As the court could not hear and

determine the case before the day of execution, the motion was granted,

and the execution postponed. Marriott's relief was exquisite; he

hastened to send a telegram to Archie, and was happy, so happy that he

could laugh at the editorial which Edwards printed the next morning,

calling for reforms in the criminal code which would prevent "such

travesties as were evidently to be expected in the Koerner case."

Marriott could laugh, because he knew how hypocritical Edwards was, but

Edwards's editorials had influence in other quarters, and Marriott more

and more regretted his simple little act of kindness--or of weakness--in

loaning Edwards the ten dollars. If the newspapers would desist, he

felt sure that in time, when public sentiment had undergone its

inevitable reaction, he might secure a commutation of Archie's sentence;

but if Edwards, in order to vent his spleen, continued to keep alive the

spirit of the mob, then there was little hope.

"If he could only be sent to prison for life!" said Elizabeth, as they

discussed this aspect of the case. "No,"--she hastened to correct

herself--"for twenty years; that would do."

"It would be the same thing," said Marriott.

"What do you mean?" Elizabeth leaned forward with a puzzled expression

in her gray eyes.

"All sentences to the penitentiary are sentences for life. We pretend

they're not, but if a man lives to get out--do we treat him as if he had

paid the debt? No, he's a convict still. Look at Archie, for

instance."

"Look at Harry Graves! Oh, Gordon,"--Elizabeth suddenly sat up and made

an impatient gesture--"I can't forget him! And Gusta! And those men I

saw as they were taken from the jail!"

"You mustn't worry about it; you can't help it."

"Oh, that's what they all tell me! 'Don't worry about it--you can't

help it!' No! But you worried about Archie--and about"--she closed her

eyes, and he watched their white lids droop in pain--"and about Dick."

"I knew them."

"Yes," she said, nodding her head, "you knew them--that explains it all.

We don't know the others, and so we don't care. Some one knows them, of

course, or did, once, in the beginning. It makes me so unhappy! Don't,

please, ever any more tell me not to worry, or that I can't help it.

Try to think out some way in which I can help it, won't you?"

Meanwhile, Edwards's editorials were doing their work. They had an

effect on Eades, of course, because the _Courier_ was the organ of his

party, to which he had to look for renomination. And they produced

their effect on the judges of the Appellate Court, who also belonged to

that party, but, not knowing Edwards, thought his anonymous utterances

the voice of the people, which, at times, in the ears of politicians

sounds like the voice of God. The court heard the case early in June;

in two weeks it was decided. When Marriott entered the court-room on

the morning the decision was to be rendered, his heart sank. On the

left of the bench were piled some law-books, and behind them, peeping

surreptitiously, he recognized the transcript in the Koerner case. It

was much like other transcripts, to be sure, but to Marriott it was as

familiar as the features of a friend with whom one has gone through

trouble. The transcript lay on the desk before Judge Gardner's empty

chair and therefore he knew that the decision was to be delivered by

Gardner, and he feared that it was adverse, for Gardner had been severe

with him and had asked him questions during the argument.

The bailiff had stood up, rapped on his desk, and Marriott, Eades and

the other lawyers in the courtroom rose to simulate a respect for the

court entertained only by those who felt that they were likely to win

their cases. The three judges paced solemnly in, and when they were

seated and the presiding judge had made a few announcements, Gardner

leaned forward, pulled the transcript toward him, balanced his gold

glasses on his nose, cleared his throat, and in a deep bass voice and in

a manner somewhat strained, began to announce the decision. Before he

had uttered half a dozen sentences, Marriott knew that he had lost

again. The decision of the lower court was affirmed in what was

inevitably called by the newspapers an able opinion, and the day of

Archie's death was once more fixed--this time for the twenty-first of

October.

A few weeks later, Marriott saw Archie at the penitentiary. He had gone

to the state capital to argue to the Supreme Court old man Koerner's

case against the railroad company. Several weeks before he had tried

the case in the Appellate Court, and had won, the court affirming the

judgment. This case seemed now to be the only hope of the family, and

Marriott was anxious to have it heard by the Supreme Court before the

learned justices knew of Archie's case, lest the relation of the old man

and the boy prejudice them. He felt somehow that if he failed in

Archie's case, a victory in the father's case would go far to dress the

balance of the scales of justice and preserve the equilibrium of things.

It was noon when Marriott was at the penitentiary, and he was glad that

the men who were waiting to be killed were then taking their exercise,

for he was spared the depression of the death-chamber. He met Archie

under the blackened locust tree in the quadrangle. Archie was hopeful

that day.

"I feel lucky," said Archie. "I'll not have to punish,--think so, Mr.

Marriott?"

"We've got lots of time," Marriott replied, not knowing what else to

say, "the Supreme Court doesn't sit till fall."

Pritchard, the poisoner, laid his slender white hand on Archie's

shoulder.

"Good boy you've got here, Mr. Marriott," he said jokingly, "but a

trifle wild."

Marriott laughed, and wondered how he could laugh.

Just then a whistle blew, and the convicts in close-formed ranks filed

by on their way to dinner. As they went by, one of them glanced at him

with a smile of recognition; a smile which, as Marriott saw, the man at

once repressed, as the convict is compelled to repress all signs of

human feeling. Marriott stared, then suddenly remembered; it was a man

named Brill, whom he had known years before. And he, like the rest of

the world, had forgotten Brill! He had not even cast him a glance of

sympathy! He felt like running after the company--but it was too late;

Brill must go without the one little kindness that might have made one

day, at least, happier, or if not that, shorter for him.

The last gray-garbed company marched by, the guard with his club at his

shoulder. The rear of this company was brought up by a convict, plainly

of the fourth grade, for he was in stripes and his head was shaved. He

walked painfully, with the aid of a crooked cane, lifting one foot after

the other, flinging it before him and then slapping it down uncertainly

with a disagreeable sound to the pavement.

"What's the matter with that man?" asked Marriott.

"They say he has locomotor ataxia," said Beck, the death-watch, "but

he's only shamming. He's no good."

XXX

Archie had lived in the death-chamber at the penitentiary for nine

months. Three times had the day of his death been fixed; the first

time, by Glassford for the fourteenth of May, the second time by the

Appellate Court for the twenty-first of October. Then, the third time

the seven justices of the Supreme Court, sitting in their black and

solemn gowns, sustained the lower court, and set the day anew, this time

for the twenty-third of November. Then came the race to the Pardon

Board; where Marriott and Eades again fought over Archie's life. The

Pardon Board refused to recommend clemency. But one hope remained--the

governor. It was now the twenty-second of November--one day more.

Archie waited that long afternoon in the death-chamber, while Marriott

at the state house pleaded with the governor for a commutation of his

sentence to imprisonment for life.

Already the prison authorities had begun the arrangements. That

afternoon Archie had heard them testing the electric chair; he had

listened to the thrumming of its current; twice, thrice, half a dozen

times, they had turned it on. Then Jimmy Ball had come in, peered an

instant, without a word, then shambled away, his stick hooked over his

arm. It was very still in the death-chamber that afternoon. The eight

other men confined there, like Archie, spent their days in reviving hope

within their breasts; like him, they had experienced the sensation of

having the day of their death fixed, and then lived to see it postponed,

changed, postponed and fixed again. They had known the long suspense,

the alternate rise and fall of hope, as in the courts the state had

wrangled with their lawyers for their lives. Not once had Burns, the

negro, twanged his guitar. Lowrie, who was writing a history of his

wasted life, had allowed his labor to languish, and sat now moodily

gazing at the pieces of paper he had covered with his illiterate

writing. Old man Stewart, who had strangled his young wife in a jealous

rage, lay on his iron cot, his long white beard spread on his breast,

strangely suggestive of the appearance he soon would present in death.

Kulaski, the Slav, who had slain a saloon-keeper for selling beer to his

son, and never repented, was moody and morose; Belden and Waller had

consented to an intermission of their quarrelsome argument about

religion. The intermission had the effect of a deference to Archie; the

argument was not to be resumed until after Archie's death, when he

might, indeed, be supposed to have solved the problem they constantly

debated, and to have no further interest in it. Pritchard, the

poisoner, a quiet fellow, and Muller had ceased their interminable game

of cribbage, the cards lay scattered on the table, the little pins stuck

in the board where they had left them, to resume their count another

time. The gloom of Archie's nearing fate hung over these men, yet none

of them was thinking of Archie; each was thinking of an evening which

would be to him as this evening was to Archie, unless--there was always

that word "unless"; it made their hearts leap painfully.

Just outside the iron grating which separated from the antechamber the

great apartment where they existed in the hope of living again, Beck,

the guard, sat in his well-worn splint-bottomed chair. He had tilted it

against the wall, and, with his head thrown back, seemed to slumber.

His coarse mouth was open, his purple nose, thrown thus into prominence,

was grotesque, his filthy waistcoat rose and stretched and fell as his

flabby paunch inflated with his breathing. Beside the hot stove, just

where the last shaft of the sun, falling through the barred window,

could fall on her, a black cat, fat and sleek, that haunted the chamber

with her uncanny feline presence, stretched herself, and yawned, curling

her delicate tongue.

When Archie entered the death-chamber, there had been eleven men in it.

But the number had decreased. He could remember distinctly each separate

exit. One by one they had gone out, never to return. There was Mike

Thomas; he would remember the horror of that to the end of his life, as,

with the human habit, he expressed it to Marriott, insensible of the

grim irony of the phrase in that place of deliberate death, where, after

all, life persisted on its own terms and with its common phrases and

symbols. The newspapers had called it a harrowing scene; the inmates of

the death-chamber had whispered about it, calling it a bungle, and the

affair had magnified and distorted itself to their imaginations, and

they had dwelt on it with a covert morbidity. The newspapers next day

were denied them, but they knew that it had required three shocks--they

could count them by the thrumming of the currents, each time the prison

had shaken with the howl of the awakened convicts in the cell-house.

Bill Arnold, the negro who had killed a real estate agent, had been the

most concerned; his day was but a week after Thomas's. The strain had

been too much for Arnold; he had collapsed, raved like a maniac, then

sobbed, fallen on his knees and yammered a prayer to Jimmy Ball, as if

the deputy warden were a god. They had dragged him out, still on his

knees, moaning "God be merciful; God be merciful."

They had missed Arnold. He was a jolly negro, who could sing and tell

stories, and do buck-and-wing dancing, and, when Ball was away, and the

guard's back turned, give perfect imitations of them both. They missed

him out of their life in that chamber, or rather out of their death. It

seemed strange to think that one minute he was among them, full of warm

pulsing life and strength--and that the next, he should be dead. They

missed him, as men miss a fellow with whom they have eaten and slept for

months.

These men in the state shambles were there, the law had said, for

murder. But this was only in a sense true. One was there, for

instance, because his lawyer had made a mistake; he had not kept

accurate account of his peremptory challenges; he thought he had

exhausted but fifteen, whereas he had exhausted sixteen; that is, all of

them, and so had been unable to remove from the jury a man whom he had

irritated and offended by his persistent questioning; he had been quite

sarcastic, intending to challenge the man peremptorily in a few moments.

Another man was there because the judge before whom he was tried, having

quarreled with his wife one morning, was out of humor all that day, and

had ridiculed his lawyer, not in words, but by sneers and curlings of

his lip, which could not be preserved in the record.

Another--Pritchard, to be exact--was there, first, because he had been a

chemist; secondly, because he, like the judge, had had a quarrel with

his wife; thirdly, because his wife had died suddenly, and traces of

cyanide of potassium had been found in her stomach--at least three of

the four doctors who had conducted the post-mortem examination had said

the traces were of cyanide of potassium--and fourthly, because a small

vial was discovered in the room in which were also traces of cyanide of

potassium; at least, three chemists declared the traces were those of

cyanide of potassium. And all of them were there for some such reason

as this, and all of them, with the possible exception of Pritchard, had

taken human life. And yet each one had felt, and still felt, that the

circumstances under which he had killed were such as to warrant killing;

such, indeed, as to make it at the moment seem imperative and necessary,

just as the State felt that in killing these men, circumstances had

arisen which made it justifiable, imperative and necessary to kill.

Though Archie waited in suspense, the afternoon was short, short even

beyond the shortness of November, and at five o'clock Marriott came. He

lingered just outside the entrance to the chamber in the little room

that was fitted up somehow like a chapel, the room in which the death

chair was placed. The guard brought Archie out, and he leaned

carelessly against the rail that surrounded the chair, mysterious and

sinister under its draping of black oil-cloth. The rail railed off the

little platform on which the chair was placed just as a chancel-rail

rails off an altar, possibly because so many people regarded the chair

in the same sacred light that they regarded an altar, and spoke of it as

if its rite were quite as saving and sacerdotal. But Archie leaned

against the rail calmly, negligently, and it made Marriott's flesh creep

to see him thus unmoved and practical. He did not speak, but he looked

his last question out of his blue eyes.

"The governor hasn't decided yet," Marriott said. "I've spent the

afternoon with him. I've labored with him--God!" he suddenly paused and

sighed in utter weariness at the recollection of the long hours in which

he had clung to the governor--"I'm to see him again at eight o'clock at

the executive mansion. He's to give me a final answer then."

"At eight o'clock?" The words slipped from Archie's lips as softly as

his breath.

"This evening," said Marriott, dreading now the thought of fixity of

time. He looked at Archie; and it was almost more than he could endure.

Archie's eyes were fastened on him; his gaze seemed to cling to him in

final desperation.

"Oh, in the name of God," Archie suddenly whispered, leaning toward him,

his face directly in his, "do something, Mr. Marriott! _something_!

_something_! I can't, I can't die to-night! If it's only a little more

time--just another day--but not to-night! Not to-night! Do something,

Mr. Marriott; _something_!"

Marriott seized Archie's hand. It was cold and wet. He wrung it as hard

as he could. There were no words for such a moment as this. Words but

mocked.

He saw Archie's chest heave, and the cords tighten in his swelling neck.

Marriott could only look at him--this boy, for whom he had come to have

an affection--so young, so strong, with the great gloom of death

prematurely, unnecessarily, in his face!

But the face cleared suddenly,--Archie still could think, and he

remembered--he remembered Curly, and Mason and old Dillon, and Gibbs, he

recalled the only ideals he knew--like all of us, he could live up only

to such ideals as he had--he remembered that he must be game. He

straightened, Marriott saw the fine and supple play of the muscles of

his chest, its white skin revealed through his open shirt.

"So long, Mr. Marriott," said Archie, and then turned and went back into

the death-chamber.

Outside, in the twilight that was filling the quadrangle, Marriott

passed along, the gloom of the place he had left filling his soul. The

trusty who had conducted him to the death-chamber paced in silence by

his side. He passed the great tree, gaunt and bare and black now, the

tree under which he had seen that summer day these doomed men take their

exercise, with the Sunday-school scholars standing by and gazing on with

curious covert glances and perverted thoughts. He wished that time had

paused on that day--he had had hope then; this thing as to Archie, it

then had seemed, simply could not be; it might, he had felt, very well

be as to those other doomed men; indeed, it seemed certain and

irrevocable; but as to Archie, no, it could not be. And yet, here it

was, the night before the day--and but one more hope between them and

the end. He hastened on, anxious to get out of the place. Any moment

the whistle might blow and he would have to wait until the men had come

from their work; the gates could not be unlocked at that time, or until

the men were locked again in their cells. They were passing the chapel,

and suddenly he heard music--the playing of a piano. He stopped and

listened. He heard the deep bass notes of Grieg's _Ode to the Spring_,

played now with a pathos he had never known before.

"What's that?" he asked the trusty.

"That playing? That's young Ernsthauser. He's a swell piano player."

"May we look in?"

"Sure."

They entered, and stood just inside the door. A young German, in the

gray convict garb, was seated at a piano, his delicate hands straying

over the keys. One gas-jet burned in the wall above the piano, shedding

its faint circle of light around the pianist, glistening on the dark

panels of the instrument, lighting the pale face of the boy--he was but

a boy--and then losing itself in the great darkness that hung thick and

soft and heavy in the vast auditorium. Marriott looked and listened in

silence; tears came to his eyes, a vast pity welled within him, and he

knew that never again would he hear the _Ode_ without experiencing the

pity and the pain of this day. He wished, indeed, that he had not heard

it. The musician played on, rapt and alone, unconscious of their

presence.

"Tell me about that fellow," said Marriott, as they stole away.

"Oh, he was a musician outside. The warden lets him play. The warden

likes music. I've seen him cry when Ernsthauser plays. He plays for

visitors, and he picks up, they say, a good bit of money every day. The

visitors, except the Sunday-schools, give him tips."

"How long is he in for?"

"Life."

The word fell like a blow on Marriott. Life! What paradoxes were in

this place! What perverted meanings--if there were any meanings left in

the world. This one word life, in one part of the prison meant life

indeed; now it meant death. Was there any difference in the words,

after all--life and death? Life in death; death in life? With Archie

it was death in life, with this musician, life in death--no, it was the

other way. But was it? Marriott could not decide. The words meant

nothing, after all.

The delay in the chapel kept Marriott in the prison for half an hour.

He would not watch the convicts march again to their cells; he did not

wish to hear the clanging of the gong nor the thud of the bolts that

locked them in for the night.

The warden, a ruddy and rotund man, spoke pleasantly to him and asked

him into his office. The warden sat in a big swivel chair before his

roll-top desk, and, while Marriott waited, locked in now like the rest,

they chatted. It was incomprehensible to Marriott that this man could

chat casually and even laugh, when he knew that he must stay up that

night to do such a deed as the law required of him. The consciousness,

indeed, must have lain on the warden, try as he might not to show it,

for, presently, the warden himself, as if he could not help it, referred

to the event.

"How's Archie taking it?" he asked.

Marriott might have replied conventionally, or politely, that he was

taking it well, but he somehow resented this man's casual and contained

manner. And so, looking him in the eyes, and meaning to punish him, he

said:

"He's trying to _appear_ game, but he's taking it hard."

"Hard, eh?"

"Yes, hard." Marriott looked at him sternly. "Tell me," he emboldened

himself to ask, "how can you do it?"

The warden's face became suddenly hard.

"Do it? Bah! I could switch it into all of them fellows in there--like

that!" He snapped his fat fingers in the air with a startling,

suggestive electric sound. And for a moment afterward his upper lip

curled with a cruelty that appalled Marriott. He looked at this man,

this executioner, who seemed to be encompassed all at once with a kind

of subtle, evil fascination. Marriott looked at his face--then in some

way at the finger and thumb which, a moment before, had snapped their

indifference in the air. And he started, for suddenly he recalled that

Doctor Tyler Tilson had declared, in the profound scientific treatise he

had written for the _Post_, that Archie had the spatulate finger-tips

and the stubbed finger-nails that were among the stigmata of the

homicide, and Marriott saw that the fingers of the warden were

spatulate, their nails were broad and stubbed, imbedded in the flesh.

And this man liked music--cried when the life-man played!

"Won't you stop and have dinner with me?" the warden asked. "You can

stay for the execution, too, if you wish."

"No, thank you," said Marriott hurriedly. The thought of sitting down

to dine with this man on this evening was abhorrent, loathsome to him.

He might have sat down and eaten with Archie and his companions, or with

those convicts whose distant shuffling feet he heard; he could have

eaten their bread, wet and salt with their tears, but he could not eat

with this man. And yet, sensitively, he could not let this man detect

his loathing.

"No," he said, "I must get back to my hotel--" and the thought of the

hotel, with its light and its life, filled him with instant longing. "I

have another appointment with the governor this evening."

"Oh, he won't do anything," said the warden.

The words depressed Marriott, and he hurried away with them persistently

ringing in his ears, glad at least to get away from the great pile that

hid so much sorrow and misery and shame from the world, and now sat

black against the gathering night, under the shadow of a mighty wing.

At eight o'clock that evening Archie was sitting on the edge of his cot,

smoking one of the Russian cigarettes Marriott had brought him in the

afternoon. The pungent and unusual odor filled the death-chamber, and

the other waiting men (who nevertheless did not have to die that night)

sniffed, some suspiciously, some with the air of connoisseurs.

"Ha!" said Pritchard, turning his pale face slowly about, "imported,

eh?"

Then Archie passed them around, though somewhat reluctantly. Marriott

had brought him several boxes of these cigarettes, and Archie knew they

were the kind Marriott smoked himself. He was generous enough; this

brotherhood of doomed men held all things in common, like the early

Christians, sharing their little luxuries, but Archie felt that it was

useless to waste such cigarettes on men who would be alive to-morrow;

especially when it was doubtful if there would be enough for himself.

The warden had sent him a supper which was borne in with the effect of

being the last and highest excellence to which the culinary art could

attain. If there was anything, Ball reported the warden as having said,

that was then in market, and was not there he'd like to know what it

was. The generosity of the warden had not been limited to Archie; the

others were treated to a like repast; there was turkey for all. Archie

had not eaten much; he had made an effort and smiled and thanked the

warden when he strolled in afterward for his meed of praise. Archie

found the cigarettes sufficient. He sat there almost without moving,

smoking them one after another, end to end, lighting a fresh one from

the cork-tipped stub of the one he was about to fling away. He sat and

smoked, his eyes blinked in his white face, and his brows contracted as

he tried to think. He was not, of course, at any time, capable of

sustained or logical thought, and now his thoughts were merely a muddle

of impressions, a curiosity as to whether he would win or lose, as if he

were gambling, and all this in the midst of a mighty wonder, vast,

immeasurable, profound, that was expanding slowly in his soul.

How many times had he waited as he was waiting now, for word from

Marriott? May fourteenth, October twenty-first, November twenty-third.

What day was this? Oh, yes, the twenty-second. What time was it now?

... Kouka?--Kouka was dead; yes, dead. That was good ... And he himself

must die ... Die? What was that? ... May fourteenth, October

twenty-first, November twenty-third. He had already died three times.

No, he had died many more times than that; during the trial he had died

again and again, by day, by night. Here in the death-chamber he had

died; here on this very cot. Sometimes during the day, when they were

all strangely merry, when Bill Arnold was doing a song and dance, when

they had all forgotten, suddenly, in an instant, it would come over him,

and he would die--die there, amidst them all, with the sun streaming in

the window--die with a smile and a joke, perhaps while speaking to one

of them; they would not know he was dying. And in the night he died

often, nearly every night, suddenly he would find himself awake, staring

into the darkness; then he would remember it all, and he would die, live

over that death again, as it were. All about him the others would be

snoring, or groaning, muttering or cursing, like drunkards in their

sleep. Perhaps they were dying, too. Now, he must die again. And he

had already died a thousand deaths. Kouka had died, too, but only

once....

What was that? Marriott? His heart stopped. But, no, it was not

Marriott. There was still hope; there was always hope so long as

Marriott did not come. It was only the old Lutheran preacher, Mr.

Hoerr. He came to pray with him? This was strange, thought Archie.

Why should he pray now? What difference could that make? Prayers could

not save him; he had tried that, sometimes at night, as well as he

could, imploring, pleading, holding on with his whole soul, until he was

exhausted; but it did no good; no one, or nothing heard. The only thing

that could do any good now was the governor.... Still, he was glad it

was not Marriott. He had, suddenly, begun to dread the coming of

Marriott.... But this preacher? Well, he could pray if he wanted to,

it seemed to please him, to be a part somehow of the whole ceremony they

were going through. Yet he might pray if it gave him any pleasure. He

had read of their praying, always; but Mr. Hoerr must not expect him to

stop smoking cigarettes while he prayed. Archie lighted a fresh

cigarette hurriedly, inhaled the smoke, filling his lungs in every

cell.... The preacher had asked him if he was reconciled, if he were

ready to meet his God. Archie did not reply. He stared at the preacher,

the smoke streaming from his lips, from his nostrils. Ready to meet his

God? What a strange thing to ask! He was not ready, no; he had not

asked to meet his God, yet. There was no use in asking such a question;

if they were uncertain about it, or had any question, or feared any

danger they could settle it by just a word--a word from the governor.

Then he would not have to meet his God.... Where was his God anyhow? He

had no God.... These sky-pilots were strange fellows! He never knew

what to say to them.... "The blood of Jesus." ... Oh, yes, he had heard

that, too.... Was he being game? What would the papers say? Would the

old Market Place gang talk about it? And Mason, and Dillon, and Gibbs?

And Curly, too? They might as well; doubtless they would. They settled

whomever they pleased.... Out at Nussbaum's saloon in the old days....

His mother, and Jakie and little Katie playing in the back yard, their

yellow heads bobbing in the sunshine.... And Gusta! Poor Gusta!

Whatever became of that chump of a Peltzer? He ought to have fixed

him.... The old man's rheumatic leg.... And that case of his against

the railroad.... John O'Brien--rattler.... What was the word for leg?

Oh, yes, gimp.... Well, he had made a mess of it.... If they would

only hang him, instead.... Why couldn't they? That would be so much

easier. He was used to thinking of that; so many men had gone through

that. But this new way, there was so much fuss about it.... Bill

Arnold.... What if? ... Ugh.... How cold it was! Had some one opened

the window?...

Yes, he was the fall guy, all right, all right.... A black, intolerable

gloom, dread wastes like a desert. Thirst raged in his throat.... It

was dry and sanded.... How rank the cigarette tasted! ... Why did the

others huddle there in the back of the cage, their faces black, ugly,

brutal? Were they plotting? They might slip up on him, from behind.

He turned quickly.... Well, they would get theirs, too.... One day in

the wilderness of Samar when their company had been detailed to--the

flag--how green the woods were; the rushes--

His father hated him, too, yes, ever since.... Eades--Eades had done

this. God! What a cold proposition Eades was! ... One day when he was

a little kid, just as they came from school in the afternoon.... The

rifle range, and the captain smiling as he pinned his sharp-shooter's

medal on.... Where was his medal now? He meant to ask the warden to

have it pinned on his breast after--He must attend to that, and not

forget it. He had spoken to Beck about it and Beck had promised, but

Beck never did anything he said he would.... If, now, those bars were

not there, he could choke Beck, take his gun--

His mind suddenly became clear. With a yearning that was ineffable,

intolerable, he longed for some power to stay this thing--if he could

only try it all over again, he would do better now! His mind had become

clear, incandescent; he had a swift flashing conception of purity,

faith, virtue--but before he could grasp the conception it had gone. He

was crying, his mother, he remembered--but now he could not see her

face, he could see the shape of her head, her hair, her throat, but not

her face. He could, however, see her hands quite distinctly. They were

large, and brown, and wrinkled, and the fingers were curved so that they

were almost always closed.... But this was not being game; he needn't

say dying game just yet.

Was that Marriott? No, the warden. He had brought him something. He

was thrusting it through the bars. A bottle! Archie seized it, pressed

it to his lips. Whisky! He drank long and long. Ah! That was better!

That did him good! That beat prayers, or tears, or solitaire, or even

wishing on the black cat. That made him warm, comfortable. There was

hope now. Marriott would bring that governor around! Marriott was a

hell of a smart fellow, even if he had lost his case. Perhaps, if he

had had Frisby,--Frisby was smart, too, and had a pull. He drank again.

That was better yet. What would it matter if the governor refused? It

wouldn't matter at all; it was all right. This stuff made him feel game.

How much was there in the bottle? ... Ah, the cigarettes tasted better,

too, now...

Marriott? No, not this time. Well, that was good. It was the barber

come to "top" him.

The barber shaved bare a little round spot on Archie's head, exposing a

bluish-white disk of scalp in the midst of his yellow locks. And then,

kneeling with his scissors, he slit each leg of Archie's trousers to the

knee. Then the warden drew a paper out of his pocket and began to read.

Archie could not hear what he read. After the barber began shaving his

head, he fell into a stupor, and sat there, his eyes staring straight

before him, his mouth agape, a cigarette clinging to his lower lip and

dangling toward his chin. He looked like a young tonsured priest

suddenly become imbecile.

When they finished, he still sat there. Some one was taking off his

shoes. Then there was a step. He looked up, as one returning from a

dream. He saw some one standing just within the door of the

antechamber. Marriott? No, it was not Marriott. It was the governor's

messenger.

Without in the cell-house the long corridors had been laid deep in

yellow sawdust, so that the fall of the feet of the midnight guests

might not awaken the convicts who slept so heavily, on the narrow bunks

in their cells, after their dreadful day of toil.

XXXI

"All ready, Archie."

Jimmy Ball touched him on the shoulder. The grated door was open, and

Beck stood just inside it, his revolver drawn. He kept his eye on the

others, huddled there behind him.

"Come, my boy."

He made an effort, and stood up. He glanced toward the open grated

door, thence across the flagging to the other door, and tried to take a

step. Out there he could see one or two faces thrust forward suddenly;

they peered in, then hastily withdrew. He tried again to take a step,

but one leg had gone to sleep, it prickled, and as he bore his weight

upon it, it seemed to swell suddenly to elephantine proportions. And he

seemed to have no knees at all; if he stood up he would collapse. How

was he ever to walk that distance?

"Here!" said Ball. "Get on that other side of him, Warden."

Then they started. The Reverend Mr. Hoerr, waiting by the door, had

begun to read something in a strange, unnatural voice, out of a little

red book he held at his breast in both his hands.

"Good-by, Archie!" they called from behind, and he turned, swayed a

little, and looked back over his shoulder.

"Good-by, boys," he said. He had a glimpse of their faces; they looked

gray and ugly, worse even than they had that evening--or was it that

evening when with sudden fear he had seen them crouching there behind

him?

Perhaps just at the last minute the governor would change his mind.

They were walking the long way to the door, six yards off. The flagging

was cold to his bare feet; his slit trouser-legs flapped miserably,

revealing his white calves. Walking had suddenly become laborious; he

had to lift each leg separately and manage it; he walked much as that

man in the rear rank of Company 21 walked. He would have liked to stop

and rest an instant, but Ball and the warden walked beside him, urged

him resistlessly along, each gripping him at the wrist and upper arm.

In the room outside, Archie recognized the reporters standing in the

sawdust. What they were to write that night would be in the newspapers

the next morning, but he would not read it. He heard Beck lock the door

of the death-chamber, locking it hurriedly, so that he could be in time

to look on. Archie had no friend in the group of men that waited in

silence, glancing curiously at him, their faces white as the whitewashed

wall. The doctors held their watches in their hands. And there before

him was the chair, its oil-cloth cover now removed, its cane bottom

exposed. But he would have to step up on the little platform to get to

it.

"No--yes, there you are, Archie, my boy!" whispered Ball. "There!"

He was in it, at last. He leaned back; then, as his back touched the

back of the chair, started violently. But there were hands on his

shoulders pressing him down, until he could feel his back touch the

chair from his shoulders down to the very end of his spine. Some one

had seized his legs, turned back the slit trousers from his calves.

"Be quick!" he heard the warden say in a scared voice. He was at his

right side where the switch and the indicator were.

There were hands, too, at his head, at his arms--hands all over him. He

took one last look. Had the governor--? Then the leather mask was

strapped over his eyes and it was dark. He could only feel and hear

now--feel the cold metal on his legs, feel the moist sponge on the top

of his head where the barber had shaved him, feel the leather straps

binding his legs and arms to the legs and the arms of the chair, binding

them tightly, so that they gave him pain, and he could not move.

Helpless he lay there, and waited. He heard the loud ticking of a

watch; then on the other side of him the loud ticking of another watch;

fingers were at his wrists. There was no sound but the mumble of Mr.

Hoerr's voice. Then some one said:

"All ready."

He waited a second, or an age, then, suddenly, it seemed as if he must

leap from the chair, his body was swelling to some monstrous,

impossible, unhuman shape; his muscles were stretched, millions of hot

and dreadful needles were piercing and pricking him, a stupendous

roaring was in his ears, then a million colors, colors he had never seen

or imagined before, colors no one had ever seen or imagined, colors

beyond the range of the spectra, new, undiscovered, summoned by some

mysterious agency from distant corners of the universe, played before

his eyes. Suddenly they were shattered by a terrific explosion in his

brain--then darkness.

But no, there was still sensation; a dull purple color slowly spread

before him, gradually grew lighter, expanded, and with a mighty pain he

struggled, groping his way in torture and torment over fearful obstacles

from some far distance, remote as black stars in the cold abyss of the

universe; he struggled back to life--then an appalling confusion, a

grasp at consciousness; he heard the ticking of the two watches--then,

through his brain there slowly trickled a thread of thought that

squirmed and glowed like a white-hot wire...

A faint groan escaped the pale lips below the black leather mask, a

tremor ran through the form in the chair, then it relaxed and was still.

"It's all over." The doctor, lifting his fingers from Archie's wrist,

tried to smile, and wiped the perspiration from his face with a

handkerchief.

Some one flung up a window, and a draught of cool air sucked through the

room. On the draught was borne from the death-chamber the stale odor of

Russian cigarettes. And then a demoniacal roar shook the cell-house.

The convicts had been awake.

XXXII

Late in the winter the cable brought the news that Amos Hunter had died

at Capri. Though the conventionalities were observed, it was doubtful

if the event caused even a passing regret in the city where Hunter had

been one of the wealthiest citizens. The extinction of this cold and

selfish personality was noted, of course, by the closing of his bank for

a day; the Chamber of Commerce, the Board of Trade, and the Stock

Exchange adopted the usual resolutions, and the newspapers printed

editorials in which the old canting, hypocritical phrases were paraded.

To his widow, beyond the shock that came with the breaking of the habit

of years, there was a mild regret, and the daughter, who was with him

when he died, after the American consul had come to her assistance and

arranged to send the body home, experienced a stealthy pleasure in her

homeward journey she had not known on the outward voyage.

But to the Wards the news came as a distinct relief, for now the danger,

if it ever was a danger, that had hung over them for months was

definitely removed. They had grown so accustomed to its presence,

however, the suspense and uncertainty had become so much a part of their

lives that they did not recognize its reality until they found it

removed altogether. Ward and Elizabeth had now and then talked about it

and speculated on its possibilities of trouble in a world where there

was so much trouble; and Mrs. Ward had been haunted by the fear of what

her world might say. Now that this danger was passed, she could look on

it as a thing that was as if it never had been, and she fondled and

caressed her full-grown son more than ever. Ward was glad, but he was

not happy. He saw that Dick's character had been marked definitely. The

boy had escaped the artificial law that man had made, but he had not

evaded the natural law, and Ward realized, though perhaps not so clearly

as Elizabeth realized, that Dick must go on paying the penalty in his

character year after year--perhaps to the end of his days.

If it made any real difference to Dick, he did not show it. Very early

in the experience he seemed to be fully reassured, and Ward and

Elizabeth and Marriott saw plainly that he was not wise enough to find

the good that always is concealed somewhere in the bad. Dick took up

his old life, and, so far as his restricted opportunities now permitted,

sought his old sensations. Elizabeth sadly observed the continued

disintegration of his character, expressed to her by such coarse

physical manifestations as his excessive eating and drinking and

smoking. And she saw that there was nothing she or any one could now

do; that no one could help him but himself, and that, like the story of

the prodigal of old, which suddenly revealed its hidden meaning to her

in this personal contact with a similar experience, he must continue to

feed on husks until he came to himself. How few, she thought, had come

to themselves! Elizabeth had been near to boasting that her own eyes

had been opened, and they had, indeed, been washed by tears, but now she

humbly wondered if she had come to herself as yet. She had long ago

given up the fictions of society which her mother yet revered; she had

abandoned her formal charities, finding them absurd and inadequate.

Meanwhile, she waited patiently, hoping that some day she might find the

way to life.

She saw nothing of Eades, though she was constantly hearing of his

success. His conviction of Archie had given him prestige. He

considered the case against Curly Jackson, but finding it impossible to

convict him, feeling a lack of public sentiment, he was forced to nolle

the indictment against him and reluctantly let him go. In fact, Eades

was having his trouble in common with the rest of humanity. Though he

had been applauded and praised, all at once, for some mysterious reason

he could not understand but could only feel in its effect, he discovered

an eccentricity in the institution he revered. For a while it was

difficult to convict any one; verdict after verdict of not guilty was

rendered in the criminal court; there seemed to be a reaction against

punishment.

When Amos Hunter died, Eades began to think again of Elizabeth Ward. He

assured himself that after this lapse of time, now that the danger was

removed, Elizabeth would respect him for his high-minded impartiality

and devotion to duty, and, indeed, understand what a sacrifice it had

been to him to decide as he had. And he resolved that at the first

opportunity he would speak to her again. He did not have to wait long

for the opportunity. A new musician had come to town, and, with his

interest in all artistic endeavors, Braxton Parrish had taken up this

frail youth who could play the violin, and had arranged a recital at his

home.

Elizabeth went because Parrish had asked her especially and because her

mother had urged it on her, "out of respect to me," as Mrs. Ward put it.

When she got there, she told herself she was glad she had come because

she could now realize how foreign all this artificial life had become to

her; she was glad to have the opportunity to correct her reckoning, to

see how far she had progressed. She found, however, no profit in it,

though the boy, whose playing she liked, interested her. He stood in

the music-room under the mellow light, and his slender figure bending

gracefully to his violin, and his sensitive, fragile, poetic face, had

their various impressions for her; but she sat apart and after a while,

when the supper was served, she found a little nook on a low divan

behind some palms. But Eades discovered her in her retreat.

"I have been wondering whether my fate was settled--after that last time

we met," he said, after the awkward moment in which they exchanged

banalities.

The wonder was in his words alone; she could not detect the uncertainty

she felt would have become him.

"Is it settled?"

"Yes, it is settled."

He was taken aback, but he was determined, always determined. He could

not suppose that, in the end, she would actually refuse him.

"Of course," he began again, "I could realize that for a time you would

naturally feel resentful--though that isn't the word--but now--that the

necessity is passed--that I am in a sense free--I had let myself begin

to hope again."

"You don't understand," she said, almost sick at heart. "You didn't

understand that day."

"Why, I thought I did. You wanted me--to let him go."

"Yes."

"And because I loved you, to prove that I loved you--"

"Exactly."

"Well, then, didn't I understand you?"

"No."

"Well, I confess," he leaned back helplessly, "you baffle me."

"Oh, but it wasn't a _bargain_," she said. Her gray eyes looked calmly

into his as she told him what she knew was not accurately the truth, and

she was glad of the moment because it gave her the opportunity to

declare false what had so long been true to her, and, just as she had

feared, true to him. She felt restored, rehabilitated in her old

self-esteem, and she relished his perplexity.

"It seems inconsistent," he said.

"Does it? How strange!" She said it coldly, and slowly she took her

eyes from him. They were silent for a while.

"Then my fate is settled--irrevocably?" he asked at length.

"Yes, irrevocably."

"I wish," he complained, "that I understood."

"I wish you did," she replied.

"Can't you tell me?"

"Don't force me to."

"Very well," he said, drawing himself up. "I beg your pardon." These

words, however, meant that the apology should have been hers.

As they drove home, her mother said to her:

"What were you and John Eades talking about back there in that corner?"

"An old subject."

"Was he--" Mrs. Ward was burning with a curiosity she did not, however,

like to put into words.

Elizabeth laughed.

"Yes," she said, "he _was_. But I settled him."

"I hope you were not--"

"Brutal?"

"Well, perhaps not that--you, of course, could not be that."

"Don't be too sure."

They discussed Eades as the carriage rolled along, but their points of

view could never be the same.

"And yet, after all, dear," Mrs. Ward was saying, "we must be just. I

don't see--"

"No," Elizabeth interrupted her mother. "You don't see. None of you

can see. It wasn't because he wouldn't let Dick go. It was because

that one act of his revealed his true nature, his real self; showed me

that he isn't a man, but a machine; not a human being, but a prosecutor;

he's an institution, and one can't marry an _institution_, you know,"

she concluded oddly.

"Elizabeth!" said Mrs. Ward. "That doesn't sound quite ladylike or

nice!"

Elizabeth laughed lightly now, in the content that came with the new

happiness that was glowing within her.

XXXIII

Curly Jackson was hurrying along Race Street, glad of his old friend,

the darkness, that in February had begun to gather at five o'clock. He

passed a factory, a tall, ugly building of brick, and in the light of

the incandescent lamps he could see the faces of the machinists bent

over the glistening machines. Curly looked at these workmen, thought of

their toil, of the homes they would go to presently, of the wives that

would be waiting, and the children--suddenly a whistle blew, the roar of

machinery subsided, whirred, hummed and died away; a glad, spontaneous

shout went up from the factory, and, in another minute, a regiment of

men in overalls and caps, begrimed and greasy, burst into the street and

went trooping off in the twilight. The scene moved Curly profoundly; he

longed for some touch of this humanity, for the fellowship of these

working-men, for some one to slap his back, and, in mere animal spirits

and joy at release, sprint a race for half a block with him.

Curly felt that these workmen were like him, at least, in one respect,

they were as glad to be released from the factory as he had been half an

hour before to be released from the jail. He had left the jail, but he

was not free. Inside the jail he had the sympathy and understanding of

his fellows; here he had nothing but hatred and suspicion. Even these

men trooping along beside him and, to his joy, brushing against him now

and then, would have scorned and avoided him had they known he was just

released from prison. There was no work for him among them, and his

only freedom lay still in the fields, the woods, and along the highways

of gravel and of iron.

"Well," he thought, grinding his teeth bitterly, "they'll have to pay

toll now!"

He found Gibbs in his back room, alone, and evidently in a gloomy mood.

Gibbs stretched his hand across the table.

"Well, Curly, I'm glad to see some one in luck."

"You're right, Dan, my luck's good. I'm no hoodoo. To be in the way I

was and have your pal topped, to make a clear lamas--that looks like

good luck to me."

"Oh, well, they never had anything on you."

"They didn't have anything on Dutch neither--but in the frame-up I

didn't know but they'd put a sinker on me, too. What made me sore was

having that Flanagan rap against me--why, great God! a job like

that--that some fink, some gay cat done after he'd got scared!" Jackson

could not find the words to express his disgust, his sense of injury,

the stain, as it were, on his professional reputation.

"It was that they put Dutch away on."

"Sure, I know that, Dan, and everybody knows that. It was just like a

mob of hoosiers after you with pitchforks; like that time old Dillon and

Mason and me gave 'em battle in the jungle in Illinois. Well, that's

the way these people was. They was howlin' around that court-house and

that pogey--God! to think of it! To think of a fellow's getting a lump

like that handed to him--all for croakin' a copper!" Curly shook his

head a moment in his inability to understand this situation, and he held

his hands out in appeal to Gibbs, and said in his high, shrill voice,

emphasizing certain words:

"What in hell do you make of it, Dan?"

"What's the use wasting time over that?" Gibbs asked. "That's all over,

ain't it? Then cut it out. Course,"--it seemed, however, that Gibbs had

some final comment of his own to make--"you might say the kid ought

to've had a medal for croaking a gendie. I wisht when he pushed his

barker he'd wiped out a few more bulls. He was a good shot."

Gibbs said this with an air of closing the discussion, and of having

paid his tribute to Archie.

"Well, Dan," Curly began, "you'll have to put me on the nut until I can

get to work. I haven't even got pad money. I gave my bit to Jane; she

says graft's on the fritz. She twisted a super, but it was an old

canister--has she been in to-day?"

Gibbs shook his head gloomily.

"She didn't expect 'em to turn me out to-day." Curly mused in a

moment's silence. "Ain't she the limit? One day she was goin' to bash

that sister of poor Dutch, the next she's doubled with her, holdin' her

up. She had me scared when she landed in; I was 'fraid she'd tip off

the lay somehow--course"--he hastened to do her justice--"I knew she

wouldn't throw me down, but the main bull-- What's wrong, Dan?" Curly,

seeing that Gibbs was not interested, stopped suddenly.

"Oh, everything's wrong. Dean's been here--now he's pinched!"

"No! What for?"

"You'd never guess."

"The big mitt?"

"No, short change! He came in drunk--he's been at it for a month; of

course, if he hadn't, he wouldn't have done anything so foolish. Did

you know a moll buzzer named McGlynn? Well, he got home the other day

from doin' a stretch, and Ed gets sorry for him and promises to take him

out. So they go down to the spill and turned a sucker--Ed flopped him

for a ten!" Gibbs's tone expressed the greatest contempt. "He'll be

doing a heel or a stick-up next, or go shark hunting. Think of Ed

Dean's being in for a thing like that!"

"Is he down at the boob?"

"No, we sprung him on paper. He's all broke up--you heard about

McDougall?"

"What about him?"

"Dead; didn't you know? Died in Baltimore--some one shot him in a

saloon. He wouldn't tell who; he was game--died saying it was all

right, that the guy wasn't to blame. And then," Gibbs went on, "that

ain't all. Dempsey was settled."

"Yes, I read it in the paper."

"That was a kangaroo, too."

"I judged so; they settled him for the dip. How did it come off?"

"Oh, it was them farmers down at Bayport. Dempsey had a privilege at

the fair last fall; he took a hieronymous--hanky-panky, chuck-a-luck."

"Yes, I know," said Curly impatiently, "the old army game."

"Well, he skinned the shellapers, and they squealed this year to get

even. They had him pinched for the dip. Why, old Dempsey couldn't even

stall--he couldn't put his back up to go to the front!"

"Who did it?"

"Oh, a little Chicago gun. You don't know him."

"Well," said Curly, "you have had a run of bad luck."

"Do you know what does it?" Gibbs leaned over confidentially, a

superstitious gleam in his eye. "It's that Koerner thing. There's a

hoodoo over that family. That girl's been in here once or twice--with

Jane. You tell Jane not to tow her round here any more. If I was you,

I'd cut her loose--she'll queer you. You won't have any luck as long as

you're filled in with her."

"I thought the old man had some damages coming to him for the loss of

his gimp," said Curly.

"Well, he has; but it's in the courts. They'll job him, too, I suppose.

He can't win against that hoodoo. The courts have been taking their

time."

The courts, indeed, had been taking their time with Koerner's case.

Months had gone by and still no hint of a decision. The truth was, the

judges of the Supreme Court were divided. They had discussed the case

many times and had had heated arguments over it, but they could not

agree as to what had been the proximate cause of Koerner's injury,

whether it was the unblocked frog in which he had caught his foot, or

the ice on which he had slipped. If it was the unblocked frog, then it

was the railroad company's fault; if it was the snow and ice, then it

was what is known as the act of God. Dixon, McGee and Bundy, justices,

all thought the unblocked frog was the proximate cause; they argued that

if the frog had been blocked, Koerner could not have caught his foot in

it. They were supported in their opinion by Sharlow, of the _nisi

prius_ court, and by Gardner, Dawson and Kirkpatrick, of the Appellate

Court; so that of all the judges who were to pass on Koerner's case, he

had seven on his side. On the other hand, Funk, Hambaugh and Ficklin

thought it was God's fault and not the railroad company's; they argued

it was the ice causing him to slip that made Koerner fall and catch his

foot.

It resulted, therefore, that with all the elaborate machinery of the

law, one man, after all, was to decide this case, and that man was

Buckmaster, the chief justice. Buckmaster had the printed transcript of

the record and the printed briefs of counsel, but, like most of his

colleagues, he disliked to read records and merely skimmed the briefs.

Besides, Buckmaster could not fix his mind on anything just then, for,

like Archie, he, too, was under sentence of death. His doctor, some

time before this, had told him he had Bright's disease, and Buckmaster

had now reached the stage where he had almost convinced himself that his

doctor was wrong, and he felt that if he could take a trip south, he

would come back well again. Buckmaster would have preferred to lay the

blame of Koerner's accident on God rather than on the railroad company.

He had thought more about the railroads and the laws they had made than

he had about God and the laws He had made, for he had been a railroad

attorney before he became a judge; indeed, the railroad companies had

had his party nominate him for judge of the Supreme Court. Buckmaster

knew how much the railroads lost in damages every year, and how the

unscrupulous personal-injury lawyers mulcted them; and just now, when he

was needing this trip south, and the manager of the railroad had placed

his own private car at his disposal, Buckmaster felt more than ever

inclined toward the railroad's side of these cases. Therefore, after

getting some ideas from Hambaugh, he announced to his colleagues that he

had concluded, after careful consideration, that Funk and Hambaugh and

Ficklin were right; and Hambaugh was designated to write the profound

opinion in which the decision of the court below was reversed.

Marriott had the news of the reversal in a telegram from the clerk of

the Supreme Court, and he sat a long time at his desk, gazing out over

the hideous roofs and chimneys with their plumes of white steam....

Well, he must tell old Koerner. He never dreaded anything more in his

life, yet it must be done. But he could wait until morning. Bad news

would keep.

But Marriott was spared the pain of bearing the news of this final

defeat to Koerner. It would seem that the law itself would forego none

of its privileges as to this family with which it so long had sported.

The news, in fact, was borne to Koerner by a deputy sheriff.

Packard, the lawyer for the Building and Loan Company which held the

mortgage on Koerner's house, had been waiting, at Marriott's request,

for the determination of Koerner's suit against the railroad company.

That morning Packard had read of the reversal in the _Legal Bulletin_, a

journal that spun out daily through its short and formal columns, the

threads of misery and woe and sin that men tangle into that inextricable

snarl called "jurisprudence." And Packard immediately, that very

morning, began his suit in foreclosure, and before noon the papers were

served.

When Marriott knocked at the little door in Bolt Street, where he had

stood so often and in so many varying moods of hope and despair,--though

all of these moods, as he was perhaps in his egoism glad to feel, had

owed their origin to the altruistic spirit,--he felt that surely he must

be standing there now for the last time. He glanced at the front of the

little home; it had been so neat when he first saw it; now it was

weather-beaten and worn; the front door was scratched, the paint had

cracked and come off in flakes.

The door was opened by the old man himself, and he almost frightened

Marriott by the fierce expression of his haggard face. His shirt was

open, revealing his red and wrinkled throat; his white hair stood up

straight, his lean jaws were covered with a short, white beard, and his

thick white eyebrows beetled fearfully. When he saw Marriott his lips

trembled in anger, and his eyes flashed from their caverns.

"So!" he cried, not opening wide the door, not inviting Marriott in,

"you gom', huh?"

"Yes, Mr. Koerner," said Marriott, "I came--to--"

"You lost, yah, I know dot! You lose all your cases, huh, pretty much,

aindt it so?"

Marriott flamed hotly.

"No, it isn't so," he retorted, stepping back a little. "I have been

unfortunate, I know, in your case, and in Archie's, but I did--"

"Ho!" scoffed Koerner in his tremendous voice. "Vell! Maybe you like to

lose anudder case. _Hier_! I gif you von!"

With a sudden and elaborate flourish of the arm he stretched over his

crutch, he delivered a document to Marriott, and Marriott saw that it

was the summons in the foreclosure suit.

"I s'pose we lose dot case, too, aindt it?"

"Yes," said Marriott thoughtfully and sadly, tapping his hand with the

paper, "we'll lose this. When did you get it?"

"Dis morning. A deputy sheriff, he brought 'im--"

"And he told you--"

"'Bout de oder von? Yah, dot's so."

They were silent a moment and Marriott, unconsciously, and with

something of the habit of the family solicitor, put the summons into his

pocket.

"Vell, I bet dere be no delays in dis case, huh?" Koerner asked.

Marriott wondered if it were possible to make this old man understand.

"You see, Mr. Koerner," he began, "the law--"

The old German reared before him in mighty rage, and he roared out from

his tremendous throat:

"Oh, go to hell mit your Gott-tamned law!"

And he slammed the door in Marriott's face.

Koerner was right; there were no delays now, no questions of proximate

cause, no more, indeed, than there had been in Archie's case. The law

worked unerringly, remorselessly and swiftly; the _Legal Bulletin_

marked the steps day by day, judgment by default--decree--order of sale.

There came a day when the sheriff's deputies--there were two of them

now, knowing old man Koerner--went to the little cottage in Bolt Street.

Standing on the little stoop, one of them, holding a paper in his hand,

rapped on the door. There was no answer, and he rapped again. Still no

answer. He beat with his gloved knuckles; he kicked lightly with his

boot; still no answer. The deputies went about the house trying to peep

in at the windows. The blinds were down; they tried both doors, front

and back; they were locked.

In a neighbor's yard a little girl looked on with the crude curiosity of

a child. After the man had tried the house all about, and rightly

imagining from all that was said of the Koerners in the neighborhood

that the law was about to indulge in some new and sensational ribaldry

with them, she called out in a shrill, important voice:

"They're in there, Mister!"

"Are you sure?"

"Oh, honest!" said the officious little girl, drawing her chin in

affectedly. "Cross my heart, it's so."

Then the deputy put his shoulder to the door; presently it gave.

In the front room, on the plush lounge, lay the two children, Jakie and

Katie, their throats cut from ear to ear. In the dining-room, where

there had been a struggle, lay the body of Mrs. Koerner, her throat

likewise cut from ear to ear. And from four huge nails driven closely

together into the lintel of the kitchen door, hung the body of old man

Koerner, with its one long leg just off the floor, and from his long

yellow face hung the old man's tongue, as if it were his last impotent

effort to express his scorn of the law, whose emissaries he expected to

find him there.

XXXIV

The series of dark events that had so curiously interwrought themselves

into the life of Elizabeth Ward seemed, as far as the mind of mortals

could determine, to find its close in the tragedy which the despairing

Koerner contrived in his household. The effects of all these related

circumstances on those who, however remotely, were concerned in them,

could not, of course, be estimated; but the horror they produced in

Elizabeth made the end of that winter a season of depression that left a

permanent impress on her life and character. For weeks she was

bewildered and afraid, but as the days went by those events began to

assume in her retrospective vision their proper relations in a world

that speedily forgot them in its contemplation of other events exactly

like them, and she tried to pass them in review; the Koerners all were

dead, save Gusta, and she was worse than dead; Kouka and Hunter were

dead; Dick was still astray; Graves and all that horde of poor and

criminal, whose faces for an instant had been turned up in appeal to

her, had sunk into the black abyss again. What did it all mean?

She sought an answer to the questions, but could find none. No one

could help her; few, indeed, could understand what it was she wished to

know. Her father thought the market quotations important; her mother

was absorbed in the way in which certain persons dressed, or served

their meals, or arranged their entertainments; as for the church, where

once she might have gone for help, it was not interested in her

question.

The philosophers and the poets that had been her favorites had now for

her new meanings, it is true, but they had been writing of the poor and

the imprisoned for ages, and yet that very morning in that very city,

not far away, there were countless poor and criminal, and as fast as

these died or disappeared or were put to prison or to death, others

appeared to take their places; the courts ground on, the prisons were

promptly filled, the scenes she had witnessed in the slums and at the

prisons were daily reenacted with ever-increasing numbers to take the

places of those who went down in the process. And men continued to talk

learnedly and solemnly of law and justice.

She thought of Marriott's efforts to save Archie; she thought of her own

efforts; the Organized Charities squabbling as to whether it would open

its meetings with prayer or not, whether it would hold an entertainment

in a theater or some other building; she remembered the tedious

statistics and the talk about the industrious and the idle, the frugal

and the wasteful, the worthy and the unworthy. When, she wondered, had

the young curate ever worked? who had declared him worthy? When,

indeed, had she herself ever worked? who had declared her worthy?

But this was not all: there were other distinctions; besides the rich

and the poor, the worthy and the unworthy, there were the "good" and the

"bad." She indeed, herself, had once thought that mankind was thus

divided, one class being rich, worthy and good, and the other class

poor, unworthy and bad. But now, while she could distinguish between

the rich and poor, she could no longer draw a line between the good and

the bad, or the worthy and the unworthy, though it did not seem

difficult to some people,--Eades, for instance, who, with his little

stated formula of life, thought he could make the world good by locking

up all the bad people in one place. Surely, she thought, Eades could

not do this; he could lock up only the poor people. And a new question

troubled Elizabeth: was the one crime, then, in being poor? But

gradually these questions resolved themselves into one question that

included all the others. "What," she asked herself, "does life mean to

me? What attitude am I to adopt toward it? In a word, what am I, a

girl, having all my life been carefully sheltered from these things and

having led an idle existence, with none but purely artificial duties to

perform--what am I to do?"

The first thing, she told herself, was to look at the world in a new

light: a light that would reveal, distinctly, all the poor, all the

criminal in the great, haggard, cruel city, not as beings of another

nature, of another kind or of another class, different from herself, and

from whom she must separate herself, but as human beings, no matter how

wretched or miserable, exactly like herself, bound to her by ties that

nothing could break. They might, indeed, be denied everything else, but

they could not be denied this kinship; they claimed it by right of a

common humanity and a common divinity. And, beginning to look on them

in this new light, she found she was looking on them in a new pity, a

new sympathy, yes, a new love. And suddenly she found the peace and the

happiness of a new life, like that which came with the great awakening

of the spring.

For spring had come again. All that morning a warm rain had fallen and

the green sward eagerly soaked it up. The young leaves of the trees

were glistening wet, the raindrops clung in little rows, like strings of

jewels, to the slender, shining twigs; they danced on the swimming

pavement, and in the gutters there poured along a yellow stream with

great white bubbles floating gaily on its surface. The day was still;

now and then she could hear the hoof-beats of the horses that trotted

nervously over the slippery asphalt. It rained softly, patiently, as if

it had always rained, as if it always would rain; the day was gray, but

in the yard a robin chirped.

Yes, thought Elizabeth, as she faced life in her new attitude, the

Koerners' tragedies are not the only ones. For all about her she saw

people who, though they moved and ate and talked and bustled to and fro,

were yet dead; the very souls within them were atrophied and dead; that

is, dead to all that is real and vital in existence. They who could so

complacently deny life to others were at the same time denying life to

themselves. The tragedy had not been Koerner's alone; it had been

Ford's as well; Eades could not punish Archie without punishing himself;

Modderwell, in excluding Gusta, must exclude himself; and Dick might

cause others to suffer, but he must suffer more. He paid the penalty

just as all those in her narrow little world paid the penalty and kept

on paying the penalty until they were bankrupts in soul and spirit. The

things they considered important and counted on to give them happiness,

gave them no happiness; they were the most unhappy of all, and far more

desperate because they did not realize why they were unhappy. The poor

were not more poor, more unhappy, more hungry, or more squalid. There

was no hunger so gnawing as that infinite hunger of the soul, no poverty

so squalid as the poverty of mere possession. And there were crimes

that printed statutes did not define, and laws that were not accidents,

but harmoniously acting and reacting in the moral world, revisited this

cruelty, this savagery, this brutality with increasing force upon those

who had inflicted it on others. And as she thought of all the evil

deeds of that host of mankind known as criminals, and of that other host

that punished them, she saw that both crime and punishment emanated from

the same ignorant spirit of cruelty and fear. Would they ever learn of

the great equity and tolerance, the simple love in nature? They had but

to look at the falling rain, or at the sun when it shone again, to read

the simple and sufficient lesson. No, she would not disown these

people, any of them. She must live among them, she must feast or

starve, laugh or cry, despair or triumph with them; she must bear their

burdens or lay her own upon them, and so be brought close to them in the

great bond of human sympathy and love, for only by love, she saw, shall

the world be redeemed.

Meanwhile, everything went on as before. The peculiar spiritual

experience through which Elizabeth was passing she kept largely to

herself: she could not discuss it with any one; somehow, she would have

found it impossible, because she realized that all those about her,

except perhaps Marriott, would consider it all ridiculous and look at

her in a queer, disconcerting way. She saw few persons outside of her

own family; people spoke of her as having settled down, and began to

forget her. But she saw much of Marriott; their old friendly relations,

resumed at the time the trouble of Gusta and Archie and Dick had brought

them together, had grown more intimate. Of Eades she saw nothing at

all, and perhaps because both she and Marriott were conscious of a

certain restraint with respect to him, his name was never mentioned

between them. But at last an event occurred that broke even this

restraint: it was announced that Eades was to be married. He was to

marry an eastern girl who had visited in the city the winter before and

now had come back again. She had been the object of much social

attention, partly because she was considered beautiful, but more,

perhaps, because she was in her own right very wealthy. She had, in

truth, a pretty, though vain and selfish little face; she dressed

exquisitely, and she had magnificent auburn, that is, red hair. People

were divided as to what color it really was, though all spoke of it as

"artistic." And now it was announced that she had been won by John

Eades; the wedding was to occur in the autumn. The news had interested

Marriott, of course, and he could not keep from imparting it to

Elizabeth; indeed, he could not avoid a certain tone of triumph when he

told her. He had seen Eades that very morning in the court-house; he

seemed to Marriott to have grown heavier, which may have been the effect

of a new coat he wore, or of the prosperousness and success that were

surely coming to him. He was one of those men whom the whole community

would admire; he would always do the thing appropriate to the occasion;

it would, somehow, be considered in bad form to criticize him.

The newspapers had the habit of praising him; he was popular--precisely

that, for while he had few friends and no intimates, everybody in the

city approved him. He was just then being mentioned for Congress, and

even for the governorship.

Yes, thought Marriott, Eades is a man plainly marked for success;

everything will come his way. Eades had stopped long enough--and just

long enough--to take Marriott's hand, to smile, to ask him the proper

questions, to tell him he was looking well, that he must drop in and see

him, and then he had hastened away. Marriott had felt a new quality in

Eades's manner, but he could not isolate or specify it. Was Eades

changing? He was changing physically, to be sure, he was growing

stouter, but he was at the age for that; the youthful lines were being

erased from his figure, just as the lines of maturity were being drawn

in his face. Marriott thought it over, a question in his mind. Was

success spoiling Eades?

But when Marriott told Elizabeth the news, she did not appear to be

surprised; she did not even appear to be interested. The summer had

come early that year; within a week it had burst upon them suddenly.

The night was so warm that they had gone out on the veranda. Marriott

watched Elizabeth narrowly, there in the soft darkness, to note the

effect. But apparently there was no effect. She sat quite still and

said nothing. The noise of the city had died away into a harmony, and

the air throbbed with the shrill, tiny sounds of hidden infinitesimal

life. There came to them the fragrance of the lilacs, just blooming in

the big yard of the Wards, and the fragrance of the lilacs brought to

them memories. To Marriott, the fragrance brought memories of that

night at Hazel Ford's wedding; he thought of it a long time, wondering.

After a while they left the veranda and strolled into the yard under the

trees.

"Do you know," said Marriott, "I thought you would be surprised to hear

of John Eades's engagement."

"Why?" she asked.

"Well, I don't know; no one had noticed that he was paying her any

attention--" Suddenly he became embarrassed. He was still thinking of

the evening at Hazel Ford's wedding, and he was wondering if Elizabeth

were thinking of it, too, and this confused him.

"Oh," Elizabeth said, as if she had not noticed his hesitation, "I'm

very glad--it's an appropriate match."

Then she was silent; she seemed to be thinking; and Marriott wondered

what significance there was in the remark she had just made; did it have

a tribute for Eades, or for the girl, or exactly the reverse?

"I was thinking," she began, as if in answer to his thought, and then

suddenly she stopped and gave a little laugh. "Gordon," she went on,

"can't you see them? Can't you see just what a life they will live--how

correct, and proper, and successful--and empty, and hollow, and deadly

it will be--going on year after year, year after year? Can't you see

them with their conception of life, or rather, their lack of conception

of it?" She had begun her sentence with a laugh, but she ended it in

deep seriousness. And for some reason they stopped where they were; and

suddenly, they knew that, at last, the moment had come. Just why they

knew this they could not have told, either of them, but they knew that

the moment had come, the moment toward which they had been moving for a

long time. They felt it, that was all. And neither was surprised.

Words, indeed, were unnecessary. They had been talking, for the first

time in months, of Eades, yet neither was thinking at all of the life

Eades and his fashionable wife would lead, nor caring in the least about

it. Marriott knew that in another instant he would tell Elizabeth what

long had been in his heart, what he should have told her months ago,

what he had come there that very night to tell her; he knew that

everything he had said that night had been intended, in some way, to

lead up to it; he was certain of it, and he thought quite calmly, and

yet when he spoke and heard his own voice, its tone, though low, showed

his excitement; and he heard himself saying:

"I am thinking--do you know of what? Well, of that night--"

And then, suddenly, he took her hands and poured out the unnecessary

words.

"Elizabeth, do you know--I've always felt--well, that little incident

that night at Hazel Ford's wedding; do you remember? I was so stupid,

so bungling, so inept. I thought that Eades--that there was--something;

I thought so for a long time. I wish I could explain--it was only

because--I loved you!"

He could see her eyes glow in the darkness; he heard her catch her

breath, and then he took her in his arms.

"Oh, Elizabeth, dearest, how I loved you! I had loved you for a long,

long time, but that night for the first time I fully realized, and I

thought then, in that moment, that I was too late, that there never had

been--"

He drew her close to him, and bent his head and kissed her lips, her

eyes, her hair.

"Oh, Gordon!" she whispered, lifting her face from his shoulder. "How

very blind you were that night!"

Long after Marriott had gone, Elizabeth sat by her window and looked out

into the night; above the trees the stars glowed in a purple sky. She

was too happy for sleep, too happy for words. She sat there and dreamed

of this love that had come to her, and tears filled her eyes. Because

of this love, this love of Gordon Marriott, this love of all things, she

need ask no more questions for a while. Love, that was the great law of

life, would one day, in the end, explain and make all things clear. Not

to her, necessarily, but to some one, to humanity, when, perhaps,

through long ages of joy and sorrow, of conflict and sin, and in hope

and faith, it had purified and perfected itself. And now by this love

and by the new light within her, at last she was to live, to enter into

life--life like that which had awakened in the world this brooding

tropical night, with its soft glowing stars, its moist air, laden with

the odor of lilacs and of the first blossoms of the fruit trees, and

with the smell of the warm, rich, fecund earth.

THE END