"Oh, is that the man who maintains the lobby here at the Capital for

his Church? I've heard about him. He--well, it is his business to see

that members of his Church are promoted to political office, isn't it?

He trades votes of whole districts to various congressmen in return

for offices for strong church members. He also got the parochial

schools of New York exempt from compulsory vaccination. The

Express--"

"Eh? The Express has heard from him?" inquired the doctor.

"Yes. We opposed the candidate Mr. Ames was supporting for Congress.

We also supported Mr. Wales in his work on the cotton schedule. And so

we heard from Father Tetham. He is supporting the National Bureau of

Health bill. He is working for the Laetare medal. He--"

"Say, Miss Carmen, will you tell me where you pick up your news?

Really, you astonish me! Do you know something about everybody here in

Washington?"

She laughed. "I have learned much here," she said, "about popular

government as exemplified by these United States. The knowledge is a

little saddening. But it is especially saddening to see our

constitutional liberties threatened by this Bureau of Health bill, and

by the Government's constant truckling to the Church of Rome. Doctor,

can it be that you want to commit this nation to the business of

practicing medicine, and to its practice according to the allopathic,

or 'regular' school? The American Medical Association, with its

reactionary policies and repressive tendencies, is making strenuous

endeavors to influence Congress to enact certain measures which would

result in the creation of such a Department of Health, the effect of

which would be to monopolize the art of healing and to create a

'healing trust.' If this calamity should be permitted to come upon the

American people, it would fall as a curtain of ignorance and

superstition over our fair land, and shut out the light of the dawning

Sun of Truth. It would mean a reversion to the blight and mold of the

Middle Ages, in many respects a return in a degree to the ignorance

and tyranny that stood for so many centuries like an impassable rock

in the pathway of human progress. The attempt to foist upon a

progressive people a system of medicine and healing which is wholly

unscientific and uncertain in its effects, but which is admittedly

known to be responsible for the death of millions and for untold

suffering and misery, and then to say, '_Thou shalt be cured thereby,

or not be cured at all_,' is an insult to the intelligence of the

Fathers of our liberties, and a crime upon a people striving for the

light. It smacks of the Holy Inquisition: You accept our creed, or you

shall go to hell--after we have broken you on the rack! Why, the

thought of subjecting this people to years of further dosing and

experimentation along the materialistic lines of the 'regular' school,

of curtailing their liberties, and forcing their necks under the yoke

of medical tyranny, should come to them with the insistence of a

clarion call, and startle them into such action that the subtle evil

which lurks behind this proposed legislative action would be dragged

out into the light and exterminated! To permit commercialism and

greed, the lust of mammon, and the pride of the flesh that expresses

itself in the demand, 'Who shall be greatest?' to dictate the course

of conduct that shall shape the destinies of a great people, is to

admit the failure of free government, and to revert to a condition of

mind that we had thought long since outgrown. To yield our dear-bought

liberties to Italian ecclesiastics, on the other hand--well, Doctor,

_it is just unthinkable_!"

"H'm! Well, at least you are delightfully frank with me. Yet you have

the effect of making me feel as if--as if I were in some way behind a

veil. That--"

"Well, the human mind is very decidedly behind a veil--indeed, behind

many of them. And how can it see God through them? Mankind just grope

about all their lives back of these veils, not knowing that God is

right before them all the time. God has got to be everything, or else

He will be nothing. With or without drugs, it is God 'who healeth all

thy diseases.' The difficulty with physicians is that they are densely

ignorant of what healing means, and so they always start with a

dreadful handicap. They believe that there is something real to be

overcome--and of course fail to permanently overcome it. Many of them

are not only pitiably ignorant, but are in the profession simply to

make money out of the fears and credulity of the people. Doctor, the

physician of to-day is in no way qualified to handle the question of

public health--especially those doctors who say: 'If you won't take

our medicines we'll get a law passed that will make you take them.' To

place the health of the people in their hands would be a terrible

mistake. The agitation for a federal Department of Health is based

upon motives of ignorance and intentional wrong. If the people

generally knew this, they would rise in a body against it. Make what

laws you wish for yourself, Doctor. The human mind is constantly

occupied in the making of ridiculous laws and limitations. But do not

attempt to foist your laws upon the people. Tell me, why all this

agitation about teaching sex-hygiene in the public schools? Why not,

for a change, teach Christianity? What would be the result? But even

the Bible has been put out of the schools. And by whom? By your

Church, that its interpretation may continue to be falsely made by

those utterly and woefully ignorant of its true meaning!"

For some moments they continued their meal in silence. Then the girl

took up the conversation again. "Doctor," she said, "will you come out

from among them and be separate?"

He looked at her quizzically. "Oppose Ames?" he finally said.

"Ah, that is the rub, then! Yes, oppose ignorance and falsity, even

though incarnate in Mr. Ames," she replied.

"He would ruin me!" exclaimed the doctor. "He ruins everybody who

stands in his way! The cotton schedule has gone against him, and the

whole country will have to suffer for it!"

"But how can he make the country suffer because he has been blocked in

his colossal selfishness?" she asked.

"That I can not answer," said the doctor. "But I do know that he has

intimated that there will be no cotton crop in this country next

year."

"No cotton crop! Why, how can he prevent that?"

The doctor shook his head. "Mr. Ames stands as the claim of omnipotent

evil," was his laconic reply.

And when the meal was ended, the girl went her way, pondering deeply.

"No cotton crop! What--what did he mean?" But that was something too

dark to be reported to the Express.

* * * * *

Three weeks from the day he had his brush with Carmen in the presence

of the President, Ames, the great corruptionist, the master

manipulator, again returned from a visit to Washington, and in a

dangerous frame of mind. What might have been his mental state had he

known that the train which drew his private car also brought Carmen

back to New York, can only be conjectured. It was fortunate, no doubt,

that both were kept in ignorance of that fact, and that, while the

great externalization of the human mind's "claim" of business sulked

alone in his luxurious apartments, the little follower after

righteousness sat in one of the stuffy day coaches up ahead, holding

tired, fretful babies, amusing restless children, and soothing away

the long hours to weary, care-worn mothers.

When the financier's car drew into the station his valets breathed

great sighs of relief, and his French chef and negro porter mopped the

perspiration from their troubled brows, while silently offering peans

of gratitude for safe delivery. When the surly giant descended the car

steps his waiting footman drew back in alarm, as he caught his

master's black looks. When he threw himself into the limousine, his

chauffeur drew a low whistle and sent a timidly significant glance in

the direction of the lackey. And when at last he flung open the doors

of his private office and loudly summoned Hood, that capable and

generally fearless individual quaked with dire foreboding.

"The Express--I want a libel suit brought against it at once! Draw it

for half a million! File it in Judge Penny's court!"

"Yes, sir," responded the lawyer meekly. "The grounds?"

"Damn the grounds!" shouted Ames. Then, in a voice trembling with

anger: "Have you read the last week's issues? Then find your grounds

in them! Make that girl a defendant too!"

"She has no financial interest in the paper, sir. And, as for the

reports which they have published--I hardly think we can establish a

case from them--"

"What? With Judge Penny sitting? If you and he can't make out a case

against them, then I'll get a judge and a lawyer who can! I want that

bill filed to-morrow!" bringing his fist down upon the desk.

"Very well, sir," assented Hood, stepping back.

"Another thing," continued Ames, "see Judge Hanson and have the

calling of the Ketchim case held in abeyance until I am ready for it.

I've got a scheme to involve that negro wench in the trial, and drag

her through the gutters! So, she's still in love with Rincón, eh?

Well, we'll put a crimp in that little affair, I guess! Has Willett

heard from Wenceslas?"

"Not yet, sir."

"I'll lift the scalp from that blackguard Colombian prelate if he

tries to trick me! Has Willett found Lafelle's whereabouts?"

"No, sir. But the detectives report that he has been in Spain

recently."

"Spain! What's he--up to there?" he exclaimed in a voice that began

high and ended in a whisper.

He lapsed into a reflective mood, and for some moments his thoughts

seemed to wander far. Then he pulled himself together and roused out

of his meditations.

"You told Jayne that I would back the Budget to any extent, provided

it would publish the stuff I sent it?"

"Yes, sir. He was very glad to accept your offer."

"Very well. You and Willett set about at once getting up daily

articles attacking the Express. I want you to dig up every move ever

made by Hitt, Haynerd, that girl, Waite, Morton, and the whole

miserable, sneaking outfit! Rake up every scandal, every fact, or

rumor, that is in any way associated with any of them. I want them

literally cannonaded by the Budget! Hitt's a renegade preacher!

Haynerd was a bum before he got the Social Era! Waite is an unfrocked

priest! Miss Wall's father was a distiller! That girl--that girl is

a--Did you know that she used to be in a brothel down in the red-light

district? Well, she did! Great record the publishers of the Express

have, eh? Now, by God! I want you and Jayne to bury that whole outfit

under a mountain of mud! I'm ready to spend ten millions to do it!

Kill 'em! Kill 'em all!"

"I think we can do it, Mr. Ames," returned the lawyer confidently.

"You've got to! Now, another matter: I'm out to get the President's

scalp! He's got to go down! Begin with those New York papers which we

can influence. I'll get Fallom and Adams over here for a conference.

Meanwhile, think over what we'd better say to them. Our attacks upon

the President must begin at once! I've already bought up a Washington

daily for that purpose. They have a few facts now that will discredit

his administration!"

"Very well, Mr. Ames. Ah--a--there is a matter that I must mention as

soon as you are ready to hear it, Mr. Ames--regarding Avon. It seems

that the reports which that girl has made have been translated into

several languages, and are being used by labor agitators down there to

stir up trouble. The mill hands, you know, never really understood

what your profits were, and--well, they have always been quite

ignorant, you know, regarding any details of the business. But now

they think they have been enlightened--they think they see how the

tariff has benefited you at their expense--and they are extremely

bitter against you. That priest, Father Danny, has been doing a lot of

talking since the girl was down there."

"By God!" cried Ames, rising from his chair, then sinking back again.

"You see, Mr. Ames," the lawyer continued, "the situation is fast

becoming acute. The mill hands don't believe now that you were ever

justified in shutting down, or putting them on half time. And, whether

you reduce wages or not, they are going to make very radical demands

upon you in the near future, unless I am misinformed. These demands

include better working conditions, better tenements, shorter hours,

and very much higher wages. Also the enforcement of the child labor

law, I am sorry to say."

"They don't dare!" shouted Ames.

"But, after all, Mr. Ames, you know you have said that it would

strengthen your case with Congress if there should be a strike at

Avon."

"But not now! Not now!" cried Ames. "It would ruin everything! I am

distinctly out of favor with the President--owing to that little negro

wench! And Congress is going against me if I lose Gossitch, Logue, and

Mall! That girl has put me in bad down there! Wales is beginning to

threaten! By G--"

"But, Mr. Ames, she can be removed, can she not?"

"Violence would still further injure us. But--if we can drive the

Express upon the shoals, and then utterly discredit that girl, either

in the libel suit or the Ketchim trial, why, then, with a little show

of bettering things at Avon, we'll get what we want. But we've got

work before us. Say, is--is Sidney with the Express?" he added

hesitatingly.

Hood started, and shot a look of mingled surprise and curiosity at his

master. Was it possible that Ames--

"You heard my question, Mr. Hood?"

"I--I beg pardon! Yes, sir--Sidney is still with them. He--a--they say

he has quite conquered his--his--"

"You mean, he's no longer a sot?" Ames asked brutally. "Out with it,

man! Don't sit there like a smirking Chinese god!"

"Well, Mr. Ames, I learn that Sidney has been cured of his habits, and

that the--that girl--did it," stammered the nervous lawyer.

Ames's mouth jerked open--and then snapped shut. Silence held him. His

head slowly sank until his chin touched his breast. And as he sat thus

enwrapped, Hood rose and noiselessly left the room.

Alone sat the man of gold--ah, more alone than even he knew. Alone

with his bruised ambitions, his hectored egoism, his watery aims.

Alone and plotting the ruin of those who had dared bid him halt in his

mad, destroying career. Alone, this high priest of the caste of

absolutism, of the old individualism which is fast hurrying into the

realm of the forgotten. Alone, and facing a new century, with whose

ideals his own were utterly, stubbornly, hopelessly discrepant.

Alone he sat, looking out, unmoved, upon the want and pain of

countless multitudes gone down beneath the yoke of conditions which he

had made too hard for them. Looking, unmoved, unhearing, upon the

bitter struggles of the weak, the ignorant, the unskilled, the gross

hewers of wood and drawers of water. Looking, and knowing not that in

their piteous cry for help and light was sounded his own dire peril.

The door opened, and the office boy announced the chief stenographer

of the great bank below. Ames looked up and silently nodded permission

for the man to enter.

"Mr. Ames," the clerk began, "I--I have come to ask a favor--a

great favor. I am having difficulty--considerable difficulty in

securing stenographers, but--I may say--my greatest struggle is

with myself. I--Mr. Ames, I can not--I simply can not continue to

hire stenographers at the old wage, nine dollars a week! I know how

these girls are forced to live. Mr. Ames, with prices where they

are now, they can not live on that! May I not offer them more? Say,

ten or twelve dollars to start with?"

Ames looked at him fixedly. "Why do you come to me with your request?"

he asked coldly. "Your superior is Mr. Doan."

"Yes, sir, I know," replied the young man with hesitation. "But--I--did

speak to him about it, and--he refused."

"I can do nothing, sir," returned Ames in a voice that chilled the

man's life-current.

"Then I shall resign, Mr. Ames! I refuse to remain here and hire

stenographers at that criminal wage!"

"Very well, sir," replied Ames in the same low, freezing tone. "Hand

your resignation to Mr. Doan. Good day, sir."

Again the guardian of the sanctity of private property was left alone.

Again, as he lapsed into dark revery, his thought turned back upon

itself, and began the reconstruction of scenes and events long since

shadowy dreams. And always as they built, the fair face of that young

girl appeared in the fabric. And always as he retraced his course, her

path crossed and crossed again his own. Always as he moved, her

reflection fell upon him--not in shadow, but in a flood of light,

exposing the secret recesses of his sordid soul.

He dwelt again upon the smoothness of his way in those days, before

her advent, when that group of canny pirates sat about the Beaubien's

table and laid their devious snares. It was only the summer before she

came that this same jolly company had merged their sacred trust assets

to draw the clouds which that autumn burst upon the country as the

worst financial panic it had known in years. And so shrewdly had they

planned, that the storm came unheralded from a clear sky, and at a

time when the nation was never more prosperous.

He laughed. It had been rich fun!

And then, the potato scheme. They had wagered that he could not put it

through. How neatly he had turned the trick, filled his pockets, and

transformed their doubts into wondering admiration! It had been rare

pleasure! Oh, yes, there had been some suffering, he had been told. He

had not given that a thought.

And the Colombian revolution! How surprised the people of these United

States would be some day to learn that this tropic struggle was in

essence an American war! The smug and unthinkingly contented in this

great country of ours regarded the frenzied combat in the far South as

but a sort of _opéra bouffe_. What fools, these Americans! And he,

when that war should end, would control navigation on the great

Magdalena and Cauca rivers, and acquire a long-term lease on the

emerald mines near Bogotá. The price? Untold suffering--countless

broken hearts--indescribable, maddening torture--he had not given that

a thought.

He laughed again.

But he was tired, very tired. His trip to Washington had been

exhausting. He had not been well of late. His eyes had been bloodshot,

and there had been several slight hemorrhages from the nose. His

physician had shaken his head gravely, and had admonished him to be

careful--

But why did that girl continue to fascinate him? he wondered. Why now,

in all his scheming and plotting, did he always see her before him?

Was it only because of her rare physical beauty? If he wrote or read,

her portrait lay upon the page; if he glanced up, she stood there

facing him. There was never accusation in her look, never malice, nor

trace of hate. Nor did she ever threaten. No; but always she

smiled--always she looked right into his eyes--always she seemed to

say, "You would destroy me, but yet I love you."

God! What a plucky little fighter she was! And she fought him fairly.

Aye, much more so than he did her. She would scorn the use of his

methods. He had to admit _that_, though he hated her, detested her,

would have torn her into shreds--even while he acknowledged that he

admired her, yes, beyond all others, for her wonderful bravery and her

loyal stand for what she considered the right.

He must have dozed while he sat there in the warm office alone.

Surely, that hideous object now floating before his straining gaze,

that thing resembling the poor, shattered Mrs. Hawley-Crowles, was not

real! It was but a shadow, a flimsy thing of thought! And that

woestricken thing there, with its tenuous arms extended toward

him--was that Gannette? Heavens, no! Gannette had died, stark mad!

But, that other shade--so like his wife, a few months dead, yet alive

again! Whence came that look of horror in a face once so haughty! It

was unreal, ghastly unreal, as it drifted past! Ah, now he knew that

he was dreaming, for there, there in the light stood Carmen! Oh, what

a blessed relief to see that fair image there among those other

ghastly sights! He would speak to her--

But--_God above_! _What was that?_ A woman--no, not Carmen--fair

and--

Her white lips moved--they were transparent--he could see right

through them--and great tears dropped from her bloodless cheeks when

her accusing look fell upon him!

Slowly she floated nearer--she stopped before him, and laid a hand

upon his shoulder--it was cold, cold as ice! He tried to call out--to

rise--to break away--

And then, groaning aloud, and with his brow dripping perspiration, he

awoke.

Hood entered, but stopped short when he saw his master's white face.

"Mr. Ames! You are ill!" he cried.

Ames passed a hand across his wet forehead. "A--a little tired, that's

all, I guess. What now?"

The lawyer laid a large envelope upon the desk. "It has come," he

said. "There's a delegation of Avon mill hands in the outer office.

Here are their demands. It's just what I thought."

Ames slowly took up the envelope. For a moment he hesitated. Again he

seemed to see that smiling girl before him. His jaw set, and his face

drew slowly down into an expression of malignity. Then, without

examining its contents, he tore the envelope into shreds, and cast the

pieces into the waste basket.

"Put them out of the office!" he commanded sharply. "Wire Pillette at

once to discharge these fellows, and every one else concerned in the

agitation! If those rats down there want to fight, they'll find me

ready!"

CHAPTER 14

The immense frame of J. Wilton Ames bent slightly, and the great legs

might have been seen to drag a bit, as the man entered his private

elevator the morning after his rejection of the mill hands' demands,

and turned the lever that caused the lift to soar lightly to his

office above. And a mouse--had the immaculate condition of his

luxurious _sanctum_ permitted such an alien dweller--could have seen

him sink heavily into his great desk chair, and lapse into deep

thought. Hood, Willett, and Hodson entered in turn; but the magnate

gave them scant consideration, and at length waved them all away, and

bent anew to his meditations.

Truth to tell--though he would not have owned it--the man was now

dimly conscious of a new force at work upon him; of a change, slowly,

subtly taking place somewhere deep within. He was feebly cognizant of

emotions quite unknown; of unfamiliar sentiments, whose outlines were

but just crystallizing out from the thick magma of his materialistic

soul.

And he fought them; he hated them; they made him appear unto himself

weak, even effeminate! His abhorrence of sentimentalism had been among

the strongest of his life-characteristics; and yet, though he could

not define it, a mellowing something seemed to be acting upon him that

dull, bitterly cold winter morning, that shed a soft glow throughout

his mental chambers, that seemed to touch gently the hard, rugged

things of thought that lay within, and soften away their sharp

outlines. He might not know what lay so heavily upon his thought, as

he sat there alone, with his head sunk upon his breast. And yet the

girl who haunted his dreams would have told him that it was an

interrogation, even the eternal question, "What shall it profit a

man--?"

Suddenly he looked up. The door had opened, he thought. Then he sat

bolt upright and stared.

"Good morning, Mr. Ames. May I come in?"

Come in! Had ever such heavenly music touched his ears before! This

was not another dream! The vision this time was real! He sprang to his

feet. He would have held out his arms to her if he could.

And yet, how dared she come to him? How dared she, after what she had

done? Was this fresh affrontery? Had she come again to flout him? To

stand within the protection which her sex afforded and vivisect anew

his tired soul? But, whatever her motives, this girl did the most

daring things he had ever seen a woman do.

"Isn't it funny," she said, as she stood before him with a whimsical

little smile, "that wherever I go people so seldom ask me to sit

down!"

Ames sank back into his seat without speaking. Carmen stood for a

moment looking about her rich environment; then drew up a chair close

to him.

"You haven't the slightest idea why I have come here, have you?" she

said sweetly, looking up into his face.

"I must confess myself quite ignorant of the cause of this unexpected

pleasure," he returned guardedly, bending his head in mock deference,

while the great wonder retained possession of him.

"Well," she went on lightly, "will you believe me when I tell you that

I have come here because I love you?"

Aha! A dark suspicion sprang up within him. So this was an attack from

a different quarter! Hitt and Haynerd had invoked her feminine wiles,

eh?

Nonsense! With one blow the unfamiliar sentiment which had been

shedding its influence upon him that morning laid the ugly suspicion

dead at his feet. A single glance into that sweet face turned so

lovingly up to his brought his own deep curse upon himself for his

hellish thought.

"You know," she bubbled, with a return of her wonted airy gaiety, "I

just had to run the gauntlet through guards and clerks and office boys

to get here. Aren't you glad I didn't send in my card? For then you

would have refused to see me, wouldn't you?"

"I would not!" he replied harshly. Then he repented his tone. "If I

had known you were out there," he said more gently, "I'd have sent out

and had you dragged in. I--I have wanted something this morning; and

now I am sure it was--"

"Yes," she interrupted, taking the words out of his mouth, "you wanted

_me_. I knew you would. You see, it's just absolutely impossible to

oppose anybody who loves you. You know, that's the very method Jesus

gave for overcoming our enemies--to love them, just love them to

pieces, until we find that we haven't any enemies at all any more.

Isn't it simple? My! Well, that's the way I've been doing with

you--just loving you."

The man's brows knotted, and his lips tightened. Was this girl

ridiculing him? Or was there aught but the deepest sincerity expressed

in the face from which he could not take his eyes? Impossible! And

yet, did ever human being talk so strangely, so weirdly, as she?

He bent a little closer to her. "Did you say that you loved me?" he

asked. "I thought you looked upon me as a human monster." After all,

there was a note of pathos in the question. Carmen laid her hand upon

his.

"It's the _real_ you that I love," she answered gently. "The monster

is only human thought--the thought that has seemed to mesmerize you.

But you are going to throw off the mesmerism, aren't you? I'll help

you," she added brightly. "You're going to put off the 'old man'

completely--and you're going to begin by opening yourself and letting

in a little love for those poor people down at Avon, aren't you? Yes,

you are!"

At the mention of the people of Avon his face became stern and dark.

And yet she spoke of them alone. She had not mentioned the Beaubien,

Miss Wall, the Express, nor herself. He noted this, and wondered.

"You see, you don't understand, Mr. Ames. You'll be, oh, so surprised

some day when you learn a little about the laws of thought--even the

way human thought operates! For you can't possibly do another person

an injury without that injury flying back and striking you. It's a

regular boomerang! You may not feel the effects of its return right

away--but it does return, and the effects accumulate. And then, some

day, when you least expect it, comes the crash! But, when you love a

person, why, that comes back to you too; and it never comes alone. It

just brings loads of good with it. It helps you, and everybody. Oh,

Mr. Ames," she cried, suddenly rising and seizing both his hands,

"you've just _got_ to love those people down there! You can't help it,

even if you think you can, for hate is not real--it's an awful

delusion!"

It was not so much an appeal which the girl made as an affirmation of

things true and yet to come. The mighty _Thou shalt not!_ which Moses

laid upon his people, when transfused by the omnipotent love of the

Christ was transformed from a clanking chain into a silken cord. The

restriction became a prophecy; for when thou hast yielded self to the

benign influence of the Christ-principle, then, indeed, thou shalt not

desire to break the law of God.

Carmen returned to her chair, and sat eagerly expectant. Ames groped

within his thought for a reply. And then his mental grasp closed upon

the words of Hood.

"They are very bitter against me--they hate me!" he retorted lamely.

"Ah, yes," she said quickly. "They reflect in kind your thought of

them. Your boomerangs of greed, of exploitation, of utter indifference

which you have hurled at them, have returned upon you in hatred. Do

you know that hatred is a fearful poison? And do you know that

another's hatred resting upon you is deadly, unless you know how to

meet and neutralize it with love? For love is the neutralizing

alkaloid."

"Love is--weakness," he said in a low tone. "That kind, at least."

"Love weakness! Oh! Why, there is no such mighty power in the whole

universe as love! It is omnipotent! It is hatred that is weak!"

Ames made a little gesture of contempt. "We argue from different

standpoints," he said. "I am a plain, matter-of-fact, cold-blooded

business man. There is no love in business!"

"And that," she replied in a voice tinged with sadness, "is why

business is such chaos; why there is so much failure, so much anxiety,

fear, loss, and unhappiness in the business world. Mr. Ames, you

haven't the slightest conception of real business, have you?"

She sat for a moment in thought. Then, brightly, "I am in business,

Mr. Ames--?"

"Humph! I am forced to agree with you there! The business of

attempting to annihilate me!"

"I am in the business of reflecting good to you, and to all mankind,"

she gently corrected.

"Then suppose you manifest your love for me by refraining from

meddling further in my affairs. Suppose from now on you let me

alone."

"Why--I am not meddling with you, Mr. Ames!"

"No?" He opened a drawer of the desk and took out several copies of

the Express. "I am to consider that this is not strictly meddling,

eh?" he continued, as he laid the papers before her.

"No, not at all," she promptly replied. "That's uncovering evil, so's

it can be destroyed. All that evil, calling itself you and your

business, has got to come to the surface--has got to come up to the

light, so that it can be--"

"Ah! I see. Then I, the monster, must be exposed, eh? And afterward

destroyed. A very pretty little idea! And the mines and mills which I

own--"

"You own nothing, Mr. Ames, except by consent of the people whom you

oppress. They will wake up some day; and then state and national

ownership of public utilities will come, forced by such as you."

"And that desideratum will result in making everybody honest, I

suppose?"

"No," she answered gravely. "We must go deeper than that. All our

present troubles, whether domestic, business, civic, or social, come

from a total misapprehension of the nature of God--a misunderstanding

of what is really _good_. We have _all_ got to prove Him. And we are

very foolish to lose any more time setting about it, don't you think

so?

"You see," she went on, while he sat studying her, "those poor people

down at Avon don't know any more about what is the real good than you

do. And that's why their thoughts and yours center upon the false

pleasures of this ephemeral existence called life--this existence of

the so-called physical senses--and why you both become the tools of

vice, disease, and misfortune. They build up such men as you, and then

you turn about and crush them. And in the end you are both what the

Bible says--poor, deluded fools."

"Well, I'll be--"

"Oh, don't swear!" she pleaded, again seizing his hand and laughing up

into his face. But then her smile vanished.

"It's time you started to prove God," she said earnestly. "Won't you

begin now--to-day? Haven't you yet learned that evil is the very

stupidest, dullest, most uninteresting thing in the world? It is,

really. Won't you turn from your material endeavors now, and take time

to learn to really live? You've got plenty of time, you know, for you

aren't obliged to work for a living."

She was leaning close to him, and her breath touched his cheek. Her

soft little hand lay upon his own. And her great, dark eyes looked

into his with a light which he knew, despite his perverted thought,

came from the unquenchable flame of her selfless love.

Again that unfamiliar sentiment--nay, rather, that sentiment long

dormant--stirred within him. Again his worldly concepts, long

entrenched, instantly rose to meet and overthrow it. He had not yet

learned to analyze the thoughts which crept so silently into his

ever-open mentality. To all alike he gave free access. And to those

which savored of things earthy he still gave the power to build, with

himself as a willing tool.

"You will--help me--to live?" he said. He thought her the most

gloriously beautiful object he had ever known, as she sat there before

him, so simply gowned, and yet clothed with that which all the gold of

Ophir could not have bought.

"Yes, gladly--oh, so gladly!" Her eyes sparkled with a rush of tears.

"Don't you think," he said gently, drawing his chair a little closer

to her, "that we have quite misunderstood each other? I am sure we

have."

"Perhaps so," she answered thoughtfully. "But," with a happy smile

again lighting her features, "we can understand each other now, can't

we?"

"Of course we can! And hasn't the time come for us to work together,

instead of continuing to oppose each other?"

"Yes! yes, indeed!" she cried eagerly.

"I--I have been thinking so ever since I returned yesterday from

Washington. I am--I--"

"We need each other, don't we?" the artless girl exclaimed, as she

beamed upon him.

"I am positive of it!" he said with suggestive emphasis. "I can help

you--more than you realize--and I want to. I--I've been sorry for you,

little girl, mighty sorry, ever since that story got abroad about--"

"Oh, never mind that!" she interrupted happily. "We are living in the

present, you know."

"True--and in the future. But things haven't been right for you. And I

want to see them straightened out. And you and I can do it, little

one. Madam Beaubien hasn't been treated right, either. And--"

"There!" she laughed, holding up a warning finger. "We're going to

forget that in the good we're going to do, aren't we?"

"Yes, that's so. And you are going to get a square deal. Now, I've got

a plan to make everything right. I want to see you in the place that

belongs to you. I want to see you happy, and surrounded by all that is

rightfully yours. And if you will join me, we will bring that all

about. I told you this once before, you may remember."

He stopped and awaited the effect of his words upon the girl.

"But, Mr. Ames," she replied, her eyes shining with a great hope,

"don't think about me! It's the people at Avon that I want to help."

"We'll help them, you and I. We'll make things right all round. And

Madam Beaubien shall have no further trouble. Nor shall the Express."

"Oh, Mr. Ames! Do you really mean it? And--Sidney?"

"Sidney shall come home--"

With a rush the impulsive girl, forgetting all but the apparent

success of her mission, threw herself upon him and clasped her arms

about his neck. "Oh," she cried, "it is love that has done all this!

And it has won you!"

The startled man strained the girl tightly in his arms. He could feel

the quick throbbing in her throat. Her warm breath played upon his

cheek like fitful tropic breezes. For a brief moment the supreme gift

of the universe seemed to be laid at his feet. For a fleeting interval

the man of dust faded, and a new being, pure and white, seemed to rise

within him.

"Yes," he murmured gently, "we'll take him to our home with us."

Slowly, very slowly, the girl released herself from his embrace and

stepped back. "With--_us_?" she murmured, searching his face for the

meaning which she had dimly discerned in his words.

"Yes--listen!" He reached forward and with a quick movement seized her

hand. "Listen, little girl. I want you--I want you! Not now--no, you

needn't come to me until you are ready. But say that you will come!

Say that! Why, I didn't know until to-day what it was that was making

me over! It's you! Don't go! Don't--"

Carmen had struggled away from him, and, with a look of bewilderment

upon her face, was moving toward the door. "Oh, I didn't know," she

murmured, "that you were--were--proposing _marriage_ to me!"

"Don't you understand?" he pursued. "We'll just make all things new!

We'll begin all over again, you and I! Why, I'll do anything--anything

in the world you say, Carmen, if you will come to me--if you will be

my little wife!

"I know--I know," he hastily resumed, as she halted and stood

seemingly rooted to the floor, "there is a great difference in our

ages. But that is nothing--many happy marriages are made between ages

just as far apart as ours. Think--think what it means to you! I'll

make you a queen! I'll surround you with limitless wealth! I'll make

you leader of society! I'll make Madam Beaubien rich! I'll support the

Express, and make it what you want it to be! I'll do whatever you say

for the people of Avon! Think, little girl, what depends now upon

you!"

Carmen turned and came slowly back to him. "And--you will not do these

things--unless I marry you?" she said in a voice scarcely above a

whisper.

"I will do them all, Carmen, if you will come to me!"

"But--oh, you were only deceiving me all the time! And now--if I

refuse--then what?"

"It depends upon you, entirely--and you will come? Not now--but within

the next few months--within the year--tell me that you will!"

"But--you will do these things whether I come to you or not?" she

persisted.

"I've put it all into your hands," he answered shortly. "I've named

the condition."

A strange look crossed the girl's face. She stood as if stunned. Then

she glanced about in helpless bewilderment.

"I--I--love--you," she murmured, as she looked off toward the window,

but with unseeing eyes. "I would do anything for you that was right.

I--love--everybody--everybody; but there are no conditions to _my_

love. Oh!" she suddenly cried, burying her face in her hands and

bursting into tears. "You have tried to _buy_ me!"

Ames rose and came to her. Taking her by the hand he led her,

unresisting, back to her chair.

"Listen," he said, bending toward her. "Go home now and think it

all over. Then let me know your answer. It was sudden, I admit; I

took you by surprise. But--well, you are not going to prevent the

accomplishment of all that good, are you? Think! It all depends upon

your word!"

The girl raised her tear-stained face. She had been crushed; and

another lesson in the cruelty of the human mind--that human mind which

has changed not in a thousand years--had been read to her. But again

she smiled bravely, as she wiped her eyes.

"It's all right now," she murmured. "It was all right all the

time--and I was protected."

Then she turned to him. "Some day," she said gently, and in a voice

that trembled just a little, "you will help the people of Avon, but

not because I shall marry you. God does not work that way. I have

loved you. And I love them. And nothing can kill that love. God will

open the way."

"Then you refuse my offer, do you?" he asked sharply, as his face set.

"Remember, all the blame will be upon you. I have shown you a way

out."

She looked up at him. She saw now with a clairvoyance which separated

him from the mask which he had worn. Her glance penetrated until it

found his soul.

"You have shown me the depths of the carnal mind," she slowly replied.

"The responsibility is not with me, but with--God. I--I came to-day

to--to help you. But now I must leave you--with Him."

"Humph!"

He stooped and took up her muff which lay upon the floor. As he did so,

a letter fell out. He seized it and glanced at the superscription.

"Cartagena! To Josè de Rincón! Another little _billet-doux_ to your

priestly lover, eh?"

She looked down at the letter which he held. "It is money," she said,

though her thought seemed far away. "Money that I am sending to a

little newsboy who bears his name."

"Ha! His brat! But, you still love that fallen priest?"

"Yes," was the whispered answer.

He rose and opened a drawer in his desk. Taking out a paper-bound

book, he held it out to the girl. "Look here," he sneered. "Here's a

little piece of work which your brilliant lover did some time ago.

'Confessions of a Roman Catholic Priest.' Do you know the penalty your

clerical paramour paid for that, eh? Then I'll tell you," bending over

close to her ear, "his _life_!"

Carmen rose unsteadily. The color had fled from her cheeks. She staggered

a few steps toward the door, then stopped. "God--is--is--_everywhere_!"

she murmured. It was the refuge of her childhood days.

Then she reeled, and fell heavily to the floor.

CHAPTER 15

If additional proof of the awful cost of hating one's fellow-men were

required, the strike which burst upon the industrial world that winter

must furnish it in sickening excess. But other facts, too, were

rendered glaringly patent by that same desperate clash which made Avon

a shambles and transformed its fair name into a by-word, to be spoken

only in hushed whispers when one's thought dwells for a moment upon

the madness of the carnal mind that has once tasted blood. The

man-cleft chasm between labor and capital, that still unbridged void

which separates master and servant, and which a money-drunk class

insolently calls God-made, grows wider with each roar of musketry

aimed by a frenzied militia at helpless men and women; grows deeper

with each splitting crack of the dynamite that is laid to tear asunder

the conscienceless wielder of the goad; and must one day fall gaping

in a cavernous embouchure that will engulf a nation.

Hitt saw it, and shuddered; Haynerd, too. Ames may have dimly marked

the typhoon on the horizon, but, like everything that manifested

opposition to this superhuman will, it only set his teeth the firmer

and thickened the callous about his cold heart. Carmen saw it, too.

And she knew--and the world must some day know--that but one tie has

ever been designed adequate to bridge this yawning cañon of human

hatred. That tie is love. Aye, well she knew that the world laughed,

and called it chimera; called it idealism, and emotional weakness.

And well she knew that the most pitiable weakness the world has ever

seen was the class privilege which nailed the bearer of the creed of

love upon the cross, and to-day manifests in the frantic grasping of a

nation's resources, and the ruthless murder of those who ask that

they, too, may have a share in that abundance which is the common

birthright of all. Do the political bully, the grafter, the tout, know

the meaning of love? No; but they can be taught. Oh, not by the

hypocritical millionaire pietists who prate their glib platitudes to

their Sunday Bible classes, and return to their luxurious homes to

order the slaughter of starving women and babes! They, like their poor

victims, are deep under the spell of that mesmerism which tells them

that evil is good. Nor by the Church, with its lamentable weakness of

knowledge and works. Only by those who have learned something of the

Christ-principle, and are striving daily to demonstrate its

omnipotence in part, can the world be taught a saving knowledge of the

love that solves every problem and creates a new heaven and a newer,

better concept of the earth and its fullness.

That morning when Carmen went to see Ames the Express received word of

the walk-out of the Avon mill employes. Almost coincident with the

arrival of the news, Carmen herself came unsteadily into Hitt's

office. The editor glanced up at her, then looked a second time. He

had never before seen her face colorless. Finally he laid down his

papers.

"What's happened?" he asked.

"Nothing," answered the girl. "What work have you--for me--to-day?"

She smiled, though her lips trembled.

"Where have you been?" he pursued, scanning her closely.

She did not reply at once. Then, so low that he scarcely caught the

words, "I--I have been with--a friend."

Sidney Ames came puffing into the office at that moment. "Hello!" he

cried as he saw Carmen. "How does it happen you're out riding with

Willett? Saw him help you out of an auto just now."

"He brought me here," she answered softly.

"Where from?"

"Your father's office."

Hitt and the lad stared at her with open mouths. She turned, and

started for her own room, moving as if in a haze. As she neared the

door she stumbled. Sidney sprang after her and caught her in his arms.

When she turned her face, they saw that her eyes were swimming in

tears.

Hitt was on his feet instantly. "Look here!" he cried. "Something's

wrong! Leave us, Sidney. Let me talk with her alone."

The boy reluctantly obeyed. Hitt closed the door after him, then took

the girl's hand and led her back to his own chair. "Now, little one,"

he said gently, "tell me all about it."

For a moment she sat quiet. Then the tears began to flow; and then she

leaned her head against him and sobbed--sobbed as does the stricken

mother who hangs over the lifeless form of her babe--sobbed as does

the strong man bereft of the friend of his bosom--sobbed as did the

Man of Sorrow, when he held out his arms over the worldly city that

cruelly rejected him. He was the channel for the divine; yet the

wickedness of the human mind broke his great heart. Carmen was not far

from him at that moment.

Hitt held her hand, and choked back the lump that filled his throat.

Then the weeping slowly ceased, and the girl looked up into his

anxious face.

"It's all past now," she said brokenly. "Jesus forgave them that

killed him. And--"

"You have been with--Ames?" said Hitt in a low, quiet tone. "And he

tried to kill you?"

"He--he knew not what he was doing. Evil used him, because as

yet he has no spiritual understanding. But--God is life! There

is--no--death!" Her voice faded away in a whisper.

"Well, little girl, I am waiting for the whole story. What happened?"

Carmen got to her feet. "Nothing happened, Mr. Hitt--nothing. It

didn't happen--it wasn't real. I--I seemed to manifest weakness--and I

fell--to the floor--but I didn't lose consciousness. And just then Mr.

Willett came in--and Mr. Ames sent me here with him."

"But what had Ames said to you, Carmen?" persisted Hitt, his face dark

with anger.

The girl smiled feebly. "I see Mr. Ames only as--as God's child," she

murmured. "Evil is not real, and it doesn't happen. Now I want to

work--work as I never did before! I must! _I must!_"

"Will you not tell me more about it?" he asked, for he knew now that a

deadly thrust had been made at the girl's life.

She brushed the tears away from her eyes. "It didn't happen," was her

reply. "Good is all that is. God is life. There is _no_ death!"

A suspicion flashed into Hitt's mind, kindled by the girl's insistence

upon the nothingness of death. "Carmen," he asked, "did he tell you

that--some one had died?"

She came to him and laid her head against him. Her hands stole into

his. "Don't! Please, Mr. Hitt! We must never speak of this again!

Promise me! I shall overcome it, for God is with me. Promise that no

one but us shall know! Make Sidney promise. It--it is--for me."

The man's eyes grew moist, and his throat filled. He drew the girl to

him and kissed her forehead. "It shall be as you wish, little one," he

said in a choking voice.

"Now set me to work!" she cried wildly. "Anything! This is another

opportunity to--to prove God! I must prove Him! I must--right here!"

He turned to his desk with a heavy heart. "There is work to be done

now," he said. "I wonder--"

She took the telegram from his hands and scanned it. At once she

became calm, her own sorrow swallowed up in selfless love. "Oh, they

have gone out at Avon! Those mothers and children--they need me! Mr.

Hitt, I must go there at once!"

"I thought so," he replied, swallowing hard. "I knew what you would

do. But you are in higher hands than mine, Carmen. Go home now, and

get ready. You can go down in the morning. And we, Sidney and I, will

say nothing of--of your visit to his father."

* * * * *

That night Hitt called up the Beaubien and asked if he and Haynerd

might come and talk with her after the paper had gone to press, and

requesting that she notify Carmen and Father Waite. A few hours later

the little group met quietly in the humble cottage. Miss Wall and

Sidney were with them. And to them all those first dark hours of

morning, when as yet the symbol of God's omnipresence hung far below

the horizon, seemed prescient with a knowledge of evil's further

claims to the lives and fortunes of men.

"I have asked you here," Hitt gravely announced when they were

assembled, "to consider a matter which touches us all--how deeply, God

alone knows. At ten o'clock to-night I received this message." He

opened the paper which he held in his hand and read:

"'Property of Hitt oil company, including derricks, pump houses,

storage tanks, destroyed by fire. Dynamite in pump houses

exploded, causing wells to cave and choke. Loss complete. Wire

instructions.'"

The news burst over them like the cracking of a bomb. Haynerd, who,

like the others, had been kept in ignorance of the message until now,

started from his chair with a loud exclamation, then sank back limp.

Carmen's face went white. Evil seemed to have chosen that day with

canny shrewdness to overwhelm her with its quick sallies from out the

darkness of the carnal mind.

Hitt broke the tense silence. "I see in this," he said slowly, "the

culmination of a long series of efforts to ruin the Express. That my

oil property was deliberately wrecked, I have not the slightest doubt.

Nor can I doubt by whose hand."

"Whose?" demanded Haynerd, having again found his voice. "Ames's?"

Hitt replied indirectly. "The Express has stood before the world as a

paper unique and apart. And because of its high ideals, the forces of

evil singled it out at the beginning for their murderous assaults.

That the press of this country is very generally muzzled, stifled,

bought and paid for, I have good reason now to know. My constant

brushes with the liquor interests, with low politicians, judges,

senators, and dive-keepers, have not been revealed even to you. Could

you know the pressure which the Church, both Catholic and Protestant,

has tried to exert upon us, you would scarce credit me with veracity.

But the Express has stood out firm against feudalism, mediaevalism,

and entrenched ecclesiasticism. It has fearlessly opposed the

legalizing of drugging. It has fought the debauching of a nation's

manhood by the legalized sale of a deadly poison, alcohol. And it has

fought without quarter the pernicious activity of morally stunted

brewers and distillers, whose hellish motto is, 'Make the boys drink!'

It has fought the money octopus, and again and again has sounded to

the world the peril which money-drunken criminals like Ames and his

clique constitute. And for that we must now wear the crown of

martyrdom!"

Silence, dismal and empty, lay over the little room for a long time.

Then Hitt resumed. "The Express has not been self-supporting. Its

growth has been steady, but it has depended for its deficit upon the

revenue from my oil property. And so have we all. Ames ruined Madam

Beaubien financially, as well as Miss Wall. He cleaned you out, Ned.

And now, knowing that we all depended upon my oil wells, he has, I

doubt not, completely removed that source of income."

"But," exclaimed Haynerd, "your property was insured, wasn't it?"

"Yes," replied Hitt, with a feeble attempt at a smile. "But with the

proviso that dynamite should not be kept on the premises. You will

note that dynamite wrecked the wells. That doubtless renders my

policies void. But, even in case I should have a fighting chance with

the insurance companies, don't you think that they will be advised

that I purposely set fire to the wells, in order to collect the

insurance? I most certainly do. And I shall find myself with a big

lawsuit on my hands, and with no funds to conduct the fight. Ames's

work, you know, is always thorough, and the Express is already facing

his suit for libel."

"But you told us you were going to mortgage your property," said Miss

Wall.

"I stood ready to, should the Express require it. But, with its recent

little boom, our paper did not seem to need that as yet," he

returned.

"Good God!" cried Haynerd. "We're done for!"

"Yes, Ned, God _is_ good!" It was Carmen who spoke.

Hitt turned quickly to the girl. "Can you say that, after all you have

endured, Carmen?"

He looked at her for a moment, lost in wonder. "An outcast babe," he

murmured, "left on the banks of a great river far, far away; reared

without knowledge of father or mother, and amid perils that hourly

threatened to crush her; torn from her beloved ones and thrust out

into an unknown and unsympathetic world; used as a stepping-stone to

advance the low social ambitions of worldly women; blackened by the

foulest slander, and ejected as an outcast by those who had fawned at

her feet; still going about with her beautiful message of love, even

though knowing that her childhood home is enveloped in the flames of

war, and her dear ones scattered, perhaps lost; spurned from the door

of the rich man whom she sought to save; carrying with her always the

knowledge that the one upon whom her affections had centered had a son

in distant Cartagena, and yet herself contributing to the support of

the little lad; and now, this morning--" He stopped, for he remembered

his promise.

"This morning," she finished, "shielded by the One who is both Father

and Mother to me."

"That One surely ought to love you, Carmen--"

"He does," she answered softly.

"Well!" put in Haynerd, torn with anger and fear. "What are we going

to do now?"

"Everything, Ned, that error seems to tell us not to do," replied the

girl.

She reached over to the little table that stood near, and took from it

a Bible. Opening it, she read aloud, very slowly, the entire

fourteenth chapter of Exodus. Then she concluded by reading the last

two verses of the eighth chapter of Romans.

"Now," she said, looking up, "we know what we are going to do, don't

we? We are going right on, as 'seeing Him who is invisible' to men

like Mr. Ames."

They sat looking at her in silence.

"There is no curse, whether of the Church, or of business, or of any

department of human thought, that can overthrow legitimate business;

and we are in the legitimate business of reflecting God to the world.

If the physical sense of supply is now lost, we are fortunate, for now

we are obliged to acquire a higher sense. All that we have comes from

God. And we become aware of it in our own consciousness. It is there

that we interpret His supply. Mr. Ames interprets it one way; we, in a

very different way. God has always been able to prepare a table in the

wilderness of human thought. If we look for supply from without, we

shall not find it, for everything is within. And the very fact that

there is a legitimate demand shows that there is the supply to meet

it, for--though the world hasn't learned this yet--_it is the supply

itself that really creates the demand_!"

"But money makes the wheels go!" retorted Haynerd.

"Money, Ned, is the counterfeit of God. He is our only supply. He is

our Principle--infinite, inexhaustible. He is our credit--without

limit! We are facing a crisis, but, like every seeming disturbance of

the infinite harmony, it will vanish in a little while if we but cling

to the divine Mind that is God for guidance."

Hitt folded the telegram and returned it to his pocket. "Are you going

to Avon to-morrow?" he abruptly asked of the girl.

"Yes, why not?"

"We can't afford it now!" cried Haynerd.

Hitt reflected a moment. Then he rose. "And we sit here lamenting!" he

exclaimed. "And when we have in our midst this girl, who has borne,

without one word of complaint or reviling, the world's most poignant

sorrows! I--I really regret that I told you of--of this telegram. I

seemed for a moment to be overwhelmed. But I am on my feet again

now!"

He reached into a pocket and took out some bills, which he handed to

Carmen. "That will see you through for a day or so down there. If you

need more, wire me. I'll get it from some source! Come," he added,

beckoning to Haynerd, "the Express will be issued to-morrow as usual,

and we must get to bed. I've really had quite a strenuous day!" He

turned, then paused and looked at Carmen.

The girl caught the meaning in his glance, and went directly to the

piano. Hitt followed and bent over her.

"Don't," he said, "if you do not feel like it. This day has been a

hard one for you, I know. And--"

"But I do feel like it," she answered, smiling up at him. "I want to

sing for you. And," her voice dropped low, "I want to sing to--Him."

Hitt gulped down something in his throat. "The bravest little girl in

the whole wide world!" he muttered through his set teeth.

* * * * *

The carnage at Avon was not incidental; it was the logical effect of

definite mental causes. It was the orderly sequence of an endless

train of hatred of man for man, bred of greed and the fear of

starvation. And starvation is the externalized human belief that life

is at the caprice of intelligent matter. But that is an infraction of

the first Commandment, given when the human race was a babe.

When the mill hands left their looms at evening of the day following

Ames's rejection of their demands, the master closed the doors behind

them and locked them out. Were not these mills his?

No, they were a sacred trust asset.

Bah! The parrot-cry of the maudlin sentimental!

But, four thousand men, women, and little children, with never a

dollar beyond their earnings of the day, thrust out into the blasts of

the bitterest winter the New England states had known in years!

True; but why, then, did they strike? For, you see, that of itself

proved the soundness of Ames's single reply to all further appeal:

"There is nothing whatever to arbitrate."

In the garden of the human mind waves many a flower, both black and

red, fanned by the foul winds of carnal thought. There grow the

brothel, the dive, the gin-shop, the jail. About these hardier stems

twine the hospital, the cemetery, the madhouse, the morgue. And Satan,

"the man-killer from the beginning," waters their roots and makes

fallow the soil with the blood of fools. But of those for whom the

gardener waits, there is none whose blood is so life-giving to these

noxious plants as that type of the materially rich who, like Ames,

have waxed gross upon the flesh of their own brothers.

Ames was a gambler in human lives. They were his chips, by which he

gained or lost, and of themselves were void of intrinsic value. The

world was the table whereon he played; the game _rouge et noir_, with

the whirl of predatory commercialism as the wheel, and the ball

weighted to drop where he might direct. He carried millions on margin,

and with them carried the destinies, for weal or for woe, of millions

of his fellow-men, with not one thought that he did so at the cost of

their honor and morality, not less than their life-blood.

It had been his custom to close his mills for several months each

year, in order to save expense when times were dull. And he did this

as casually as he closed the doors of his stables, and with much less

thought for the welfare of those concerned. It is doubtful if he had

ever really considered the fact that these four thousand human beings

were wholly dependent upon him for their very existence. For he was a

business man, and gold was far weightier in the scale of values than

human flesh, and much less easily obtained. Cain's comforting

philosophy was quite correct, else would the business world not have

been so firmly established upon it. Besides, he was terribly busy; and

his life was lived upon a plane high, high above that upon which these

swarming toilers groveled with their snouts in the dust.

And now, with the doors of his mills barred against the hungry hordes,

he would frame the terms upon which they should be reopened. The

eight-hour law must not be enforced. Perhaps he could influence the

Supreme Court to declare it unconstitutional, as depriving the mill

hands of the right to labor as long as they pleased. Wages should not

be raised. And the right to organize and band together for their

common good would be contemptuously denied the ignorant rats who

should be permitted to toil for him once more. If they offered

violence, there was the state militia, armed and impatient to slay.

Also, this was an excellent opportunity to stamp out trade-unionism

within the confines of his activities. He would win the plaudits of

the whole industrial world by so doing. He therefore immediately got

in touch with the Governor, a Tammany puppet, and received that loyal

henchman's warm assurances of hearty support for any measures which

the great magnate might wish to enforce. He then approached the

officers of the state guard, and secured them to a man. Times were

hard, and they welcomed his favor. He finally posted armed guards in

all his buildings at Avon, and bade them remember that property rights

were of divine institution. Then he sat down and dictated the general

policy to be followed by the Amalgamated Spinners' Association

throughout the country in support of his own selfish ends.

His activity in these preparations, as in everything, was tremendous.

His agents swarmed over the state like ants. The Catholic Archbishop

was instructed that he must remove Father Danny from Avon, as his

influence was pernicious. But the objection was made that the priest

was engaged only in humanitarian labors. It availed not; Ames desired

the man's removal. And removed he was. The widow Marcus likewise had

been doing much talking. Ames's lawyer, Collins, had her haled into

court and thoroughly reprimanded. And then, that matters might be

precipitated, and Congress duly impressed with the necessity of

altering the cotton schedule in favor of the Spinners' Association,

Ames ordered his agents to raise the rents of his miserable Avon

tenements. There were few, he knew, who dared even attempt to meet the

raise; and those who could not, he ordered set into the streets.

It was a wild winter's day that the magnate chose for the enforcement

of this cruel order. A driving blizzard had raged throughout the

night, and the snow had banked up in drifts in places many feet deep.

The temperature was freezing, and the strong east wind cut like a

knife. It was Ames's desire to teach these scum a needed lesson, and

he had chosen to enlist the elements to aid him in the righteous

task.

For a week, ever since the strike was declared, Carmen had lived among

these hectored people. Daily her reports of the unbearable situation

had gone to Hitt. And through them the editor had daily striven to

awaken a nation's conscience. Ames read the articles, and through the

columns of the Budget sought to modify them to the extent of shifting

the responsibility to the shoulders of the mill hands themselves, and

to a dilatory Congress that was criminally negligent in so framing a

cotton tariff as to make such industrial suffering possible. Nor did

he omit to foully vilify the Express and calumniate its personnel.

Amid curses, screams, and despairing wails, the satanic work of

ejecting the tenement dwellers went on that day. Ames's hirelings,

with loaded rifles, assisted the constables and city police in the

miserable work, themselves cursing often because of the keen blasts

that nipped their ears and numbed their well-cased limbs. More than

one tiny, wailing babe was frozen at the breast that dull, drab

afternoon, when the sun hung like a ghastly clot of human blood just

above the horizon, and its weird, yellow light flitted through the

snow-laden streets like gaunt spectres of death. More than one aged,

toil-spent laborer, broken at the loom in the service of his

insatiable master, fell prone in the drifts and lay there till his

thin life-current froze and his tired heart stopped. More than one

frenzied, despairing father, forgetful for the moment of the divine

right of property, rushed at a guard and madly strove with him, only

to be clubbed into complaisance, or, perchance, be left in a welter of

crimson on the drifting snow. Carmen saw it all. She had been to see

Pillette that same morning, and had been laughed from his presence.

She did not understand, she was told, what miserable creatures these

were that dared ask for bread and human rights. Wait; they themselves

would show their true colors.

And so they did. And the color was red. And it spurted like fountains

from their veins. And they saw it with dimming eyes, and were glad,

for it brought sweet oblivion. That night there were great fires

built along the frozen creek. Shacks and tents were hastily reared;

and the shivering, trembling women and babes given a desperate

shelter. Then the men, sullen and grim, drew off into little groups,

and into the saloons and gambling halls of the town. And when the

blizzard was spent, and the cold stars were dropping their frozen

light, these dull-witted things began to move, slowly at first,

circling about like a great forming nebula, but gaining momentum and

power with each revolution. More than a thousand strong, they circled

out into the frozen streets of the little town, and up along the main

thoroughfare. Their dull murmurs slowly gained volume. Their low

curses welled into a roar. And then, like the sudden bursting of

pent-up lava, they swept madly through the town, carrying everything

to destruction before them.

Stores, shops, the bank itself, burst open before this wave of

maddened humanity. Guns and pistols were thrown from laden shelves to

the cursing, sweating mob below. Axes and knives were gathered by

armfuls, and borne out into the streets to the whirling mass. Great

barrels of liquor were rolled into the gutters and burst asunder.

Bread and meat were dragged from the shops and savagely devoured. The

police gathered and planted themselves with spitting pistols before

the human surge. They went down like grass under stampeded cattle.

Frightened clerks and operators rushed to the wires and sent wild,

incoherent appeals for help to New York. Pandemonium had the reins,

the carnal mind was unleashed.

On rolled the mob, straight on to the massive stone house of Pillette,

the resident manager of the great Ames mills. On over the high iron

fence, like hungry dock rats. On through the battered gate. On up the

broad drive, shouting, shooting, moaning, raving. On over the veranda,

and in through broken windows and shattered doors, swarming like flies

over reeking carrion, until the flames which burst through the peaked

roof of the mansion drove them forth, and made them draw sullenly,

protestingly away, leaving the tattered bodies of Pillette and his

wife and daughters to be consumed in the roaring furnace.

Oh, ye workers, ye toilers at loom and forge, it is indeed you who

bear the world's burdens! It is you who create the rich man's wealth,

and fight his battles. So ye fought in the great war between North and

South, and protected the rich man at home, hovering in fright over his

money bags. It is you who put into his hands the bayonet which he

turns against you to guard his wealth and maintain his iniquitous

privilege. It is indeed in your hands that the destinies of this great

nation lie; but what will ye do with your marvelous opportunity?

What, with your stupendous, untried strength? Will ye once more set up

the golden calf, and prostrate yourselves before it? Will ye again

enthrone ecclesiastical despotism, and grovel before image of Virgin

and Saint? Will ye raise high the powers of mediaeval darkness, and

bend your necks anew to the yoke of ignorance and stagnation? But

think you now that flames and dynamite will break your present bonds?

Aye, America may be made a land without a pauper, without a

millionaire, without industrial strife. But fire and sword will not

effect the transformation. Yes, perhaps, as has been said, our

"comfortable social system and its authority will some day be blown to

atoms." But shall we then be better off than we are to-day? For shall

we know then how to use our precious liberty?

Blood-drunk and reeling, the mob turned from the flaming wreckage and

flowed down toward the mills. There were some among them, saner, and

prescient of the dire consequences of their awful work, who counseled

restraint. But they were as chips in a torrent. Down into the creek

bottom rolled the seething tide, with a momentum that carried it up

the far side and crashing into the heavily barred oak doors of the

great mills. A crushing hail of bullets fell upon them, and their

leaders went down; but the mass wavered not. Those within the

buildings knew that they would become carrion in the maws of the

ravening wolves outside, and fought with a courage fed with

desperation.

In the solemn hush of death Socrates said, "The hour of departure has

arrived, and we go our ways, I to die and you to live. Which is

better, God only knows." And mankind through the ages in their last

hours have echoed this sentiment of the gentle philosopher. For all

human philosophy leads to a single end--resignation.

But hunger transforms resignation into madness. And madness is murder.

The frenzied hordes swarming about the Ames mills knew in their heart

of hearts that death was preferable to life in death under the goad of

human exploitation. But such knowledge came only in rational moments.

Now they were crazed and beyond reason.

In the distance, across the swale, the sky glowed red where the souls

of the agent of predatory wealth and his family had gone out in

withering heat. In the stricken town, men huddled their trembling

loved ones about them and stood with loaded muskets. Somewhere on the

steel bands that linked this scene of carnage with the great

metropolis beyond, a train plunged and roared, leaping over the

quivering rails at the rate of a hundred miles an hour, bringing eager

militiamen and their deadly instruments of civilization. For the Ames

mills were private property. And that was a divine institution.

* * * * *

In his luxurious office in the tower of the Ames building the master

sat that black night, surrounded by his laboring cohorts. Though they

strained under the excitement of the hour, Ames himself remained calm

and determined. He was in constant communication with the Governor at

Albany, and with the municipal officers of both New York and Avon. He

had received the tidings of the destruction of the Pillette family

with a grim smile. But the smile had crystallized into an expression

of black, malignant hatred when he demanded of the Governor that the

New York contingent of the state guard be sent at once to protect his

property, and specified that the bullets used should be of the

"dum-dum" variety. For they added to the horrors of death. Such

bullets had been prohibited by the rules of modern warfare, it was

true. But this was a class war. And Ames, foreseeing it all, had

purchased a hundred thousand rounds of these hellish things for the

militia to exchange for those which the Government furnished. And

then, as an additional measure of precaution, he had sent Hood and

Collins into the United States District Court and persuaded the

sitting judge to issue an injunction, enjoining any possible relief

committees from furnishing food and shelter to such as might enter the

industrial conflict being waged against him.

Had the man gone mad? That he had! And in the blood-red haze that hung

before his glittering eyes was framed the face of the girl who had

spurned him but a few days before. She was the embodiment of love that

had crossed his path and stirred up the very quintessence of evil

within him. From the first she had drawn him. From the first she had

aroused within his soul a conflict of emotions such as he had never

known before. And from the night when, in the Hawley-Crowles box at

the opera he had held her hand and looked down into her fathomless

eyes, he had been tortured with the conflicting desires to possess

that fair creature, or to utterly destroy her.

But always she had eluded him. Always she hovered just within his

grasp; and then drew back as his itching fingers closed. Always she

told him she loved him--and he knew she lied not. But such love was

not his kind. When he loved, he possessed and used. And such love had

its price--but not hers. And so hope strove with wrath, and chagrin

with despair. She was a babe! Yet she conquered him. He was omnipotent

in this world! Her strength she drew from the world invisible. And

with it she had laid the giant low and bound him with chains.

Not so! Though he knew now that she was lost to him forever; though

with foul curses he had seen hope flee; yet with it he had also bidden

every tender sentiment, every last vestige of good depart from his

thought forever more. And:

"----with hope, farewell fear,

Farewell remorse: all good to me is lost;

Evil, be thou my good!"

That same night Hitt's wells burned. And that night the master slept

not, but sat alone at his desk in the great Fifth Avenue mansion, and

plotted the annihilation of every human being who had dared oppose his

worldly ambitions. Plotted, too, the further degradation and final

ruin of the girl who had dared to say she loved him, and yet would not

become his toy.

* * * * *

There is no need to curse the iniquitous industrial and social system

upon which the unstable fabric of our civilization rests, for that

system is its own fell curse in the rotting fruit it bears. A bit of

that poisonous fruit had now dropped from the slimy branch at Avon. Up

from the yards came the militiamen at double-quick, with rifles

unslung and loaded with the satanic Ames bullets. Behind them they

dragged two machine guns, capable of discharging three hundred times a

minute. The mob had concentrated upon the central building of the mill

group, and had just gained entrance through its shattered doors.

Before them the guards were falling slowly back, fighting every inch

of the way. The dead lay in heaps. The air was thick with powder

smoke. One end of the building was in flames. The roar of battle was

deafening.

Quickly swinging into action, the militia opened upon the mill hands.

Hemmed in between two fires, the mob broke and fled down the frozen

stream. The officers of the guard then ordered their men to join in

the work of extinguishing the flames, which were beginning to make

headway, fanned by the strong draft which swept through the long

building. Until dawn they fought the stubborn fire. Then, the building

saved, they pitched their tents and sought a brief rest.

At noon the soldiers were again assembled, for there remained the task

of arresting the leaders of the mob and bringing them to justice. The

town had been placed under martial law with the arrival of the

militia. Its streets were patrolled by armed guards, and a strong

cordon had been thrown around the shacks which the mill hands had

hastily erected the afternoon before. And now, under the protection of

a detachment of soldiers, the demand was made for the unconditional

surrender of the striking laborers.

Dull terror lay like a pall over the miserable shacks huddled along

the dead stream. It was the dull, hopeless, numbing terror of the

victim who awaits the blow from the lion's paw in the arena. Weeping

wives and mothers, clasping their little ones to them, knelt upon the

frozen ground and crossed themselves. Young men drew their newly-wed

mates to their breasts and kissed them with trembling lips. Stern,

hard-faced men, with great, knotted hands, grouped together and looked

out in deadly hatred at the heartless force surrounding them.

Then out from among them and across the ice went Carmen, up the

slippery hillside, and straight to the multi-mouthed machine gun, at

the side of which stood Major Camp. She had been all night with these

bewildered, maddened people. She had warmed shivering babes at her own

breast. She had comforted widows of a night, and newly-bereaved

mothers. She had bound up gaping wounds, and had whispered tender

words of counsel and advice. And they had clung to her weeping; they

had called upon Virgin and Saint to bless her; and they named her the

Angel of Avon--and the name would leave her no more.

"Take me," she said, "take me into court, and let me tell all."

The major fell back in amazement. This beautiful, well-clad girl among

such miserable vermin!

"You have demanded their leaders," she continued. "I have been trying

to lead them. Leave them, and take me."

The major's eyes roved over her face and figure. He could make nothing

out of her words, but he motioned to an aid, and bade him place the

girl under arrest.

A wild shout then rose from the shacks, as Carmen moved quietly away

under guard. It was the last roar of raging despair. The girl was

being taken from them! A dozen men sprang out and rushed, muskets in

hand, up toward the soldiers to liberate her. The major called to them

to halt. Poor, dull-witted creatures! Their narrow vision could

comprehend but one thing at a time; and they saw in the arrest of the

girl only an additional insult piled upon their already mountainous

injuries.

The major shouted a command. A roar burst from the soldiers' rifles.

It was answered by a shriek of rage from the hovels, and a murderous

return fire. Then the major gave another loud command, and the machine

guns began to vomit forth their clattering message of death.

At the sound of shooting, Carmen's guard halted. Then one of them

fell, pierced by a bullet from the strikers. The others released the

girl, and hurried back to the battle line. Carmen stood alone for a

moment. Bullets whizzed close about her.

One sang its death-song almost in her ear. Another tore through her

coat. Then she turned and made her way slowly up the hill to the

paralyzed town.

Down in the vale beneath, Death swung his scythe with long, sweeping

strokes. The two machine guns poured a flaming sheet of lead into the

little camp below. The shacks fell like houses of cards. The tents

caught fire, and were whirled blazing aloft by the brisk wind. Men

dropped like chaff from a mill. Hysterical, screaming women rushed

hither and yon to save their young, and were torn to shreds by the

merciless fusillade from above. Babes stood for a moment bewildered,

and then sank with great, gaping wounds in their little, quivering

bodies. And over all brooded the spirit of the great manipulator,

Ames, for the protection of whose sacred rights such ghastly work is

done among civilized men to-day.

* * * * *

That night, while the stars above Avon drew a veil of gray between

them and the earth below, that they might not see the red embers and

stark bodies, Carmen came slowly, and with bent head, into the office

of the Express. As she approached Hitt's door she heard him in earnest

conversation with Haynerd.

"Yes," the editor was saying, "I had a mortgage placed on the Express

to-day, but I couldn't get much. And it's a short-term one, at that.

Stolz refused point blank to help us, unless we would let him dictate

the policy of the paper. No, he wouldn't buy outright. He's still

fighting Ames for control of C. and R. And I learn, too, that the

Ketchim case is called for next week. That probably means an attempt

by Ames to smoke Stolz out through Ketchim. It also means that

Carmen--"

"Yes; what about her?"

"That she will be forced to go upon the stand as a witness."

"Well?"

"And that, as I read it, means a further effort on Ames's part to

utterly discredit her in the eyes of the world, and us through her

association with the Express."

"But--where is she, Hitt? No word from her since we got the news of

the massacre at Avon this afternoon! Nothing happened to her, do you

think?"

Hitt's face was serious, and he did not answer. Then Carmen herself

came through the open door. Both men rose with exclamations of

gladness to welcome her. The girl's eyes were wet, and her wonted

smile had gone.

"Mr. Hitt," she said, "I want a thousand dollars to-night."

"Well!" Hitt and Haynerd both sat down hard.

"I must go back to Avon to-morrow," she announced. "And the money is

for the--the people down there." Her voice caught, and her words

stumbled.

The two men looked at each other blankly. Then Hitt reached out and

took her hand. "Tell us," he said, "about the trouble there to-day."

Carmen shook her head. "No," she said, "we will not talk about evil.

You--you have the money? A thousand--"

"I have that much on deposit in the bank now, Carmen," he replied

gravely. His thought was on the mortgage which he had signed that

morning.

"Then write me a check at once, and I will deposit it in the Avon bank

when I get there to-morrow. I must go home now--to see mother."

"But--let me think about it, Carmen. Money is--well, won't less than

that amount do you?"

"No, Mr. Hitt. Write the check now."

Hitt sighed, but made no further protest. If the Express must founder,

then this money were well spent on the stricken people of Avon. He

took out his book, and immediately wrote the check and handed it to

the girl.

"Hitt," said Haynerd, after Carmen had left them and he had exhausted

his protests over the size of the check, "something's killing that

girl! And it isn't only the trouble at Avon, either! What is it? I

believe you know."

Hitt shook his head. "She's no longer in this world, Ned. She left it

two days ago."

"Eh? Say! News about that Rincón fellow?"

But Hitt would say nothing to further illuminate his cryptic remark,

and Haynerd soon switched to the grim topic of the industrial war in

progress at Avon.

"What are we coming to?" he cried. "What's going to be the end? A

social and industrial system such as ours, which leaves the masses to

starve and consume with disease under intolerable burdens, that a

handful may rot in idleness and luxury, marks us in this latest

century as hopelessly insane!"

"Well, Ned, whence came the idea, think you, that it is divine justice

for a majority of the people on earth to be poor in order that a few

may be rich? And how are we going to get that perverted idea out of

the minds of men? Will legislation do it?"

"Humph!" grunted Haynerd. "Legislation arouses no faith in me! We are

suffering here because, in our immensely selfish thought of ourselves

only, we have permitted the growth of such men as Ames, and allowed

them to monopolize the country's resources. Heavens! Future

generations will laugh themselves sick over us! Why, what sane excuse

is there for permitting the commonest necessities of life to be

juggled with by gamblers and unmoral men of wealth? How can we ask to

be considered rational when we, with open eyes, allow 'corners' on

foodstuffs, and permit 'wheat kings' to amass millions by corralling

the supply of grain and then raising the price to the point where the

poor washerwoman starves? Lord! We are a nation gone mad! The

existence of poverty in a country like America is not only proof

positive that our social system is rotten to the core, but that our

religion is equally so! As a people we deserve to be incarcerated in

asylums!"

"A considerable peroration, Ned," smiled Hitt. "And yet, one that I

can not refute. The only hope I see is in a radical change in the

mental attitude of the so-called enlightened class--and yet they are

the very worst offenders!"

"Sure! Doesn't the militia exist for men like Ames? To-day's work at

Avon proves it, I think!"

"Apparently so, Ned," returned Hitt sadly. "And the only possibility

of a change in enlightened people is through a better understanding of

what is really good and worth while. That means real, practical

Christianity. And of that Ames knows nothing."

"Seems to me, Hitt, that it ought to stagger our preachers to realize

that nineteen centuries of their brand of Christianity have scarcely

even begun to cleanse society. What do you suppose Borwell thinks,

anyway?"

"Ned, they still cling to human law as necessarily a compelling

influence in the shaping of mankind's moral nature."

"And go right on accepting the blood-stained money of criminal

business men who have had the misfortune to amass a million dollars!

And, more, they actually hold such men up as patterns for the youth to

emulate! As if the chief end of endeavor were to achieve the glorious

manhood of an Ames! And he a man who is deader than the corpses he

made at Avon to-day!"

"The world's ideal, my friend, has long been the man who succeeds in

everything except that which is worth while," replied Hitt. "But we

have been bidden to come out from the world, and be separate. Is it

not so?"

"Y--e--s, of course. But I can't take my thought from Avon--"

"And thereby you emphasize your belief in the reality of evil."

"Well--look at us! The Express stands for righteousness. And now we

are a dead duck!"

"Then, if that is so, why not resign your position, Ned? Go seek work

elsewhere."

"No, sir! Not while the Express has a leg to stand on! Your words are

an offense to me, sir!"

Hitt rose and clapped his friend heartily on the back. "Ned, old man!

You're a jewel! Things do look very dark for us, if we look only with

the human sense of vision. But we are trying to look at the invisible

things within. And there is only perfection there. Come, we must get

to work. The Express still lives."

"But--Carmen?"

Hitt turned and faced him. "Ned, Carmen is not in our hands. She is

now completely with her God. We must henceforth wait on Him."

* * * * *

On the following afternoon at three a little group of Avon mill hands

crept past the guards and met in Father Danny's Mission, down in the

segregated vice district. They met there because they dared not go

through the town to the Hall. Father Danny was with them. He had

slipped into town the preceding night, and remained in hiding through

the day. And Carmen was with them, too. She had gone first to the

Hall, and then to the Mission, when she arrived again in the little

town. And after she had deposited Hitt's check in the bank she had

asked Father Danny to call together some of the older and more

intelligent of the mill hands, to discuss methods of disbursing the

money.

Almost coincident with her arrival had come an order from Ames to

apprehend the girl as a disturber of the peace. The hush of death lay

over Avon, and even the soldiers now stood aghast at their own bloody

work of the day before. Carmen had avoided the main thoroughfares, and

had made her way unrecognized. At a distance she saw the town jail,

heavily guarded. Its capacity had been sorely taxed, and many of the

prisoners had been crowded into cold, cheerless store rooms, and

placed under guards who stood ready to mow them down at the slightest

threatening gesture.

"It's come, Miss Carmen!" whispered Father Danny, after he had quietly

greeted the girl. "It's come! It may be the beginning of the great

revolution we've all known wasn't far off! I just _had_ to get back

here! They can only arrest me, anyway. And, oh, God! my poor, poor

people!"

He sank into a chair and buried his face in his hands. But soon he

sprang to his feet. "No time for mollycoddling!" he exclaimed. "Come,

men, we'll give you checks, and do you get food for the babies. Only,

don't buy of the company stores!"

"We'll have to, Father," said one of them. "It's dangerous not to."

"But they've never taken cash from you there, ye know. Only your pay

scrip."

"Aye, Father, and they've discounted that ten per cent each time. But

if we bought at other stores we were discharged. And now we'd be

blacklisted."

"Ah, God, that's true!" exclaimed the priest. "But now then, Miss

Carmen, we'll begin."

For an hour the girl wrote small checks, and the priest handed them

out to the eager laborers. They worked feverishly, for they knew that

at any moment they might be apprehended.

"Ah, you men!" cried Father Danny, at last unable to restrain himself.

"Did ye but know that this grand nation is wholly dependent on such as

you, its common people! Not on the rich, I say, the handful that own

its mills and mines, but on you who work them for your rich masters!

But then, ye're so ignorant!"

"Don't, Father!" pleaded Carmen, "don't! They have suffered so much!"

"Ah, lass, it's but love that I'm dealin' out to 'em, God knows! And

yet, it's they that are masters of the situation, only they don't know

it! There's the pity! They've no leaders, except such as waste their

money and leave 'em in the ditch! The world's social schemes, Miss

Carmen, don't reach such as these. They're only sops. And they've got

the contempt of the wage-earners."

"The Church, Father, could do much for these people, if--"

"Don't hesitate, Miss Carmen. You mean, if we didn't give all our

thought to the rich, eh? But still, it's wholly up to the people

themselves, after all. And, mark me, when they do rise, why, such men

as Ames won't know what's hit 'em!"

The door was thrown violently open at that moment, and a squad of

soldiers under the command of a lieutenant entered.

Carmen and Father Danny rose and faced them. The mill hands stood like

stone images, their faces black with suppressed rage. The lieutenant

halted his men, and then advanced to the girl.

"Is a woman named Carmen Ariza here?" he demanded rudely.

"I am she," replied the fearless girl.

"Come with us," he said in a rough voice.

"That she will not!" cried Father Danny, suddenly pulling the girl

back and thrusting himself before her.

The lieutenant raised his hand. The soldiers advanced. The mill hands

quickly formed about the girl. And then, with a yell of rage, they

threw themselves upon the soldiers.

For a few minutes the little room was a bedlam. The crazed strikers

fought without weapons, except such as they could wrest from the

soldiers. But they fought to the death. One of them seized Carmen and

threw her beneath the table at which she had been working. Above her

raged the desperate conflict. The shouting and cursing might have been

heard for blocks around. Father Danny stood in front of the table,

beneath which lay the girl. He strove desperately to maintain his

position, that he might protect her, meantime frantically calling to

the mill hands to drag her out to the rear, and escape by the back

door.

In the midst of the _mêlée_ a soldier mounted a chair near the door

and raised his rifle. The shot roared out, and Father Danny pitched

forward to the floor. Another shot, and still another followed in

quick succession. The strikers fell back. Confusion seized them. Then

they turned and fled precipitately through the rear exit.

The lieutenant dragged Carmen from beneath the table and out through

the door. Then, assembling his men, he gave an order, and they marched

away with her up the icy street to the town jail.

CHAPTER 16

With the wreckage which he had wrought strewn about him, J. Wilton

Ames sat at his rich desk far above the scampering human ants in the

streets below and contemplated the fell work of his own hands. And

often and anon as he looked, great beads of perspiration welled out

upon his forehead, and his breath came hot and dry. In the waste

basket at his feet lay crumpled the newspapers with their shrieking,

red-lettered versions of the slaughter at Avon. He was not a coward,

this man! But he had pushed that basket around the desk out of his

sight, for when he looked at it something rose before him that sent a

chill to his very soul. At times his vision blurred; and then he

passed his hands heavily across his eyes. He had chanced to read in

the grewsome accounts of the Avon massacre that little children had

been found among those fallen shacks, writhing in their last agonies.

And the reports had said that great, red-dripping holes had been

ripped in their thin little bodies by those awful "dum-dum" bullets.

God! Why had he used them? And why had the demoniac soldiers down

there blown the brains from harmless women and helpless babes? He

really had not intended to go so far!

And yet, he had! Curse them! The brats would have grown up to oppose

the vested privileges of the rich! They, too, would have become

anarchists and rioters, bent on leveling the huge industrial fabric

which such as he had so laboriously erected under the legal protection

afforded their sacred rights! He had done well to remove them now! And

the great captains of industry would thank him for the example he had

thus fearlessly set!

To think of Avon was for him now to think in terms of blood. And yet

his carnal soul hourly wrestled sore with thoughts of a wholly

different stamp; with those strange emotions which he had felt when in

Carmen's presence; with those unfamiliar sentiments which, had he not

fought them back so bitterly, might have made him anew, and--

But the remembrance maddened him. His face grew black, and his mouth

poured forth a torrent of foul imprecations and threats upon her and

upon those who stood with her. His rage towered again. He smote the

desk with his great fist. He fumed, he frothed, he hurled reason from

its throne, and bade the Furies again become his counselors.

Upon the desk before him lay the mortgage papers which Hitt had

signed. He had bought the mortgage from the bank which had loaned the

Express the money. He would crush that sheet now, crush it until the

ink dripped black from its emasculated pages! And when it fell into

his hands, he would turn it into the yellowest of sensational

journals, and hoot the memory of its present staff from ocean to

ocean!

Then, his head sunk upon his breast, he fell to wondering if he might

not secure a mortgage upon the Beaubien cottage, and turn its

occupants into the street. Ah, what a power was money! It was the

lever by which he moved the world, and clubbed its dull-witted

inhabitants into servile obeisance! Who could stand against him--

That girl!

He sprang to his feet and called Hood. That obedient lackey hastened

into his master's presence.

"The Ketchim trial?" snarled Ames.

"Called for this week, sir," replied Hood, glad that the announcement

could not possibly offend his superior.

"Humph! The--that girl?"

"Brought up from Avon, and lodged in the Tombs, sir."

"You tell Judge Spencer that if he allows her bail I'll see that his

federal appointment is killed, understand?"

"You may rely upon him, sir."

Ames regarded the man with a mixture of admiration and utter contempt.

For Hood stood before him a resplendent example of the influence of

the most subtle of all poisons, the insidious lure of money. Soul and

body he had prostituted himself and his undoubted talents to it. And

now, were he to be turned adrift by Ames, the man must inevitably sink

into oblivion, squeezed dry of every element of genuine manhood, and

weighted with the unclean lucre for which his bony fingers had always

itched.

"Will Cass defend Ketchim?" the master asked.

"Oh, doubtless. He knows most about the formation of the defunct

Simití company."

"Well, see him and--you say he's young, and got a wife and baby? Offer

him twenty-five thousand to quit the case."

"I'm afraid it wouldn't do, sir," returned Hood, shaking his head

dubiously. "I've had men talking with him regarding the trial, and

he--"

"Then get him over here. I'll see if I can't persuade him," growled

Ames in an ugly tone.

Hood bowed and went out. A few minutes later Reverend Darius Borwell

was ushered into the financier's private office.

"Mr. Ames," cried that gentleman of the cloth, "it's shocking,

terribly so, what those unbridled, unprincipled mill hands have drawn

upon themselves down in Avon! Goodness! And four members of the Church

of the Social Revolution came to my study last evening and demanded

that I let them speak to my congregation on the coming Sabbath!"

"Well?"

"Why, I told them certainly not! My church is God's house! And I shall

have policemen stationed at the doors next Sunday to maintain order!

To think that it has come to this in America! But, Mr. Ames, is your

house guarded? I would advise--"

"Nobody can get within a block of my house, sir, without ringing a

series of electric bells," replied Ames evenly. "I have fifty guards

and private detectives in attendance in and about my premises all the

time. My limousine has been lined with sheet steel. And my every step

is protected. I am not afraid for my life. I simply want to keep going

until I can carry out a few plans I have in hand." His thought had

reverted again to the fair girl in the Tombs.

"But now, Borwell," he continued, "I want to talk with you about

another matter. I am drawing up my will, and--"

"Why, my dear Mr. Ames! You are not ill?"

Ames thought of his physician's constantly iterated warning; but shook

his head. "I may get caught in this Avon affair," he said evasively.

"And I want to be prepared. The President has sent his message to

Congress, as you may be aware. There are unpleasant suggestions in it

regarding dispossession in cases like my own. I'm coming back by

magnanimously willing to Congress a hundred millions, to stand as a

fund for social uplift."

"Ah!" sighed the clergyman. Great was Mammon!

"But the little matter I wish to discuss with you is the sum that I am

setting aside for the erection of a new church edifice," continued

Ames, eying the minister narrowly.

"You don't mean it!" cried that worthy gentleman, springing up and

clasping the financier's hand. "Mr. Ames! So magnanimous! Ah--the

amount?"

"Well, will half a million do?" suggested Ames.

The minister reflected a moment. One should not be too precipitate in

accepting tentative benefactions. "Ah--we really should have--ah--a

trifle more, Mr. Ames. There's the settlement home, and the commons,

you know, and--"

"Humph! Well, we'll start with half a million," replied Ames dryly.

"By the way, you know Jurges, eh? Reverend William Jurges? Er--have

you any particular influence with him, if I may ask?" His sharp eyes

bored straight through the wondering divine.

"Why--yes--yes, I know the gentleman. And, as for influence--well, I

may--"

"Yes, just so," put in Ames. "Now there is a trial coming up this

week, and Jurges will be called to the stand. I want you to give him

the true facts in regard to it. I'll call Hood, and we'll go over them

in detail now. Then you see Jurges this afternoon, and--say, he's

raising a building fund too, isn't he?"

The magnate summoned Hood again; and for an hour the trio discussed

the forthcoming trial of the unfortunate Philip O. Ketchim. Then Ames

dismissed the clergyman, and bade his office boy admit the young

lawyer, Cass, who had come in response to Hood's request.

For some moments after Cass entered the office Ames stood regarding

him, studying what manner of man he was, and how best to approach him.

Then he opened the conversation by a casual reference to the

unsatisfactory business situation which obtained throughout the

country, and expressed wonder that young men just starting in their

professions managed to make ends meet.

"But," he concluded with deep significance, "better go hungry than

take on any class of business which, though promising good money

returns, nevertheless might eventually prove suicidal." He looked hard

at the young lawyer when he paused.

"I quite agree with you, Mr. Ames," returned Cass. "But as I am

particularly busy this morning, may I ask why you have sent for me?

Have you anything that I can--"

"I have," abruptly interrupted the financier. "We need additions to

our legal staff. I thought perhaps you might like to talk over the

matter with me, with a view to entering our employ."

"Why, Mr. Ames, I--I have never thought of--" The young man's eyes

glistened.

"Well, suppose you think of it now," said Ames, smiling graciously. "I

have heard considerable about you of late, and I must say I rather

like the way you have been handling your work."

Cass looked at him with rising wonder. The work which he had been

doing of late was most ordinary and routine, and called for no display

of legal skill whatever. Suspicions slowly began to rise.

"I'd hate to see you tackle anything at this stage of your career, Mr.

Cass, that would bring discredit upon you. And I am afraid your

association with Ketchim is going to do just that. But possibly you do

not intend to handle further business for him?"

Ketchim, though long confined in the Tombs, had at length secured

bail, through the not wholly disinterested efforts of his uncle,

Stolz, the sworn enemy of Ames. And, because of his loyal efforts in

behalf of Ketchim, Stolz had insisted that Cass be retained as counsel

for the latter when his trial should come up.

"I'll tell you what I'll do, Mr. Cass," said Ames suddenly. "Mr. Hood

will take you on at a salary of, say, five thousand to start with.

We'll try you out for a few weeks. Then, if we don't mutually fit,

why, we'll quietly separate and say nothing. How about it?"

Cass thought hard. Half of that salary would have looked large to him

then. But--

"May I ask," he slowly said in reply, "what class of work Mr. Hood

would give me to start with?"

"Why, nothing of great importance, perhaps, while you are getting into

the harness. Possibly court work, as a starter. You've had experience

in that, eh?"

Cass reflected again. The temptation was tremendous. That little house

which he had passed and stopped to look at so wistfully every night on

his way home was now within his grasp.

He glanced up at the great man, sitting so calmly before him. Then he

thought suddenly of Avon. Then of Carmen.

"Mr. Ames," he said, "if I enter your employ, it must be with the

stipulation that I shall have nothing to do with the Ketchim trial."

Ames's face went suddenly dark. "If you enter my employ, sir, it will

be with the stipulation that you do as I say," he returned coldly.

And then the young lawyer saw through the mask. And his anger flamed

high at what he discerned behind it. He rose and faced the great man.

"Mr. Ames," said he, "you have made a mistake. I am poor, and I need

business. But I have not as yet fallen so completely under the spell

of fortune-hunting as to sell my honor to a man like you! To enter

your employ, I now see, would mean the total loss of character and

self respect. It would mean a lowering of my ideals, whatever they may

be, to your own vulgar standard. I may have done wrong in becoming

associated with Mr. Ketchim. In fact, I know that I have. But I

pledged myself to assist him. And yet, in doing so, I scarcely can

blacken my reputation to the extent that I should were I to become

your legal henchman. I want wealth. But there are some terms upon

which even I can not accept it. And your terms are among them. I bid

you good morning."

Ames gave a snort of anger when Cass went out. Summoning Hood, he

vented his great wrath upon that individual's bald pate. "And now," he

concluded, "I want that fellow Cass so wound up that he will sneak off

to a lonely spot and commit suicide! And if you can't do it, then I'll

accept your resignation!"

"Very well, sir," replied Hood. "And, by the way, Mr. Ames, I have

just learned that Judge Harris, father of the young man who came up

with that girl, is in Colombia. Seems that he's taken some wealthy man

down there to look at La Libertad mine."

"What!" Ames's eyes snapped fire.

"They believe you put one over on Ketchim, with the help of Monsignor

Lafelle, and so they've gone down to get titles to that mine."

"By G--"

"And they say that--"

"Never mind what they say!" roared Ames. "Cable Wenceslas at once to

see that those fellows remain permanently in Colombia. He has ways of

accomplishing that. Humph! Fools! Judge Harris, eh? Ninny! I guess

Wenceslas can block his little game!"

His great frame shook slightly as he stood consuming with rage, and a

slight hemorrhage started from his nostrils. He turned to the

lavatory. And as he walked, Hood thought his left foot dragged

slightly. But the lawyer made no comment.

* * * * *

And then, with the way well cleared, came the Ketchim trial, which has

gone down in history as containing the most spectacular _dénoûement_

in the record of legal procedure in the New World. Had it been

concerned, as was anticipated, only with routine legal procedure

against the man Ketchim, a weak-souled compound of feeble sycophancy

and low morals, it would have attracted slight attention, and would

have been spread upon the court records by uninterested clerks with

never a second thought. But there were elements entering into it of

whose existence the outside world could not have even dreamed. Into it

converged threads which now may be traced back to scenes and events in

three continents; threads whose intricate windings led through

trackless forest and dim-lit church; through court of fashion and hut

of poverty; back through the dark mazes of mortal thought, where no

light shines upon the carnal aims and aspirations of the human mind;

back even to the doors of a palace itself, even to the proudest throne

of the Old World.

But none of these elements found expression in the indictment against

the frightened defendant, the small-visioned man who had sought to

imitate the mighty Ames, and yet who lacked sufficient intelligence of

that sort which manifests in such a perversion of skill and power.

Ames was a tremendous corruptionist, who stood beyond the laws simply

because of the elemental fact that he himself made those laws. Ketchim

was a plain deceiver. And his deception was religious fervor. Mingling

his theology with fraud, he employed the unholy alliance for the

purpose of exploiting the credulous who attended his prayer meetings

and commented with bated breath upon his beautiful showing of

religious zeal. He was but one of a multitude afflicted with the

"dollar mania." His misfortune was that his methods were so antique

that they could not long fail of detection. And it was because of his

use of the mails for the purpose of deceit that the indictment had

been drawn against Philip O. Ketchim _et al._ by the long-suffering,

tolerant complainant, called the people.

Nominally the people's interests were in the hands of the Public

Prosecutor, a certain smug young worldling named Ellis. But, as that

gentleman owed his appointment to Ames, it is not surprising that at

his right hand sat Hood and his well trained staff. Nominally, too,

Judge Spencer conducted the trial strictly upon its merits, not all of

which lay with the people. But the judge might have been still

prosecuting petty cases back in the unknown little district from

which he came, had it not been for the great influence of Ames, long

since, who had found him on a certain occasion useful. And so the jury

panel contained none but those who, we may be very sure, were amenable

to the tender pressure of a soft hand lined with yellow gold. And only

those points of evidence were sustained which conduced to the

incrimination of the miserable defendant. Ketchim was doomed before

the trial began.

And yet, to subserve the dark schemes of Ames, and to lengthen the

period of torture to which his victims should be subjected, the trial

was dragged through many days. Besides, even he and his hirelings were

bound to observe the formalities.

It was at the suggestion of Cass that no effort had been made to

procure bail for Carmen after her arrest. The dramatic may always be

relied upon to carry a point which even plain evidence negatives. And

she, acquiescing in the suggestion, remained a full two weeks in the

Tombs before Ames's eager counsel found their opportunity to confront

her on the witness stand and besmirch her with their black charges.

The Beaubien was prostrated. But, knowing that for her another hour of

humiliation and sorrow had come, she strove mightily to summon her

strength for its advent. Father Waite toiled with Cass day and night.

Hitt and Haynerd, without financial resources, pursued their way, grim

and silent. The Express was sinking beneath its mountainous load. And

they stood at the helm, stanch to their principles, not yielding an

iota to offers of assistance in exchange for a reversal of the policy

upon which the paper had been launched.

"We're going down, Hitt," said Haynerd grimly. "But we go with the

flag flying at the mast!"

Yet Hitt answered not. He was learning to know as did Carmen, and to

see with eyes which were invisible.

It was just when the jury had been impaneled, after long days of petty

wrangling and childish recrimination among the opposing lawyers, that

Stolz came to Ames and laid down his sword. The control of C. and R.

should pass unequivocally to the latter if he would but save Ketchim

from prison.

Then Ames lay back and roared with laughter over his great triumph. C.

and R! Poof! He would send Stolz' nephew to prison, and then roll a

bomb along Wall Street whose detonation would startle the financial

world clean out of its orbit! Stolz had failed to notice that Ames's

schemes had so signally worked out that C. and R. was practically in

his hands now! The defeated railroad magnate at length backed out of

the Ames office purple with rage. And then he pledged himself to

hypothecate his entire fortune to the rescue of his worthless nephew.

Thus, in deep iniquity, was launched the famous trial, a process of

justice in name only, serving as an outlet for a single man's long

nurtured personal animosities. The adulterous union of religion and

business was only nominally before the bar. The victims, not the

defendant only, not the preachers, the washerwomen, the factory girls,

the widows, and the orphans, whose life savings Ketchim had drawn into

his net by the lure of pious benedictions, but rather those

unfortunates who had chanced to incur the malicious hatred of the

great, legalized malefactor, Ames, by opposition to his selfish

caprice, and whose utter defeat and discrediting before the public

would now place the crown of righteous expediency upon his own

chicanery and extortion and his wantonly murderous deeds.

The prosecution scored from the beginning. Doctor Jurges, utterly

confused by the keen lawyers, and vainly endeavoring to follow the

dictates of his conscience, while attempting to reconcile them with

his many talks with Darius Borwell, gave testimony which fell little

short of incriminating himself. For there were produced letters which

he had written to members of his congregation, and which for subtlety

and deception, though doubtless innocently done, would have made a

seasoned promoter look sharp to his own laurels.

Then Harris was called. He had been summoned from Denver for the

trial. But his stuttering evidence gave no advantage to either side.

And then--crowning blunder!--Cass permitted Ketchim himself to take

the stand. And the frightened, trembling broker gave his own cause

such a blow that the prosecution might well have asked the judge to

take the case from the jury then and there. It was a legal _faux pas_;

and Cass walked the floor and moaned the whole night through.

Then, as per program, the prosecution called Madam Beaubien. Could not

that sorrowing woman have given testimony which would have aided the

tottering defense, and unmasked the evil genius which presided over

this mock trial? Ah, yes, in abundance! But not one point would the

judge sustain when it bordered upon forbidden territory. It was made

plain to her that she was there to testify against Ketchim, and to

permit the Ames lawyers to bandy her own name about the court room

upon the sharp points of their cruel cross-questions and low

insinuations.

But, she protested, her knowledge of the Simití company's affairs had

come through another person.

And who might that be?

Mr. J. Wilton Ames.

Ah! But Mr. Ames should give his own testimony--for was it not he who

had, not long since, legally punished the witness on a charge of

defamation of character? The witness was dismissed. And the spectators

knew that it was because the righteous prosecution could no longer

stain its hands with one who bore such a tarnished name as she.

And then, taunted and goaded to exasperation, the wronged woman burst

into tears and flayed the bigamist Ames there before the court room

crowded with eager society ladies and curious, non-toiling men. Flayed

him as men are seldom flayed and excoriated by the women they trample.

The bailiffs seized her, and dragged her into an ante-room; the judge

broke his gavel rapping for order, and threatened to clear the court;

and then Cass, too young and inexperienced to avoid battle with

seasoned warriors, rose and demanded that Madam Beaubien be returned

to the stand.

The astonished judge hesitated. Cass stood his ground. He turned to

the people, as if seeking their support. A great murmur arose through

the court room. The judge looked down at Ames. That man, sitting calm

and unimpassioned, nodded his head slightly. And the woman was led

back to the chair.