Carshaw, ignoring Meiklejohn, whispered to his mother that Winifred should be sent to bed. She was utterly worn out. One of the maids should sleep in her room in case she awoke in fright during the night.
When left alone with Meiklejohn he intended to scarify the man’s soul. But he was disarmed at the outset. The Senator’s spirit was broken. He admitted everything; said nought in palliation. He could have taken no better line. When Mrs. Carshaw hastened back, fearing lest her plans might be upset, she found her son giving Winifred’s chief persecutor a stiff dose of brandy.
The tragedy of Smith’s Pier was allowed to sink into the obscurity of an ordinary occurrence. Fowle’s unhappily-timed appearance was explained by Rachel Craik when her frenzy at the news of Voles’s death had subsided.
A chuckling remark by Mick the Wolf that “There’d been a darned sight too much fuss about that slip of a girl, an’ he had fixed it,” alarmed her.
She sent Fowle at top speed to Smith’s Pier to warn Voles. He arrived in time to be shot for his pains.
Carshaw and Winifred were married quietly. Their honeymoon consisted of the trip to Massachusetts when he began work in the cotton mill. Meiklejohn fulfilled his promise. When the Costa Rica cotton concession reached its zenith he sold out, resigned his seat in the Senate and transferred to Winifred railway cash and gilt-edged bonds to the total value of a half a million dollars. So the young bride enriched her husband, but Carshaw refused to desert his business. He will die a millionaire, but he hopes to live like one for a long time.
Petch and Jim fought over Polly. There was talk about it in East Orange, and Polly threw both over; the latest gossip is that she is going to marry a police-inspector.
Mrs. Carshaw, Sr., still visits her “dear friend,” Helen Tower. Both of them speak highly of Meiklejohn, who lives in strict seclusion. He is very wealthy; since he ceased to strive for gold it has poured in on him.
Winifred secured an allowance for Rachel Craik sufficient to live on, and Mick the Wolf, whose arm was never really sound again, was given a job on the Long Island estate as a watcher.
Quite recently, when the young couple came in to New York for a week-end’s shopping—rendered necessary by the establishment of day and night nurseries—they entertained Steingall and Clancy at dinner in the Biltmore. Naturally, at one stage of a pleasant meal, the talk turned on those eventful months, October and November, 1913. As usual, Clancy waxed sarcastic at his chief’s expense.