"There are a hundred men beating the mountain to find you"

The Wild Olive

A Novel

By the author of
The Inner Shrine

[Basil King]

Illustrated by
Lucius Hitchcock

New York
Grosset & Dunlap
Publishers

Published by Arrangement with Harper & Brothers

Published May, 1910

Printed in the United States of America

Part I

Ford

I

Finding himself in the level wood-road, whose open aisle drew a long, straight streak across the sky, still luminous with the late-lingering Adirondack twilight, the tall young fugitive, hatless, coatless, and barefooted, paused a minute for reflection. As he paused, he listened; but all distinctiveness of sound was lost in the play of the wind, up hill and down dale, through chasm and over crag, in those uncounted leagues of forest. It was only a summer wind, soft and from the south; but its murmur had the sweep of the eternal breath, while, when it waxed in power, it rose like the swell of some great cosmic organ. Through the pines and in the underbrush it whispered and crackled and crashed, with a variety of effect strangely bewildering to the young man's city-nurtured senses. There were minutes when he felt that not only the four country constables whom he had escaped were about to burst upon him, but that weird armies of gnomes were ready to trample him down.

Out of the confusion of wood-noises, in which his unpractised ear could distinguish nothing, he waited for a repetition of the shots which a few hours ago had been the protest of his guards; but, none coming, he sped on again. He weighed the danger of running in the open against the opportunities for speed, and decided in favor of the latter. Hitherto, in accordance with a woodcraft invented to meet the emergency, and entirely his own, he had avoided anything in the nature of a road or a pathway, in order to take advantage of the tracklessness which formed his obvious protection; but now he judged the moment come for putting actual space between his pursuers and himself. How near, or how far behind him, they might be he could not guess. If he had covered ground, they would have covered it too, since they were men born to the mountains, while he had been bred in towns. His hope lay in the possibility that in this wilderness he might be lost to their ken, as a mote is lost in the air—though he built something on the chance that, in sympathy with the feeling in his favor pervading the simpler population of the region, they had given negative connivance to his escape. These thoughts, far from stimulating a false confidence, urged him to greater speed.

And yet, even as he fled, he had a consciousness of abandoning something—perhaps of deserting something—which brought a strain of regret into this minute of desperate excitement. Without having had time to count the cost or reckon the result, he felt he was giving up the fight. He, or his counsel for him, had contested the ground with all the resourceful ingenuity known to the American legal practitioner. He was told that, in spite of the seeming finality of what had happened that morning, there were still loopholes through which the defence might be carried on. In the space of a few hours Fate had offered him the choice between two courses, neither of them fertile in promises of success. The one was long and tedious, with a possibility of ultimate justification; the other short and speedy, with the accepted imputation of guilt. He had chosen the latter—instinctively and on the spur of the moment; and while he might have repeated at leisure the decision he had made in haste, he knew even now that he was leaving the ways and means of proving his innocence behind him. The perception came, not as the result of a process of thought, but as a regretful, scarcely detected sensation.

He had dashed at first into the broken country, hilly rather than mountainous, which from the shores of Lake Champlain gradually gathers strength, as it rolls inland, to toss up the crests of the Adirondacks. Here, burying himself in the woods, he skirted the unkempt farms, whose cottage lights, just beginning to burn, served him as signals to keep farther off. When forced to cross one of the sterile fields, he crawled low, blotting himself out among the bowlders. At times a patch of tall, tasselled Indian corn, interlaced with wandering pumpkin vines, gave him cover, till he regained the shelter of the vast Appalachian mother-forest which, after climbing Cumberlands, Alleghanies, Catskills, and Adirondacks, here clambers down, in long reaches of ash and maple, juniper and pine, toward the lowlands of the north.

As far as he had yet been able to formulate a plan of flight, it was to seek his safety among the hills. The necessity of the instant was driving him toward the open country and the lake, but he hoped to double soon upon his tracks, finding his way back to the lumber camps, whose friendly spiriting from bunk-house to bunk-house would baffle pursuit. Once he had gained even a few hours' security, he would be able to some extent to pick and choose his way.

He steered himself by the peak of Graytop, black against the last coral-tinted glow of the sunset, as a sailor steers by a star. There was further assurance that he was not losing himself or wandering in a circle, when from some chance outlook he ventured to glance backward and saw the pinnacle of Windy Mountain or the dome of the Pilot straight behind him. There lay the natural retreats of the lynx, the bear, and the outlaw like himself; and, as he fled farther from them, it was with the same frenzied instinct to return that the driven stag must feel toward the bed of fern from which he has been roused. But, for the minute, there was one imperative necessity—to go on—to go on anywhere, anyhow, so long as it took him far enough from the spot where masked men had loosed the handcuffs from his wrists and stray shots had come ringing after him. In his path there were lakelets, which he swam, and streams, which he forded. Over the low hills he scrambled through an undergrowth so dense that even the snake or the squirrel might have avoided it, to find some easier way. Now and then, as he dragged himself up the more barren ascents, the loose soil gave way beneath his steps in miniature avalanches of stone and sand, over which he crept, clinging to tufts of grass or lightly rooted saplings, to rise at last with hands scratched and feet bleeding. Then, on again!--frantically, as the hare runs and as the crow flies, without swerving—on, with the sole aim of gaining time and covering distance!

He was not a native of the mountains. Though in the two years spent among them he had come to acknowledge their charm, it was only as a man learns to love an alien mistress, whose alternating moods of savagery and softness hold him with a spell of which he is half afraid. More than any one suspected or he could have explained, his reckless life had been the rebellion of his man-trained, urban instinct against the domination of this supreme earth-force, to which he was of no more value than a falling leaf or a dissolving cloud. Even now, as he flung himself on the forest's protection, it was not with the solace of the son returning to the mother; it was rather as a man might take refuge from a lion in a mammoth cavern, where the darkness only conceals dangers.

After the struggle with crude nature the smooth, grass-carpeted wagon-track brought him more than a physical sense of comfort. It not only made his flight swift and easy, but it had been marked out by man, for man's purposes and to meet man's need. It was the result of a human intelligence; it led to a human goal. It was possible that it might lead even him into touch with human sympathies With the thought, he became conscious all at once that he was famished and fatigued. Up to the present he had been as little aware of a body as a spirit on its way between two worlds. It had ached and sweated and bled; but he had not noticed it. The electric fluid could not have seemed more tireless or iron more insensate. But now, when the hardship was somewhat relaxed, he was forced back on the perception that he was faint and hungry His speed slackened; his shoulders sagged; the long second wind, which had lasted so well, began to shorten. For the first time it occurred to him to wonder how long his strength would hold out.

It was then that he noticed a deflection of the wood-road toward the north, and down over the brow of the plateau on which for a mile or two its evenness had been sustained. It was a new sign that it was tending toward some habitation. Half an hour ago he would have taken this to mean that he must dash into the forest again; but half an hour ago he had not been hungry. He did not say to himself that he would venture to any man's door and ask for bread. So far as he knew, he would never venture to any man's door again; nevertheless, he kept on, down-hill, and down-hill nearer and nearer the lake, and farther and farther from the mountain and the lairs of safety.

Suddenly, at a turning, when he was not expecting it, the wood-road emerged into a rough clearing. Once more he stopped to reflect and take his bearings. It had grown so dark that there was little danger in doing so; though, as he peered into the gloom, his nerves were still taut with the expectation of shot or capture from behind. Straining his eyes, he made out a few acres that had been cleared for their timber, after which Nature had been allowed to take her own way again, in unruly growths of saplings, tangles of wild vines, and clumps of magenta fireweed.

Without quite knowing why he did so, he crept down the slope, feeling his way among the stumps, and stooping low, lest his white shirt, wet and clinging limply to his body, might betray him to some keen-eyed marksman. Presently one of the old root-hedges, common to the countryside, barred his path—a queer, twisted line of long, gray tentacles that had once sucked sustenance from the soil, but now reached up idly into a barren element, where the wild grape was covering their grotesque nakedness with masses of kindly beauty. Below him he saw lights shining clearly like the planets, or faintly like the mere star-dust of the sky, while between the two degrees of brightness he knew there must lie the bosom of the lake. He had come to the little fringe of towns that clings to the borders of Champlain, here with the Adirondacks behind him, and there with the mountains of Vermont, but keeping close to the great, safe waterway, as though distrusting the ruggedness of both.

It was a moment at which to renew his alarm in this proximity to human dwellings. Like the tiger that has ventured beyond the edge of the jungle, he must slink back at the sight of fire. He turned himself slowly, looking up the heights from which he had come down, as they rolled behind him, mysterious and hostile, in the growing darkness. Even the sky, from which it seemed impossible for the daylight ever to depart, now had an angry red glare in it.

He took a step or two toward the forest, and paused again, still staring upward. Where was he going? Where could he go? The question presented itself with an odd pertinence that drew his set, beardless lips into a kind of smile. When he had first made his rush outward the one thing that seemed to him essential was to be free; but now he was forced to ask himself: For what purpose? Of what use was it to be as free as wind if he was to be as homeless? It was not merely that he was homeless for the moment; that was nothing; the overwhelming reflection was that he, Norrie Ford, could never have a home at all—that there was scarcely a spot within the borders of civilized mankind where the law would not hunt him out.

This view of his situation was so apparent and yet so new that it held him stock-still, gazing into space. He was free—but free only to crawl back into the jungle and lie down in it, like a wild beast.

"But I'm not a wild beast," he protested, inwardly. "I'm a man—with human rights. By God, I'll never let them go!"

He wheeled round again, toward the lower lands and the lake. The lights glowed more brightly as the darkness deepened, each lamp shining from some little nest, where men and women were busied with the small tasks and interests that made life. This was liberty! This was what he had a claim upon! All his instincts were civilized, domestic. He would not go back to the forest, to herd with wild nature, when he had a right to lie down among his kind. He had slept in the open hundreds of times; but it had been from choice. There had been pleasure then, in waking to the smell of balsam and opening his eyes upon the stars. But to do the same thing from compulsion, because men had closed up their ranks and ejected him from their midst, was an outrage he would not accept. In the darkness his head went up, while his eyes burned with a fire more intense than that of any of the mild beacons from the towns below, as he strode back to the old root-hedge and leaped it.

He felt the imprudence, not to say the uselessness, of the movement, as he made it; and yet he kept on, finding himself in a field in which cows and horses were startled from their munching by his footstep. It was another degree nearer to the organized life in which he was entitled to a place. Shielded by a shrubbery of sleeping goldenrod, he stole down the slope, making his way to the lane along which the beasts went out to pasture and came home. Following the trail, he passed a meadow, a potato-field, and a patch of Indian corn, till the scent of flowers told him he was coming on a garden. A minute later, low, velvety domes of clipped yew rose in the foreground, and he knew himself to be in touch with the civilization that clung, like a hardy vine, to the coves and promontories of the lake, while its tendrils withered as soon as they were flung up toward the mountains. Only a few steps more, and, between the yews, he saw the light streaming from the open doors and windows of a house.

It was such a house as, during the two years he had spent up in the high timber-lands, he had caught sight of only on the rare occasions when he came within the precincts of a town—a house whose outward aspect, even at night, suggested something of taste, means, and social position for its occupants. Slipping nearer still, he saw curtains fluttering in the breeze of the August evening, and Virginia creeper dropping in heavily massed garlands from the roof of a columned veranda. A French window was open to the floor, and within, he could see vaguely, people were seated.

The scene was simple enough, but to the fugitive it had a kind of sacredness. It was like a glimpse into the heaven he has lost caught by a fallen angel. For the moment he forgot his hunger and weakness, in this feast for the heart and eyes. It was with something of the pleasure of recognizing long-absent faces that he traced the line of a sofa against the wall, and stated to himself that there was a row of prints hanging above it. There had been no such details as these to note in his cell, nor yet in the courtroom which for months had constituted his only change of outlook Insensibly to himself, he crept nearer, drawn by the sheer spell of gazing.

Finding a gate leading into the garden, he opened it softly, leaving it so, in order to secure his retreat. From the shelter of one of the rounded yew-trees he could make his observations more at ease. He perceived now that the house stood on a terrace, and turned the garden front, its more secluded aspect, in his direction. The high hedges, common in these lakeside villages, screened it from the road; while the open French window threw a shaft of brightness down the yew-tree walk, casting the rest of the garden into gloom.

To Norrie Ford, peeping furtively from behind one of the domes of clipped foliage, there was exasperation in the fact that his new position gave him no glimpse of the people in the room. His hunger to see them became for the minute more insistent than that for food. They represented that human society from which he had waked one morning to find himself cut off, as a rock is cut off by seismic convulsion from the mainland of which it has formed a part. It was in a sort of effort to span the gulf separating him from his own past that he peered now into this room, whose inmates were only passing the hours between the evening meal and bedtime. That people could sit tranquilly reading books or playing games filled him with a kind of wonder.

When he considered it safe he slipped along to what he hoped would prove a better point of view, but, finding it no more advantageous, he darted to still another. The light lured him as it might lure an insect of the night, till presently he stood on the very steps of the terrace. He knew the danger of his situation, but he could not bring himself to turn and steal away till he had fixed the picture of that cheerful interior firmly on his memory. The risk was great, but the glimpse of life was worth it.

With powers of observation quickened by his plight, he noted that the home was just such a one as that from which he had sprung—one where old engravings hung on the walls, while books filled the shelves, and papers and periodicals strewed the tables. The furnishings spoke of comfort and a modest dignity. Obliquely in his line of vision he could see two children, seated at a table and poring over a picture-book The boy, a manly urchin, might have been fourteen, the girl a year or two younger. Her curls fell over the hand and arm supporting her cheek, so that Ford could only guess at the blue eyes concealed behind them. Now and then the boy turned a page before she was ready, whereupon followed pretty cries of protestation. It was perhaps this mimic quarrel that called forth a remark from some one sitting within the shadow.

"Evie dear, it's time to go to bed. Billy, I don't believe they let you stay up as late as this at home."

"Oh yes, they do," came Billy's answer, given with sturdy assurance. "I often stay up till nine."

"Well, it's half past now; so you'd both better come and say good-night."

With one foot resting on the turf and the other raised to the first step of the terrace, as he stood with folded arms, Ford watched the little scene, in which the children closed their book, pushed back their chairs, and crossed the room to say good-night to the two who were seated in the shadow. The boy came first, with hands thrust into his trousers pockets in a kind of grave nonchalance. The little girl fluttered along behind, but broke her journey across the room by stepping into the opening of the long window and looking out into the night. Ford stood breathless and motionless, expecting her to see him and cry out. But she turned away and danced again into the shadow, after which he saw her no more. The silence that fell within the room told him that the elders were left alone.

Stealthily, like a thief, Ford crept up the steps and over the turf of the terrace. The rising of the wind at that minute drowned all sound of his movements, so that he was tempted right on to the veranda, where a coarse matting deadened his tread. He dared not hold himself upright on this dangerous ground, but, crouching low, he was blotted from sight, while he himself could see what passed within. He would only, he said, look once more into kindly human faces and steal away as he came.

He could perceive now that the lady who had spoken was an invalid reclining in a long chair, lightly covered with a rug. A fragile, dainty little creature, her laces, trinkets, and rings revealed her as one clinging to the elegancies of another phase of life, though Fate had sent her to live, and perhaps to die, here on the edge of the wilderness. He made the same observation with regard to the man who sat with his back to the window. He was in informal evening dress—a circumstance that, in this land of more or less primitive simplicity, spoke of a sense of exile. He was slight and middle-aged, and though his face was hidden, Ford received the impression of having seen him already, but from another point of view. His habit of using a magnifying-glass as, with some difficulty, he read a newspaper in the light of a green-shaded lamp, seemed to Ford especially familiar, though more pressing thoughts kept him from trying to remember where and when he had seen some one do the same thing within the recent past.

As he crouched by the window watching them, it came into his mind that they were just the sort of people of whom he had least need to be afraid. The sordid tragedy up in the mountains had probably interested them little, and in any case they could not as yet have heard of his escape. If he broke in on them and demanded food, they would give it to him as to some common desperado, and be glad to let him go. If there was any one to inspire terror, it was he, with his height, and youth, and wildness of aspect. He was thinking out the most natural method of playing some small comedy of violence, when suddenly the man threw down the paper with a sigh. On the instant the lady spoke, as though she had been awaiting her cue.

"I don't see why you should feel so about it," she said, making an effort to control a cough. "You must have foreseen something of this sort when you took up the law."

The answer reached Ford's ears only as a murmur, but he guessed its import from the response.

"True," she returned, when he had spoken, "to foresee possibilities is one thing, and to meet them is another; but the anticipation does something to nerve one for the necessity when it comes."

Again there was a murmur in which Ford could distinguish nothing, but again her reply told him what it meant.

"The right and the wrong, as I understand it," she went on, "is something with which you have nothing to do. Your part is to administer the law, not to judge of how it works."

Once more Ford was unable to catch what was said in reply, but once more the lady's speech enlightened him.

"That's the worst of it? Possibly; but it's also the best of it; for since it relieves you of responsibility it's foolish for you to feel remorse."

What was the motive of these remarks? Ford found himself possessed of a strange curiosity to know. He pressed as closely as he dared to the open door, but for the moment nothing more was said. In the silence that followed he began again to wonder how he could best make his demand for food, when a sound from behind startled him. It was the sound which, among all others, caused him the wildest alarm—that of a human footstep. His next movement came from the same blind impulse that sends a hunted fox to take refuge in a church—eager only for the instant's safety. He had sprung to his feet, cleared the threshold, and leaped into the room, before the reflection came to him that, if he was caught, he must at least be caught game. Wheeling round toward the window-door through which he had entered, he stood defiantly, awaiting his pursuers, and heedless of the astonished eyes fixed upon him. It was not till some seconds had gone by, and he realized that he was not followed, that he glanced about the room. When he did so it was to ignore the woman, in order to concentrate all his gaze on the little, iron-gray man who, still seated, stared at him, with lips parted. In his own turn, Norrie Ford was dumb and wide-eyed in amazement It was a long minute before either spoke.

"You?"

The monosyllable came simultaneously from each. The little woman got to her feet in alarm. There was inquiry as well as terror in her face—inquiry to which her husband felt prompted to respond.

"This is the man," he said, in a voice of forced calmness, "whom—whom—we've been talking about."

"Not the man—you—?"

"Yes," he nodded, "the man I—I—sentenced to death—this morning."

II

"Evie!"

Mrs. Wayne went to the door, but on Ford's assurance that her child had nothing to fear from him, she paused with her hand on the knob to look in curiosity at this wild young man, whose doom lent him a kind of fascination. Again, for a minute, all three were silent in the excess of their surprise. Wayne himself sat rigid, gazing up at the new-comer with strained eyes blurred with partial blindness. Though slightly built and delicate, he was not physically timid; and as the seconds went by he was able to form an idea as to what had happened. He himself, in view of the tumultuous sympathy displayed by hunters and lumber-jacks with the man who passed for their boon companion, had advised Ford's removal from the pretty toy prison of the county-town to the stronger one at Plattsville. It was clear that the prisoner had been helped to escape, either before the change had been effected or while it was taking place. There was nothing surprising in that; the astonishing thing was that the fugitive should have found his way to this house above all others. Mrs. Wayne seemed to think so too, for it was she who spoke first, in a tone which she tried to make peremptory, in spite of its tremor of fear.

"What did you come here for?"

Ford looked at her for the first time—in a blankness not without a dull element of pleasure. It was at least two or three years since he had seen anything so dainty—not, in fact, since his own mother died. At all times his mind worked slowly, so that he found nothing to reply till she repeated her question with a show of increased severity.

"I came here for protection," he said then.

His hesitation and bewildered air imparted assurance to his still astonished hosts.

"Isn't it an odd place in which to look for that?" Wayne asked, in an excitement, he strove to subdue.

The question was the stimulus Ford needed in order to get his wits into play.

"No," he replied, slowly; "I've a right to protection from the man who sentenced me to death for a crime of which he knows me innocent."

Wayne concealed a start by smoothing the newspaper over his crossed knees, but he was unable to keep a shade of thickness out of his voice as he answered:

"You had a fair trial. You were found guilty. You have had the benefit of all the resources allowed by the law. You have no right to say I know you to be innocent."

Wholly spent, Ford dropped into a chair from which one of the children had risen. With his arm hanging limply over the back he sat staring haggardly at the judge, as though finding nothing to say.

"I have a right to read any man's mind," he muttered, after a long pause, "when it's as transparent as yours. No one had any doubt as to your convictions—after your charge."

"That has nothing to do with it. If I charged in your favor, it was because I wanted you to have the benefit of every possible plea. When those pleas were found insufficient by a jury of your peers—"

Ford emitted a sound that might have been a laugh, had there been mirth in it.

"A jury of my peers! A lot of thick-headed country tradesmen, prejudiced against me from the start because I'd sometimes kicked up a row in their town! They weren't my peers any more than they were yours!"

"The law assumes all men to be equal—"

"Just as it assumes all men to be intelligent—only they're not. The law is a very fine theory. The chief thing to be, said against it is that five times out of ten it leaves human nature out of account. I'm condemned to death, not because I killed a man, but because you lawyers won't admit that your theory doesn't work."

He began to speak more easily, with the energy born of his desperate situation and his sense of wrong. He sat up straighter; the air of dejection with which he had sunk to the chair slipped from him; his gray eyes, of the kind called "honest," shot out glances of protest. The elder man found himself once more struggling against the wave of sympathy which at times in the court-room had been almost too strong for him. He was forced to intrench himself mentally within the system he served before bracing himself to reply.

"I can't keep you from having your opinion—"

"Nor can I save you from having yours. Look at me, judge!" He was bolt upright now, throwing his arms wide with a gesture in which there was more appeal than indignation "Look at me! I'm a strong, healthy-bodied, healthy-minded fellow of twenty-four; but I'm drenched to the skin, I'm half naked, I'm nearly dead with hunger, I'm an outlaw for life—and you're responsible for it all."

It was Wayne's turn for protest, and though he winced, he spoke sharply.

"I had my duty to perform—"

"Good God, man, don't sit there and call that thing your duty! You're something more than a wheel in a machine. You were a human being before you were a judge. With your convictions you should have come down from the bench and washed your hands of the whole affair. The very action would have given me a chance—"

"You mustn't speak like that to my husband," Mrs. Wayne broke in, indignantly, from the doorway. "If you only knew what he has suffered on your account—"

"Is it anything like what I've suffered on his?"

"I dare say it's worse. He has scarcely slept or eaten since he knew he would have to pass that dreadful sen—"

"Come! come!" Wayne exclaimed, in the impatient tone of a man who puts an end to a useless discussion. "We can't spend time on this subject any longer. I'm not on my defence—"

"You are on your defence," Ford declared, instantly. "Even your wife puts you there. We're not in a courtroom as we were this morning. Circumstantial evidence means nothing to us in this isolated house, where you're no longer the judge, as I'm no longer the prisoner. We're just two naked human beings, stripped of everything but their inborn rights—and I claim mine."

"Well—what are they?"

"They're simple enough. I claim the right to have something to eat, and to go my way without being molested—or betrayed. You'll admit I'm not asking much."

"You may have the food," Mrs. Wayne said, in a tone not without compassion. "I'll go and get it."

For a minute or two there was no sound but that of her cough, as she sped down a passage. Before speaking, Wayne passed his hand across his brow as though in an effort to clear his mental vision.

"No; you don't seem to be asking much. But, as a matter of fact, you're demanding my pledge to my country. I undertook to administer its laws—"

Ford sprang up.

"You've done it," he cried, "and I'm the result! You've administered the law right up to its hilt, and your duty as a judge is performed. Surely you're free now to think of yourself as a man and to treat me as one."

"I might do that, and still think you a man dangerous to leave at large."

"But do you?"

"That's my affair. Whatever your opinion of the courts that have judged your case, I must accept their verdict."

"In your official capacity—yes; but not here, as host to the poor dog who comes under your roof for shelter. My rights are sacred. Even the wild Arab—"

He paused abruptly. Over Wayne's shoulder, through the window still open to the terrace, he saw a figure cross the darkness. Could his pursuers be waiting outside for their chance to spring on him? A perceptible fraction of a second went by before he told himself he must have been mistaken.

"Even the wild Arab would think them so," he concluded, his glance shifting rapidly between the judge and the window open behind him.

"But I'm not a wild Arab," Wayne replied. "My first duty is toward my country and its organized society."

"I don't think so. Your first duty is toward the man you know you've sentenced wrongly. Fate has shown you an unusual mercy in giving you a chance to help him."

"I can be sorry for the sentence and yet feel that I could not have acted otherwise."

"Then what are you going to do now?"

"What would you expect me to do but hand you back to justice?"

"How?"

There was a suggestion of physical disdain in the tone of the laconic question, as well as in the look he fixed on the neat, middle-aged man doing his best to be cool and collected Wayne glanced over his shoulder toward the telephone on the wall. Norrie Ford understood and spoke quickly:

"Yes; you could ring up the police at Greenport, but I could strangle you before you crossed the floor."

"So you could; but would you? If you did, should you be any better off? Should you be as well off as you are now? As it is, there is a possibility of a miscarriage of justice, of which one day you may get the benefit. There would be no such possibility then. You would be tracked down within forty-eight hours."

"Oh, you needn't argue; I've no intention—" Once more he paused. The same shadow had flitted across the dark space outside, this time with a distinct flutter of a white dress. He could only think it was some one getting help together; and while he went on to finish his sentence in words, all his subconscious faculties were at work, seeking an escape from the trap in which he was taken.

"I've no intention of doing violence unless I'm driven to it—"

"But if you are driven to it—?"

"I've a right to defend myself. Organized society, as you call it, has put me where it has no further claim upon me. I must fight against it single-handed—and I'll do it. I shall spare neither man nor woman—nor woman"—he raised his voice so as to be heard outside—"who stands in my way."

He threw back his head and looked defiantly out into the night. As if in response to this challenge a tall, white figure suddenly emerged from the darkness and stood plainly before him.

It was a girl, whose movements were curiously quick and silent, as she beckoned to him, over the head of the judge, who sat with his back toward her.

"Then all the more reason why society should protect itself against you," Wayne began again; but Ford was no longer listening. His attention was wholly fixed on the girl, who continued to beckon noiselessly, fluttering for an instant close to the threshold of the room, then withdrawing suddenly to the very edge of the terrace, waving a white scarf in token that he should follow her. She had repeated her action again and again, beckoning with renewed insistence, before he understood and made up his mind.

"I don't say that I refuse to help you," Wayne was saying. "My sympathy with you is very sincere. If I can get your sentence commuted—In fact, a reprieve is almost certain—"

With a dash as lithe and sudden as that which had brought him in, Ford was out on the terrace, following the white dress and the waving scarf which were already disappearing down the yew-tree walk. The girl's flight over grass and gravel was like nothing so much as that of a bird skimming through the air. Ford's own steps crunched loudly on the stillness of the night, so that if any one lay in ambush he knew he could not escape. He was prepared to hear shots come ringing from any quarter, but he ran on with the indifference of a soldier grown used to battle, intent on keeping up with the shadow fleeing before him.

He followed her through the garden gate he himself had left open, and down the lane leading to the pasture. At the point where he had entered it from the right, she turned to the left, keeping away from the mountains and parallel with the lake. There was no moon, but the night was clear; and no sound but that of the shrill, sustained chorus of insect life.

Beyond the pasture the lane became nothing but a path, zigzagging up a hillside between patches of Indian corn. The girl sped over it so lightly that Ford would have found it hard to keep her in sight if from time to time she had not paused and waited. When he came near enough to see the outlines of her form she flew on again, less like a living woman than a mountain wraith.

From the top of the hill he could see the dull gleam of the lake with its girdle of lamp-lit towns. Here the woodland began again; not the main body of the forest, but one of its long arms, thrust down over hill and valley, twisting its way in among villages and farm lands. That which had been a path now become a trail, along which the girl flitted with the ease of habit and familiarity.

In the concentration of his effort to keep the moving white spot in view Ford lost count of time. Similarly he had little notion of the distance they were covering. He guessed that they had been ten or fifteen minutes on the way, and that they might have gone a mile, when, after waiting for him to come almost near enough to speak to her, she began moving in a direction at an acute angle to that by which they had come. At the same time he perceived that they were on the side of a low wooded mountain and that they were beating their way round it.

All at once they emerged on a tiny clearing—a grassy ledge on the slope. Through the starlight he could see the hillside break away steeply into a vaporous gorge, while above him the mountain raised a black dome amid the serried points of the sky-line. The dryad-like creature beckoned him forward with her scarf, until suddenly she stopped with the decisive pause of one who has reached her goal. Coming up with her, he saw her unlock the door of a small cabin, which had hitherto not detached itself from the surrounding darkness.

"Go in," she whispered. "Don't strike a light. There are biscuits somewhere, in a box. Grope for them. There's a couch in a corner."

Without allowing him to speak, she forced him gently over the threshold and closed the door upon him. Standing inside in the darkness, he heard the grating of her key in the lock, and the rustle of her skirts as she sped away.

III

From the heavy sleep of fatigue Ford woke with the twittering of birds that announces the dawn. His first thought before opening his eyes, that he was still in his cell, was dispelled by the silky touch of the Sorrento rugs on which he lay. He fingered them again and again in a kind of wonder, while his still half-slumbering senses struggled for the memory of what had happened, and the realization of where he was. When at last he was able to reconstruct the events of the preceding night, he raised himself on his elbow and peered about him in the dim morning twilight.

The object he discerned most readily was an easel, giving him the secret of his refuge. On the wooden walls of the cabin, which was fairly spacious, water-color sketches were pinned at intervals, while on the mantelpiece above a bricked fireplace one or two stood framed. Over the mantelpiece a pair of snow-shoes were crossed as decorations, between which hung a view of the city of Quebec. On a lay-figure in a corner was thrown carelessly the sort of blanket coat worn by Canadians during winter sports. Paints and palettes were arranged on a table by the wall, and on a desk in the middle of the room were writing materials and books. More books stood in a small suspended bookcase. Beside a comfortable reading-chair one or two magazines lay on the floor. His gaze travelled last to the large apron, or pinafore, on a peg fastened in a door immediately beside his couch. The door suggested an inner room, and he got up promptly to explore it. It proved to be cramped and dark, lighted only from the larger apartment, which in its turn had but the one high north window of the ordinary studio. The small room was little more than a shed or "lean-to", serving the purposes of kitchen and storeroom combined. The arrangements of the whole cabin showed that some one had built it with a view to passing in seclusion a few days at a time without forsaking the simpler amenities of civilized life; and it was clear that that "some one" was a woman. What interested Ford chiefly for the moment was the discovery of a sealed glass jar of water, from which he was able to slake his twenty hours' thirst.

Returning to the room in which he had slept, he drew back the green silk curtain covering the north light in order to take his bearings. As he had guessed on the previous night, the slope on which the cabin was perched broke steeply down into a wooded gorge, beyond which the lower hills rolled in decreasing magnitude to the shore of Champlain, visible from this point of view in glimpses, less as an inland sea than like a chain of lakelets. Sunrise over Vermont flooded the waters with tints of rose and saffron, but made of the Green Mountains a long, gigantic mass of purple-black twisting its jagged outline toward the north into the Hog's Back and the Camel's Hump with a kind of monstrous grace. To the east, in New York, the Adirondacks, with the sunlight full upon them, shot up jade-colored peaks into the electric blue—the scarred pyramid of Graytop standing forth dark, detached, and alone, like a battered veteran sentinel.

In an access of conscious hatred of this vast panoramic beauty which had become the background of his tragedy, Ford pulled the curtain into place again and turned once more to the interior of the room. It began to seem more strange to him the more it grew familiar. Why was he here? How long was he to stay? How was he to get away again? Had this girl caught him like a rat in a trap, or did she mean well by him? If, as he supposed, she was Wayne's daughter, she would probably not be slow in carrying out her father's plan of handing him back to justice—and yet his mind refused to connect the wraith of the night before with either police work or betrayal. Her appearance had been so dim and fleeting that he could have fancied her the dryad of a dream, had it not been for his surroundings.

He began to examine them once more, inspecting the water-colors on the wall one by one, in search of some clew to her personality. The first sketch was of a nun in a convent garden—the background vaguely French, and yet with a difference. The next was of a trapper, or voyageur, pushing a canoe into the waters of a wild northern lake. The next was a group of wigwams with squaws and children in the foreground. Then came more nuns; then more voyageurs with their canoes; then more Indians and wigwams It occurred to Ford that the nuns might have been painted from life, the voyageurs and Indians from imagination He turned to the two framed drawings on the chimney-piece Both represented winter scenes. In the one a sturdy voyageur was conveying his wife and small personal belongings across the frozen snow on a sled drawn by a team of dogs. In the other a woman, apparently the same woman as in the preceding sketch, had fallen in the midst of a blinding storm, while a tall man of European aspect—decidedly not the voyageur—was standing beside her with a baby in his arms. These were clearly fancy pictures, and, so it seemed to Ford, the work of one who was trying to recapture some almost forgotten memory. In any case he was too deeply engrossed by his own situation to dwell on them further.

He wheeled round again toward the centre of the room, impatiently casting about him for something to eat. The tin box, from which he had devoured all the biscuits, lay empty on the floor, but he picked it up and ate hungrily the few crumbs sticking in its corners. He ransacked the small dark room in the hope of finding more, but vainly. As far as he could see, the cabin had never been used for the purpose it was meant to serve, nor ever occupied for more than a few hours at a time. It had probably been built in a caprice that had passed with its completion. He guessed something from the fact that there was no visible attempt to sketch the scene before the door, though the site had evidently been chosen for its beauty.

He had nothing by which to measure time, but he knew that precious hours which he might have utilized for escape were passing. He began to chafe at the delay. With the impulse of youth to be active, he longed to be out, where he could at least use his feet. His clothes had dried upon him; in spite of his hunger he was refreshed by his night's sleep; he was convinced that, once in the open, he could elude capture. He pulled back the curtain again in order to reconnoitre. It was well to be as familiar as possible with the immediate lay of the land, so as to avail himself of any advantages it might offer.

The colors of sunrise had disappeared, and he judged that it must be seven or eight o'clock. Between the rifts of the lower hills the lake was flashing silver, while where Vermont had been nothing but a mass of shadow, blue-green mountains were emerging in a triple row, from which the last veils of vapor were being dragged up into the firmament On the left, the Adirondacks were receding into translucent dimness, in a lilac haze of heat.

With an effort to get back the woodcraft suddenly inspired by his first dash for freedom, he ran his eye over the landscape, noting the points with which he was familiar. To the west, in a niche between Graytop and the double peak of Windy Mountain, he could place the county-town; to the north, beyond the pretty headlands and the shining coves, the prison of Plattsville was waiting to receive him. Farther to the north was Canada; and to the south the great waterway led toward the populous mazes of New York.

With an impatience bordering on nervousness he realized that these general facts did not help him. He must avoid the prison and the county-town, of course; while both New York and Canada offered him ultimate chances. But his most pressing dangers lurked in the immediate foreground; and there he could see nothing but an unsuggestive slope of ash and pine. The rapidity of instinct by which last night he had known exactly what to do gave place this morning to his slower and more characteristic mental processes.

He was still gazing outward in perplexity, when, through the trees beyond the grassy ledge, he caught the flicker of something white. He pressed closer to the pane for a better view, and a few seconds later a girl, whom he recognized as the nymph of last night, came out of the forest, followed by a fawn-colored collie. She walked smoothly and swiftly, carrying a large basket with her right hand, while with her left she motioned him away from the window. He stepped back, leaping to the door as she unlocked it, in order to relieve her of her burden.

"You mustn't do that," she said, speaking quickly. "You mustn't look out of the window or come to the door. There are a hundred men beating the mountain to find you."

She closed the door and locked it on the inside. While Ford lifted her basket to the desk in the centre of the room she drew the green curtain hastily, covering the window. Her movements were so rapid that he could catch no glimpse of her face, though he had time to note again the curious silence that marked her acts. The dog emitted a low growl.

"You must go in here," she said, decisively, throwing open the door of the inner room. "You mustn't speak or look out unless I tell you. I'll bring you your breakfast presently. Lie down, Micmac."

The gesture by which she forced him across the threshold was compelling rather than commanding. Before he realized that he had obeyed her, he was standing alone in the darkness, with the sound of a low voice of liquid quality echoing in his ears. Of her face he had got only the hint of dark eyes flashing with an eager, non-Caucasian brightness—eyes that drew their fire from a source alien to that of any Aryan race.

But he brushed that impression away as foolish. Her words had the unmistakable note of cultivation, while a glance at her person showed her to be a lady. He could see, too, that her dress, though simple, was according to the standard of means and fashion. She was no Pocahontas; and yet the thought of Pocahontas came to him. Certainly there was in her tones, as well as in her movements, something akin to this vast aboriginal nature around him, out of which she seemed to spring as the human element in its beauty.

He was still thinking of this when the door opened and she came in again, carrying a plate piled high with cold meat and bread-and-butter.

"I'm sorry it's only this," she smiled, as she placed it before him; "but I had to take what I could get—and what wouldn't be missed. I'll try to do better in future."

He noted the matter-of-fact tone in which she uttered the concluding words, as though they were to have plenty of time together; but for the moment he was too fiercely hungry to speak. For a few seconds she stood off, watching him eat, after which she withdrew, with the light swiftness that characterized all her motions.

He had nearly finished his meal when she returned again.

"I've brought you these," she said, not without a touch of shyness, against which she struggled by making her tone as commonplace as possible. "I shall bring you more things by degrees."

On a chair beside that on which he was sitting she laid a pair of slippers, a pair of socks, a shirt, a collar, and a tie.

He jumped up hastily, less in surprise than in confusion.

"I can't take anything of Judge Wayne's—" he began to stammer; but she interrupted him.

"I understand your feelings about that," she said, simply. "They're not Judge Wayne's; they were my father's. I have plenty more."

In his relief at finding she was not Wayne's daughter he spoke awkwardly.

"Your father? Is he—dead?"

"Yes; he's dead. You needn't be afraid to take the things. He would have liked to help a man—in your position."

"In my position? Then you know—who I am?"

"Yes; you're Norrie Ford. I saw that as soon as I chanced on the terrace last night."

"And you're not afraid of me?"

"I am—a little," she admitted; "but that doesn't matter."

"You needn't be—" he began to explain, but she checked him again.

"We mustn't talk now. I must shut the door and leave you in the dark all day. Men will be passing by, and they mustn't hear you. I shall be painting in the studio, so that they won't suspect anything, if you keep still."

Allowing him no opportunity to speak again, she closed the door, leaving him once more in darkness. Sitting in the constraint she imposed upon him, he could hear her moving in the outer room, where, owing to the lightness of the wooden partition, it was not difficult to guess what she was doing at any given moment. He knew when she opened the outer door and moved the easel toward the entrance. He knew when she took down the apron from its peg and pinned it on. He knew when she drew up a chair and pretended to set to work. In the hour or two of silence that ensued he was sure that, whatever she might be doing with her brush, she was keeping eye and ear alert in his defence.

Who was she? What interest had she in his fate? What power had raised her up to help him? Even yet he had scarcely seen her face; but he had received an impression of intelligence. He was sure she was no more than a girl—certainly not twenty—and yet she acted with the decision of maturity. At the same time there was about her that suggestion of a wild origin—that something not wholly tamed to the dictates of civilized life—which persisted in his imagination, even if he could not verify it in fact.

Twice in the course of the morning he heard voices. Men spoke to her through the open doorway, and she replied. Once he distinguished her words.

"Oh no," she called out to some one at a distance. "I'm not afraid. He won't do me any harm. I've got Micmac with me. I often stay here all day, but I shall go home early. Thanks," she added, in response to some further hint. "I'd rather not have any one here. I never can paint unless I'm quite alone."

Her tone was light, and Ford fancied that as she spoke she smiled at the passers-by who had thought it right to warn her against himself; but when, a few minutes later, she pushed open the door softly, the gravity that seemed more natural to her had returned.

"Several parties of men have gone by," she whispered. "They have no suspicion. They won't have, if you keep still. They think you have slipped away from here, and have gone back toward the lumber camps. This is your lunch," she continued, hastily, placing more food before him. "It will have to be your dinner, too. It will be safer for me not to come into this room again to-day. You must not go out into the studio till you're sure it's dark. No noise. No light. I've put an extra rug on the couch in case you're chilly in the night."

She spoke breathlessly, in whispers, and, having finished, slipped away.

"You're awfully good," he whispered back. "Won't you tell me your name?"

"Hush!" she warned him, as she closed the door.

He stood still in the darkness, leaving his food untasted, listening to the soft rustle of her movements beyond the wall. Except that he heard no more voices, the afternoon passed like the morning. At the end of what seemed to him interminable hours he knew by acute attention that she hung her apron on its peg, put on her hat, and took up her basket, while Micmac rose and shook himself. Presently she closed the door of the cabin and locked it on the outside. He fancied he could almost hear her step as she sped over the grass and into the forest. Only then did the tension of his nerves relax, as, dropping to his chair in the darkness, he began to eat.

IV

The two or three days that followed were much like the first. Each morning she came early, bringing him food, and such articles of clothing as she thought he could wear. By degrees she provided him with a complete change of raiment, and though the fit was tolerable, they laughed together at the transformation produced in him. It was the first time he had seen her smile, and even in the obscurity of the inner room where she still kept him secluded he noted the vividness with which her habitually grave features lighted up. Micmac, too, became friendly, inferring with the instinct of his race that Ford was an object to be guarded.

"No one would know you now," the girl declared, surveying him with satisfaction.

"Were these things all your father's?" he asked, with a new attempt to penetrate the mystery of her personality.

"Yes," she returned, absently, continuing her inspection of him. "They were sent to me, and I kept them. I never knew why I did; but I suppose it was—for this."

"He must have been a tall man?" Ford hazarded, again.

"Yes, he must have been," she returned, unwarily. Then, feeling that the admission required some explanation, she added, with a touch of embarrassment, "I never saw him—not that I can remember."

"Then he died a long time ago?"

Her reply came reluctantly, after some delay:

"Not so very long—about four years ago now."

"And yet you hadn't seen him since you were a child?"

"There were reasons. We mustn't talk. Some one may pass and hear us."

He could see that her hurry in finishing the small tasks she had come in to perform for him arose not so much from precaution as from a desire to escape from this particular subject.

"I suppose you could tell me his name?" he persisted.

Her hands moved deftly, producing order among the things he had left in confusion, but she remained silent. It was a silence in which he recognized an element of protest though he ignored it.

"You could tell me his name?" he asked, again.

"His name," she said, at last, "wouldn't convey anything to you. It wouldn't do you any good to know it."

"It would gratify my curiosity. I should think you might do as much as that for me."

"I'm doing a great deal for you as it is. I don't think you should ask for more."

Her tone was one of reproach rather than of annoyance, and he was left with a sense of having committed an indiscretion. The consciousness brought with it the perception that in a measure he was growing used to his position. He was beginning to take it for granted that this girl should come and minister to his wants. She herself did it so simply, so much as a matter of course, that the circumstance lost much of its strangeness. Now and then he could detect some confusion in her manner as she served him, but he could see too that she surmounted it, in view of the fact that for him the situation was one of life and death. She was clearly not indifferent to elementary social usages; she only saw that the case was one in which they did not obtain. In his long, unoccupied hours of darkness it distracted his thoughts from his own peril to speculate about her; and when she appeared his questions were the more blunt because of the small opportunity she allowed for asking them.

"Won't they miss you at home?" he inquired, on the next occasion when she entered his cell.

She paused with a look of surprise.

"At home? Where do you mean?"

"Why—where you live; where your mother lives."

"My mother died a few months after I was born."

"Oh! But even so, you live somewhere, don't you?"

"I do; but they don't miss me there, if that's what you want to know."

"I was only afraid," he said, apologetically, "that you were giving me too much of your time."

"I've nothing else to do with it. I shall be only too glad if I can help you to escape."

"Why? Why should you care about me?"

"I don't," she said, simply; "at least, I don't know that I do."

"Oh, then you're helping me just—on general principles?"

"Quite so."

"Well," he smiled, "mayn't I ask why, again?"

"Because I don't like the law."

"You mean that you don't like the law as a whole?—or—or this law in particular?"

"I don't like any law. I don't like anything about it. But," she added, resorting to her usual method of escape, "we mustn't talk any more now. Some men passed here this morning, and they may be coming back. They've given up looking for you; they are convinced you're up in the lumber camps, but all the same we must be careful still."

He had no further speech with her that day, and the next she remained at the cabin little more than an hour.

"It's just as well for me not to excite curiosity," she explained to him before leaving; "and you needn't be uneasy now. They've stopped the hunt altogether. They say there's not a spot within a radius of ten miles of Greenport that they haven't searched. It would never occur to any one that you could be here. Every one knows me; and so the thought that I could be helping you would be the last in their minds."

"And have you no remorse at betraying their confidence?"

She shook her head. "Most of them," she declared, "are very well pleased to think you've got away; and even if they weren't I should never feel remorse for helping any one to evade the law."

"You seem to have a great objection to the law."

"Well, haven't you?"

"Yes; but in my case it's comprehensible."

"So it is in mine—if you only knew."

"Perhaps," he said, looking at her steadily, "this is as good a time as any to assure you that the law has done me wrong."

He waited for her to say something; but as she stroked Micmac's head in silence, he continued.

"I never committed the crime of which they found me guilty."

He waited again for some intimation of her confidence.

"Their string of circumstantial evidence was plausible enough, I admit. The only weak point about it was that it wasn't true."

Even through the obscurity of his refuge he could feel the suspension of expression in her bearing, and could imagine it bringing a kind of eclipse over her eyes.

"He was very cruel to you—your uncle?—wasn't he?" she asked, at last.

"He was very cantankerous; but that wouldn't be a reason for shooting him in his sleep—whatever I may have said when in a rage."

"I should think it might be."

He started. If it were not for the necessity of making no noise he would have laughed.

"Are you so bloodthirsty—?" he began.

"Oh no, I'm not; but I should think it is what a man would do. My father wouldn't have submitted to it. I know he killed one man; and he may have killed two or three."

Ford whistled under his breath.

"So that," he said, after a pause, "your objection to the law is—hereditary."

"My objection to the law is because it is unjust. The world is full of injustice," she added, indignantly, "and the laws men live by create it."

"And your aim is to defeat them?"

"I can't talk any more now," she said, reverting to an explanatory tone of voice. "I must go. I've arranged everything for you for the day. If you are very quiet you can sit in the studio and read; but you mustn't look out at the window, or even draw back the curtain. If you hear a step outside, you must creep in here and shut the door. And you needn't be impatient; because I'm going to spend the day working out a plan for your escape."

But when she appeared next morning she declined to give details of the plan she had in mind. She preferred to work it out alone, she said, and give him the outlines only when she had settled them. It chanced to be a day of drenching summer rain, and Ford, with a renewed effort to get some clew to her identity, expressed his surprise that she should have been allowed to venture out.

"Oh, no one worries about what I do," she said, indifferently "I go about as I choose."

"So much the better for me," he laughed. "That's how you came to be wandering on old Wayne's terrace, just in the nick of time. What stumps me is the promptness with which you thought of stowing me away."

"It wasn't promptness, exactly. As a matter of fact, I had worked the whole thing out beforehand."

His eyebrows went up incredulously. "For me?"

"No, not for you; for anybody. Ever since my guardian allowed me to build the studio—last year—I've imagined how easy it would be for some—some hunted person to stay hidden here, almost indefinitely. I've tried to fancy it, when I've had nothing better to do."

"You don't seem to have had anything better to do very often," he observed, glancing about the cabin.

"If you mean that I haven't painted much, that's quite true. I thought I couldn't do without a studio—till I got one. But when I've come here, I'm afraid it's generally been to—to indulge in day-dreams."

"Day-dreams of helping prisoners to escape. It wouldn't be every girl's fancy, but it's not for me to complain of that."

"My father would have wanted me to do it," she declared, as if in self-justification. "A woman once helped him to get out of prison."

"Good for her! Who was she?"

Having asked the question lightly, in a boyish impulse to talk, he was surprised to see her show signs of embarrassment.

"She was my mother," she said, after an interval in which she seemed to be making up her mind to give the information.

In the manifest difficulty she had in speaking, Ford sprang to her aid.

"That's like the old story of Gilbert à Becket—Thomas à Becket's father, you know."

The historical reference was received in silence, as she bent over the small task she had in hand.

"He married the woman who helped him out of prison," Ford went on, for her enlightenment.

She raised her head and faced him.

"It wasn't like the story of Gilbert à Becket," she said, quietly.

It took some seconds of Ford's slow thinking to puzzle out the meaning of this. Even then he might have pondered in vain had it not been for the flush that gradually over-spread her features, and brought what he called the wild glint into her eyes. When he understood, he reddened in his own turn, making matters worse.

"I beg your pardon," he stammered. "I never thought—"

"You needn't beg my pardon," she interrupted, speaking with a catch in her breath. "I wanted you to know.... You've asked me so many questions that it seemed as if I was ashamed of my father and mother when I didn't answer.... I'm not ashamed of them.... I'd rather you knew.... Every one does—who knows me."

Half unconsciously he glanced up at the framed sketches on the chimney-piece. Her eyes followed him, and she spoke instantly:

"You're quite right. I meant that—for them."

They were standing in the studio, into which she had allowed him to come from the stifling darkness of the inner room, on the ground that the rain protected them against intrusion from outside. During their conversation she had been placing the easel and arranging the work which formed her pretext for being there, while Micmac, stretched on the floor, with his head between his paws, kept a half-sleepy eye on both of them.

"Your father was a Canadian, then?" he ventured to ask, as she seated herself with a palette in her hand.

"He was a Virginian. My mother was the wife of a French-Canadian voyageur. I believe she had a strain of Indian blood. The voyageurs and their families generally have."

Having recovered her self-possession, she made her statements in the matter-of-fact tone she used to hide embarrassment flicking a little color into the sketch before her as she spoke. Ford seated himself at a distance, gazing at her with a kind of fascination. Here, then, was the clew to that something untamed which persisted through all the effects of training and education, as a wild flavor will last in a carefully cultivated fruit. His curiosity about her was so intense that, notwithstanding the difficulty with which she stated her facts, it overcame his prompting to spare her.

"And yet," he said, after a long pause, in which he seemed to be assimilating the information she had given him—"and yet I don't see how that explains you."

"I suppose it doesn't—not any more than your situation explains you."

"My situation explains me perfectly, because I'm the victim of a wrong."

"Well, so am I—in another way. I'm made to suffer because I'm the daughter of my parents."

"That's a rotten shame," he exclaimed, in boyish sympathy "It isn't your fault."

"Of course it isn't," she smiled, wistfully. "And yet I'd rather suffer with the parents I have than be happy with any others."

"I suppose that's natural," he admitted, doubtfully.

"I wish I knew more about them," she went on, continuing to give light touches to the work before her, and now and then leaning back to get the effect. "I never understood why my father was in prison in Canada."

"Perhaps it was when he killed the man," Ford suggested.

"No; that was in Virginia—at least, the first one. His people didn't like it. That was the reason for his leaving home. He hated a settled life; and so he wandered away into the northwest of Canada. It was in the days when they first began to build the railways there—when there were almost no people except the trappers and the voyageurs. I was born on the very shores of Hudson Bay."

"But you didn't stay there?"

"No. I was only a very little child—not old enough to remember—when my father sent me down to Quebec, to the Ursuline nuns. He never saw me again. I lived with them till four years ago. I'm eighteen now."

"Why didn't he send you to his people? Hadn't he sisters?—or anything like that."

"He tried to, but they wouldn't have anything to do with me."

It was clearly a relief to her to talk about herself. He guessed that she rarely had an opportunity of opening her heart to any one. Not till this morning had he seen her in the full light of day; and, though but an immature judge, he fancied her features had settled themselves into lines of reserve and pride from which in happier circumstances they might have been free. Her way of twisting her dark hair—which waved over the brows from a central parting—into the simplest kind of knot gave her an air of sedateness beyond her years. But what he noticed in her particularly was her eyes—not so much because they were wild, dark eyes, with the peculiar fleeing expression of startled forest things, as because of the pleading, apologetic look that comes into the eyes of forest things when they stand at bay. It was when—for seconds only—the pupils shone with a jet-like blaze that he caught what he called the non-Aryan effect; but that glow died out quickly, leaving something of the fugitive appeal which Hawthorne saw in the eyes of Beatrice Cenci.

"He offered his sisters a great deal of money," she sighed, "but they wouldn't take me."

"Oh? So he had money?"

"He was one of the first Americans to make money in the Canadian northwest; but that was after my mother died. She died in the snow, on a journey—like that sketch above the fireplace. I've been told that it changed my father's life. He had been what they call wild before that—but he wasn't so any more. He grew very hard-working and serious. He was one of the pioneers of that country—one of the very first to see its possibilities. That was how he made his money; and when he died he left it to me. I believe it's a good deal."

"Didn't you hate being in the convent?" he asked, suddenly "I should."

"N-no; not exactly. I wasn't unhappy. The Sisters were kind to me. Some of them spoiled me. It wasn't until after my father died, and I began to realize—who I was, that I grew restless. I felt I should never be happy until I was among people of my own kind."

"And how did you get there?"

She smiled faintly to herself before answering.

"I never did. There are no people of my kind."

Embarrassed by the stress she seemed inclined to lay on this circumstance, he grasped at the first thought that might divert her from it.

"So you live with a guardian! How do you like that?"

"I should like it well enough if he did—that is, if his wife did. You see," she tried to explain, "she's very sweet and gentle, and all that, but she's devoted to the proprieties of life, and I seem to represent to her—its improprieties. I know it's a trial to her to keep me, and so, in a way, it's a trial to me to stay."

"Why do you stay, then?"

"For one reason, because I can't help myself. I have to do what the law tells me."

"I see. The law again!"

"Yes; the law again. But I've other reasons besides that."

"Such as—?"

"Well, I'm very fond of their little girl, for one thing. She's the greatest darling in the world, and the only creature, except my dog, that loves me."

"What's her name?"

The question drove her to painting with closer attention to her work. Ford followed something of the progress of her thought by watching the just perceptible contraction of her brows into a little frown, and the setting of her lips into a curve of determination. They were handsome lips, mobile and sensitive—lips that might easily have been disdainful had not the inner spirit softened them with a tremor—or it might have been a light—of gentleness.

"It isn't worth while to tell you that," she said, after long reflection. "It will be safer for you in the end not to know any of our names at all."

"Still—if I escape—I should like to know them."

"If you escape, you may be able to find out."

"Oh, well," he said, with assumed indifference, "since you don't want to tell me—"

Going on with her painting, she allowed the subject to drop; but to him the opportunity for conversation was too rare a thing to neglect. Not only was his youthful impulse toward social self-expression normally strong, but his pleasure in talking to a lady—a girl—was undeniable. Sometimes in his moments of solitary meditation he said to himself that she was "not his type of girl"; but the fact that he had been deprived of feminine society for nearly three years made him ready to fall in love with any one. If he did not precisely fall in love with this girl, it was only because the situation precluded sentiment; and yet it was pleasant to sit and watch her paint, and even torment her with his questions.

"So the little girl is one reason for your staying here. What's another?"

She betrayed her own taste for social communion by the readiness with which she answered him—

"I don't know that I ought to tell you that; and yet I might as well. It's just this: they're not very well off—so I can help. Naturally I like that."

"You can help by footing the bills. That's all very fine if you enjoy it, but everybody wouldn't."

"They would if they were in my position," she insisted. "When you can help in any way it gives you a sense of being of use to some one. I'd rather that people needed me, even if they didn't want me, than that they shouldn't need me at all."

"They need your money," he declared, with a young man's outspokenness. "That's what."

"But that's something, isn't it? When you've no place in the world you're glad enough to get one, even if you have to buy it. My guardian and his wife mayn't care much to have me, but it's some satisfaction to know that they'd get along much worse if I weren't here."

"So should I," he laughed. "What I'm to do when I'm turned adrift without you, Heaven only knows. It's curious—the effect imprisonment has on you. It takes away your self-reliance. It gives you a helpless feeling, like a baby. You want to be free—and yet you're almost afraid of the open air."

He was so much at home with her now that, sitting carelessly astride of his chair, with his arms folded on the back, he felt a fraternal element in their mutual relation. She bent more closely over her work, and spoke without looking up.

"Oh, you'll get along all right. You're that sort."

"That's easy to say."

"You may find it easy to do." Her next words, uttered while she continued to flick color into her sketch, caused him to jump with astonishment. "I'd go to the Argentine."

"Why not say the moon?"

"For one reason, because the moon is inaccessible."

"So is the Argentine—for me."

"Oh no, it isn't. Other people have reached it."

"Yes: but they weren't in my fix."

"Some of them were probably in worse."

There was a pause, during which she seemed absorbed in her work, while Ford sat meditatively whistling under his breath.

"What put the Argentine into your head?" he asked, at last.

"Because I happen to know a good deal about it. Everybody says it's the country of new opportunities. I know people who've lived there. The little girl I was speaking of just now—whom I'm so fond of—was born there. Her father is dead since then, and her mother is married again."

He continued to meditate, emitting the same tuneless, abstracted sound, just above his breath.

"I know the name of an American firm out there," she went on. "It's Stephens and Jarrott. It's a very good firm to work for. I've often heard that. And Mr. Jarrott has helped ever so many—stranded people."

"I should be just his sort, then."

His laugh, as he sprang to his feet, seemed to dismiss an impossible subject; and yet as he lay on his couch that evening in the lampless darkness the name of Stephens and Jarrott obtruded itself into his visions of this girl, who stood between him and peril because she "disliked the law," He wondered how far it was dislike, and how far jealous pain. In her eagerness to buy the domestic place she had not inherited she reminded him of something he had read—or heard—of the wild olive being grafted into the olive of the orchard. Well, that would come in the natural course of events. Some fine fellow, worthy to be her mate, would see to it. He was not without a pleasant belief that in happier circumstances he himself might have had the qualifications for the task. He wondered again what her name was. He ran through the catalogue of the names he himself would have chosen for a heroine—Gladys, Ethel, Mildred Millicent!--none of them seemed to suit her. He tried again. Margaret, Beatrice, Lucy, Joan! Joan possibly—or he said to himself, in the last inconsequential thoughts as he fell asleep, it might be—the Wild Olive.

V

As the days passed, one much like another, and the retreat seemed more and more secure, it was natural that Ford's thoughts should dwell less on his own danger and more on the girl who filled his immediate horizon. The care with which she foresaw his wants, the ingenuity with which she met them, the dignity and simplicity with which she carried herself through incidents that to a less delicate tact must have been difficult, would have excited his admiration in any case, even if the namelessness which helped to make her an impersonal element in the episode had not stirred his imagination. He was obliged to remind himself often that she was "not his type of girl," in order to confine his heart within the limits which the situation imposed.

It worried him, therefore, it even hurt him, that in spite of all the openings he had given her, she had never offered him a sign of her belief in his innocence. For this reason he took the first occasion when she was seated at her easel, with the dog lying at her feet, to lay his case before her.

He told her of his overindulged boyhood, as the only child of a wealthy New York merchant. He outlined his profitless years at the university, where a too free use of money had hindered work. He narrated the disasters that had left him at the age of two-and-twenty to begin life for himself—his father's bankruptcy, followed by the death of both his parents within the year. He had been eager to start in at the foot of the ladder and work his way upward, when the proposal was made which proved fatal.

Old Chris Ford, his great-uncle, known throughout the Adirondack region as "the lumber king," had offered to take him, train him to the lumber business, and make him his heir. An eccentric, childless widower, commonly believed to have broken his wife's heart by sheer bitterness of tongue, old Chris Ford was hated, feared, and flattered by the relatives and time-servers who hoped ultimately to profit by his favor. Norrie Ford neither flattered nor feared his powerful kinsman, but he hated him with the best. His own instincts were city born and bred. He was conscious, too, of that aptitude with which the typical New-Yorker is supposed to come into being—the capacity to make money. He would have preferred to make it on his own ground and in his own way; and had it not been for the counsels of those who wished him well, he would have replied to his great-uncle's offer with a courteous "No." Wiser heads than his pointed out the folly of such a course as that; and so, reluctantly, he entered on his apprenticeship.

In the two years that followed he could not see what purpose he served other than that of a mark for the old man's poisoned wit. He was taught nothing, and paid nothing, and given nothing to do. He slept under his great-uncle's roof and ate at his table, but the sharp tongue made the bed hard to lie on and the bread difficult to swallow down. Idleness reawakened the propensity to vicious habits which he thought he had outlived, while the rough society of the lumber camps, in which he sought to relieve the tedium of time, extended him the welcome which Falstaff and his comrades gave Prince Hal.

The revolt of his self-respect was on the eve of bringing this phase of his existence to an end when the low farce turned into tragedy. Old Chris Ford was found dead in his bed—shot in his sleep. On the premises there had been but three persons, one of whom must have committed the crime—Norrie Ford, and Jacob and Amalia Gramm. Jacob and Amalia Gramm had been the old man's servants for thirty years. Their faithfulness put them beyond suspicion. The possibility of their guilt, having been considered, was dismissed with few formalities. The conviction of Norrie Ford became easy after that—the more respectable people of the neighborhood being agreed that from the evidence presented no other deduction could be drawn. The very fact that the old man, by his provocation of the lad, so thoroughly deserved his fate made the manner in which he met with it the clearer. Even Norrie Ford's friends, the hunters and the lumbermen, admitted as much as that, though they were determined that he should never suffer for so meritorious an act as long as they could give him a fighting chance for freedom.

The girl listened to Ford's narrative with some degree of interest, though it contained nothing new to her. She could not have lived at Greenport during the period of his trial without being familiar with it all. But when he came to explanations in his own defence she followed listlessly. Though she leaned back in her chair, and courteously stopped painting, while he talked so earnestly, the light in her eyes faded to a lustreless gleam, like that of the black pearl. His perception that her thoughts were wandering gave him a queer sensation of speaking into a medium in which his voice could not carry, cutting short his arguments, and bringing him to his conclusion more hurriedly than he had intended.

"I wanted you to know I didn't do it," he finished, in a tone which begged for some expression of her belief, "because you've done so much to help me."

"Oh, but I should have helped you just the same, whether you had done it or not."

"But I suppose it makes some difference to you," he cried, impatiently, "to know that I didn't."

"I suppose it would," she admitted, slowly, "if I thought much about it."

"Well, won't you think?" he pleaded—-"just to oblige me."

"Perhaps I will, when you're gone; but at present I have to give my mind to getting you away. It was to talk about that that I came this morning."

Had she wanted to slip out of giving an opinion on the subject of his guilt, she could not have found a better exit. The means of his ultimate escape engrossed him even more than the theme of his innocence. When she spoke again all his faculties were concentrated into one keen point of attention.

"I think the time has come for you to—go."

If her voice trembled on the last word, he did not notice it. The pose of his body, the lines of his face, the glint of his gray eyes, were alive with interrogation.

"Go?" he asked, just audibly. "When?"

"To-morrow."

"How?"

"I'll tell you that then."

"Why can't you tell me now?"

"I could if I was sure you wouldn't raise objections, but I know you will."

"Then there are objections to be raised?"

"There are objections to everything. There's no plan of escape that won't expose you to a good many risks. I'd rather you didn't see them in advance."

"But isn't it well to be prepared beforehand?"

"You'll have plenty of time for preparation—after you've started. If that seems mysterious to you now, you'll know what I mean by it when I come to-morrow. I shall be here in the afternoon at six."

With this information Ford was obliged to be content, spending a sleepless night and an impatient day, waiting for the time appointed.

She came punctually. For the first time she was not followed by her dog. The only change in her appearance he could see was a short skirt of rough material instead of her usual linen or muslin.

"Are we going through the woods?" he asked.

"Not far. I shall take you by the trail that led to this spot before I built the cabin and made the path." As she spoke she surveyed him. "You'll do," she smiled at last. "In those flannels, and with your beard, no one would know you for the Norrie Ford of three weeks ago."

It was easy for him to ascribe the glow in her eyes and the quiver in her voice to the excitement of the moment; for he could see that she had the spirit of adventure. Perhaps it was to conceal some embarrassment under his regard that she spoke again, hurriedly.

"We've no time to lose. You needn't take anything from here. We'd better start."

He followed her over the threshold, and as she turned to lock the cabin he had time to throw a glance of farewell over the familiar hills, now transmuted into a haze of amethyst under the westering sun. A second later he heard her quick "Come on!" as she struck into the barely perceptible path that led upward, around the shoulder of the mountain.

It was a stiff bit of climbing, but she sped along with the dryad-like ease she had displayed on the night when she led him to the cabin. Beneath the primeval growth of ash and pine there was an underbrush so dense that no one but a creature gifted with the inherited instinct of the woods could have found the invisible, sinuous line alone possible to the feet. But it was there, and she traced it—never pausing never speaking, and only looking back from time to time to assure herself that he was in sight, until they reached the top of the dome-shaped hill.

They came out suddenly on a rocky terrace, beneath which, a mile below, Champlain was spread out in great part of its length, from the dim bluff of Crown Point to the far-away, cloud-like mountains of Canada.

"You can sit down a minute here," she said, as he came up.

They found seats among the low scattered bowlders, but neither spoke. It was a moment at which to understand the jewelled imagery of the Seer of the Apocalypse. Jasper, jacinth, chalcedony, emerald, chrysoprasus, were suggested by the still bosom of the lake, towered round by light-reflecting mountains. The triple tier of the Vermont shore was bottle-green at its base, indigo in the middle height, while its summit was a pale undulation of evanescent blue against the jade and topaz of the twilight.

"The steamer Empress of Erin," the girl said, with what seemed like abruptness, "will sail from Montreal on the twenty-eighth, and from Quebec on the twenty-ninth. From Rimouski, at the mouth of the river St. Lawrence, she will sail on the thirtieth, to touch nowhere else till she reaches Ireland. You will take her at Rimouski."

There was a silence, during which he tried to absorb this startling information.

"And from here to Rimouski?" he asked, at last.

"From here to Rimouski," she replied, with a gesture toward the lake, "your way is there."

There was another silence, while his eyes travelled the long, rainbow-colored lake, up to the faint line of mountains where it faded into a mist of bluish-green and gold.

"I see the way," he said then, "but I don't see the means of taking it."

"You'll find that in good time. In the mean while you'd better take this." From her jacket she drew a paper, which she passed to him. "That's your ticket. You'll see," she laughed, apologetically, "that I've taken for you what they call a suite, and I've done it for this reason. They're keeping a lookout for you on every tramp ship from New York, on every cattle-ship from Boston, and on every grain-ship from Montreal; but they're not looking for you in the most expensive cabins of the most expensive liners. They know you've no money; and if you get out of the country at all, they expect it will be as a stoker or a stow-away They'll never think you're driving in cabs and staying at the best hotels."

"But I shan't be," he said, simply.

"Oh yes, you will. You'll need money, of course; and I've brought it. You'll need a good deal; so I've brought plenty."

She drew out a pocketbook and held it toward him. He looked at it, reddening, but made no attempt to take it.

"I can't—I can't—go as far as that," he stammered, hoarsely.

"You mean," she returned, quickly, "that you hesitate to take money from a woman. I thought you might. But it isn't from a woman; it's from a man. It's from my father. He would have liked to do it. He would have wanted me to do it. They keep putting it in the bank for me—just to spend—but I never need it. What can I do with money in a place like Greenport? Here, take it," she urged, thrusting it into his hands. "You know very well it isn't a matter of choice, but of life or death."

With her own fingers she clasped his upon it, drawing back and coloring at her boldness. For the first time in their weeks of intercourse she saw in him a touch of emotion The phlegmatism by which he had hitherto concealed his inward suffering seemed suddenly to desert him. He looked at her with lips quivering, while his eyes filled. His weakness only nerved her to be stronger, sending her for refuge back into the commonplace.

"They'll expect you at Rimouski, because your luggage will already have gone on board at Montreal. Yes," she continued, in reply to his astonishment, "I've forwarded all the trunks and boxes that came to me from my father. I told my guardian I was sending them to be stored—and I am, for you'll store them for me in London when you've done with them. Here are the keys."

He made no attempt to refuse them, and she hurried on.

"I sent the trunks for two reasons; first, because there might be things in them you could use till you get something better; and then I wanted to prevent suspicion arising from your sailing without luggage. Every little thing of that sort counts. The trunks have 'H.S.' painted in white letters on them; so that you'll have no difficulty in knowing them at sight. I've put a name with the same initials on the ticket. You'd better use it till you feel it safe to take your own again."

"What name?" he asked, with eager curiosity, beginning to take the ticket out of its envelope.

"Never mind now," she said, quickly. "It's just a name—any name. You can look at it afterward. We'd better go on."

She made as though she would move, but he detained her.

"Wait a minute. So your name begins with S!"

"Like a good many others," she smiled.

"Then tell me what it is. Don't let me go away without knowing it. You can't think what it means to me."

"I should think you'd see what it means to me."

"I don't. What harm can it do you?"

"If you don't see, I'm afraid I can't explain. To be nameless is—- how shall I say it?—a sort of protection to me. In helping you, and taking care of you, I've done what almost any really nice girl would have shrunk from. There are plenty of people who would say is was wrong. And in a way—a way I could never make you understand, unless you understand already—it's a relief to me that you don't know who I am. And even that isn't everything."

"Well—what else?"

"When this little episode is over"—her voice trembled, and it was not without some blinking of the eyes that she was able to begin again—"when this little episode is over, it will be better for us both—for you as well as for me—to know as little about it as possible. The danger isn't past by any means; but it's a kind of danger in which ignorance can be made to look a good deal like innocence. I shan't know anything about you after you've gone, and you know nothing whatever about me."

"That's what I complain of. Suppose I pull the thing off, and make a success of myself somewhere else, how should I communicate with you again?"

"Why should you communicate with me at all?"

"To pay you back your money, for one thing—"

"Oh, that doesn't matter."

"Perhaps it doesn't from your point of view; but it does from mine. But it wouldn't be my only reason in any case."

Something in his voice and in his eyes warned her to rise and interrupt him.

"I'm afraid we haven't time to talk about it now," she said, hurriedly. "We really must be going on."

"I'm not going to talk about it now," he declared, rising in his turn. "I said it would be a reason for my wanting to communicate with you again. I shall want to tell you something then; though perhaps by that time you won't want to hear it."

"Hadn't we better wait and see?"

"That's what I shall have to do; but how can I come back to you at all if I don't know who you are?"

"I shall have to leave that to your ingenuity," she laughed, with an attempt to treat the matter lightly. "In the mean time we must hurry on. It's absolutely necessary that you should set out by sunset."

She glided into the invisible trail running down the lakeside slope of the mountain, so that he was obliged to follow her. As they had climbed up, so they descended—the girl steadily and silently in advance. The region was dotted with farms; but she kept to the shelter of the woodland, and before he expected it they found themselves at the water's edge. A canoe drawn up in a cove gave him the first clear hint of her intentions.

It was a pretty little cove, enclosed by two tiny headlands, forming a miniature landlocked bay, hidden from view of the lake beyond. Trees leaned over it and into it, while the canoe rested on a yard-long beach of sand.

"I see," he remarked, after she had allowed him to take his own observations. "You want me to go over to Burlington and catch a train to Montreal."

She shook her head, smiling, as he thought, rather tremulously.

"I'm afraid I've planned a much longer journey for you. Come and see the preparations I've made." They stepped to the side of the canoe, so as to look down into it. "That," she pursued, pointing to a small suit-case forward of the middle thwart, "will enable you to look like an ordinary traveller after you've landed. And that," she added, indicating a package in the stern, "contains nothing more nor less than sandwiches. Those are bottles of mineral water. The small objects are a corkscrew, a glass, a railway timetable a cheap compass, and a cheaper watch. In addition you'll find a map of the lake, which you can consult tomorrow morning, after you've paddled all night through the part with which you're most familiar."

"Where am I going?" he asked, huskily, avoiding her eyes. The nonchalance of her tone had not deceived him, and he thought it well not to let their glances meet.

"You'll keep to the middle of the lake and go on steadily. You'll have all Champlain to yourself to-night, and in daylight there's no reason why you shouldn't pass for an ordinary sportsman. All the same, you had better rest by day, and go on again in the evening. You'll find lots of little secluded coves where you can pull up the canoe and be quite undisturbed. I'd do that, if I were you."

He nodded to show that he understood her.

"When you look at the map," she went on, "you'll find that I've traced a route for you, after you get above Plattsville. You'll see that it will take you past the little French-Canadian village of Deux Etoiles. You can't mistake it, because there's a lighthouse, with a revolving light, on a rock, just off the shore. You'll be in Canada then. You'd better time yourself to go by about nightfall."

He nodded his agreement with her again, and she continued.

"About a mile above the lighthouse, and close in by the eastern shore, just where the lake becomes very narrow, there are two little islands lying close together. You'll take them as a landmark, because immediately opposite them, on the mainland, there's a stretch of forest running for a good many miles. There you can land finally. You must drag the canoe right up into the wood, and hide it as well as you can. It's my own canoe, so that it can lie there till it drops to pieces. Is all that quite clear to you?"

Once more he nodded, not trusting himself to speak. Again the sight of his emotion braced her to make her tone more matter-of-fact than ever.

"Now, then," she went on, "if you consult the map you'll see that an old wood-road runs through the forest, and comes out at the station of Saint Jean du Clou Noir. There you can get a train to Quebec.... The road begins nearly opposite the two little islands I spoke of.... I don't think you'll have any difficulty in finding it.... It's about seven miles to the station.... You could walk that easily enough through the night.... I've marked a very good train on the time-table—a train that stops at Saint Jean du Clou Noir at seven thirty-five ..."

A choking sensation warned her to stop, but she retained the power to smile. The sun had set, and the slow northern night was beginning to close in. Across the lake the mountains of Vermont were receding into deep purple uniformity, while over the crimson of the west a veil of filmy black was falling, as though dropped in mid-flight by the angel of the dark. Here and there through the dead-turquoise green of the sky one could detect the pale glimmer of a star.

"You must go now," she whispered. He began to move the canoe into the water.

"I haven't thanked you," he began, unsteadily, holding the canoe by the bow, "because you wouldn't let me. As a matter of fact, I don't know how to do it—adequately. But if I live at all, my life will belong to you. That's all I can say. My life will be a thing for you to dispose of. If you ever have need of it—"

"I shan't have," she said, hastily, "but I'll remember what you say."

"Thanks; that's all I ask. For the present I can only hope for the chance of making my promise good."

She said nothing in reply, and after a minute's silence he entered the canoe. She steadied it herself to allow him to step in. It was not till he had done so and had knelt down with the paddle in his hand that, moved by a sudden impulse she leaned to him and kissed him. Then, releasing the light craft, she allowed it to glide out like a swan on the tiny bay. In three strokes of the paddle it had passed between the low, enclosing headlands and was out of sight. When she summoned up strength to creep to an eminence commanding the lake, it was already little more than a speck, moving rapidly northward, over the opal-tinted waters.

VI

On finding himself alone, and relatively free, Ford's first sensation was one of insecurity. Having lived for more than a year under orders and observation, he had lost for the moment some of his natural confidence in his own initiative. Though he struck resolutely up the lake he was aware of an inner bewilderment, bordering on physical discomfort, at being his own master. For the first half-hour he paddled mechanically, his consciousness benumbed by the overwhelming strangeness. As far as he was able to formulate his thought at all he felt himself to be in process of a new birth, into a new phase of existence. In the darkening of the sky above him and of the lake around there came upon him something of the mental obscurity that might mark the passage of a transmigrating soul. After the subdued excitement of the past weeks, and especially of the past hour, the very regularity of his movements now lulled him into a passivity only quickened by vague fears. The noiseless leaping forward of the canoe beneath him heightened his sense of breaking with the past and hastening onward into another life. In that life he would be a new creature, free to be a law unto himself.

A new creature! A law unto himself! The ideas were subconscious, and yet he found the words framing themselves on his lips. He repeated them mentally with some satisfaction as a cluster of lights on his left told him he was passing Greenport. Other lights, on a hill, above the town and away from it, were probably those of Judge Wayne's villa. He looked at them curiously, with an odd sense of detachment, of remoteness, as from things belonging to a time with which he had nothing more to do. That was over and done with.

It was not until a steamer crossed his bows, not more than a hundred yards in front of him, that he began to appreciate his safety. Under the protection of the dark, and in the wide loneliness of the waters, he was as lost to human sight as a bird in the upper air. The steamer—zigzagging down the lake, touching at little ports now on the west bank and now on the east—had shot out unexpectedly from behind a point, her double row of lights casting a halo in which his canoe must have been visible on the waves; and yet she had passed by and taken no note of him. For a second such good-fortune had seemed to his nervous imagination beyond the range of hope. He stopped paddling he almost stopped breathing, allowing the canoe to rock gently on the tide. The steamer puffed and pulsated, beating her way directly athwart his course. The throbbing of her engines seemed scarcely louder than that of his own heart. He could see people moving on the deck, who in their turn must have been able to see him. And yet the boat went on, ignoring him, in tacit acknowledgment of his right to the lake, of his right to the world.

His sigh of relief became almost a laugh as he began again to paddle forward. The incident was like a first victory, an assurance of victories to come. The sense of insecurity with whith he had started out gave place, minute by minute, to the confidence in himself which was part of his normal state of mind. Other small happenings confirmed his self-reliance. Once a pleasure party in a rowboat passed so near him that he could hear the splash of their oars and the sound of their voices. There was something almost miraculous to him in being so close to the commonplace of human fellowship. He had the feeling of pleasant inward recognition that comes from hearing one's mother-tongue in a foreign land. He stopped paddling again, just to catch meaningless fragments of their talk, until they floated away into silence and darkness. He would have been sorry to have them pass out of ear-shot, were it not for his satisfaction in being able to go his way unheeded.

On another occasion he found himself within speaking distance of one of the numerous small lakeside hotels. Lights flared from open doors and windows, while from the veranda, the garden, and the little pier came peals of laughter, or screams and shouts of young people at rough play. Now and then he could catch the tones of some youth's teasing, and the shrill, pretended irritation of a girl's retort. The noisy cheerfulness of it all reached his ears with the reminiscent tenderness of music heard in childhood. It represented the kind of life he himself had loved. Before the waking nightmare of his troubles began he had been of the unexacting type of American lad who counts it a "good time" to sit in summer evenings on "porches" or "stoops" or "piazzas," joking with "the boys," flirting with "the girls," and chattering on all subjects from the silly to the serious, from the local to the sublime. He was of the friendly, neighborly, noisy, demonstrative spirit characteristic of his age and class. He could have entered into this circle of strangers—strangers for the most part, in all probability, to one another—and in ten minutes' time been one of them. Their screams, their twang, their slang, their gossip, their jolly banter, and their gay ineptitude would have been to him like a welcome home. But he was Norrie Ford, known by name and misfortune to every one of them. The boys and girls on the pier, the elderly women in the rocking-chairs, even the waitresses who, in high-heeled shoes and elaborate coiffures, ministered disdainfully to the guests in the bare-floored dining-room, had discussed his life, his trial, his sentence, his escape, and formed their opinions upon him. Were it possible for them to know now that he was lurking out there in the dark, watching their silhouettes and listening to their voices, there would be such a hue and cry as the lake had not heard since the Indians sighted Champlain on its banks.

It was this reflection that first of all stirred the current of his deep, slow resentment. During the fifteen months since his arrest he had been either too busy, or too anxious, or too sorely puzzled at finding himself in so odd a position, to have leisure for positive anger. At the worst of times he had never lost the belief that the world, or that portion of the world which concerned itself with him, would come to recognize the fact that it was making a mistake. He had taken his imprisonment and his trial more or less as exciting adventures. Even the words of his sentence lost most of their awfulness in his inner conviction that they were empty sounds. Of the confused happenings on the night of his escape his clearest memory was that he had been hungry, while he thought of the weeks spent in the cabin as a "picnic." Just as good spirits had seldom failed him, so patience had rarely deserted him. Such ups and downs of emotion as he had experienced resulted in the long run in an increase of optimism. In the back of his slow mind he kept the expectation, almost the intention, of giving his anger play—some time; but only when his rights should have been restored to him.

But he felt it coming on him now, before he was prepared for it. It was taking him unawares, and without due cause, roused by the chance perception that he was cut off from rightful, natural companionship. Nothing as yet had brought home to him the meaning of his situation like the talk and laughter of these lads and girls, who suddenly became to him what Lazarus in Abraham's bosom was to Dives in his torment.

A few dips of the paddle took him out of sight and sound of the hotel; but the dull, indignant passion remained in his heart, finding outward vent in the violence with which he sent the canoe bounding northward beneath the starlight. For the moment it was a blind, objectless passion, directed against nothing and no one in particular. He was not skilled in the analysis of feeling, or in tracing effect to cause. For an hour or two his wrath was the rage of the infuriated animal roaring out its pain, regardless of the hand that has inflicted it. Other rowing-parties came within hearing distance, but he paid them no attention; lake steamers hove in sight, but he had learned how to avoid them; little towns, dotted at intervals of a few miles apart, lit up the banks with the lights of homes, but their shining domesticity seemed to mock him. The birth of a new creature was a painful process; and yet, through all his confused sensations and obscure elemental suffering, he kept the conviction that a new creature was somehow claiming its right to live.

Peace of mind came to him gradually, as the little towns put out their lights, and the lake steamers laid up in tiny ports, and the rowing-parties went home to bed. In the smooth, dark level of the lake and in the stars there was a soothing quality to which he responded before he was aware of doing so. The spacious solitude of the summer night brought with it a large calmness of outlook, in which his spirit took a measure of comfort. There was a certain bodily pleasure, too, in the regular monotony of paddling, while his mental faculties were kept alert by the necessity of finding points by which to steer, and fixing his attention upon them. So, by degrees, his limited reasoning powers found themselves at work, fumbling, with the helplessness of a man whose strong points are physical activity and concentration of purpose, for some light on the wild course on which he was embarked.

Perhaps his first reflection that had the nature of a conclusion or a deduction was on the subject of "old Wayne." Up to the present he had regarded him with special ill will, owing to the fact that Wayne, while inclining to a belief of his innocence, had nevertheless lent himself to the full working of the law. It came to Ford now in the light of a discovery that, after all, it was not Wayne's fault. Wayne was in the grip of forces that deprived him to a large extent of the power of voluntary action. He could scarcely be blamed if he fulfilled the duties he was appointed to perform The real responsibility was elsewhere. With whom did it lie? For a primitive mind like Ford's the question was not an easy one to answer.

For a time he was inclined to call to account the lawyers who had pleaded for the State. Had it not been for their arguments he would have been acquitted. With an ingenuity he had never supposed to exist they had analyzed his career—especially the two years of it spent with Uncle Chris—and showed how it led up to the crime as to an inevitable consequence. They seemed familiar with everything he had ever done, while they were able to prove beyond cavil that certain of his acts were inspired by sinister motives which he himself knew to have sprung from dissipation at the worst. It was astonishing how plausible their story was; and he admitted that if anybody else had been accused, he himself would probably have been convinced by it. Certainly, then, the lawyers must have been to blame—that is, unless they were only carrying out what others had hired them to do.

That qualifying phrase started a new train of thought. Mechanically, dip by dip, swaying gently with each stroke as to a kind of rhythm, he drove the canoe onward, while he pondered it. It was easy to meditate out here, on the wide, empty lake, for no sound broke the midnight stillness but the soft swish of the paddle and the skimming of the broad keel along the water. It was not by any orderly system of analysis, or synthesis, or syllogism, that Ford, as the hours went by, came at last to his final conclusion; and yet he reached it with conviction. By a process of elimination he absolved judge, jury, legal profession, and local public from the greater condemnation. Each had contributed to the error that made him an outlaw, but no one contributor was the whole of the great force responsible. That force, which had set its component parts to work, and plied them till the worst they could do was done, was the body which they called Organized Society. To Ford, Organized Society was a new expression. He could not remember ever to have heard it till it was used in court. There it had been on everybody's lips. Far more than old Chris Ford himself it was made to figure as the injured party. Though there was little sympathy for the victim in his own person, Organized Society seemed to have received in his death a blow that called for the utmost avenging. Organized Society was plaintiff in the case, as well as police, jury, judge, and public. The single human creature who could not apparently gain footing within its fold was Norrie Ford himself. Organized Society had cast him out.

He had been told that before, and yet the actual fact had never come home to him till now. In prison, in court, in the cabin in the woods, there had always been some human hand within reach of his own, some human tie, even though it was a chain. However ignoble, there had been a place for him. But out here on the great vacant lake there was an isolation that gave reality to his expulsion. The last man left on earth would not feel more utterly alone.

For the first time since the night of his escape there came back to him that vague feeling of deserting something he might have defended, that almost physical sensation of regret at not having stood his ground and fought till he fell. He began to understand now what it meant. Dip, splash, dip, splash, his paddle stirred the dimly shining water, breaking into tiny whirlpools the tremulous reflection of the stars. Not for an instant did he relax his stroke, though the regret took more definitive shape behind him. Convicted and sentenced, he was still part of the life of men, just as a man whom others are trying to hurl from a tower is on the tower till he has fallen. He himself had not fallen; he had jumped off, while there was still a chance of keeping his foothold.

It required an hour or two of outward rhythmic movement and confused inward feeling to get him ready for his next mental step. He had jumped off the tower; true; but he was alive and well, with no bones broken. What should he do now? Should he try to tear the tower down? The attempt would not be so very ludicrous, seeing he should only have to join those—socialists, anarchists, faddists—already at the work. But he admired the tower, and preferred to see is stand. If he did anything at all, it would be to try to creep back into it.

The reflection gave still another turn to his thoughts. He was passing Burlington by this time—the electric lamps throwing broad bands of light along the deserted, up-hill streets, between the sleeping houses. It was the first city he had seen since leaving New York to begin his useless career in the mountains. The sight moved him with an odd curiosity, not free from a homesick longing for normal, simple ways of life. He kept the canoe at a standstill, looking hungrily up the empty thoroughfares, as a poor ghost may gaze at familiar scenes while those it has loved are dreaming. By-and-by the city seemed to stir in its sleep. Along the waterside he could hear the clatter of some belated or too early wayfarer; a weird, intermittent creaking told him that the milk-cart of provincial towns was on its beat; from a distant freight-train came the long, melancholy wail that locomotives give at night; and then drowsily, but with the promptness of one conscientious in his duty, a cock crew. Ford knew that somewhere, unseen as yet by him, the dawn was coming, and—again like a wandering ghost—sped on.

But he had been looking on the tower which the children of men had builded, and had recognized his desire to clamber up into it again. He was not without the perception that a more fiery temperament than his own—perhaps a nobler one—would have cursed the race that had done him wrong, and sought to injure it or shun it. Misty recollections of proud-hearted men who had taken this stand came back to him.

"I suppose I ought to do the same," he muttered to himself humbly; "but what would be the use when I couldn't keep it up?"

Understanding himself thus well, his purpose became clearer. Like the ant or the beaver that has seen its fabric destroyed, he must set patiently to work to reconstruct it. He suspected a poor-spirited element in this sort of courage; but his instinct forced him within his limitations. By dint of keeping there and toiling there he felt sure of his ability to get back to the top of the tower in such a way that no one would think he lacked the right to be on it.

But he himself would know it. He shrank from that fact with the repugnance of an honest nature for what is not straightforward; but the matter was past helping. He should be obliged to play the impostor everywhere and with every one. He would mingle with men, shake their hands, share their friendships, eat their bread, and accept their favors—and deceive them under their very noses. Life would become one long trick, one daily feat of skill. Any possible success he could win would lack stability, would lack reality, because there would be neither truth nor fact behind it.

From the argument that he was innocent he got little comfort. He had forfeited his right to make use of that fact any longer. Had he stayed where he was he could have shouted it out till they gagged him in the death-chair. Now he must be dumb on the subject forevermore. In his disappearance there was an acceptation of guilt which he must remain powerless to explain away.

Many minutes of dull pain passed in dwelling on that point. He could work neither back from it nor forward. His mind could only dwell on it with an aching admission of its justice, while he searched the sky for the dawn.

In spite of the crowing of the cock he saw no sign of it—unless it was that the mountains on the New York shore detached themselves more distinctly from the sky of which they had seemed to form a part. On the Vermont side there was nothing but a heaped-up darkness, night piled on night, till the eye reached the upper heavens and the stars.

He paddled on, steadily, rhythmically, having no sense of hunger or fatigue, while he groped for the clew that was to guide him when he stepped on land. He felt the need of a moral programme, of some pillar of cloud and fire that would show him a way he should be justified in taking. He expressed it to himself by a kind of aspiration which he kept repeating, sometimes half aloud:

"O Lord, O Holy One! I want to be a man!"

Suddenly he struck the water with so violent a dash that the canoe swerved and headed landward.

"By God!" he muttered, under his breath, "I've got it.... It isn't my fault.... It's theirs.... They've put me in this fix.... They've brought this dodging, and shifting, and squirming upon me.... The subterfuge isn't mine; it's theirs.... They've taken the responsibility from me.... When they strip me of rights they strip me of duties.... They've forced me where right and wrong don't exist for me any more.... They've pitched me out of their Organized Society, and I've had to go.... Now I'm free ... and I shall profit by my freedom."

In the excitement of these discoveries he smote the waters again. He remembered having said something of the sort on the night of his interview with Wayne; but he had not till now grasped its significance. It was the emancipation of his conscience. Whatever difficulties he might encounter from outside, he should be hampered by no scruples from within. He had been relieved of them; they had been taken from him. Since none had a duty toward him, he had no duty toward any. If it suited his purposes to juggle with men, the blame must rest upon themselves. He could but do his best with the maimed existence they had left to him. Self-respect would entail observance of the common laws of truth and honesty, but beyond this he need never allow consideration for another to come before consideration for himself. He was absolved from the necessity in advance. In the region in which he should pass his inner life there would be no occupant but himself. From the world where men and women had ties of love and pity and mutual regard they had cast him out, forcing him into a spiritual limbo where none of these things obtained. It was only lawful that he should make use of such advantages as his lot allowed him.

There was exaltation in the way in which he grasped this creed as his rule of life; and looking up suddenly, he saw the dawn. It had taken him unawares, stealing like a gray mist of light over the tops of the Vermont hills, lifting their ridges faintly out of night, like the ghosts of so many Titans. Among the Adirondacks one high peak caught the first glimmer of advancing day, while all the lower range remained a gigantic silhouette beneath the perceptibly paling stars. Over Canada the veil was still down, but he fancied he could detect a thinner texture to the darkness.

Then, as he passed a wooded headland, came a sleepy twitter, from some little pink and yellow bill barely withdrawn from its enfolding wing—to be followed by another, and another, and another, till both shores were aquiver with that plaintive chirrup, half threnody for the flying darkness, half welcome to the sun, like the praise of a choir of children roused to sing midnight matins, but still dreaming. Ford's dip was softer now, as though he feared to disturb that vibrant drowsiness; but when, later, capes and coves began to define themselves through the gray gloaming, and, later still, a shimmer of saffron appeared above the eastern summits, he knew it was time to think of a refuge from the daylight.

The saffron became fire; the fire lit up a heaven of chrysoprase and rose. Where the lake had been as a metal mirror for the stars, it rippled and dimpled and gleamed with the tints of mother-of-pearl. He knew the sun must be on the farther slope of the Green Mountains, because the face they turned toward him was dense in shadow, like the unilluminated portion of the moon. On the western shore the Adirondacks were rising out of the bath of night as dewy fresh as if they had been just created.

But the sun was actually in the sky when he perceived that he no longer had the lake to himself. From a village nestling in some hidden cove a rowboat pulled out into the open—a fisherman after the morning's catch. It was easy enough for Ford to keep at a prudent distance; but the companionship caused him an uneasiness that was not dispelled before the first morning steamer came pounding from the northward. He fixed his attention then on a tiny islet some two or three miles ahead. There were trees on it, and probably ferns and grass. Reaching it, he found himself in a portion of the lake forest-banked and little frequented. Pastures and fields of ripening grain on the most distant slopes of Vermont gave the nearest token of life. All about him there was solitude and stillness—with the glorious, bracing beauty of the newly risen day.

Landing with stiffened limbs, he drew up the canoe on a bit of sandy beach, over which sturdy old bushes, elder and birch, battered by the north winds, leaned in friendly, concealing protection. He himself would be able to lie down here, among the tall ferns and the stunted blueberry-scrub, as secluded and secure as ever he had been in prison.

Being hungry and thirsty, he ate and drank, consulting his map the while and fixing approximately his whereabouts. He looked at his little watch and wound it up, and fingered the pages of the railway guide he found beside it.

The acts brought up the image of the girl who had furnished him with these useful accessories to flight. For lack of another name he called her the Wild Olive—remembering her yearning, not wholly unlike his own, to be grafted back into the good olive-tree of Organized Society. With some shame he perceived that he had scarcely thought of her through the night. It was astounding to recollect that not twelve hours ago she had kissed him and sent him on his journey. To him the gulf between then and now was so wide and blank that it might have been twelve weeks, or twelve months, or twelve years. It had been the night of the birth of a new creature, of the transmigration of a soul; it had no measurement in time, and threw all that preceded it into the mists of prenatal ages.

These thoughts passed through his mind as he made a pillow for himself with his white flannel jacket, and twisted the ferns above it into a shelter from the flies. Having done this, he stood still and pondered.

"Have I really become a new creature?" he asked himself.

There was much in the outward conditions to encourage the fancy, while his inner consciousness found it easy to be credulous. Nothing was left of Norrie Ford but the mere flesh and bones—the least stable part of personality. Norrie Ford was gone—not dead, but gone—blasted, annihilated stamped out of existence, by the act of Organized Society. In its place the night of transition had called up some one else.

"But who? ... Who am I? ... What am I?"

Above all, a name seemed required to give him entity. It was a repetition of his feeling about the Wild Olive—the girl in the cabin in the woods. Suddenly he remembered that, if he had found a name for her, she had also found one for him—and that it was written on the steamer ticket in his pocket. He drew it out, and read:

"Herbert Strange."

He repeated it at first in dull surprise, and then with disapproval. It was not the kind of name he would have chosen. It was odd, noticeable—a name people would remember He would have preferred something commonplace such as might be found for a column or two in any city directory. She had probably got it from a novel—or made it up. Girls did such things. It was a pity, but there was no help for it now. As Herbert Strange he must go on board the steamer, and so he should be called until—

But he was too tired to fix a date for the resumption of his own name or the taking of another. Flinging himself on his couch of moss and trailing ground-spruce, with the ferns closing over him, and the pines over them, he was soon asleep.

Part II

Strange

VII

Dressed in overalls that had once been white, he was superintending the stacking of wool in a long, brick-walled, iron-roofed shed in Buenos Aires when the thought came to him how easy it had all been. He paused for a minute in his work of inspection—standing by an open window, where a whiff of fresh air from off the mud-brown Rio de la Plata relieved the heavy, greasy smell of the piles of unwashed wool—just to review again the past eighteen months. Below him stretched the noisy docks, with their row of electric cranes, as regular as a line of street lamps, loading or unloading a mile of steamers lying broadside on, and flying all flags but the Stars and Stripes. Wines, silk, machinery, textiles were coming out; wheat, cattle, hides, and beef were pouring in. In the confusion of tongues that reached him he could, on occasions, catch the tones of Spaniard, Frenchman, Swede, and Italian, together with all the varieties of English speech from Highland Scotch to Cockney; but none of the intonations of his native land. The comparative rarity of anything American in his city of refuge, while it added to his sense of exile, heightened his feeling of security. It was still another of the happy circumstances that had helped him.

The strain under which he had lived during this year and a half had undoubtedly been great; but he could see now that it had been inward strain—the mental strain of unceasing apprehension, the spiritual strain of the new creature in casting off the old husk, and adapting itself not merely to new surroundings, but to a new life. This had been severe. He was not a rover, and still less an adventurer, in any of the senses attached to that word. His instincts were for the settled, the well-ordered, and the practical. He would have been content with any humdrum existence that permitted his peaceable, commercially gifted soul to develop in its natural environment. The process, therefore, by which Norrie Ford became Herbert Strange, even in his own thoughts, had been one of inner travail, though the outward conditions could not have been more favorable. Now that he had reached a point where his more obvious anxieties were passing away, and the hope of safety was becoming a reality, he could look back and see how relatively easy everything had been.

He had leisure for reflection because it was the hour for the men's midday meal and siesta. He could see them grouped together—some thirty-odd—at the far end of the shed—sturdy little Italians, black-eyed, smiling, thrifty, dirty, and contented to a degree that made them incomprehensible to the ambitious, upward-toiling American set over them. They sat, or lounged, on piles of wood, or on the floor, some chattering, most of them asleep. He had begun like them. He had stacked wool under orders till he had made himself capable of being in command. He had been beneath the ladder; and though his foot was only on the lowest rung of it even now, he was satisfied to have made this first step upward.

He could not be said to have taken it to his own surprise, since he had prepared himself for it, and for other such steps to follow it, knowing that they must become feasible in time. He had been given to understand that what the Argentine, in common with some other countries, needed most was neither men nor capital, but intelligence. Men were pouring in from every corner of the globe; capital was keen in looking for its opportunity; but for intelligence the demand was always greater than the supply.

The first intimation of such a need had come to him on the Empress of Erin, in mid-Atlantic, by a chance opportunity of the voyage. It was on one of the first days of liberty when he had ventured to mix freely with his fellow-passengers. Up to the present he had followed the rule of conduct adopted at the little Canadian station of Saint Jean du Clou Noir. He went into public when necessary, but no oftener. He did then what other people did, in the way to attract the least attention. The season favored him, for amid the throngs of early autumn travellers, moving from country back to town, or from seaside resorts to the mountains he passed unnoticed. At Quebec he was one of the crowd of tourists come to see the picturesque old town. At Rimouski he was lost among the trainful of people from the Canadian maritime provinces taking the Atlantic steamer at a convenient port. He lived through each minute in expectation of the law's tap on his shoulder; but he acquired the habit of nonchalance. On shipboard it was a relief to be able to shut himself up in his cabin—his suite!--feigning sickness, but really allowing his taut nerves to relax, as he watched first the outlines of the Laurentides, and then the shores of Anticosti, and lastly the iron-black coast of Labrador, follow each other below the horizon. Two or three appearances at table gave him confidence that he had nothing to fear. By degrees he allowed himself to walk up and down the deck, where it was a queer sensation to feel that the long row of eyes must of necessity be fixed upon him. The mere fact that he was wearing another man's clothes—clothes he had found in the cabin trunk that had come on board for him—produced a shyness scarcely mitigated by the knowledge that he was far from looking grotesque.

Little by little he plucked up courage to enter the smoking-room where the tacit, matter-of-course welcome of his own sex seemed to him like extraordinary affability. An occasional word from a neighbor, or an invitation to "take a hand at poker," or to "have a cocktail," was like an assurance to a man who fancies himself dead that he really is alive. He joined in no conversations and met no advances, but from the possibilities of doing so he would go back to his cabin smiling.

The nearest approach to pleasure he allowed himself was to sit in a corner and listen to the talk of his fellow-men. It was sometimes amusing, but oftener stupid; it turned largely on food, with irrelevant interludes on business. It never went beyond the range of topics possible to the American or Canadian merchants, professional men, politicians, and saloon-keepers, who form the rank and file of smoking-room society on any Atlantic liner; but the Delphic worshipper never listened to Apollo's oracle with a more rapt devotion than Ford to this intercommunion of souls.

It was in this way that he chanced one day to hear a man speaking of the Argentine. The remarks were casual, choppy, and without importance, but the speaker evidently knew the ground. Ford had already noticed him, because they occupied adjoining steamer-chairs—a tall, sallow Englishman of the ineffectual type, with sagging shoulders, a drooping mustache, and furtive eyes. Ford had scarcely thought of the Argentine since the girl in the cabin had mentioned it—- now ten or twelve days ago; but the necessity of having an objective point, and one sufficiently distant turned his mind again in that direction.

"Did I hear you speaking yesterday of Buenos Aires?" he ventured to ask, on the next occasion when he found himself seated beside his neighbor on deck.

The Englishman drew his brier-root pipe from his mouth, glanced sidewise from the magazine he was reading, and jerked his head in assent.

"What kind of place did it seem to you?"

"Jolly rotten."

Pondering this reply, Ford might have lost courage to speak again had he not caught the eye of the Englishman's wife as she leaned forward and peeped at him across her husband's brier-root. There was something in her starry glance—an invitation, or an incitement—that impelled him to continue.

"I've been told it's the land of new opportunities."

The Englishman grunted without looking up. "I didn't see many."

"May I ask if you saw any?"

"None fit for a white man."

"My husband means none fit for a—gentleman. I liked the place."

From the woman's steely smile and bitter-sweet tones Ford got hints of masculine inefficiency and feminine contempt which he had no wish to follow up. He knew from fragments of talk overheard in the smoking-room that they had tried Mexico, California, and Saskatchewan in addition to South America. From the impatience with which she shook the foot just visible beneath the steamer-rug, while all the rest of her bearing feigned repose, he guessed her humiliation at returning empty to the land she had left with an Anglo-Saxon's pioneering hope, beside a husband who could do nothing but curse luck. To get over the awkward minute he spoke hurriedly.

"I've heard of a very good house out there—Stephens and Jarrott. Do you happen to know anything about them?"

"Wool," the Englishman grunted again. "Wool and wheat. Beastly brutes."

"They were horribly impertinent to my husband," the woman spoke up, with a kind of feverish eagerness to have her say. "They actually asked him if there was anything he could do. Fancy!"

"Oh, I know people of that sort put a lot of superfluous questions to you," Ford said. But the lady hurried on.

"As to questions, there are probably fewer asked you in Argentine than anywhere else in the world. It's one of the standing jokes of the place, both in Buenos Aires and out in the Camp. Of course, the old Spanish families are all right; but when it comes to foreigners a social catechism wouldn't do. That's one of the reasons the place didn't agree with us. We wanted people to know who we'd been before we got there; but that branch of knowledge isn't cultivated."

"More beastly Johnnies in the Argentine passin' under names not their own," said the man, moved to speak, at last, "than in all the rest of the world put together. Heard a story at the Jockey Club—lot of beastly native bounders in the Jockey Club—heard a story at the Jockey Club of a little Irish Johnny who'd been cheatin' at cards. Three other asses kicked him out. Beggar turned at the door and got in his lick of revenge. 'Say boys, d'yez know why they call me Mickey Flanagan out here? Because it's me na-ame.' Beggar 'd got 'em all there."

Ford nerved himself to laugh, but made an excuse for rising.

"Oh, there's lots of cleverness among them," the lady observed, before he had time to get away. "In fact, it's one of the troubles with the country—for people like us. There's too much competition in brains. My husband hit the right nail on the head when he said there was no chance for any beastly Johnny out there, unless he could use his bloomin' mind—and for us that was out of the question."

Ford never spoke to them again, but he meditated on their words, finding himself at the end of twenty-four hours in possession of a new light. "I've got to use my bloomin' mind." The words seemed to offer him the clew to life. It was the answer to the question, "What should I do there?" which positively asked itself, whenever he thought of seeking a refuge in this country or in that. It came as a discovery that within himself was the power that would enable him to make the best of any country, and the country to make the best of him.

He could hardly have explained how his decision to try Argentina had become fixed. Until he saw whether or not he should get successfully ashore at Liverpool there was a paralysis of all mental effort; but once on the train for London his plans appeared before him already formed. The country where few questions were asked and the past had no importance was clearly the place for him. Within a fortnight he was a second-class passenger on board the Royal Mail Steam Packet Parana, bound for Buenos Aires—thus fulfilling, almost unexpectedly to himself, the suggestion made by the girl in the Adirondack cabin, whose star, as he began to believe, must rule his fate.

He thought of her now and then, but always with the same curious sense of remoteness—or unreality, as of a figure seen in a dream. Were it not for the substantial tokens of her actuality he possessed she would have seemed to him like the heroine of a play. He would have reproached himself for disloyalty if the intensity of each minute as he had to meet it had not been an excuse for him. The time would come when the pressure of the instant would be less great, and he should be able to get back the emotion with which he left her. Perhaps if she had been "his type of girl," her image would not have faded so quickly.

There was but one thing for which he was not grateful to her. She had fixed the name of Herbert Strange upon him in such a way that he was unable to shake it off. His own first name was the unobjectionable monosyllable John—though he had always been known by his less familiar middle name, Norrie—and as John Ford he could have faced the world with a certain amount of bluff. He meant to begin the attempt immediately on reaching London, but the difficulty of appearing in a hotel under one name while everything he brought with him bore another was patent to him at once. Similarly, he could not receive the correspondence incidental to his outfit and his passage under the name of Ford in a house where he was known as Strange. Having applied for his passage as Strange, he knew it would create comment if he asked to be put down in the books as Ford. Do what he would he was obliged to appear on the printed list of second-cabin passengers as Herbert Strange, and he had made at least one acquaintance who would expect to call him so after they reached land.

This was a little, clean-shaven man, in the neighborhood of sixty, always dressed at sea as he probably dressed on shore. He wore nothing but black, with a white shirt and a ready-made black bow-tie. He might have been a butler, an elderly valet, or a member of some discreet religious order in street costume. Ford had heard a flippant young Frenchman speak of him as an "ancien curé, qui a fait quelque bêtise"; and indeed there was about him that stamp of the ecclesiastic which is sometimes ineffaceable.

"I call myself Durand," he said to Ford, using the conveniently ambiguous French idiom, "je m'appelle Durand."

"Et je m'appelle Strange, I call myself Strange," Ford had replied, claiming the name for the first time without hesitation, but feeling the irrevocable nature of the words as soon as he had uttered them.

Out of the crowd of second-rate Europeans of all races who made up the second cabin, the man who called himself Strange had selected the man who called himself Durand by some obscure instinct of affinity. "He looks like an old chap who could give one information," was Strange's own way of putting it, not caring to confess that he was feeling after a bit of sympathy. But the give and take of information became the basis of their friendship, and imparted the first real stimulus to the young man's awkward efforts to use his mind.

Monsieur Durand had been thirty years in the Argentine, observing the place and the people, native and foreign, with the impartial shrewdness only possible to one who sought little for himself. It was a pleasure to share the fruits of his experience with one so eager to learn, for young men were not in the habit of showing him deference. He could tell Mr. Strange many things that would be to his advantage—what to do—what to avoid—what sort of place to live in—what he ought to pay—and what sort of company to keep.

Yes, he knew the firm of Stephens and Jarrott—an excellent house. There was no Mr. Stephens now, only a Mr. Jarrott. Mr. Stephens had belonged to the great days of American enterprise in the southern hemisphere, to the time of Wheelwright, and Halsey, and Hale. The Civil War had put an end to that. Mr. Jarrott had come later—a good man, not generally understood. He had suffered a great loss a few years ago in the death of his brother-in-law and partner, Mr. Colfax. Mrs. Colfax, a pretty little woman, who hadn't old age in her blood either—one could see that—had gone back to the United States with her child—but a child!--blond as an angel—altogether darling—tout à fait mignonne. Monsieur Durand thought he remembered hearing that Mrs. Colfax had married again, but he couldn't say for certain. What would you? One heard so many things. He knew less of the family since the last boy died—the boy to whom he gave lessons in Spanish and French. Death hadn't spared the household—taking the three sons one after another and leaving father and mother alone. It was a thousand pities Mrs. Colfax had taken the little girl away. They loved her as if she had been their own—especially after the boys died. An excellent house! Mr. Strange couldn't do better than seek an entry there—it is I who tell you so—c'est moi qui vous le dis.

All this was said in very good English, with occasional lapses into French, in a soft, benevolent voice, with slow benedictory movements of the hands, more and more suggestive of an ecclesiastic en civile—or under a cloud. Strange stole an occasional glance into the delicate, clear-cut face, where the thin lips were compressed into permanent lines of pain, and the sunken brown eyes looked out from under scholarly brows with the kind of hopeful anguish a penitent soul might feel in the midst of purifying flames. He remembered again that the flippant young Frenchman had said, "Un ancien curé, qui a fait quelque bêtise." Was it possible that some tragic sin lay under this gentle life? And was the four-funnelled, twin-screwed Parana but a ghostly ship bearing a cargo of haunted souls into their earthly purgatory?

"But listen, monsieur," the old man began next day. But listen! There would be difficulties. Stephens and Jarrott employed only picked men, men with some experience—except for the mere manual labor such as the Italians could perform. Wouldn't it be well for Mr. Strange to qualify himself a little before risking a refusal? Ah, but how? Monsieur Durand would explain. There was first the question of Spanish. No one could get along in the Argentine without a working knowledge of that tongue. Monsieur Durand himself gave lessons in it—and in French—but in the English and American colonies of Buenos Aires exclusively. There were reasons why he did not care to teach among Catholics, though he himself was a fervent one, and he hoped—repentant. He pronounced the last word with some emphasis, as though to call Strange's attention to it. If his young friend would give him the pleasure of taking a few lessons, they could begin even now. It would while away the time on the voyage. He had his own method of teaching, a method based on the Berlitz system, but not borrowed from it, and, he ventured to say, possessing its own good points. For example: el tabaco—la pipa—los cigarillos. Que es esto? Esto es la pipa. Very simple. In a few weeks' time the pupil is carrying on conversations.

It would be an incalculable advantage to Mr. Strange if he could enter on his Argentine life with some command of the vernacular. It might even be well to defer his search for permanent employment until he could have that accomplishment to his credit. If he possessed a little money—even a very little—Oh, he did? Then so much the better. He need not live on it entirely, but it would be something to fall back on while getting the rudiments of his education. In the mean time he could learn a little about wool if he picked up jobs—Oh, very humble ones!--they were always to be had by the young and able-bodied—at the Mercado Central, one of the great wool-markets of the world. He could earn a few pesetas, acquire practical experience, and fit himself out in Spanish, all at the same time.

And he could live with relative economy. Monsieur Durand could explain that too. In fact, he might get board and lodging in the same house as himself, with Mrs. Wilson who conducted a modest home for "gentlemen only." Mrs. Wilson was a Protestant—what they called a Methodist, he believed—but her house was clean, with a few flowers in the patio, very different from the frightful conventillos in which the poor were obliged to herd. If Mr. Strange thought it odd that he, Monsieur Durand, should be living beneath a Protestant roof—well, there were reasons which were difficult to explain.

Later on, perhaps, Mr. Strange might take a season on some great sheep estancia out in the Camp, where there were thousands of herds that were thousands strong. Monsieur Durand could help him in that too. He could introduce him to wealthy proprietors whose sons he had taught. It would be a hard life, but it need not be for long. He would live in a mud hut, dirty, isolated, with no companionship but that of the Italian laborers and their womenkind. But the outdoor existence would do him good; the air over the pampas was like wine; and the food would not be as bad as he might expect. There would be an abundance of excellent meat, chiefly mutton, it was true, which when cooked à la guacho—carne concuero, they called it in the Camp—roasted in the skin so as to keep all the juices in the meat—! A gesture of the hands, accompanied by a succulent inspiration between the teeth, gave Strange to understand that there was one mitigation at least to life on an Argentine estancia.

To come into actual contact with the sheep, to know Oxfords, Cheviots, Leicesters, and Black-faced Downs, to assist at the feedings and washings and doctorings and shearings, to follow the crossings and recrossings and crossings again, that bred new varieties as if they were roses, to trace the processes by which the Argentine pampas supply novel resources to the European manufacturer, and the European manufacturer turns out the smart young man of London or New York, with his air of wearing "the very latest"—all this would not only give Strange a pleasing sense of being at the root of things, but form a sort of apprenticeship to his trade.

The men had not yet finished their hour of siesta, but Strange himself was at work. Ten minutes were sufficient for his own snack, and he never needed rest. Moreover, he was still too new to his position to do other than glory in the fact that he was a free being, doing a man's work, and earning a man's wage. Out in the Camp he had been too desolate to feel that, but here in Buenos Aires, at the very moment when the great city was waking to the knowledge of her queenship in the southern world—when the commercial hordes of the north were sweeping down in thousands of ships across the equator to outdo each other in her markets, it was an inspiring thing merely to be alive and busy. He was as proud of Stephens and Jarrott's long brick shed, where the sun beat pitilessly on the corrugated iron roof, and the smell of wool nearly sickened him, as if it had been a Rothschild's counting-house. His position there was just above the lowest; but his enthusiasm was independent of trivial things like that. How could he lounge about, taking siestas, when work was such a pleasure in itself? The shed of which he had the oversight was a model of its kind, not so much because his ambition designed to make it so, as because his ardor could make it nothing else.

The roar of dock traffic through the open windows drowned everything but the loudest sounds, so that busily working, he heard nothing, and paid no attention, when some one stopped behind him. He had turned accidentally, humming to himself in the sheer joy of his task, when the presence of the stranger caused him to blush furiously beneath his tan. He drew himself up, like a soldier to attention. He had never seen the head of the firm that employed him, but he had heard a young Englishman describe him as "looking like a wooden man just coming into life," so that he was enabled to recognize him now. He did look something like a wooden man, in that the long, lean face, of the tone of parchment, was marked by the few, deep, almost perpendicular folds that give all the expression there is to a Swiss or German medieval statue of a saint or warrior in painted oak. One could see it was a face that rarely smiled, though there was plenty of life in the deep-set, gray-blue eyes, together with a force of cautious, reserved, and possibly timid, sympathy. Of the middle height and slender, with hair just turning from iron-gray to gray, immaculate in white duck, and wearing a dignified Panama, he stood looking at Strange—who, tall and stalwart in his greasy overalls, held his head high in conscious pride in his position in the shed—as Capital might look at Labor. It seemed a long time before Mr Jarrott spoke—the natural harshness of his voice softened by his quiet manner.

"You're in charge of this gang?"

"Yes, sir."

There was an embarrassed pause. As though not knowing what to say next, Mr. Jarrott's gaze travelled down the length of the shed to where the Italians, rubbing their sleepy eyes, were preparing for work again.

"You're an American, I believe?"

"Yes, sir."

"How old are you?"

"Not quite twenty-six."

"What's your name?"

"Herbert Strange!"

"Ah? One of the Stranges of Virginia?"

"No, sir."

There was another long pause, during which the older man's eyes wandered once more over the shed and the piles of wool, coming back again to Strange.

"You should pick up a little Spanish."

"I've been studying it. Hablo Español, pero no muy bien."

Mr. Jarrott looked at him for a minute in surprise.

"So much the better—tanto mejor," he said, after a brief pause, and passed on.

VIII

He was again thinking how easy it had been, as he stood, more than three years later, on the bluffs of Rosario, watching the sacks of wheat glide down the long chute—full seventy feet—into the hold of the Walmer Castle. The sturdy little Italians who carried the bags from the warehouse in long single file might have been those he had superintended in the wool-shed in Buenos Aires in the early stages of his rise. But he was not superintending these. He superintended the superintendents of those who superintended them. Tired with his long day in the office, he had come out toward the end of the afternoon not only to get a breath of the fresh air off the Parana, but to muse, as he often did, over the odd spectacle of the neglected, half-forgotten Spanish settlement, that had slumbered for two hundred years, waking to the sense of its destiny as a factor of importance in the modern world. Wheat had created Chicago and Winnipeg Adam-like from the ground; but it was rejuvenating Rosario de Santa Fé Faust-like, with its golden elixir. It interested the man who called himself Herbert Strange—resident manager of Stephens and Jarrott's great wheat business in this outlet of the great wheat provinces—to watch the impulse by which Decrepitude rose and shook itself into Youth. As yet the process had scarcely advanced beyond the early stages of surprise. The dome of the seventeenth-century Renaissance cathedral accustomed for five or six generations to look down on low, one-storied Spanish dwellings surrounding patios almost Moorish in their privacy, seemed to lift itself in some astonishment over warehouses and flour-mills; while the mingling of its sweet old bells with the creaking of cranes and the shrieks of steam was like that chorus of the centuries in which there can be no blending of the tones.

Strange felt himself so much a part of the rejuvenescence that the incongruity gave him no mental nor æsthetic shock. If in his present position he took a less naïve pride than in that of three years ago, he was conscious none the less of a deep satisfaction in having his part, however humble, in the exercise of the world's energies. It gave him a sense of oneness with the great primal forces—with the river flowing beneath him, two hundred miles to the Atlantic, with the wheat fields stretching behind him to the confines of Brazil and the foothills of the Andes—to be a moving element in this galvanizing of new life into the dormant town, in this finding of new riches in the waiting earth. There was, too, a kind of companionship in the steamers moored to the red buoys in the river, waiting their turns to come up to the insufficient quays and be loaded. They bore such names as Devonshire, Ben Nevis, and Princess of Wales. They would go back to the countries where the speech was English, and the ideals something like his own. They would go back, above all, to the north, to the north that he yearned for with a yearning to which time brought no mitigation, to the north which was coming to mean for him what heaven means to a soul outside the scope of redemption.

It was only on occasions that this sentiment got possession of him strongly. He was generally able to keep it down. Hard work, assisted by his natural faculty for singleness of purpose and concentration of attention, kept him from lifting the eyes of his heart toward the unattainable. Moreover, he had developed an enthusiasm, genuine in its way, for the land of his adoption. The elemental hugeness of its characteristics—its rivers fifty to a hundred miles in width, its farms a hundred thousand acres in extent, its sheep herds and cattle herds thousands to the count—were of the kind to appeal to an ardent, strenuous nature. There was an exhilarating sense of discovery in coming thus early to one of the world's richest sources of supply at a minute when it was only beginning to be tapped. Out in the Camp there was an impression of fecundity, of earth and animal alike, that seem to relegate poverty and its kindred ills to a past that would never return; while down in the Port the growth of the city went on like the bursting of some magic, monstrous flower. It was impossible not to share in some degree the pride of the braggart Argentine.

It was difficult, too, not to love a country in which the way had been made so smooth for him. While he knew that he brought to his work those qualities most highly prized by men of business, he was astonished nevertheless at the rapidity with which he climbed. Men of long experience in the country had been more than once passed over, while he got the promotion for which they had waited ten and fifteen years. He admired the way in which for the most part they concealed their chagrin, but now and then some one would give it utterance.

"Hello, grafter!" a little man had said to him, on the day when his present appointment had become known among his colleagues.

The speaker was coming down the stairs of the head office in the Avenida de Mayo as Strange was going up. His name was Green, and though he had been twenty years in Argentine, he haled from Boston. Short and stout, with gray hair, a gray complexion, a gray mustache, and wearing gray flannels, with a gray felt hat, he produced a general impression of neutrality. Strange would have gone on his way unheeding had not the snarling tone arrested him. He had ignored this sort of insult more than once; but he thought the time had come for ending it. He turned on an upper step, looking down on the ashy-faced little man, to whom he had once been subordinate and who was now subordinate to him.

"Hello—what?" he asked, with an air of quiet curiosity.

"I said, Hello, grafter," Green repeated, with bravado.

"Why?"

"I guess you know that as well as I do."

"I don't. What is it? Out with it. Fire away."

His tranquil air of strength had its effect in overawing the little man, though the latter stood firm and began to explain.

"A grafter is a fellow with an underground pull for getting hold of what belongs to some one else. At least that's what I understand by it—"

"It's very much what I understand by it, too. But have I ever got hold of anything of yours?"

"Yes, confound you! You've taken my job—the job I've waited for ever since 1885."

"Did waiting for it make it yours? If so, you would have come by it more easily than I did. I worked for it."

"Worked for it? Haven't I worked for it, too? Haven't I been in this office for going on seventeen years? Haven't I done what they've paid me for—?"

"I dare say. But I've done twice what they've paid me for. That's the secret of my pull, and I don't mind giving it away. You mayn't like it—some fellows don't; but you'll admit it it's a pull you could have had, as well as I. Look here, Green," he continued, in the same quiet tone, "I'm sorry for you. If I were in your place, I dare say I should feel as you do. But if I were in your place, I'll be hanged if I shouldn't make myself fit to get out of it. You're not fit—and that's the only reason why you aren't going as resident manager to Rosario. You're labelled with the year '1885,' as if you were a bottle of champagne—and you've forgotten that champagne is a wine that gets out of date. You're a good chap—quite as good as your position—but you're not better than your position—and when you are you won't be left in it any longer."

In speaking in this way the man who had been Norrie Ford was consciously doing violence to himself. His natural tendency was to be on friendly terms with those around him, and he had no prompting stronger than the liking to be liked. In normal conditions he was always glad to do a kindness; and when he hurt any one's feelings he hurt his own still more. Even now, though he felt justified in giving little Green to understand his intoleration of impertinence, he was obliged to fortify himself by appealing to his creed that he owed no consideration to any one. Little Green was protected by a whole world organized in his defence; Norrie Ford had been ruined by that world, while Herbert Strange had been born outside it. With a temperament like that of a quiet mastiff, he was forced to turn himself into something like a wolf.

In spite of the fact that little Green's account of the brief meeting on the stairs presented it in the light of the castigation he had administered to "that confounded upstart from nobody knows where," Strange noticed that it made the clerks in the office, most of whom had been his superiors as Green had been, less inclined to bark at his heels. He got respect from them, even if he could not win popularity—and from popularity, in any case, he had been shut out from the first. No man can be popular who works harder than anybody else, shuns companionship, and takes his rare amusements alone. He had been obliged to do all three, knowing in advance that it would create for him a reputation of an "ugly brute" in quarters whence he would have been glad to get good-will.

Finding the lack of popularity a safeguard not only against prying curiosity, but against inadvertent self-betrayal, it was with some misgiving that he saw his hermit-like seclusion threatened, as he rose higher in the business and consequently in the social—scale. In the English-speaking colony of Buenos Aires the one advance is likely to bring about the other—especially in the case of a good-looking young man, evidently bound to make his mark, and apparently of respectable antecedents. The first menace of danger had come from Mr. Jarrott himself, who had unexpectedly invited his intelligent employee to lunch with him at a club, in order to talk over a commission with which Strange was to be intrusted. On this occasion he was able to stammer his way out of the invitation; but when later, Mr. Skinner, the second partner, made a like proposal, he was caught without an excuse, being obliged, with some confusion, to eat his meal in a fashionable restaurant in the Calle Florida. Oddly enough, both his refusal on the one occasion and his acceptance on the other obtained him credit with his elders and superiors, as a modest young fellow, too shy to seize an honor, and embarrassed when it was thrust upon him.

To Strange both occurrences were so alarming that he put himself into a daily attitude of defence, fearing similar attack from Mr. Martin, the third member of the firm. He, however, made no sign; and the bomb was thrown by his wife. It came in the shape of a card informing Mr. Strange that on a certain evening, a few weeks hence, Mrs. Martin would be at home, at her residence in Hurlingham. It was briefly indicated that there would be dancing, and he was requested to answer if he pleased. The general information being engraved, his particular name was written in a free bold hand, which he took to be that of one of the daughters of the family.

Though he did his best to keep his head, there was everything in that bit of pasteboard to throw him into a state of something like excitement. Not only were the doors of the world Norrie Ford had known being thrown open to Herbert Strange, but the one was being moved by the same thrill—the thrill of the feminine—that had been so powerful with the other. He was growing more susceptible to it in proportion as it seemed forbidden—just as a man in a desert island may dream of the delights of wine.

He had looked at the Misses Martin, but had never supposed they could fling a glance at him. He had seen them at the public gathering-places—in their box at the opera, in the grand stand at the Jockey Club, in their carriage at Palermo or in the Florida. They were handsome girls—blonde and dashing—whose New York air was in pleasant contrast to the graceful indolence or stolid repose of the dark-eyed ladies of the Argentine, too heavily bejewelled and too consciously dressed according to the Paris mode. Strange said of the Misses Martin, as he had said of Wild Olive, that they were "not his type of girl"—but they were girls—they were American girls—they were bright, lively girls, representing the very poetry and romance of the world that had turned him out.

It was a foregone conclusion that he should decline their invitation, and he did so; but the mere occasion for doing it gave his mind an impetus in the direction in which he had been able hitherto to check it. He began again to think of the feminine, to dream of it, to long for it. For the time being it was the feminine in the abstract—without features or personality. As far as it took form at all it was with the dainty, nestling seductiveness that belonged to what he called his "type"—a charm that had nothing in common with the forest grace of the Wild Olive or the dash of the Misses Martin.

Now and then he caught glimpses of it, but it was generally out of reach. Soft eyes, of the velvety kind that smote him most deliciously, would lift their light upon him through the casement of some old Spanish residence, or from the daily procession of carriages moving slowly along the palm avenue at Palermo or in the Florida. When this happened he would have a day or two of acting foolishly, in the manner of the Bonarense bucks. He would stand for hours of his leisure time—if he could get away from the office at the minute of the fashionable promenade—on the pavement of the Florida, or under a palm-tree in the park, waiting for a particular carriage to drive round again and again and again, while he returned the sweet gaze which the manners of the country allow an unknown lady to bestow, as a rose is allowed to shed its beauty. This being done, he would go away, and realize that he had been making himself ridiculous.

Once the incarnation of his dreams came so near him that it was actually within his grasp. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil dangled its fruit right before his eyes in the person of Mademoiselle Hortense, who sang at the Café Florian, while the clients, of whom he was sometimes one, smoked and partook of refreshments. She was just the little round, soft, dimpling, downy bundle of youth and love he so often saw in his mind's eye, and so rarely in reality, and he was ready to fall in love with any one. The mutual acquaintance was formed, as a matter of course, over the piece of gold he threw into the tambourine, from which, as she passed from table to table, she was able to measure her hearer's appreciation of art. Those were the days in which he first began to be able to dress well, and to have a little money to throw away. For ten days or a fortnight he threw it away in considerable sums, being either in love or in a condition like it. He respected Mademoiselle Hortense, and had sympathy with her in her trials. She was desperately sick of her roving life as he was of Mrs. Wilson's boarding-house. She was as eager to marry and settle down as he to have a home. The subject was not exactly broached between them, but they certainly talked round it. The decisive moment came on the night when her troupe was to sail for Montevideo. In the most delicate way in the world she gave him to understand that she would remain even at the eleventh hour if he were to say the word. She might be on the deck, she might be in her berth, and it still would not be too late. He left her at nine, and she was to sail at eleven. During the two intervening hours he paced the town, a prey to hopes, fears, temptations, distresses. To do him justice, it was her broken heart he thought of, not his own. To him she was only one of many possibilities; to her, he was the chance of a lifetime. She might never, he said to himself, "fall into the clutches of so decent a chap again." It was a wild wrestle between common sense and folly—so wild that he was relieved to hear a clock strike eleven, and to know she must have sailed.

The incident sobered him by showing him how near and how easily he could come to a certain form of madness. After that he worked harder than ever, and in the course of time got his appointment at Rosario. It was a great "rise," not only in position and salary, but also in expectations. Mr. Martin had been resident manager at Rosario before he was taken into partnership—so who could tell what might happen next?

The first intimation of the change was conveyed by Mr. Jarrott in a manner characteristically casual. Strange, being about to leave the private office one day, after a consultation on some matter of secondary import, was already half-way to the door, while Mr. Jarrott himself was stooping to replace a book in the revolving bookcase that stood beside his chair.

"By-the-way," he said, without looking up, "Jenkins is going to represent the house in New York. We think you had better take his place at Rosario."

Strange drew himself up to attention. He knew the old man liked his subordinates to receive momentous orders as if they came in the routine of the day.

"Very well, sir," he said, quietly, betraying no sign of his excitement within. Raising himself, Mr. Jarrott looked about uneasily, as if trying to find something else to say, while Strange began again to move toward the door.

"And Mrs. Jarrott—"

Strange stopped so still that the senior partner paused with that air of gentlemanly awkwardness—something like an Englishman's—which he took on when he had firmly made up his mind.

"Mrs. Jarrott," he continued, "begs me to say she hopes you will—a—come and lunch with us on Sunday next."

There was a long pause, during which the young man searched wildly for some formula that would soften his point-blank refusal.

"Mrs. Jarrott is awfully kind," he began at last to stammer, "but if she would excuse me—"

"She will expect you on Sunday at half-past twelve."

The words were uttered with that barely perceptible emphasis which, as the whole house knew, implied that all had been said.

In the end the luncheon was no formidable affair. Except for his fear, lest it should be the thin edge of the wedge of that American social life which it would be perilous for him to enter, he would have enjoyed this peep into a comfortable home, after his long exile from anything of the sort. In building his house at Palermo, Mr. Jarrott had kept, in the outlines at least, to the old Spanish style of architecture, as being most suited to the history and climate of the country, though the wealthy Argentines themselves preferred to have their residences look—like their dresses, jewels, and carriages—as if they had come from Paris. The interior patio was spacious, shaded with vines, and gay with flowers, while birds, caged or free, were singing everywhere. The rooms surrounding it were airy and cool, and adapted to American standards of comfort. In the dining-room mahogany, damask, crystal, and silver gave Strange an odd feeling of having been wafted back to the days and usages of the boyhood of Norrie Ford.

As the only guest he found himself seated on Mrs. Jarrott's right, and opposite Miss Queenie Jarrott, the sister of the head of the house. The host, as his manner was, spoke little. Miss Jarrott, too, only looked at Strange across the table, smiling at him with her large, thin, upward-curving smile, comic in spite of itself, and with a certain pathos, since she meant it to be charged with sentiment. Over the party at table, over the elderly men-servants who waited on them, over the room, over the patio, there was—except for the singing of the birds—the hush that belongs to a household that never hears the noise or the laughter of youth.

Mrs. Jarrott took the brunt of the conversation on herself She was a beautiful woman, faded now with the pallor that comes to northern people after a long residence in the sub-tropical south, and languid from the same cause. Her handsome hazel eyes looked as if they had been used to weeping, though they conserved a brightness that imparted animation to her face. A white frill round her throat gave the only relief to her plain black dress, but she wore many handsome rings, after the Argentine fashion as well as a brooch and earrings of black pearls.

She began by asking her guest if it was true, as Mr. Jarrott had informed her, that he was not one of the Stranges of Virginia. She thought he must be. It would be so odd if he wasn't. There were Stranges in Virginia, and had been for a great many generations. In fact, her own family, the Colfaxes, had almost intermarried with them. When she said almost, she meant that they had intermarried with the same families—the Yorkes, the Endsleighs and the Poles. If Mr. Strange did belong to the Virginia Stranges, she was sure they could find relatives in common. Oh, he didn't? Well, it seemed really as if he must. If Mr. Strange came from New York, he probably knew the Wrenns. Her own mother was a Wrenn. She had been Miss Wrenn before she was Mrs. Colfax. He thought he had heard of them? Oh, probably. They were well-known people—at least they had been in the old days—though New York was so very much changed. She rarely went back there now, the voyage was so long, but when she did she was quite bewildered. Her own family used to be so conservative, keeping to a little circle of relatives and friends that rarely went north of Boston or south of Philadelphia; but now when she made them a visit she found them surrounded by a lot of people who had never been heard of before. She thought it a pity that in a country where there were so few distinctions, those which existed shouldn't be observed.

It was a relief to Strange when the sweet, languorous monologue, punctuated from time to time by a response from himself, or an interjectory remark from one of the others, came to an end, and they proceeded to the patio for coffee.

It was served in a corner shaded by flowering vines, and presided over by a huge green and gray parrot in a cage. The host and hostess being denied this form of refreshment took advantage of the moment to stroll arm in arm around the court, leaving Miss Jarrott in tête-à-tête with Strange. He noticed that as this lady led the way her figure was as lithe as a young girl's and her walk singularly graceful. "No one is ever old with a carriage like yours," Miss Jarrott had been told, and she believed it. She dressed and talked according to her figure, and, had it not been for features too heavily accentuated in nose and chin, she might have produced an impression of eternal spring-tide. As it was, the comic papers would have found her cruelly easy to caricature, had she been a statesman. The parrot screamed at her approach, croaking out an air, slightly off the key:

"Up and down the ba-by goes,

Turning out its lit-tle ..."

Tempted to lapse into prose, it proceeded to cry:

"Wa-al, Polly, how are you to-day? Wa-al, pretty well for an old gal," after which there was a minute of inarticulate grumbling. When coffee was poured, and the young man's cigarette alight, Miss Jarrott seized the opportunity which her sister-in-law's soft murmur at the table had not allowed her.

"It's really funny you should be Mr. Strange, because I've known a young lady of the same name. That is, I haven't known her exactly, but I've known about her."

Not to show his irritation at the renewal of the subject, Strange presumed she was one of the Stranges of Virginia, with right and title to be so called.

"She is and she isn't," Miss Jarrot replied. "I know you'll think it funny to hear me speak so; but I can't explain I'm like that. I can't always explain. I say lots and lots of things that people just have to interpret for themselves It's funny I should be like that, isn't it? I wonder why? Can you tell me why? And this Miss Strange—I never knew her really—not really—but I feel as if I had. I always feel that way about friends of friends of mine. I feel as if they were my friends, too. I'd go through fire and water for them. Of course that's just an expression but you know what I mean, now don't you?"

Having been assured on that point, she continued:

"I'm afraid you'll find us a very quiet household, Mr. Strange, but we're in mourning. That is, Mrs. Jarrott is in mourning; and when those dear to me are in mourning I always feel that I'm in mourning, too. I'm like that. I never can tell why it is, but—I'm like that. My sister-in-law has just lost her sister-in-law. Of course that's no relation to me, is it? And yet I feel as if it was. I've always called Mrs. Colfax my sister-in-law, and I've taught her little girl to call me Aunt Queenie. They lived here once. Mr. Colfax was Mrs. Jarrott's brother and Mr. Jarrott's partner. The little girl was born here. It was a great loss to my brother when Mr. Colfax died. Mrs. Colfax went back to New York and married again. That was a blow, too; so we haven't been on the same friendly terms of late years. But now I hope it will be different. I'm like that. I always hope. It's funny, isn't it? No matter what happens, I always think there's a silver lining to the cloud. Now, why should I be like that? Why shouldn't I despair, like other people?"

Strange ventured the suggestion that she had been born with a joyous temperament.

"Wa-al, pretty well for an old gal!" screamed the parrot ending in a croaking laugh.

"I'm sure I don't know," Miss Jarrott mused. "Everybody is different, don't you think? And yet it sometimes seems to me that no one can be so different as I am. I always hope and hope; and you see, in this case I've been justified. We're going to have our little girl again. She's coming to make us a long, long visit. Her name is Evelyn; and once we get her here we hope she'll stay. Who knows? There may be something to keep her here. You never can tell about that. She's an orphan, with no one in the world but a stepfather, and he's blind. So who has a better right to her? I always think that people who have a right to other people should have them, don't you? Besides, he's going to Wiesbaden, to a great oculist there, so that Evelyn will come to us as her natural protectors. She's nearly eighteen now, and she wasn't eight when she left us. Oh yes, of course we've seen her since then—when we've gone to New York—but that hasn't been often. She will have changed; she'll have her hair up, and be wearing her dresses long; but I shall know her. Oh, you couldn't deceive me. I never forget a face. I'm like that. No, nor names either. I should remember you, Mr. Strange, if I met you fifty years from now. I noticed you when you first began to work for Stephens and Jarrott. So did my sister-in-law, but I noticed you first. We've often spoken of you, especially after we knew your name was Strange. It seemed to us so strange. That's a pun, isn't it? I often make them. We both thought you were like what Henry—that's Mr. Jarrott's oldest son—might have grown to, if he had been spared to us. We've had a great deal of sorrow—Oh, a great deal! It's weaned my sister-in-law away from the world altogether. She's like that. My brother, too—he isn't the same man. So when Evelyn comes we hope we shall see you often, Mr. Strange. You must begin to look on this house as your second home. Indeed, you must. It'll please my brother. I've never heard him speak of any young man as he's spoken of you. I think he sees the likeness to Henry. That'll be next year when Evelyn comes. No, I'm sorry to say it isn't to be this year. She can't leave her stepfather till he goes to Wiesbaden. Then she'll be free. Some one else is going to Wiesbaden with him. And isn't it funny, it's the same Miss Strange—the lady we were speaking of just now."

It was already some months since those words had been spoken, so that he had ceased to dwell on them; but at first they haunted him like a snatch of an air that passes through the mental hearing, and yet eludes the attempt to bring it to the lips. Even if he had had the synthetic imagination that easily puts two and two together, he had not the leisure, in the excitement of his removal to Rosario and the undertaking of his duties there, to follow up a set of clews that were scarcely more palpable than odors. Nevertheless the words came back to him from time to time, and always with the same odd suggestion of a meaning special—perhaps fatal—to himself. They came back to him at this minute, as he stood watching the loading of the Walmer Castle and breathing the fresh air off the Parana. But if they threatened danger, it was a danger that disappeared the instant he turned and faced it—leaving nothing behind but the evanescent memory of a memory, such as will sometimes remain from a dream about a dream.

IX

Another year had passed before he learned what Miss Jarrott's words were to mean to him. Knowledge came then as a flash of revelation in which he saw himself and his limitations clearly defined. His success at Rosario had been such that he had begun to think himself master of Fate; but Fate in half an hour laughingly showed herself mistress of him.

He had been called to Buenos Aires on an errand of piety and affection—to bury Monsieur Durand. The poor old unfrocked priest had been gathered to his rest, taking his secret with him—penitent, reconciled to the Church, and fortified with the Last Sacraments. Strange slipped a crucifix between the wax-like fingers, and followed—the only mourner—to the Recoleta Cemetery.

Having ordered a cross to mark the grave, he remained in town a day or two longer to attend to a small matter which for some time past he had at heart and on his conscience. It was now three or four years since he had set aside the sum lent him by the girl for whom he had still no other name than that of the Wild Olive. He had invested it, and reinvested it, till it had become a fund of some importance. Putting it now into the safest American securities, he placed them in the hands of a firm of English solicitors in Buenos Aires, with directions not only to invest the interest from time to time, but—in the event of his death—to follow certain sealed instructions with which also he intrusted them. From the few hints he was able to give them in this way he had little doubt but that her identity could be discovered, and the loan returned.

In taking these steps he could not but see that what would be feasible in case of his death must be equally feasible now; but he had two reasons for not attempting it. The first was definite and prudential. He was unwilling to risk anything that could connect him ever so indirectly with the life of Norrie Ford. Secondly, he was conscious of a vague shrinking from the payment of this debt otherwise than face to face. Apart from considerations of safety, he was unwilling to resort to the commonplace channels of business as long as there was a possibility of taking another way.

Not that he was eager to see her again. He had questioned himself on that point, and knew she had faded from his memory. Except for a vision of fugitive dark eyes—eyes of Beatrice Cenci—he could scarcely recall her features. Events during the last six years had pressed so fast on each other, life had been so full, so ardent, each minute had been so insistent that he should give it his whole soul's attention, that the antecedent past was gone like the passion no effort can recapture. As far as he could see her face at all, it looked at him out of an abyss of oblivion to which his mind found it as hard to travel back as a man's imagination to his infancy.

It was with some shame that he admitted this. She had saved him—in a sense, she had created him. By her sorcery she had raised up Herbert Strange out of the ruin of Norrie Ford, and endowed him with young vigor. He owed her everything. He had told her so. He had vowed his life to her. It was to be hers to dispose of, even at her caprice. It was what he had meant in uttering his parting words to her. But, now, that he had the power in some degree, he was doing nothing to fulfil his promise. He had even lost the desire to make the promise good.

It was not difficult to find excuses for himself. They were ready-made to his hand. There was nothing practical that he could do except what he had done about the money. Life was not over yet; and some day the chance might come to prove himself as high-souled as he should like to be. If he could only have been surer that he was inwardly sincere he would not have been uneasy over his inactivity.

Then, within a few minutes, the thing happened that placed him in a new attitude, not only toward the Wild Olive, but toward all life.

Business with the head office detained him in Buenos Aires longer than he had expected. It was business of a few hours at a time, leaving him leisure for the theatres and the opera, for strollings at Palermo, and for standing stock-still watching the procession of carriages in the Florida or the Avenida Sarmiento, in the good Bonarense fashion. He was always alone, for he had acquired the art—none too easy—of taking pleasure without sharing it.

So he found himself, one bright afternoon, watching the races from the lawn of the Hipodromo of the Jockey Club. He was fond of horses, and he liked a good race. When he went to the Hipodromo it was for the sporting, not the social, aspect of the affair. Nevertheless, as he strolled about, he watched for that occasional velvety glance that gave him pleasure, and amused himself with the types seated around him, or crossing his path—heavy, swarthy Argentines, looking like Italian laborers grown rich—their heavy, swarthy wives, come out to display all the jewels that could be conveniently worn at once—pretty, dark-eyed girls, already with a fatal tendency to embonpoint, wearing diamonds in their ears and round their necks as an added glory to costumes fresh from the rue de la Paix—grave little boys, in gloves and patent-leather boots, seated without budging by their mammas, sucking the tops of their canes in imitation of their elder brothers, who wandered about in pairs or groups, all of the latest cut, eying the ladies but rarely addressing them—tall Englishmen, who looked taller than they were in contrast to the pudgy race around them, as the Germans looked lighter and the French more blond—Italian opera singers, Parisian actresses Spanish dancers, music-hall soubrettes—diplomats of all nations—clerks out for a holiday—sailors on shore—tourists come to profit by a spectacle that has no equal in the southern world, and little of the kind that is more amusing in the north.

As Strange's glance roamed about in search of a response he not infrequently received it, for he was a handsome fellow by this time—tall, well dressed, and well set up, his trim, fair beard emphasizing the clear-cut regularity of his profile, without concealing the kindliness that played about the mouth. A little gray on the temples, as well as a few tiny wrinkles of concentration about the eyes, gave him an air of maturity beyond his age of thirty-two. The Anglo-Saxon influence in the Argentine is English—from which cause he had insensibly taken on an English air, as his speech had acquired something of the English intonation. He was often told that he might pass for an Englishman anywhere, and he was glad to think so. It was a reason the less for being identified as Norrie Ford. It sometimes seemed to him that he could, in case of necessity, go back to North America, to New York, to Greenport, or even to the little county town where he had been tried and sentenced to death, and run no risk of detection.

The staring of other men first directed his attention toward her. She was sitting slightly detached from the party of Americans to whom she clearly belonged, and in which the Misses Martin formed the merrily noisy centre. Though dressed in white, that fell softly about her feet, and trained on the grass sidewise from her chair, her black cuffs, collar and hat suggested the last days of mourning. Whether or not she was aware of the gaze of the passers-by it was difficult to guess, for her air of demure simplicity was proof against penetration. She was one of those dainty little creatures who seem to see best with the eyes downcast; but when she lifted her dark lashes, the darker from contrast with the golden hair, to sweep heaven and earth in a blue glance that belonged less to scrutiny than to prayer, the effort seemed to create a shyness causing the lids, dusky as some flowers are, to drop heavily into place again, like curtains over a masterpiece. It was so that they rose and fell before Strange, her eyes meeting his in a look that no Argentine beauty could ever have bestowed, in that it was free from coquetry or intention, and wholly accidental.

It was in fact this accidental element, with its lack of preparation, that gave the electric thrill to both. That is to say, in Strange the thrill was electric; as for her, she gave no sign further than that she opened her parasol and raised it to shade her face. Having done this she continued to sit in undisturbed composure, though she probably saw through her fringing lashes that the tall, good-looking young man still stood spellbound, not twenty yards away.

Strange, on his part, was aware of the unconventionality of his behavior, though he was incapable of moving on. He felt the occasion to be one which justified him in transcending the established rules of courtesy. He was face to face with the being who met not only all the longings of his earthly love, but the higher, purer aspirations that accompanied it. It was not, so he said to himself, a chance meeting; it was one which the ages had prepared, and led him up to. She was "his type of girl" only in so far as she distilled the essence of his gross imaginings and gave them in their exquisite reality. So, too, she was the incarnation of his dreams only because he had yearned for something mundane of which she was the celestial, and the true, embodiment. He had that sense of the insufficiency of his own powers of preconception which comes to a blind man when he gets his sight and sees a rose.

He was so lost in the wonder of the vision that he had to be awakened as from a trance when Miss Jarrott, very young and graceful, crossed the lawn and held out her hand.

"Mr. Strange! I didn't know you were in town. My brother never mentioned it. He's like that. He never tells. If I didn't guess his thoughts, I shouldn't know anything. But I always guess people's thoughts. Why do you suppose it is? I don't know. Do you? When I see people, I can tell what they're thinking of as well as anything. I'm like that; but I can't tell how I do it. I saw you from over there, and I knew you were thinking about Evelyn. Now weren't you? Oh, you can't deceive me. You were thinking of her just as plain—! Well, now you must come and be introduced."

He felt that he stumbled blindly as he crossed the bit of greensward in Miss Jarrott's wake; and yet he kept his head sufficiently to know that he was breaking his rules, contradicting his past, and putting himself in peril. In being presented to the Misses Martin and their group, he was actually entering that Organized Society to which Herbert Strange had no attachments, and in which he could thrust down no roots. By sheer force of will he might keep a footing there, as a plant that cannot strike into the soil may cling to a bare rock. All the same the attempt would be dangerous, and might easily lead to his being swept away.

It was in full consciousness, therefore, of the revolution in his life that he bowed before the Misses Martin, who received him coldly. He had not come to their dance, nor "called," nor shown them any of the civilities they were accustomed to look for from young men. Turning their attention at once to the other gentlemen about them, they made no effort to detain him as Miss Jarrott led him to Miss Colfax.

Here the introduction would have been disappointing if the greatness of the event had not been independent of the details with which it happened. Strange was not in a condition to notice them, any more than a soul can heed the formalities with which it is admitted into heaven. Nearly all his impressions were subconscious—to be brought to the surface and dwelt on after he went away. It was thus he recorded the facts relating to the gold tint—the teint doré—of her complexion, the curl of her lashes that seemed to him deep chestnut rather than quite black, as well as the little tremor about her mouth, which was pensive in repose, and yet smiled with the unreserved sweetness of an infant. He could not be said to have taken in any of these points at a glance; but they came to him later, vividly, enchantingly, in the solitude of his room at the Phoenix Hotel.

What actually passed would have been commonplace in itself had it not been for what lay behind. Miss Colfax acknowledged the introduction with a fleeting smile and a quick lifting of the curtains of her eyes. He did not need that glimpse to know that they were blue, but he got a throb of bliss from it, as does one from the gleam of a sunlit sea. To her answers to the questions he asked as to when she had arrived, how she liked the Argentine, and what she thought of the Hipodromo, he listened less than to the silvery timbre of her voice. Mere words were as unimportant to those first minutes of subtle ecstasy as to an old Italian opera. The music was the thing, and for that he had become one enraptured auditory nerve.

There was no chair for him, so that he was obliged to carry on the conversation standing. He did not object to this, as it would give him an excuse for passing on. That he was eager to go, to be alone, to think, to feel, to suffer, to realize, to trace step by step the minutes of the day till they had led him to the supreme instant when his eyes had fallen on her, to take the succeeding seconds one by one and extract the significance from each, was proof of the power of the spell that had been cast upon him.

"And isn't it funny, Evie, dear," Miss Jarrott began, just as he was about to take his leave, "that Mr. Strange's name should be—"

"Yes, I've been thinking about that," Miss Colfax fluted, with that pretty way she had of speaking with little movement of the lips.

But he was gone. He was gone with those broken sentences ringing in his ears—casual and yet haunting—meaningless and yet more than pregnant—creeping through the magic music of the afternoon, as a death-motive breathes in a love-chant.

X

After a night of little sleep and much thinking he determined to listen to nothing but the love-chant. He came to this decision, not in the recklessness of self-will, but after due consideration of his rights. It was true that, in biblical phrase, necessity was laid upon him. He could no more shut his ears against that entrancing song than he could shut his eyes against the daylight. This was not, however, the argument that he found most cogent, as it was not the impulse from which he meant to act. If he could make this girl his wife it would be something more than a case of getting his own way; it would be an instance—probably the highest instance—of the assertion of himself against a world organized to destroy him. He could not enter that world and form a part of it; but at least he could carry off a wife from it, as a lion may leap into a sheepfold and snatch a lamb.

It was in this light that he viewed the matter when he accepted Miss Jarrott's invitations—now to lunch, now to dinner, now to a seat in their box at the opera or in their carriage in the park—during the rest of the time he remained in town. It became clear to him that the family viewed with approval the attachment that had sprung up between Miss Colfax and himself, and were helping it to a happy ending. He even became aware that they were growing fond of him—making the discovery with a queer sensation of surprise. It was a thing so new in his experience that he would have treated the notion as ridiculous had it not been forced upon him. Women had shown him favors; one lonely old man, now lying in the Recoleta Cemetery, had yearned over him; but a household had never opened its heart to him before. And yet there could be no other reading of the present situation. He began to think that Mr. Jarrott was delaying his departure for Rosario purposely, to keep him near. It was certain that into the old man's bearing toward him there had crept something that might almost be called paternal, so that their business discussions were much like those between father and son. Mrs. Jarrott advanced as far out of the circle of her griefs to welcome him as it was possible for her languorous spirit to emerge. Miss Jarrott, friendly from the first, attached him to the wheels of her social chariot with an air of affectionate possession.

It required no great amount of perspicuity to see that the three elders would be glad if Miss Colfax and he were to "make a match of it," and why. It would be a means—and a means they could approve—of keeping their little girl among them. As matters stood, she was only a visitor, who spoke of her flight back to New York as a matter of course.

"I only came," she lisped to Strange, as they sat one day, under the parrot's chaperonage, in the shady corner of the patio—"I only came because when dear mamma died there was nothing else for me to do. Everything happened so unfortunately, do you see? Mamma died, and my stepfather went blind, and really I had no home. Of course that doesn't matter so much while I'm in mourning—I mean, not having a home—but I simply must go back to New York next autumn, in order to 'come out.'"

["Who is Miriam?" was on his lips]

"Aren't you 'out' enough already?"

"Do you see?" she began to explain, with the quaint air of practical wisdom he adored in her, "I'm not out at all—and I'm nearly nineteen. Dear mamma fretted over it as it was—and if she knew it hadn't been done yet—Well something must be managed, but I don't know what. It isn't as if Miriam could do anything about it, though she's a great deal older than I am, and has seen a lot of social life at Washington and in England. But she's out of the question. Dear mamma would never have allowed it. And she's no relation to me, besides."

The question, "Who is Miriam?" was on his lips, but he checked it in time. He checked all questions as to her relatives and friends whom he did not know already. He was purposely making ignorance his bliss as long as possible, in the hope that before enlightenment could be forced upon him it would be too late for any one to recede.

"Couldn't they do it for you here?" he asked, when he was sure of what he meant to say. "I know the Miss Martins—"

"Carrie and Ethel! Oh, well! That isn't quite the same thing. I couldn't come out in a place like Buenos Aires—or anywhere, except New York."

"But when you've been through it all, you'll come back here, won't you?"

His eyes sought hers, but he saw only the curtains of the lids—those lids with the curious dusk on them, which reminded him of the petals of certain pansies.

"That'll—depend," she said, after a minute's hesitation.

"It'll depend—on what?" he persisted, softly.

Before she could answer the parrot interrupted, screaming out a bit of doggerel in its hoarse staccato.

"Oh, that bird!" the girl cried, springing up. "I do wish some one would wring its neck."

He got no nearer to his point that day, and perhaps he was not eager to. The present situation, with its excitements and uncertainties, was too blissful to bring to a sudden end. Besides, he was obliged to go through some further rehearsing of the creed adopted in the dawn on Lake Champlain before his self-justification could be complete. It was not that he was questioning his right to act; it was only that he needed to strengthen the chain of arguments by which his action must be supported—against himself. Within his own heart there was something that pleaded against the breaking off of this tender sprig of the true olive to graft it on the wild, in addition to which the attitude of the Jarrott family disconcerted him. It was one thing to push his rights against a world ready to deny them, but it was quite another to take advantage of a trusting affection that came more than half-way to meet him. His mind refused to imagine what they would do if they could know that behind the origin of Herbert Strange there lay the history of Norrie Ford. After all, he was not concerned with them, he asserted inwardly, but with himself. They were intrenched within a world able to take care of itself; while there was no power whatever to protect him, once he made a mistake.

So every night, as he sat in his cheerless hotel room, he reviewed his arguments, testing them one by one, strengthening the weak spots according to his lights, and weighing the for and against with all the nicety he could command. On the one side were love, happiness, position, a home, children probably, and whatever else the normal, healthy nature craves; on the other, loneliness, abnegation, crucifixion, slow torture, and slower death. Was it just to himself to choose the latter, simply because human law had made a mistake and put him outside the human race? The answer was obvious enough; but while his intelligence made it promptly, something else within him—some illogical emotion—seemed to lag behind with its corroboration.

This hesitation of his entire being to respond to the bugle-call of his need gave to his wooing a certain irregularity—an advance and recession like that of the tide. At the very instant when the words of declaration were trembling on his lips this doubt about himself would check him. There were minutes—moonlit minutes, in the patio, when the birds were hushed, and the scent of flowers heavy, and the voices of the older ones stole from some lighted room like a soft, human obligato to the melody of the night—minutes when he felt that to his "I love you!" hers would come as surely as the echo to the sound; and yet he shrank from saying it. Their talk would drift near to it, dally with it, flash about it, play attack and defence across it, and drift away again, leaving the essential thing unspoken. The skill with which she fenced with this most fragile of all topics, never losing her guard, never missing her thrust or parry, and yet never inflicting anything like a wound, filled him with a sort of rapture. It united the innocence of a child to the cleverness of a woman of the world, giving an exquisite piquancy to both. In this young creature, who could have had no experience of anything of the kind, it was the very essence of the feminine.

By dint of vigil and meditation he drew the conclusion that his inner hesitancy sprang from the fact that he was not being honest with himself. He was shirking knowledge that he ought to face. Up to the present he had done his duty in that respect, and done it pluckily. He had not balked at the statement that his rôle in the world was that of an impostor—though an impostor of the world's own creation. It had been part of the task forced upon him "to deceive men under their very noses," as he had expressed it to himself that night on Lake Champlain. Whatever vengeance, therefore, discovery might call upon him, he could suffer nothing in the loss of self-respect. He would be always supported by his inner approval. Remorse would be as alien to him as to Prometheus on the rock.

In the present situation he was less sure of that, and there he put his finger on his weakness. Seeing shadows flitting in the background he dodged them, instead of calling them out into daylight. He was counting on happy chances in dealing with the unforeseen, when all his moves should be based on the precise information of a general.

Therefore, when, in the corner of the patio, the next opportunity arose for asking the question, "Who is Miriam?" he brought it out boldly.

"She's a darling." The unexpected reply was accompanied by a sudden lifting of the lashes for a rapturous look and one of the flashing smiles.

"That's high praise—from you."

"She deserves it—from any one!"

"Why? What for? What has she done to win your enthusiasm when other people find it so hard?"

"It isn't so hard—only some people go the wrong way to work about it, do you see?"

She leaned back in her wicker chair, fanning herself slowly, and smiling at him with that air of mingled innocence and provocation which he found the most captivating of her charms.

"Do I?" he was tempted to ask.

"Do you? Now, let me think. Really, I never noticed. You'd have to begin all over again—if you ever did begin—before I could venture an opinion."

This was pretty, but it was not keeping to the point.

"Evidently Miriam knows how to do it, and when I see her I shall ask her."

"I wish you could see her. You'd adore her. She'd be just your style."

"What makes you think that? Is she so beautiful? What is she like?"

"Oh, I couldn't tell you what she's like. You'd have to see her for yourself. No, I don't think I should call her beautiful, though some people do. She's awfully attractive anyhow."

"Attractive? In what way?"

"Oh, in a lot of ways. She isn't like anybody else. She's in a class by herself. In fact, she has to be, poor thing."

"Why should she be poor thing, with so much to her credit in the way of assets?"

"Do you see?—that's something I can't tell you. There's a sort of mystery about her. I'm not sure that I understand it very well myself. I only know that dear mamma didn't feel that she could take her out, in New York, except among our very most intimate friends, where it didn't matter. And yet when Lady Bonchurch took her to Washington she got a lot of offers—I know that for a fact—and in England, too."

"I seem to be getting deeper in," Strange smiled, with the necessary air of speaking carelessly. "Who is Lady Bonchurch?"

"Don't you know? Why, I thought you knew everything. She was the wife of the British Ambassador. They took a house at Greenport that year because they were afraid about Lord Bonchurch's lungs. It didn't do any good, though. He had to give up his post the next winter, and not long after that he died. I don't think air is much good for people's lungs, do you? I know it wasn't any help to dear mamma. We had all those tedious years at Greenport, and in the end—but that's how we came to know Lady Bonchurch, and she took a great fancy to Miriam. She said it was a shame a girl like that shouldn't have a chance, and so it was. Mamma thought she interfered and I suppose she did. Still, you can't blame her much, when she had no children of her own, can you?"

"I shouldn't want to blame her if she gave Miriam her chance."

"That's what I've always said. And if Miriam had only wanted to, she could have been—well, almost anybody. She had offers and offers in Washington, and in England there was a Sir Somebody-or-other who asked her two or three times over. He married an actress in the end—and dear mamma thought Miriam must be crazy not to have taken him while he was to be had. Dear mamma said it would have been such a good thing for me to have some one like Miriam—who was under obligations to us, do you see?—in a good social position abroad."

"But Miriam didn't see it in that way?"

"She didn't see it in any way. She's terribly exasperating in some respects, although she's such a dear. Poor mamma used to be very tried about her—and she so ill—and my stepfather going blind—and everything. If Miriam had only been in a good social position abroad it would have been a place for me to go—instead of having no home—like this."

There was something so touching in her manner that he found it difficult not to offer her a home there and then; but the shadows were marching out into daylight, and he must watch the procession to the end.

"It seems to have been very inconsiderate of Miriam," he said. "But why do you suppose she acted so?"

"Dear mamma thought she was in love with some one—some one we didn't know anything about—but I never believed that. In the first place, she didn't know any one we didn't know anything about—not before she went to Washington with Lady Bonchurch. And besides, she couldn't be in love with any one without my knowing it, now could she?"

"I suppose not; unless she made up her mind she wouldn't tell you."

"Oh, I shouldn't want her to tell me. I should see it for myself. She wouldn't tell me, in any case—not till things had gone so far that—but I never noticed the least sign of it, do you see? and I've a pretty sharp eye for that sort of thing at all times. There was just one thing. Dear mamma used to say that for a while she used to do a good deal of moping in a little studio she had, up in the hills near our house—but you couldn't tell anything from that. I've gone and moped there myself when I've felt I wanted a good cry—and I wasn't in love with any one."

There was a long silence, during which he sat grave, motionless, reflecting. Now and then he placed his extinguished cigarette to his lips, with the mechanical motion of a man forgetful of time and place and circumstance.

"Well, what are you thinking about?" she inquired, when the pause had lasted long enough. He seemed to wake with a start.

"Oh—I—I don't know. I rather fancy I was thinking about—about this Miss—after all, you haven't given me any name but Miriam."

"Strange, her name is. The same as yours."

"Oh? You've never told me that."

"Aunt Queenie has, though. But you always seem to shuffle so when it's mentioned that I've let it alone. I don't blame you, either; for if there's one thing more tedious than another, it's having people for ever fussing about your name. There was a girl at our school whose name was Fidgett—Jessie Fidgett—a nice, quiet girl, as placid as a church—but I do assure you, it got to be so tiresome—well, you know how it would be—and so I decided I wouldn't say anything about Miriam's name to you, nor about yours to her. Goodness knows, there must be lots of Stranges in the world—just as much as Jarrotts."

"So that—after all—her name was Miriam Strange."

"It was, and is, and always will be—if she goes on like this," Miss Colfax rejoined, not noticing that he had spoken half-musingly to himself. "She was a ward of my step-father's till she came of age," she added, in an explanatory tone. "She's a sort of Canadian—or half a Canadian—or something—I never could quite make out what. Anyhow, she's a dear. She's gone now with my stepfather to Wiesbaden, about his eyes—and you can't think what a relief to me it is. If she hadn't, I might have had to go myself—and at my age—with all I've got to think about—and my coming out—Well, you can see how it would be."

She lifted such sweet blue eyes upon him that he would have seen anything she wanted him to see, if he had not been determined to push his inquiries until there was nothing left for him to learn.

"Were you fond of him?—your stepfather?"

"Of course—in a way. But everything was so unfortunate I know dear mamma thought she was acting for the best when she married him; and if he hadn't begun to go blind almost immediately—But he was very kind to mamma, when she had to go to the Adirondacks for her health. That was very soon after she returned to New York from here—when papa died. But she was so lonely in the Adirondacks—and he was a judge—a Mr. Wayne—with a good position—and naturally she never dreamed he had anything the matter with his eyes—it isn't the sort of thing you'd ever think of asking about beforehand—and so it all happened that way, do you see?"

He did see. He could have wished not to see so clearly. He saw with a light that dazzled him. Any step would be hazardous now, except one in retreat; though he was careful to explain to himself that night that it was retreat for reconnoitre, and not for running away. The mere fact that the Wild Olive had taken on personality, with a place of some sort in the world, brought her near to him again; while the knowledge that he bore her name—possibly her father's name—seemed to make him the creation of her magic to an even greater degree than he had felt hitherto. He could perceive, too, that by living out the suggestions she had made to him in the cabin—the Argentine—Stephens and Jarrott—"the very good firm to work for"—he had never got beyond her influence, no more than the oak-tree gets beyond the acorn that has been its seed. The perception of these things would have been enough to puzzle a mind not easily at home in the complex, even if the reintroduction of Judge Wayne had not confused him further.

It was not astonishing, therefore, that he was seized with a sudden longing to get away—a longing for space and solitude, for the pampas and the rivers, and, above all, for work. In the free air his spirit would throw off its oppression of discomfort, while in a daily routine of occupation he often found that difficulties solved themselves.

"If you think that this business of Kent's can get along without me now," he said to Mr. Jarrott, in the private office, next morning, "perhaps I had better be getting back to Rosario."

Not a muscle moved in the old man's long, wooden face, but the gray-blue eyes threw Strange a curious look.

"Do you want to go?" he asked, after a slight pause.

Strange smiled, with an embarrassment that did not escape observation.

"I've been away longer than I expected—a good deal longer. Things must want looking after, I suppose. Green can take my place for a while, but—"

"Green is doing very well—better than I thought he could. He seems to have taken a new start, that man."

"I'm not used to loafing, sir. If there's no particular reason for my staying on here—"

Mr. Jarrott fitted the tips of his fingers together, and answered slowly.

"There's no particular reason—just now. We've been speaking of—of—a—certain changes—But it's too soon—"

"Of course, sir, I don't want to urge my private wishes against—"

"Quite so; quite so; I understand that. A—a—private wishes, you say?"

"Yes, sir; entirely private."

The gray-blue eyes rested on him in a gaze meant to be uninquisitive and non-committal, but which, as a matter of fact, expressed something from which Strange turned his own glance away.

"Very well; I'd go," the old man said, quietly.

Strange left his cards that afternoon at the house just when he knew Mrs. Jarrott would be resting and Miss Jarrott driving with Miss Colfax. At seven he took the night boat up the Plata to the Parana.

XI

"Evie, what do you think made Mr. Strange rush away like that? Your uncle says he didn't have to—that he might just as well have stayed in town."

"I'm sure I don't know," was Evie's truthful response, as she flitted about the dining-room table arranging the flowers before luncheon.

"Your uncle thinks you do," Mrs. Jarrott said, leaning languidly back in an arm-chair. Her tone and manner implied that the matter had nothing to do with her, though she was willing to speak of it. This was as far as she could come to showing an interest in anything outside herself since the boys died. She would not have brought up the subject now if the girl's pallor during the last few days had not made them uneasy.

"I haven't the least idea," Miss Colfax declared. "I was just as much surprised as you were, Aunt Helen."

"Your uncle thinks you must have said something to him—"

"I didn't. I didn't say anything to him whatever. Why should I? He's nothing to me."

"Of course he's nothing to you, if you're engaged to Billy Merrow."

Miss Colfax leaned across the table, taking a longer time than necessary to give its value to a certain rose.

"I'm not engaged to him now," she said, as if after reflection—"not in my own mind, that is."

"But you are in his, I suppose."

"Well, I can't help that, can I?"

"Not unless you write and tell him it's all over."

Miss Colfax stood still, a large red flower raised in protestation.

"That would be the cruellest thing I ever heard of," she exclaimed, with conviction. "I don't see how you can bear to make the suggestion."

"Then what are you going to do about it?"

"I needn't do anything just yet. There's no hurry—till I get back to New York."

"Do you mean to let him go on thinking—?"

"He'd much rather. Whenever I tell him, it will be too soon for him. There's no reason why he should know earlier than he wants to."

"But is that honor, dear?"

"How can I tell?" At so unreasonable a question the blue eyes clouded with threatening tears. "I can't go into all those fine points, Aunt Helen, do you see? I've just got to do what's right."

Mrs. Jarrot rose with an air of helplessness. She loved her brother's daughter tenderly enough, but she admitted to herself that she did not understand young girls. Having borne only sons, she had never been called upon to struggle with the baffling.

"I hope you're not going to tell any one, Aunt Helen," Evie begged, as Mrs. Jarrott seemed about to leave the room. "I shouldn't want Uncle Jarrott to know, or Aunt Queenie, either."

"I shall certainly spare them," Mrs. Jarrott said, with what for her was asperity. "They would be surprised, to say the least, after the encouragement you gave Mr. Strange."

"I didn't give it—he took it. I couldn't stop him."

"Did you want to?"

"I thought of it—sometimes—till I gave up being engaged to Billy."

"And having passed that mental crisis, I suppose it didn't matter."

"Well, the mental crisis, as you call it, left me free. I sha'n't have to reproach myself—"

"No; Mr. Merrow will do that for you."

"Of course he will. I expect him to. It would be very queer if he didn't. I shall have a dreadful time making him see things my way. And with all that hanging over me, I should think I might look for a little sympathy from you, Aunt Helen. Lots of girls wouldn't have said anything about it. But I told you because I want you to see I'm perfectly straight and above-board."

Mrs. Jarrott said no more for the moment, but later in the day she confided to her husband that the girl puzzled her. "She mixes me up so that I don't know which of us is talking sense." She was not at all sure that Evie was fretting about Mr. Strange—though she might be. If she wasn't, then she couldn't be well. That was the only explanation of her depression and loss of appetite.

"You can bet your life he's thinking of her," Mr. Jarrott said, with the lapse from colloquial dignity he permitted himself when he got into his house-jacket. "He's praying to her image as if it was a wooden saint."

With the omission of the word wooden this was much what Strange was doing at Rosario. Not venturing—in view of all the circumstances—to write to her, he could only erect a shrine in his heart, and serve it with a devotion very few saints enjoy. He found, however, that absence from her did not enable him to form detached and impartial opinions on his situation, just as work brought no subconsciously reached solution to the problems he had to face. In these respects he was disappointed in the results of his unnecessary flight from town.

At the end of two months he was still mentally where he was when he left Buenos Aires. His intelligence assured him that he had the right of a man who has no rights to seize and carry off what he can; while that nameless something else within him refused to ratify the statement. What precise part of him raised this obstacle he was at a loss to guess. It could not be his conscience, since he had been free of conscience ever since the night on Lake Champlain. Still less could it be his heart, seeing that his heart was crying out for Evie Colfax more fiercely than a lion roars for food. The paralysis of his judgment had become such that he was fast approaching the determination to make Love the only arbiter, and let all the rest go hang!

He was encouraged in this impulse by the thought that between her and himself there was the mysterious bond of something "meant." He believed vaguely in a Power, which, with designs as to human destinies, manifests its intentions by fitful gleams, vouchsafed somewhat erratically. In this way Evie Colfax, as a beautiful, fairy-like child, had been revealed to him at the most critical instant of his life. His mind had never hitherto gone back willingly to recollections of that night; but now he made the excursion into the past with a certain amount of pleasure. He could see her still, looking at a picture-book, her face resting on the back of her hand, and golden ringlets falling over her bare arm. He could see the boy, too. He remembered that his name was Billy. Billy who? he wondered. He could hear the sweet, rather fretful voice calling from the shadows:

"Evie dear, it's time to go to bed. Billy, I don't believe they let you stay up as late as this at home."

How ridiculous it would have been to remember such trivial details all these years if something hadn't been "meant" by it. There was a hint in the back of his mind that by the same token something might have been "meant" about the Wild Olive, too, but he had not an equal temptation to dwell on it. The Wild Olive, he repeated, had never been "his type of girl"—not from the very first. It was obviously impossible for a superintending Power to "mean" things that were out of the question.

He had got no further than this when the news was conveyed to him by Mrs. Green, whom he met accidentally in the street, that Mr. Skinner, the second partner, had had a "stroke," and had been ordered to Carlsbad. Mrs. Skinner, so Mrs. Green's letters from the Port informed her, was to accompany her husband. Furthermore, Miss Colfax was seizing the opportunity to travel with them to Southampton, where she would be able to join friends who would take her to New York. There was even a rumor that Miss Jarrott was to accompany her niece, but Mrs. Green was unable to vouch for the truth of it. In any case, she said, there were signs of "a regular shaking up," such as comes periodically in any great mercantile establishment; and this time, she ventured to hope, Mr. Green would get his rights.

XII

The knowledge that it was a juncture at which to execute a daring movement acted as an opiate on what would otherwise have been, for Strange, a day of frenzy. While to the outward eye he was going quietly about his work, he was inwardly calling all his resources to his aid to devise some plan for outwitting circumstance. After forty-eight hours of tearing at his heart and hacking at his brain, he could think of nothing more original than to take the first train down to the Port, ask the girl to be his wife, and let life work out the consequence. At the end of two days, however, he was saved from a too deliberate defiance of the unaccounted-for inner voice, by an official communication from Mr. Jarrott.

It was in the brief, dry form of his business conversation, giving no hint that there were emotions behind the stilted phraseology, and an old man's yearnings. Mr. Skinner was far from well, and would "proceed immediately" to Carlsbad. Strange would hand over the business at Rosario to Mr. Green—who would become resident manager, pro tem at any rate—and present himself in Buenos Aires at the earliest convenient moment. Mr. Jarrott would be glad to see him as soon as possible after his arrival.

That was all; but as far as the young man was concerned, it saved the situation. On consulting the steamer-list he saw that the Royal Mail Steam Packet Corrientes would sail for Southampton in exactly six days' time. By dint of working all night with Mr. Green, who was happy to lend himself to anything that would show him the last of his rival, he was able to take a train to the Port next day. It was half-past six when he arrived in Buenos Aires. By half-past eight he had washed, changed to an evening suit, and dined. At nine his cab stopped at the door of the house at Palermo.

As he followed the elderly man-servant who admitted him, the patio was so dim that he made his way but slowly. He made his way but slowly, not only because the patio was dim, but because he was trying to get his crowding emotions under control before meeting his employer in an interview that might be fraught with serious results. For once in his life he was unnerved, tremulous, almost afraid. As he passed the open doors and windows of unlighted, or dimly lighted, rooms he knew she might be in any one of the shadowy recesses. It would have been a relief to hear her at the piano, or in conversation, and to know her attention was diverted. None the less, he peered about for a glimpse of her, and strained his hearing for a sound of her voice. But all was still and silent, except for the muffled footfall of the servant leading him to the library at the far end of the court.

If she had not moved out unexpectedly from behind a pillar, a little fluttering figure in a white frock, he could have kept his self-control. If he had not come upon her in this sudden way, when she believed him in Rosario, she, too, would not have been caught at a disadvantage. As it was, he stood still, as if awe-struck. She gave a little cry, as if frightened. It is certain that his movement of the arms was an automatic process, not dictated by any order of the brain; and the same may be said for the impulse which threw her on his breast. If, after that, the rest was not silence, it was little more. What he uttered and she replied was scarcely audible to either, though it was understood by both. It was all over so quickly that the man-servant had barely thrown open the library door, and announced "Mr. Strange," when Strange himself was on the threshold.

It was a moment at which to summon all his wits together to attend to business; but he was astonished at the coolness and lightness of heart with which he did it. After those brief, sudden vows exchanged, it was as easy to dismiss Evie Colfax momentarily from his mind as it is to forget money troubles on inheriting a fortune. Nevertheless as he got himself ready to deal with practical, and probably quite commercial, topics, he was fully conscious of the rapture of her love, while he was scarcely less aware of a comfort closely akin to joy in feeling that the burden of decision had been lifted from him. Since Fate had taken the matter into her own hands, she could be charged with the full responsibility.

Mr. Jarrott, who was smoking a cigar and sipping his after-dinner coffee, was in evening dress, but wore his house-jacket—a circumstance of which Strange did not know the significance, though he felt its effect. The old man's welcome was not unlike that of a shy father trying to break the shackles of reserve with a home-coming son. He pushed Strange gently into the most comfortable arm-chair beside which he drew up a small table for the cigar-box, the ash-tray, and the matches. He rang for another cup, and brought the coffee with his own hands. Strange remembered how often, after a hard day's work, he had been made uncomfortable by just such awkward, affectionate attentions from poor old Monsieur Durand.

"I didn't expect you so soon," Mr. Jarrott began, when they were both seated, "but you've done well to come. I'm afraid we're in for a regular upset all round."

"I hope it isn't going to make things harder for you, sir," Strange ventured, in the tone of personal concern which his kindly treatment seemed to warrant him in taking.

"It won't if I can get the right men into the right places. That'll be the tough part of the business. The wool department will suffer by Mr. Skinner's absence—he's very ill, in my opinion—and there's only one man who can take his place." Strange felt his heart throbbing and the color rising to his face. He did not covet the position, for he disliked the wool department; but it was undeniably a "rise," and right along the line of highest promotion. "That's Jenkins," Mr. Jarrott finished, quietly.

Strange said nothing. After all, he was relieved. Mr. Jarrott did not go on at once, but when he did speak Strange fell back into the depths of his arm-chair, in an attitude suggestive of physical collapse.

"And if Jenkins came back here," the old man pursued, "you'd have to take his place in New York."

Strange concealed his agitation by puffing out successive rings of smoke. If he had not long ago considered what he would say should this proposal ever be made to him, he would have been even more overcome than he actually was. He had meant to oppose the offer with a point-blank refusal, but what had happened within the last quarter of an hour had so modified this judgment that he could only sit, turning things rapidly over in his mind, till more was said.

"There's no harm in—a—telling you," Mr. Jarrott went on again, with that hesitancy Strange had begun to associate with important announcements, "that—a—Jenkins will be—a—taken into partnership. You won't—a—be taken into partnership—a—yet. But you will have a good salary in New York. I can—a—promise you that much."

It was because he was unnerved that tears smarted in the young man's eyes at the implications in these sentences. He took his time before responding, the courtesies of the occasion being served as well by silence as by speech.

"I won't try to thank you for all your kindness, sir," he said, with a visible effort, "until I've told you something—something that, very likely, you won't approve of. I've asked Miss Colfax to marry me, and she's consented."

The old man's brows shot up incredulously.

"That's odd," he said, "because not half an hour ago she told my wife there was nothing whatever between you—that you hadn't even written to her since you went away. Mrs. Jarrott only left this room as you rang the door-bell."

"But it was after I rang the door-bell," Strange stammered "that I—I—asked her."

"Quick work," was the old man's only comment, but the muscles of his lips relaxed slowly, as if rusty from disuse, into one of his rare smiles.

With the assurance of this reception, Strange could afford to sit silent till Mr. Jarrott made some further sign.

"By the terms of her father's will," he explained some minutes later, "I'm her guardian and trustee. She can't marry without my consent till she comes of age. I don't say that in this instance I should—a—withhold my consent; but I should feel constrained to—a—give it with conditions."

"If it's anything I can fulfil, sir—"

"No; it wouldn't concern you so much as her. She's very young—and in heart she's younger than her age. She knows nothing about men—she can't know—and I dare say you're the first young fellow who ever said anything to her about—well, you understand what I mean. Mind you, we've no objections to you whatever. You are your own credentials; and we take them at their face value. You tell me you're an orphan, with no near relations, so that there couldn't be any complications on that score. Besides that, you're—a likely chap; and I don't mind saying that—a—my ladies—Mrs. Jarrott and my sister—have taken rather a fancy to you. It can't do you any—a—harm to know as much as that."

Strange murmurred his appreciation, and the old man went on.

"No; you're all right. But, as I said before, she's very young, and if we married her to you out of hand we feel that we shouldn't be giving her a fair show. We think she ought to have a little more chance to look round her, so to speak. In fact, she isn't what ladies call 'out.' She's scarcely ever seen a man, except through a window. Consequently, we think we must send her back to New York, for a winter at any rate, and trot the procession before her. My sister is to undertake it, and they're to sail next week. That won't make so much difference to you now, as it would if you weren't soon going to follow them."

Strange nodded. He felt himself being wafted to New York, whether he would or no.

"Now all I have to say is this: if, when she's regularly started, she sees some other young fellow she likes better than you, you're to give her up without making a fuss."

"Of course. Naturally, she would have to be free to do as she chose in the long run. I'm not afraid of losing her—"

"That'll be your own lookout. You'll be on the spot, and will have as good a chance as anybody else. You'll have a better chance; for you'll only have to keep what you've won, while any one else would have to start in at the beginning. But it's understood that there—a—can be no talk of a wedding just yet. She must have next winter to reconsider her promise to you, if she wants to."

Strange having admitted the justice of this, the old man rose, and held out his hand.

"We'll keep the matter between ourselves—in the family, I mean—for the time being," he said, with another slowly breaking smile; "but the ladies will want to wish you luck. You must come into the drawing-room and see them."

They were half-way to the door when Mr. Jarrott paused.

"And, of course, you'll go to New York? I didn't think it necessary to ask you if you cared to make the change."

With the question straight before him, Strange knew that an answer must be given. He understood now how it is that there are men and women who find it worth their while to thrust their heads into lions' mouths.

"Yes, sir, of course," he answered, quietly; and they went on to join the ladies.

Part III

Miriam

XIII

On a day when Evie Colfax was nearing Southampton, and Herbert Strange sailing northward from the Rio de la Plata, up the coast of Brazil, Miriam Strange, in New York, was standing in the embrasure of a large bay-window of a fifth-floor apartment, in that section of Fifty-ninth Street that skirts the southern limit of Central Park. Her conversation with the man beside her turned on subjects which both knew to be only preliminary to the business that had brought him in. He inquired about her voyage home from Germany, and expressed his sympathy with "poor Wayne" on the hopelessness and finality of the Wiesbaden oculist's report. Taking a lighter tone, he said, with a gesture toward the vast expanse of autumn color on which they were looking down:

"You didn't see anything finer than that in Europe. Come now!"

"No, I didn't—not in its own way. As long as I can look at this I'm almost reconciled to living in a town."

As her eyes roamed over the sea of splendor that stretched from their very feet, a vision of October gorgeousness against the sky, he was able to steal a glance at her. His immediate observation was to the effect that the suggestion of wildness—or, more correctly, of a wild origin—was as noticeable in her now, a woman of twenty-seven, as it was when he first knew her, a girl of nineteen. That she should have brought it with her from a childhood passed amid lakes and rivers and hills was natural enough—just as it was natural that her voice should have that liquid cadence which belongs to people of the forest, though it is rarely caught by human speech elsewhere; but that she should have conserved these qualities through the training of a woman of the world was more remarkable. But there it was, that something woodland-born which London and New York had neither submerged nor swept away. It was difficult to say in what it consisted, since it eluded the effort to say, "It is this or that." It resisted analysis, as it defied description. Though it might have been in the look, or in the manner, it conveyed itself to the observer's apprehension, otherwise than by the eye or ear, as if it appealed to some extra sense. People who had not Charles Conquest's closeness of perception spoke of her as "odd," while those who had heard the little there was to learn about her, said to each other, "Well, what could you expect?" Young men, as a rule, fought shy of her, not so much from indifference as from a sense of an indefinable barrier between her and themselves so that it was the older men who sought her out. There was always some fear on Conquest's part lest the world should so assimilate her that her distinctiveness—which was more like an influence that radiated than a characteristic that could be seen—would desert her; and it was with conscious satisfaction that he noted now, after an absence of some months, that it was still there.

He noted, too, the sure lines of her profile—a profile becoming clearer cut as she grew older—features wrought with delicacy and yet imbued with strength, suggestive of carved ivory. Delicacy imbued with strength was betokened, too, by the tall slenderness of her figure, whose silence and suppleness of movement came—in Conquest's imagination at least—from her far-off forest ancestry.

"I couldn't live anywhere else but here—if it must be in New York," she said, turning from the window. "I couldn't do without the sense of woods, and space, and sky. I can stand at this window and imagine all sorts of things—that the park really does run into the Catskills, as it seems to do—that the Catskills run into the Adirondacks—and that the Adirondacks take me up to the Laurentides with which my earliest recollections begin."

"I think you're something like Shelley's Venice," he smiled, "a sort of 'daughter of the earth and ocean.' You never seem to me to belong in just the ordinary category—"

She had been afraid of something like this from the minute he was announced, and so hastened to cling to the impersonal.

"Then, the apartment is so convenient. Being all on one floor, it is so much easier for Mr. Wayne to get about it than if he had stairs to climb. I didn't tell you that I've had Mrs. Wayne's room done over for Evie. It's so much larger and lighter than her old one—"

He cleared his throat uneasily.

"I remember your saying something of the kind before you went away in the spring. It's one of the things I came in to talk about to-day?"

"Indeed?" His change of tone alarmed her. He had taken on the air of a man about to break unpleasant news. "Won't you sit down? I'll ring for tea. We're not in very good order yet, but the servants can give us that much."

She spoke for the purpose of hiding her uneasiness, just as she felt that she should be more sure of herself while handling the teacups than if she were sitting idle.

"I've had a letter from Mr. Jarrott," he said, making himself comfortable, while she moved the tea-table in front of her. "He wrote to me, partly as Stephens and Jarrott's legal adviser, and partly as a friend."

He allowed that information time to sink in before continuing.

"He tells me Miss Jarrott is on her way home, with Evie."

"Yes; Evie herself wrote me that. I got the letter at Cherbourg."

"Then she probably told you about the house."

"The house? What house?"

"The house they've asked me to take for the winter—for Miss Jarrott and her."

The tea-things came, giving her the relief of occupation. She said nothing for the moment, and her attention seemed concentrated on the rapid, silent movements of her own hands among the silver and porcelain. Once she looked up, but her glance fell as she saw his small, keen, gray-green eyes scanning her obliquely.

"So I'm not to have her?" she said, at last.

"It's only for this winter—"

"Oh, I know. But what's for this winter will be for every winter!"

"And she won't be far away. I've taken the Grant's house in Seventy-second Street. They asked for a house in which they could do some entertaining. You see, they want to give her a good time—"

"I quite understand all that. Evie has to 'come out.' I've not the least doubt that they're managing it in the best way possible. Yes, I see that. If I feel a little—well, I won't say hurt—but a little—sorry—it's because I've almost brought Evie up. And I suppose I'm the person she's most fond of—as far as she's fond of any one."

"I presume she's fond of my nephew, Billy Merrow."

"I hope so. Billy rather teased her into that engagement, you know. She's too young to be deeply in love—unless it was with one romantic. And Billy isn't that. I'm not sure that there isn't trouble ahead for him."

"Then I shall let him worry through it himself. I've got other things to think about."

When she had given him his tea and begun to sip her own, she looked up with that particular bright smile which in women means the bracing of the courage.

"It'll be all right," she said, with forced conviction. "I know it will. It's foolish in me to think I shall miss her, when she will be so near. It's only because she and Mr. Wayne are all I've got—"

"They needn't be," he interposed, draining his cup, and setting it down, like a man preparing for action.

She knew her own words had exposed her to this, and was vexed with herself for speaking in a dangerous situation without due foresight. For a minute she could think of nothing to say that would ward off his thrust. She sat looking at him rather helplessly, unconsciously appealing to him with her eyes to let the subject drop.

If he meant to go on with it, he took his time—flecking a few crumbs from his white waistcoat and from his fingertips. In the action he showed himself for what he was—a man so neat as just to escape being dapper. There was nothing large about him, in either mind or body; while, on the contrary, there was much that was keen and able. The incisiveness of the face would have been too sharp had it not been saved by the high-bred effect of a Roman nose and a handsome mouth and chin. The fair mustache, faded now rather than gray, softened the cynicism of the lips without concealing it. It was the face of a man accustomed to "see through" other men—to "see through" life—compelling its favors from the world rather than asking them. The detailed exactness and unobtrusive costliness of everything about him, from the pearl in his tie to the polish on his boots, were indicative of a will rigorously demanding "the best," and taking it. The refusal of it now in the person of the only woman whom he had ever wanted as a wife left him puzzled, slightly exasperated, as before a phenomenon not to be explained. It was this unusual resistance that caused the somewhat impatient tone he took with her.

"It's all nonsense—your living as you do—like a professional trained nurse."

"The life of a professional trained nurse isn't nonsense."

"It is for you."

"On the contrary; it's for me, more than for almost any one, to justify my right to being in the world."

"Oh, come now! Don't let us begin on that."

"I don't want to begin on it. I'd much rather not. But if you don't, you throw away the key that explains everything about me."

"All right," he rejoined, in an argumentative tone. "Let's talk about it, then. Let's have it out. You feel your position; granted. Mind you, I've always said you wouldn't have done so if it hadn't been for Gertrude Wayne. The world to-day has too much common sense to lay stress on a circumstance of that kind. Believe me, nobody thinks about it but yourself. Did Lady Bonchurch? Did any of her friends? You've got it a little bit—just a little bit—on the brain; and the fault isn't yours; it belongs to the woman whose soul is gone, I hope, where it's freed from the rules of a book of etiquette."

"She meant well—"

"Oh, every failure, and bungler, and mischief-maker means well. That's their charter. I'm not concerned with that. I'm speaking of what she did. She fixed it in your mind that you were like a sapling sprung from a seed blown outside the orchard. You think you can minimize that accident by bringing forth as good as any to be found within the pale. Consequently you've taken a poor, helpless, blind man off the hands of the people whose duty it is to look after him—and who are well able to do it—"

"That isn't the reason," she declared, flushing. "If Mr. Wayne and I live together it's because we're used to each other—and in a way he has taken the place of my father."

"Oh, come now! That's all very fine. But haven't you got in the back of your mind the thought that the wild tree that's known by its good fruit is the one that's best worth grafting?"

"If I had—" she began, with color deepening.

"If you had, you'd simply be taking a long way round, when there's a short cut home. I'm the orchard, Miriam. All you've got to do is to walk into it—with me."

A warmer tone came into his voice as he uttered the concluding words, adding to her discomfort. She moved the tea-things about, putting them into an unnecessary state of order, before she could reply.

"There's a reason why I couldn't do that," she said, meeting his sharp eyes with one of her fugitive glances. "I would have given it to you when—when you brought up this subject last spring, only you didn't ask me."

"Well, what is it?"

"I couldn't love you."

She forced herself to bring out the words distinctly. He leaned back in his chair, threw one leg across the other, and stroked the thin, colorless line of his mustache.

"No, I suppose you couldn't," he said, quietly, after considering her words.

"So that my answer has to be final."

"I don't see that. Love is only one of the many motives for marriage—and not, as I understand it, the highest one. The divorce courts are strewn with the wrecks of marriages made for love. Those that stand the test of life and time are generally those that have been contracted from some of the more solid—and worthier—motives."

"Then I don't know what they are."

"I could explain them to you if you'd let me. As for love—if it's needed at all—I could bring enough into hotch-potch as the phrase goes, to do for two. I'm over fifty years of age. It never occurred to me that you could—care about me—as you might have cared for some one else. But as far as I can see, there's no one else. If there was, perhaps I shouldn't persist."

She looked up with sudden determination.

"If there was any one else, you—would consider that as settling the question?"

"I might. I shouldn't bind myself. It would depend."

"Then I'll tell you; there is some one else." The words caused her to flush so painfully that she hastened to qualify them. "That is, there might have been."

"What do you mean by—might have been?"

"I mean that, though I don't say I've ever—loved—any man, there was a man I might have loved, if it had been possible."

"And why wasn't it possible?"

"I'd rather not tell you. It was a long time ago. He went away. He never came back again."

"Did he say he'd come back again?"

She shook her head. She tried to meet his gaze steadily, but it was like facing a search-light.

"Were you what you would call—engaged?"

"Oh no." Her confusion deepened. "There was never anything. It was a long time ago. I only want you to understand that if I could care for any one it would be for him. And if I married you—and he came back—"

"Are you expecting him back?"

She was a long time answering the question. She would not have answered it at all had it not been in the hope of getting rid of him.

"Yes."

He took the declaration coolly, and went on.

"Why? What makes you think he'll come?"

"I have no reason. I think he will—that's all."

"Where is he now?"

"I haven't the faintest idea."

"Hasn't he ever written to you?"

"Never."

"And you don't know what's become of him?"

"Not in the least."

"And yet you expect him back?"

She nodded assent.

"You're waiting for him?"

Once more she braced herself to look him in the eyes and answer boldly.

"I am."

He leaned back in his chair and laughed, not loudly, but in good-humored derision.

"If that's all that stands between us—"

To her relief he said no more; though she was disappointed that the subject should be dropped in a way that made it possible to bring it up again. As he was taking his leave she renewed the attempt to end the matter once for all.

"I know you think me foolish—" she began.

"No, not foolish; only romantic."

"Then, romantic. Romance is as bad as folly when one is twenty-seven. I confess it," she went on, trying to smile, "only that you may understand that it's a permanent condition which I sha'n't get over."

"Oh yes, you will."

"Things happened—long ago—such as don't generally happen; and so—I'm waiting for him. If he never comes—then I'd rather go on—waiting—uselessly."

It was hard to say, but it was said. He laughed again—not quite so derisively as before—and went away.

When he had gone, she resumed her seat behind the tea-table. She sat looking absently at the floor and musing on the words she had just spoken. Not in all the seven or eight years since Norrie Ford went away had she acknowledged to her own heart what, within the last few minutes, she had declared aloud. The utmost she had ever owned to herself was that she "could have loved him." When she refused other men, she did not confess to waiting for him; she evaded the question with herself, and found pretexts. She would have continued doing so with Conquest, had not his persistency driven her to her last stand. But now that she had uttered the words for his benefit, she had to repeat them for her own. Notwithstanding her passionate love of woods, winds, and waters, she had always been so sane, so practical, in the things that pertained to daily life that she experienced something like surprise at detecting herself in this condition of avowed romance. She had actually been waiting for Norrie Ford to return, and say what he had told her he would say, should it ever become possible! She was waiting for him still! If he never came she would rather go on waiting for him—uselessly! The language almost shocked her; but now that the thing was spoken she admitted it was true. It was a light thrown on herself—if not precisely a new light, at least one from which all shades and colored wrappings that delude the eye and obscure the judgment had been struck away.

She smiled to herself to think how little Conquest understood her when he ascribed to her the ambition to graft her ungarnered branch on the stock of a duly cultivated civilization. She might have had that desire once, but it was long past. It was a kind of glory to her now to be outside the law—with Norrie Ford. There they were exiles together, in a wild paradise with joys of its own, not less sweet than those of any Eden. She had faced more than once the question of being "taken into the orchard," as Conquest put it. The men who had asked her at various times to marry them had been like himself, men of middle age, or approaching it—men of assured position either by birth or by attainment. As the wife of any one of them her place would have been unquestioned. She had not rejected their offers lightly, or from any foregone conclusion. She had taken it as a duty to weigh each one seriously as it came; and, leaving the detail of love apart, she had asked herself whether it was not right for her to seize the occasion of becoming "some one" in the world. Once or twice the position offered her was so much in accordance with her tastes that her refusal brought with it a certain vague regret. "But I couldn't do it," were the words with which she woke from every dream of seeing herself mistress in a quiet English park, or a big house in New York. Her habits might be those of civilized mankind; but her heart was listening for a call from beyond the limits in which men have the recognized right to live. She could put no shackles on her freedom to respond to it—if it ever came.

XIV

She discovered that Norrie Ford had come back, and that some of her expectations were fulfilled by finding him actually seated beside her one evening at dinner.

Miss Jarrott's taste in table light was in the direction of candles tempered by deep-red shades. As no garish electricity was allowed to intrude itself into this soft glow, the result was that only old acquaintances among her guests got a satisfactory notion of each other's features. It was with a certain sense of discovery that, by peering through the rose-colored twilight, Miriam discerned now a Jarrott or a Colfax, now an Endsleigh or a Pole—faces more or less well known to her which she had not had time to recognize during the few hurried minutes in the drawing-room.

It was the dinner of which Evie had said, in explaining her plan of campaign to Miriam, "We must kill off the family first of all." It was plain that she regarded the duty as a bore; but she was too worldly wise not to see that her bread cast upon the waters would return to her. Most of the Jarrotts were important; some were wealthy; and one—Mrs. Endsleigh Jarrott—was a power in such matters as assemblies and cotillons. The ladies Colfax were little less influential; and while the sphere of the Poles and Endsleighs was in the world of art, letters, and scholarship, rather than in that of fashion and finance, they had the uncontested status of good birth. To Evie they represented just so much in the way of her social assets, and she was quick in appraising them at their correct relative values. Some would be good for a dinner given in her honor, others for a dance. The humblest could be counted on for a theatre-party or a "tea." She was skilful, too, in presenting her orphan state with a touching vividness that enlisted their sympathies on behalf of "poor Jack's," or "poor Gertrude's," pretty little girl, according to the side of the house on which they recognized the relationship.

With the confusion incidental to the arrival from South America, the settling into a new house, and the ordering of new clothes, Miriam had had little of the old intimate intercourse with Evie during the six weeks since the latter's return. There was no change in their mutual relation; it was only that Evie was caught up into the glory of the coming winter, and had no time for the apartment in Fifty-ninth Street. It was with double pleasure, therefore, that Miriam responded one day to Evie's invitation to "come and look at my things," which meant an inspection of the frocks and hats that had just come home. They lay about now, in clouds like a soft summer sunset, or in gay spots of feathers and flowers, on the bed and the sofa in Evie's room, and filled all the chairs except the one on which Miriam had retreated into the farthest corner of the bay-window. Seated there, not quite in profile, against the light, her head turned and slightly inclined, in order to get a better view of Evie's finery, her slender figure possessed a sort of Vandyke grace, heightened rather than diminished by the long plumes and rich draperies of the month's fashion. Evie flitted between closets, wardrobes, and drawers, prattling while she worked off that first event of her season, in which the family were to be "killed off." She recited the names of those who would "simply have to be asked" and of those who could conveniently be omitted.

"And, of course, Popsey Wayne must come," she observed in her practical little way. "I dare say he won't want to, poor dear, but it wouldn't do if he didn't. Only you, you dear thing, will have to go in with him—to pilot him and look after him when the dishes are passed. But I'm going to have some one nice on your other side, do you see?—some one awfully nice. We shall have to ask a few people outside the family, just to give it relief, and save it from looking like Christmas."

"You'll have Billy, I suppose."

Evie took the time to deposit a lace blouse in a drawer, as softly as a mother lays a sleeping babe to rest.

"No, I sha'n't ask Billy," she said, while she was still stooping.

"Won't he think that queer?"

"I hope so." She turned from the drawer, and lifted a blue gossamer creation from the bed. Miriam smiled indulgently.

"Why? What's the matter? Have you anything to punish him for?"

"I've nothing to punish him for; I've only got something I want to—bring home to him." She paused in the middle of the room, with her blue burden held in her outstretched arms, somewhat like a baby at a christening. "I might as well tell you, Miriam, first as last. You've got to know it some time, though I don't want it talked about just yet. I've broken my engagement to Billy."

"Broken your engagement! Why, I saw Billy myself this morning. I met him as I was coming over. He said he was here last night, and seemed particularly cheerful."

"He doesn't know it yet. I'm doing it—by degrees."

"You're doing it by—what?" Miriam rose and came toward her, stopping midway to lean on the foot-rail of the bed. "Evie darling, what do you mean?"

Evie's eyes brimmed suddenly, and her lip trembled.

"If you're going to be cross about it—"

"I'm not going to be cross about it, but I want you to tell me exactly what you're doing."

"Well, I'm telling you. I've broken my engagement, and I want to let Billy know it in the kindest way. I don't want to hurt his feelings. You wouldn't like me to do that yourself. I'm trying to bring him where he'll see things just as I do."

"And may I ask if you're—getting him there?"

"I shall get him there in time. I'm doing lots of things to show him."

"Such as what?"

"Such as not asking him to the dinner, for one thing. He'll know from that there's something wrong. He'll make a fuss, and I shall be disagreeable. Little by little he'll get to dislike me—and then—"

"And how long do you think it will take for that good work to be accomplished?"

"I don't see that that matters. I suppose I may take all the time I need. We're both young—"

"And have all your lives to give to it. Is that what you mean?"

"I don't want to give all my life to it, because—I may as well tell you that, too, while I'm about it—because I'm engaged to some one else."

"Oh, Evie!"

Miriam went back, like a person defeated, to the chair from which she had just risen, while Evie buried herself in the depths of a closet, where she remained long enough, as she hoped, to let Miriam's first astonishment subside. On coming out she assumed a virtuous tone.

"You see now why I simply had to break with Billy. I couldn't possibly keep the two things going together—as some girls would. I'm one of those who do right, whatever happens. It's very hard for me—but if people would only be a little more sympathetic—"

It was some minutes before Miriam knew just what to say. Even when she began to speak she doubted her capacity for making herself understood.

"Evie darling," she said, trying to speak as for a child's comprehension, "this is a very serious matter. I don't think you realize how serious it is. If you find you don't love Billy well enough, of course you must ask him to release you. I should be sorry for that, but I shouldn't blame you. But until you've done it you can't give your word to any one."

"Well, I must say I never heard anything like that," Evie declared, indignantly. "You do have the strangest ideas, Miriam. Dear mamma used to say so, too. I try to defend you, but you make it difficult for me, I must say. I never knew any one like you for making things more complicated than they need be. You talk of my asking Billy to release me when I released myself long ago—in my own mind. That's where I have to look. I must do things according to my conscience—and when that's clear—"

"It isn't only a case of conscience, dear; it's one of common sense. Conscience has a way of sometimes mistaking the issue, whereas common sense can generally be trusted to be right."

"Of course, if you're going to talk that way, Miriam, I don't see what's left for me to answer; but it doesn't sound very reverent, I must say. I'm trying to look at things in the highest light, and it doesn't strike me as the highest light to be unkind to Billy when I needn't be. If you think I ought to treat him cruelly you must keep your opinion, but I know you'll excuse me if I keep mine."

She carried her head loftily as she bore another gown into the adjoining darkness, and Miriam waited patiently till she emerged again.

"Does your other—I hardly know what to call him—does your other fiancé know about Billy?"

"Why on earth should he? What good would that do? It will be all over—I mean about Billy—before I announce my second engagement, and as the one to Billy will never be announced at all there's no use in saying anything about it."

"But suppose Billy himself finds out?"

"Billy won't find out anything whatever until I get ready to let him."

The finality of this retort reduced Miriam to silence. She allowed some minutes to pass before saying, with some hesitation:

"I suppose you don't mind my knowing—who it is?"

Evie was prepared for this question and answered it promptly.

"I shan't mind your knowing—by-and-by. I want you to meet him first. When you've once seen him, I know you'll be more just to me. Till then I'm willing to go on being—misunderstood."

During the three more weeks that intervened before the family dinner Miriam got no further light on Evie's love-affairs. She purposely asked no questions through fear of seeming to force the girl's confidence, but she obtained some relief from thinking that the rival suitor could be no other than a certain young Graham, of whom she had heard much from Evie during the previous year. His chances then had stood higher than Billy Merrow's; and nothing was more possible than a discovery on Evie's part that she liked him the better of the two. It was a situation that called for sympathy for Billy, but not otherwise for grave anxiety, so that Miriam could wait quietly for further out-pourings of Evie's heart, and give her mind to the mysteries incidental to the girl's social presentation to the world.

Of the ceremonies attendant on this event the "killing off" of the family was the one Miriam dreaded most. It was when she came within the periphery of this powerful, meritorious, well-to-do circle, representing whatever was most honorable in New York, that she chiefly felt herself an alien. She could scarcely have explained herself in this respect, since many of the clan had been kind to her, and none had ever shown her incivility. It was when she confronted them in the mass, when she saw their solidarity, their mutual esteem, their sum total of wealth, talents, and good works, that she grew conscious of the difference of essence between herself and them. Not one of them but had the right to the place he sat in!--a right maintained by himself, but acquired by his fathers before him—not one of them but was living in the strength of some respectable tradition of which he could be proud! Endsleigh Jarrott's father, for example, had been a banker, Reginald Pole's the president of a university, Rupert Colfax's a judge; and it was something like that with them all. In the midst of so much that was classified, certified, and regular she was as obviously a foreign element as a fly in amber. She came in as the ward of Philip Wayne, who himself was a new-comer and an intruder, since he entered merely as "poor Gertrude's second husband," by a marriage which they all considered a mistake.

With the desire to be as unobtrusive as possible, she dressed herself in black, without ornament of any kind, unaware of the fact that with her height of figure, her grace of movement, her ivory tint, and that expression of hers which disconcerted people because it was first appealing and then proud, she would be more than ever conspicuous against the background of brilliant toilets, fine jewels, and assured manners which the family would produce for the occasion. As a matter of fact, there was a perceptible hush in the hum of talk as she made her entry into the drawing-room, ostensibly led by Philip Wayne, but really leading him. As she paused near the door, half timid, half bewildered, looking for her hostess, it did not help her to feel at ease to see Mrs. Endsleigh Jarrott—a Rubens Maria de Medici in white satin and pearls—raise her lorgnette and call on a tall young man who stood beside her to take a look. There was no time to distinguish anything further before Miss Jarrott glided up, with mincing graciousness, to shake hands.

"How do you do! How do you do! So glad you've come. I think you must know nearly every one here, so I needn't introduce any one. I hardly ever introduce. It's funny, isn't it? They say it's an English custom not to introduce, but I don't do it just by nature. I wonder why I shouldn't?—but I never do—or almost never. So if you don't happen to know your neighbors at table just speak. It was Evie who arranged where every one was to sit. I don't know. They say that's English, too—just to speak. I believe it's quite a recognized thing in London to say, 'Is this your bread or mine?' and then you know each other. Isn't it funny? Now I think we're all here. Will you take in Miriam, Mr. Wayne?"

A hasty embrace from Evie—an angelic vision in white—was followed by a few words of greeting from Charles Conquest after which Miriam saw Miss Jarrott take the arm of Bishop Endsleigh, and the procession began to move.

At table Miriam was glad of the dim, rose-colored light. It offered her a seclusion into which she could withdraw, tending her services to Wayne. She was glad, too, that the family, having so much to say to itself, paid her no special attention. She was sufficiently occupied in aiding the helpless blind man beside her, and repeating for his benefit the names of their fellow-guests. As the large party talked at the top of its lungs, Miriam's quiet voice, with its liquid, almost contralto, quality, reached her companion's ears unheard by others. She began with Bishop Endsleigh who was on Miss Jarrott's right. Then came Mrs. Stephen Colfax; after her Mr. Endsleigh Jarrott, who had on his right Mrs. Reginald Pole. Mrs. Pole's neighbor was Charles Conquest, whom she shared with Mrs. Rodney Wrenn. Now and then Wayne himself would give proof of that increased acuteness in his hearing of which he had spoken more than once since his blindness had become total. "Colfax Yorke is here," he observed at one time. "I hear his voice. He's sitting on our side of the table." "Mrs. Endsleigh Jarrott is next but one to you," he said at another time. "She's airing her plans for the reconstruction of New York society."

So for a while they kept one another in small talk, affecting the same sort of vivacity that obtained around them. It was not till dinner was half over that he asked in an undertone:

"Who is your neighbor?"

"I don't know," she managed to whisper back. "He's so taken up with Mrs. Endsleigh Jarrott that he hasn't looked this way. I don't think he's any member of the family."

"He must be," Wayne replied. "I know his voice. I have some association with it, but just what I can't remember."

Miriam herself listened to hear him speak, catching only an irrelevant word or two.

"He sounds English," she said then.

"No, he isn't English. That's not my association. It's curious how the mind acts. Since I became—since my sight failed—my memory instinctively brings me voices instead of faces, when I want to recall anything. Aren't you going to speak to him? You've got the formula: Is this your bread or mine?"

"It's very convenient, but I don't think I shall use it."

"He'd like you to, I know. I heard him say to Mrs. Endsleigh Jarrott as we came in—while Queenie Jarrott was talking—that you were he most strikingly beautiful woman he had ever seen in his life. How's that for a compliment from a perfect stranger?"

"I certainly sha'n't speak to him now. A man who could say that to Mrs. Endsleigh, after having seen her, must be wofully wanting in tact."

Mary Pole on Wayne's right claimed his attention and Miriam was left her own mistress. Almost at once her attention was arrested by hearing Mrs. Endsleigh Jarrott saying in that appealing voice which she counted as the secret of her success with men:

"Now do give me your frank opinion, Mr. Strange. You don't know how much I should like it. It's far from my idea that we should slavishly copy London. You know that, don't you? We've an entirely different stock of materials to work with. But I'm firmly convinced that by working on the London model we should make society far more general, far more representative, and far—oh, far—more interesting! Now, what do you think? Do give me your frank opinion."

Mr. Strange! Her own name was sufficiently uncommon to cause Miriam to glance sidewise, in her rapid, fugitive way, at the person who bore it. His face was turned from her as he bent toward Mrs. Jarrott, but again she heard his voice, and this time more distinctly.

"I'm afraid my opinion wouldn't be of much value. Nevertheless, I know you must be right."

"Now I'm disappointed in you," Mrs. Jarrott said, with pretty reproachfulness. "You're not taking me seriously. Oh, I see, I see. You're just an ordinary man, after all; when I thought for a minute you might be—well, a little different. Do take some of that asparagus," she added in another tone. "It's simply delicious."

It was while he was helping himself to this delicacy that Miriam got the first clear view of his face, half turned as it was toward her. He seemed aware that she was observing him, for during the space of some seconds he held the silver implements idle in his hands, while he lifted his eyes to meet hers. The look they exchanged was significant and long, and yet she was never quite sure that she recognized him then. For the minute she was only conscious of a sudden, inward shock, to which she was unable to ascribe a cause. Something had happened, though she knew not what. Having in the course of a few minutes regained her self-control, she could only suppose that it was a repetition of that unreasoning panic which had now and then brought her to the verge of fainting, when by chance, in London, Paris, or New York, she caught a glimpse of some tall figure that carried her imagination back to the cabin in the Adirondacks. She had always thought that he might appear in some crowd and take her by surprise. She had never expected to find him in a gathering that could be called social. Still less had she looked to meet him like this, with Philip Wayne who had sentenced him to death not three feet away. The mere idea was preposterous. And yet—

She glanced at him again. He was listening attentively while Mrs. Endsleigh Jarrott's voice ran on:

"People say our society has no traditions. It has traditions. It has the traditions of the country village, and it has never outgrown them. We're nothing but the country village writ large. New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore—we're the country village over again, with its narrowness its sets, its timidity, all writ so large that they hide anything like a real society from us. Now isn't it so, Mr. Strange? Don't be afraid to give me your frank opinion because that's what I'm asking for."

Miriam herself made an effort to seem to be doing something that would enable her to sit unnoticed. She was glad that Wayne was engaged by Mary Pole so that he could no longer listen to the voice that wakened his recollections. She looked again at the tall, carefully dressed man beside her, so different in all his externals from anything she imagined Norrie Ford could ever become. Norrie Ford was an outlaw and this was a man of the world. She felt herself being reassured—and yet disappointed. Her first feeling of faintness passed away, enabling her to face the situation with greater calm. Under cover of the energetic animation characteristic of every American dinner-party at which the guests are intimate, she had leisure to think over the one or two hints that were significant. Now and then a remark was addressed to her across the table to which she managed to return a reply sufficiently apt to give her the appearance of being in touch with what was going on around her; but in reality she was taking in the fact, with the spirit rather than the mind, that Norrie Ford had returned.

She never understood just how and when that assurance came to her. It was certainly not by actual recognition of his features, as it was not by putting together the few data that came under her observation. Thinking it over in after years, she could only say that she "just found herself knowing it." He was there—beside her. Of that she had no longer a doubt.

Her amazement did not develop all at once. Indeed, the position had an odd naturalness, like something in a dream. The element of impossibility in what had happened was so great that for the time being her mind refused to meet it. She was only aware of that vague sense of satisfaction, of inward peace, that comes when long-desired ends have been fulfilled.

The main fact being accepted, her outer faculties could respond to the call that a dinner-party makes on its least important member. When the conversation at her end of the table became general she took her part, and later engaged in a three-cornered discussion with Wayne and Mary Pole on the subject of an endowed theatre; but all the while her subconscious mind was struggling for a theory to account for Norrie Ford's presence in that particular room and in that unexpected company. The need of some immediate, plausible reason for so astounding an occurrence deadened her attention to the comparative quietness with which she accepted his coming—now that she had regained her self-control, although she was conscious of stirrings of wild joy in this evidence that he had been true to her. Had she recalled what she had said to him eight years ago as to the Argentine, and the "very good firm to work for," she would have had an easy clew, but that had passed from her mind almost with the utterance—certainly with his departure He had gone out into the world, leaving no more trace behind him than the bird that has flown southward. Not once during the intervening years did the thought cross her mind that words which she had spoken nearly at haphazard could have acted as a guide to him, while still less did she dream that they could have led him into the very seat beside her which he was occupying now.

Nevertheless, he was there, and for the present she could dispense with the knowledge of the adventures that had brought him. He was there, and that was the reason of his coming in itself. He had hewn his way through all difficulties to reach her—as Siegfried came to Brunhild, over the mountains and through the fire. He had found the means—both the means and the daring—to enter and make himself accepted in her own world, her own circle, her own family—in so far as she had a family—and to sit right down at her side.

She was not surprised at it. She assured herself of that. At the very instant when she was saying to Mary Pole, across Philip Wayne's white waistcoat, that she had always thought of endowed institutions of creative art as belonging to the races of weaker individual initiative—at the very instant when she was saying that, she was repeating to herself that the directness, the high-handedness, and the success of this kind of exploit was exactly what she would have expected of Norrie Ford. It was what she had expected of him—in one form or another. It was with a sense of inward pride that she remembered that her faith in him had never wavered, even though it was not until Conquest forced her that she had confessed the fact. She glanced at Conquest across the table now and caught his eye. He smiled at her and raised his glass, as though to drink to her health. She smiled in return, daringly, triumphantly, as she would not have ventured to do an hour ago. She could see him flush with pleasure—a rare occurrence—at her unusual graciousness, while she was only rejoicing in her escape from him. Under the shadow of the tall man beside her, who had achieved the impossible in order to be loyal to her, she felt for the first time in her life that she had found a shelter. It mattered nothing that he was engrossed with Mrs. Endsleigh Jarrott, and that, after the one glance, he had not turned toward her again; she was sure he knew that she understood him, and that he recognized her power to wait in patience to have the mystery explained.

In the drawing-room he was introduced to her. Miss Jarrott led him up and made the presentation.

"Miss Strange, I want you to know Mr. Strange. Now isn't that funny? You can't think how many times I've thought how interesting it would be to see you two meet. It's so unusual to have the same name, especially when it's such a strange name as yours. There's a pun. I simply can't help making them. My brother says I inherited all the sense of humor in the family. I don't know why I do it, but I always see a joke. Can you tell me why I do it?"

Neither Strange nor Miriam knew what replies they made, but a conversation of some sort went on for a minute or two, after which Miss Jarrott whisked him away to present him to some one else. When he had gone Miriam was left with a feeling of spiritual chill. While it was impossible to betray a previous acquaintance before Miss Jarrott, there had been nothing whatever in his bearing to respond to the recognition in hers. There was something that might have been conveyed from mind to mind without risk, and he had not used the opportunity. In as far as he addressed her at all it had been through Miss Jarrott, and he had looked around her and over her rather than directly into her eyes.

During the rest of the evening she caught glimpses of him only in the distance, talking now to one member of the family, now to another. It was clear that Miss Jarrott was, in a way, showing him off, and that he was received as some one of importance. She admired the coolness with which he carried himself, while her inherited instincts gave her a curious thrill of content that these law-making, law-keeping people should be duped.

She hoped he would find an occasion for passing again in her direction. If she could have only a word with him it might help to make the situation intelligible. But he did not return, and presently she noticed, in looking about the room, that he had disappeared. She, too, was eager to be gone. Only in solitude could she get control of the surging thoughts, the bewildering suggestions, the contradictory suppositions that crowded it on her. She saw how useless it was to try to build a theory without at least one positive fact to go on.

It was just as they were departing that her opportunity to ask a question came. They had said their good-nights to Miss Jarrott and were in the hall, waiting for the footman to call their carriage, when Evie, whom they had not wanted to disturb, came fluttering after them. She was flushed but radiant, and flung herself into Miriam's arms.

"You dear thing! I haven't had time to say a word to you or Popsey Wayne the entire evening. But you'll excuse me, won't you? I've had to be civil to them all—do you see?—and do them up well. I knew you wouldn't mind. I wanted you to have a good time, but I'm afraid you haven't."

"Oh yes," Miriam said, disengaging herself from the girl's embrace. "It's been wonderful—it really has. But, Evie dear," she whispered, drawing her away from the group of ladies who stood cloaked and hooded, also waiting for their carriages, "tell me—who is that Mr. Strange who sat next to me?"

Evie's eyes went heavenward, and she took on a look of rapture.

"I hope you liked him."

"I didn't have much chance to see. But why do you hope it?"

"Because—don't you see? Oh, surely you must see—because—he's the one."

XV

Enlightenment came to her in the carriage while she was driving homeward. During the five or ten minutes since Evie had spoken she, Miriam, had been sitting still and upright in the darkness, making no further attempt to see reason through this succession of bewilderments from sheer inability to contend against them. For the time being, at any rate, the struggle was too much for her. The issues raised by Evie's overwhelming announcement were so confusing that she must postpone their consideration. She must postpone everything but her own tumultuous passion, which had to be faced and mastered instantly. She was fighting with herself, with her own wild inward cries of protest, anger, jealousy, and self-pity, trying to distinguish each from the others and to silence it by appeal to her years of romantic folly, when suddenly Wayne spoke, in the cheery tone of a man who has unexpectedly passed a pleasant evening.

"I had a nice long chat with the Great Unknown, who was sitting beside you, when the ladies left the dining-room. Who do you think he is?"

After the shocks of the last two hours, she was prepared to hear Wayne tell her, in an offhand way, that it was Norrie Ford. Nevertheless, she summoned what was left of her stunned faculties and did her best to speak carefully.

"I heard them call him Mr. Strange—"

"Odd that was, wasn't it? But it isn't such a very uncommon name. I've met other Stranges—"

"Oh yes. So have I."

"Well, who do you think he is? Why, he's Stephens and Jarrott's new man in New York. He's taken Jenkins's place. You remember Jenkins, don't you? That little man with a lisp. I had a nice long chat with him—Strange, I mean. He tells me he's a New-Yorker by birth, but that he went out to the Argentine after his father failed in business. Well, he won't fail in business, I bet a penny. He's tremendously enthusiastic over the Argentine, too. Showed he had his head put on the right way when he went there. Wonderful country—the United States of South America some people call it. We're missing our opportunities out there. Great volume of trade flowing to Europe of which we had almost the monopoly at one time. I had a nice long chat with him."

Her tired emotions received a new surprise as Wayne's words directed her thoughts to the morning when she had made to Ford the first suggestion of the Argentine. She had not precisely forgotten it; she had only thought it of too little importance to dwell on. She remembered that she had considered the idea practical till she had expressed it, but that his opposition had seemed to turn it into the impossible. She had never supposed that he might have acted on it—not any more than she had expected him to retain her father's name once he had reached a place of safety. In spite of the suddenness with which her dreams regarding him had been dispelled, it gave her a thrill of satisfaction to think that the word which, in a sense, had created him had been hers. To her fierce jealousy, with which her pride was wrestling even now, there was a measure of comfort in the knowledge that he could never be quite free from her, that his existence was rooted in her own.

"Queenie Jarrott tells me," Wayne meandered on, "that her brother thinks very highly of this young man. It seems that his business abilities are quite remarkable, and they fancy he looks like Henry—the eldest of the boys who died. It's extraordinary how his voice reminds me of some one—don't know who. It might be—But then again—"

"His voice is like a thousand other voices," she thought it well to say, "just as he looks like a thousand other men. He's one of those rather tall, rather good-looking, rather well-dressed youngish men—not really young—of whom you'll pass twenty within a mile any day in Fifth Avenue, and who are as thick as soldiers on a battle-field at the lower end of Broadway."

With the data Wayne had given her she worked out the main lines of the story during the night; but it was not until she had done so that its full significance appeared to her. Having grasped that, she could scarcely wait for daylight in order to go to Evie, and yet when morning came she abandoned that course as impolitic. Reflection showed her that her struggle must be less with Evie than with Ford, while she judged that he himself would lose no time in putting the battle in array. He must see as plainly as she did that she stood like an army across his path, and that he must either retreat before her or show fight. She believed he would do the latter and do it soon. She thought it probable that he would appear that very day, and that her wisest plan was to await his opening attack. The necessity, so unexpectedly laid upon her, of defending the right deflected her mind from dwelling too bitterly on her own disillusioning.

The morning having passed without a sign from him, she made her arrangements for having the afternoon undisturbed sending Wayne to drive, and ordering the servants to admit no one but Mr. Strange, should he chance to call. Having intrenched herself behind the fortification of the tea-table, she waited. In spite of her preoccupation, or rather because of it, she purposely read a book, forcing herself to fix her attention on its pages in order to have her mind free from preconceived notions as to how she must act and what she must say. Her single concession to herself was to put on a new and becoming house dress, whose rich tones of brown and amber harmonized with her ivory coloring and emphasized the clear-cut distinction of her features. Before taking up her position she surveyed herself with the mournful approval which the warrior about to fall may give to the perfection of his equipment.

It was half-past four when the servant showed him in. His formal attire seemed to her, as he crossed the room, oddly civilized and correct after her recollections of him. Notwithstanding her dread of the opening minutes, the meeting passed off according to the fixed procedure of the drawing-room. It was a relief to both to find that the acts of shaking hands and sitting down had been accomplished with matter-of-course formality. With the familiar support of afternoon-call conventions difficult topics could be treated at greater ease.

"I'm very glad to find you at home," he began, feeling it to be a safe opening. "I was almost afraid—"

"I stayed in on purpose," she said, frankly. "I thought you might come."

"I wasn't sure whether or not you knew me last night—"

"I didn't at first. I really hadn't noticed you, though I remembered afterward that you were standing with Mrs. Endsleigh Jarrott when Mr. Wayne and I came into the room. I wonder now if you recognized me?"

"Oh, rather! I knew you were going to be there. I've been in New York a month."

"Then you might have come to see me sooner."

"Well, you see—"

He paused and colored, trying to cover up his embarrassment with a smile. She allowed her eyes to express interrogation not knowing that her frank gaze disconcerted him. She herself went back so eagerly to the days when he was the fugitive, Norrie Ford, and she the nameless girl who was helping him, that she could not divine his humiliation at being obliged to drop his mask. Since becoming engaged to Evie Colfax and returning to New York, he perceived more clearly than ever before that his true part in the world was that of the respectable, successful man of business which he played so skilfully. It cost him an effort she could have no reason to suspect to be face to face with the one person in the world who knew him as something else.

"You see," he began again, "I had to consider a good many things—naturally. It wouldn't have done to give any one an idea that we had met before."

"No, of course not. But last night you might have—"

"Last night I had to follow the same tactics. I can't afford to run risks. It's rather painful, it's even a bit humiliating—"

"I can imagine that, especially here in New York. In out-of-the-way places it must be different. There it doesn't matter. But to be among the very people who—"

"You think that there it does matter. I had to consider that. I had to make it plain to myself that there was nothing dishonorable in imposing on people who had forced me into a false position. I don't say it's pleasant—"

"Oh, I know it can't be pleasant. I only wondered a little, as I saw you last night, why you let yourself be placed in a position that made it necessary."

"I should have wondered at that myself a year ago. I certainly never had any intention of doing it. It's almost as much a surprise to me to be here as it is to you to see me. I suppose you thought I would never turn up again."

"No, I didn't think that. On the contrary, I thought you would turn up—only not just here."

It struck him that she was emphasizing that point for a purpose—to bring him to another point still. He took a few seconds to reflect before deciding that he would follow her lead without further hanging back.

"I shouldn't have returned to New York if I hadn't become engaged to Miss Colfax. You know about that, don't you? I think she meant to tell you."

She inclined her head assentingly, without words. He noticed her dark eyes resting on him with a kind of pity. He had cherished a faint hope—the very faintest—that she might welcome what he had just said sympathetically. In the few minutes during which she remained silent that hope died.

"I suppose," she said, gently, "that you became engaged to Evie before knowing who she was?"

"I fell in love with her before knowing who she was. I'm afraid that when I actually asked her to marry me I had heard all there was to learn."

"Then why did you do it?"

He shrugged his shoulders with a movement acquired by long residence among Latins. His smile conveyed the impossibility of explaining himself in a sentence.