TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:

—Obvious print and punctuation errors were corrected.

—A Table of Contents was not in the original work; one has been produced and added by Transcriber.

TO THE HIGHEST BIDDER

In the one spring-time when David Whitcomb loved her

(Page [74])

TO THE
HIGHEST BIDDER

By

FLORENCE MORSE KINGSLEY

Author of “The Singular Miss Smith,” “The Glass House,” etc.

ILLUSTRATED BY

JOHN RAE

NEW YORK

DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY

1911

Copyright, 1911, by
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
Published, January, 1911

Copyright, 1910, by
THE CHRISTIAN HERALD

TABLE OF CONTENTS

TO THE HIGHEST BIDDER

THE HIGHEST BIDDER

I

Abram Hewett and his son “Al” were distributing the mail in the narrow space behind the high tier of numbered glass boxes which occupied the left-hand corner of the general store known as “Hewett’s grocery.” There were not many letters and papers in the old leathern bag whose marred outer surface bore evidence to its many hurried departures and ignominious arrivals. Only the “locals” stopped at Barford; the expresses whizzed disdainfully past, discharging the mailbag on the platform of the ugly little station like a well-aimed bullet.

There was one letter in the scant pile awaiting official scrutiny over which the younger Hewett pursed his thick lips in a thoughtful whistle. He turned over the thin envelope, held it up to the light, squinted curiously at it out of one gray-green eye before he finally deposited it among the letters destined for general delivery.

This done, a slight sound drew his attention to the wabbly stand on the counter next to the post-office proper, whereon was displayed a variety of picture postal cards; “views” of Barford taken by the local photographer, and offered generously to the public at the rate of two for five cents. Intermingled with the photographic representations of the village were cards of a more general and decorative nature; impossibly yellow Easter chickens, crosses, wreaths, and baskets of flowers, in a variety of startling colors, and lurking behind these in a manner suited to the time of year (it being the month of April) were reminders of a Christmas past, in the shape of stars, holly wreaths, and churches, their lighted windows sparkling with mica snows.

Before this varied collection a small boy, with a scarlet tam perched on the back of his curly head, stood gazing with longing eyes.

“Oh! hello there, bub!” observed Mr. Al Hewett rebukingly. “You mustn’t touch them cards, y’ know.”

The boy stared at him from under puckered brows, his rosy mouth half opened.

“What are they for?” he demanded.

“Why, to sen’ to folks, Jimmy,” explained Mr. Hewett, with a return of his wonted good humor. “Easter greetings, views of our town, et cetery. Want one t’ sen’ t’ y’r bes’ girl?”

“Yes, I do,” said the child earnestly. “I want one for—for Barb’ra. I want this one.”

He laid a proprietary hand on a Christmas tree sparkling with tinsel lights and surmounted by the legend, “I wish you a merry Christmas.”

“Well, son, that card’ll cost you a nickel, seein’ it’s early in the season,” responded the youth humorously. “A nickel apiece; three fer ten. Shan’t I wrap you up an Easter greetin’ an’ th’ Meth’dist church along with it?”

The boy was engaged in untying a hard knot in the corner of his handkerchief.

“I’ve got ten cents an’ a nickel,” he said. “An’ I want ten cents’ worth of m’lasses an’ the mail an’ that card. It’s my birfday,” he added proudly, “an’ Barb’ra said I could buy anything I wanted with the nickel. She’s goin’ to make me some popcorn balls with the m’lasses.”

“How old are you, Jimmy?” inquired the youth, as he tied up the card in brown paper with a pink string, and languidly deposited the nickel in the till. “‘Bout a hunderd, I s’pose.”

“I’m six years old,” replied Jimmy importantly. “An’ I’m large of my age; Barb’ra says so.”

“Then it mus’ be so, I reckon. Say, here’s a letter fer Barb’ra f’om ’way out west. I’ve been wonderin’ who Barb’ra knows out west. Ever hear her say, Jimmy?”

The boy shook his blond head vigorously, as he bestowed the letter in the pocket of his coat.

“I’ll ask her if you want me to,” he said with a friendly little smile.

But young Mr. Hewett was back at his post behind the little window, where he presently became engaged in brisk repartee with a couple of red-cheeked girls over the non-arrival of a letter which one of them appeared confidently to expect.

Neither bestowed a glance upon the small figure in the red cap which presently made its way out of the door, carefully carrying a covered tin pail, and out of whose shallow pocket protruded the half of a thin blue envelope addressed to Miss Barbara Preston, in a man’s bold angular hand.

There was a cold wind abroad, roaring through the branches of the budding trees, and tossing the red maple blossoms in a riotous blur of color against the brilliant blue and white of the sky. To Jimmy Preston trudging along the uneven sidewalk, where tiny pools of water from the morning’s rain reflected the sky and the tossing trees, like fragments of a broken mirror, came a sense of singular elation. It was his birthday; in one hand he carried the beautiful sparkling card, and in the other the tin pail containing the molasses; while in the dazzling reflections under foot were infinite heights—infinite depths of mysterious rapture.

“If I sh’d step in,” mused Jimmy, carefully skirting the edges of a shallow uneven pool in the worn stones, “‘s like’s not I’d go clear through to heaven.”

Heaven was a wonderful place, all flowers and music and joyous ease. He knew this, because Barbara had told him so; and nearly all of the family were there—all but Barbara and himself. But there might not be popcorn balls in heaven; Jimmy couldn’t be certain on that point; and, anyway, he concluded it was better to stay where Barbara was and grow up to be a man as soon as possible.

The little boy broke into a manly whistle as he pictured himself in a gray flannel shirt with his trousers tucked into large boots, ploughing and calling to the horses, the way Peg Morrison did.

The sidewalk came to an end presently, together with the village street, just opposite the big house of the Honorable Stephen Jarvis. Jimmy stopped, as he always did, to look in through the convolutions of a highly ornamental fence at the cast-iron deer which guarded the walk on either side, and at the mysterious blue glass balls mounted on pedestals, which glistened brightly in a passing gleam of sunshine. There were other things of interest in the yard of the big house: groups of yellow daffodils, nodding gaily in the wind, red, white, and purple hyacinths behind the borders of blue-starred periwinkle, and shrubs with clouds of pink and yellow blossoms. In the summer there would be red geraniums and flaming cannas and pampas grass in tall fleecy pyramids. Jimmy wondered what it would be like to walk up the long smooth gravel path and open the tall front door. What splendors might be hid behind the lace curtains looped away from the shining windows; books, maybe, with pictures; a real piano with ivory keys, and chairs and sofas of red velvet.

“S’pos’n,” said Jimmy to his sociable little self, “jus’ s’pos’n me an’ Barb’ra lived there; an’ I should walk right in an’ find Barb’ra all dressed in a pink satin dress with a trail an’ maybe a diamon’ crown. She’d look lovely in a diamon’ crown, Barb’ra would.”

His attention was diverted at the moment by the sight of a smart sidebar buggy, drawn by a spirited bay horse, which a groom was driving around the house from the stable at the rear. The man pulled up sharply at the side entrance, where the bay horse pawed the gravel impatiently. Jimmy observed with interest that the horse’s tail was cropped short and bobbed about excitedly.

He was imagining himself as coming out of the house and climbing into the shining buggy, and taking the reins in his own hands, and——

He waited breathlessly, his eyes glued to an opening in the fence, while the tall spare figure of a man wearing a gray overcoat and a gray felt hat emerged from the house.

Jimmy recognized the man at once. He was the Honorable Stephen Jarvis. Few persons in Barford ever spoke of him in any other way. “The Honorable” seemed as much a part of his name as Jarvis. Jimmy, for one, thought it was.

“That’s me!” said Jimmy. “Now I’m climbin’ in; now I’ve took the lines! Now I’ve got the whip! And now——”

The vehicle dashed out of the open gate, whirred past with a spatter of half-frozen mud, and disappeared around a bend of the road where pollarded willows grew.

“My! I’m goin’ fast!” said Jimmy aloud. “But I ain’t afraid; no, sir! I guess Barb’ra’ll be some s’prised when she sees me drivin’ in! I’ll say, ‘Come on an’ take a ride with me, Barb’ra’; an’ Barb’ra, she’ll say, ‘Why, Jimmy Preston! ain’t you ’fraid that short-tailed horse’ll run away?’ An’ I’ll laugh an’ say, ‘Don’t you see I’m drivin’?’”

The laugh at least was real, and it rang out in a series of rollicking chuckles, as the child resumed his slow progress with the pail of molasses which had begun to ooze sticky sweetness around the edge. Observing this, Jimmy set it down and applied a cautious finger to the overflow; from thence to his mouth was a short distance, with results of such surprising satisfaction that the entire circumference of the pail was carefully gone over. “I guess,” reflected Jimmy gravely, “that I’d better hurry now. Barb’ra’ll be expectin’ me.”

A more rapid rate of progress brought about a recrudescence of the oozing sweetness which, manifestly, involved a repetition of salvage. By this time Jimmy had reached and passed the row of willows, cut back every spring to the gnarled stumps which vaguely reminded the child of a row of misshapen dwarfs; enchanted, maybe, and rooted to the ground like gnomes in the fairy-tales. Beyond the distorted willows, with their bunched osiers just budding into a mist of yellowish green, was the bridge with its three loose planks which rattled loud and hollow when a trotting horse passed over, and responded to the light footfalls of the child with a faint, intermittent creaking. On either side of the brook, swollen now to a muddy torrent with the spring rains, grew crisp green clumps of the skunk cabbage, interspersed with yellow adders’ tongues and the elusive pink and white of clustered spring-beauties.

“If I sh’d take Barb’ra some flowers, I guess she’d be glad,” communed Jimmy with himself. “I’m mos’ sure Barb’ra’d be awful glad to have some of those yellow flowers; she likes yellow flowers, Barb’ra does.”

He climbed down carefully, because of the molasses which seemed to seethe and bubble ever more joyously within the narrow confines of the tin pail, and having arrived at the creek bottom he set down the pail by a big stone and proceeded to fill his hands with pink and yellow blossoms. It was pleasant down by the brook, with the wind roaring overhead like a friendly giant, and the blue sky and hurrying white clouds reflected in the still places of the stream.

A thunder of hoofs and wheels sounded on the bridge, and the child looked up to see the round red face of Peg Morrison, and the curl of his whip-lash as he called to his horses.

“Hello, Peg!” shouted Jimmy, “wait an’ le’ me get in!” He caught up the pail and clambered briskly up the steep bank.

The man had drawn up his horses, his puckered eyes and puckered lips smiling down at the little boy.

“Wall, I d’clar!” he called out in a high cracked voice, “if this ’ere ain’t the Cap’n! Where’d you come f’om, Cap’n? Here, I’ll take your pail.”

“It’s got molasses in it, so you’d better be careful,” warned Jimmy. “I’m goin’ to have six popcorn balls an’ one to grow on, ’cause it’s my birfday an’ I’m large of my age.”

“Wall, now, I d’clar!” cried Peg admiringly, “so you be, now I come to think of it, Cap’n. You’re hefty, too—big an’ hefty.”

He pulled the little boy up beside him with a grunt as of a mighty effort. As he did so the blue letter slipped out of the small pocket, which was only half big enough to hold it, and dropped unnoticed to the ground. Then the wagon with a creak and a rattle started on once more.

“You c’n see,” said Peg gravely, “how the horses hes to pull now’t you’re in.”

“Didn’t they have to pull’s hard as that before I got in?” inquired Jimmy. “Honest, Peg, didn’t they?”

“Why, all you’ve got to do is to look at ’em, Cap’n,” chuckled Peg. “I’m glad it ain’t fur or they’d git all tuckered out, an’ I’ve got to plough to-day. Say, Cap’n, the wind’s blowin’ fer business ain’t it? You’d better look out fer that military hat o’ your’n.”

“It does blow pretty hard,” admitted Jimmy; “but my hat’s on tight.”

He glanced back vaguely to see a glimmer of something blue skidding sidewise across the road into the tangle of huckleberry and hard-hack bushes; then he turned once more to the man at his side.

“I’ve got a birfday present for Barb’ra,” he said eagerly.

“A birthday present fer Barb’ry? ’Tain’t her birthday, too, is it?” inquired Peg, clucking to his horses.

“No, it’s my birfday; but I got Barb’ra a birfday present with my fi’ cents. I’m six.”

“Sure!” cried Peg. “Anybody’d know you was six, Cap’n, jus’ to look at you! Six, an’ large an’ hefty fer your age. You bet they would! What sort of birthday present did you get for Barb’ry—hey?”

“If you’ll keep the molasses from spillin’ over I’ll show it to you,” offered Jimmy. “It’s a beautiful picture.”

“Wall, now I vow!” exclaimed Peg, when the pink string had been carefully untied and the sparkling Christmas tree exposed to view. “‘I wish you a merry Christmas,’” he read slowly. “Say, that’s great, Cap’n! Mos’ folks fergit all about merry Christmas long before spring. But they hadn’t ought to. Stan’s to reason they hadn’t. They’d ought to be merrier in April ’an in December, ’cause the goin’s better an’ it’s ’nuffsight pleasanter weather. I’ll bet Barb’ry’ll be tickled ha’f to death when she sees that.”

“It sparkles, don’t it, Peg?”

“Mos’ puts my eyes out,” acquiesced the man. “It’s all kin’s an’ colors o’ sparkles. It cert’ly is a neligant present. D’ye want to drive while I do it up fer ye?”

Jimmy took the reins.

“I won’t let ’em run away,” he said gravely.

“Run away?” chuckled Peg. “I’d like to see ’em run away with you a-holt o’ the lines. They wouldn’t das to try it.”

“I s’pose I’ll be able to work the farm before long, Peg,” observed Jimmy, after a short silence, during which he sternly eyed the bobbing heads of the old farm horses. “I’m pretty old now, an’ I’m gettin’ taller every day.”

“H’m!” grumbled Mr. Morrison. “I guess the’ ain’t no ’special hurry ’bout your takin’ charge o’ the farm, Cap’n. Me an Barb’ry’s makin’ out pretty well; an’ you know, Cap’n, you’ve got to go to school quite a spell yet.”

Jimmy knit his forehead.

“I guess there is some hurry,” he said slowly. “I’ve got to grow up’s quick’s I can.”

The man looked down at the valiant little figure at his side with a queer twist of his weather-beaten face.

“Did—Barb’ry tell you that?” he wanted to know after a short silence.

“No,” said Jimmy, shaking his head, “Barb’ra didn’t tell me. I—just thinked it. You see, it’s this way,” he went on, with a serious grown-up air, “I’m all Barb’ra’s got, an’ Barb’ra’s all I’ve got. We’ve just got each other; an’—an’—the farm.”

Peg pursed up his lips in an inaudible whistle. “You wasn’t thinkin’ of givin’ up the farm—you an’ Barb’ry; was you?” he inquired presently.

“What? Me an’ Barb’ra give up the—farm?” echoed Jimmy, in a shocked little voice. “Why—we couldn’t do that.”

“Seein’ the’s jus’ th’ two of you, Cap’n—you an’ Barb’ry, an’—an’—the farm, I didn’t know but what you was calc’latin’ t’ move int’ th’ village, where the’s more folks, an’——”

Jimmy shook his blond head vigorously.

“We couldn’t live anywhere else,” he said decidedly. “It’s—why, it’s our home!”

Peg had taken the reins and the wagon jolted noisily between the tall stone gate-posts, past the big elms and the groups of untrimmed evergreens, to where the house stood on its low grassy terrace, a gravelled driveway encircling it. It was a wide, low, old-fashioned house with narrow porches and small-paned windows, glittering in the sun like little fires. Obviously the house had not been painted for a long time; and its once dazzling walls and green shutters had softened with time and uncounted storms into a warm silvery gray which lent a certain dignity to its square outlines.

Jimmy climbed down over the wheel and dashed excitedly into the house.

“I’ve come, Barb’ra!” he shouted imperiously. “Where are you, Barb’ra?”

The door of the sitting-room opened and a young woman came out. She was tall and slender, with masses of warm brown hair, a red mouth, and a brilliantly clear pale skin; her gray eyes under their long dark lashes were wide and angry, but they softened as they fell upon the small figure in the red tam.

“I’ve got a neligant birfday present f’r you, Barb’ra,” announced the little boy loudly. “An’ I’ve got a quart of m’lasses an’ I’ve got a letter f’om way out west. An’ Al Hewett he wants to know——”

“Hush, Jimmy,” said the girl, stooping to kiss the child’s red mouth. “There’s—someone here. I—can’t stop now. Go and get warm in the kitchen. I’ll come presently.”

She opened a door peremptorily and the child passed through it, his bright face clouded with disappointment.

“Don’t you want to see your—birfday present, even?” he demanded with quivering lips. “I bought it with my fi’ cents, an’ it’s——”

But the girl had already closed the door behind her; he could hear her speak to someone in the sitting-room. There followed the sound of a man’s voice, speaking at length, and the low-toned murmur of a brief reply. Jimmy laid the small flat parcel containing the postal card on the kitchen table, and set the pail of molasses on a chair. There was a froth of sweetness all around the edge now, but Jimmy didn’t care. Vaguely heavy at heart he walked over to the window and looked out. Hitched to the post near the lilac bushes was a tall bay horse with a cropped tail. Behind the horse was a shining sidebar buggy with red wheels. The horse was stretching his sleek neck in an effort to reach the tender green shoots of the lilac bushes, his cropped tail switching irritably from side to side. Jimmy stared with round eyes.

Presently the side door opened and Stephen Jarvis came out quickly, jamming his gray felt hat low upon his forehead. He untied the horse, jerking the animal’s head impatiently to one side as he did so, and stepped to the high seat; then, at a savage cut of the whip, the horse darted away, the gravel spurting from under his angry hoof-beats.

“I’m glad I’m not that horse,” mused Jimmy, “an’ I’m glad—” he added, after a minute’s reflection—“‘at I’m not—him.”

He was still thinking confusedly about the short-tailed horse and his owner, when he heard Barbara’s step behind him.

The girl stooped, put both arms about the little boy, and laid her hot cheek on his. Then she laughed, rather unsteadily.

“Kiss me quick, Jimmy Preston!” she cried. “I want to be loved—hard!”

The child threw both arms fervently about his sister’s neck. “I love you,” he declared circumstantially, “wiv all my outsides an’ all my insides! I love you harder’n anyfing!”

II

For a long time (it seemed to Jimmy) after the last hoof-beat of the ill-tempered horse with the cropped tail had died away on the gravelled drive Barbara sat with the child in her arms, his curly head close against her cheek; her gray eyes bright with tears resolutely held in check.

“Aren’t you gettin’ some tired of holdin’ me?” inquired Jimmy, with a stealthy little wriggle of protest. “You know I’m six, an’ Peg says I’m hefty for my age.”

Barbara laughed faintly, and the little boy slipped from her arms with alacrity and stood before her, eyeing her searchingly.

“I bought you a birfday present with my fi’ cents,” he said, “but you wouldn’t wait to see it.”

“You bought me a birthday present?” cried Barbara. “Why, Jimmy Preston! Show it to me; I can’t wait a minute longer.”

Jimmy walked soberly across to the table. The first glow of his enthusiasm had vanished, and he frowned a little as he untied the pink string.

“Maybe you won’t like it,” he said modestly. “It’s a picture, an’—an’ it—sparkles. I fought—no; I mean I thought it was pretty, an’ that you’d like it, Barb’ra.”

“Like it, boy! I should say so! It’s the most beautiful birthday present I ever had.” Barbara spoke with convincing sincerity and her eyes suddenly wrinkled with fun—the fun Jimmy loved. “I’d really like to kiss you six times—and one to grow on, if you’ll allow me, sir,” she said.

Jimmy considered this proposition for awhile in silence. “You don’t kiss Peg,” he objected at last.

“Mercy no! I should hope not!” laughed Barbara.

She seized the child firmly and planted four of the seven kisses on his hard pink cheeks. “Now two more under your curls in the sweet place,” she murmured. “And the last one in the sweetest place of all!” And she turned up his round chin and sought the warm white hollow beneath like a homing bee.

“I guess I’ll be some sweeter after I eat six popcorn balls,” observed Jimmy, disengaging himself. “The molasses didn’t spill much.”

“Well, I’m glad of that!” cried Barbara. “I guess I’d better get to work. You run out and bring in some chips from the woodpile, and I’ll have that molasses boiling before you can spell Jack Robinson.”

“J-a-c-k,” began Jimmy triumphantly; but Barbara chased him out of doors with a sudden access of pretended severity.

“You’re getting altogether too clever for me, Jimmy Preston!” she said. Then her face clouded swiftly at the recollection of Stephen Jarvis’s parting words.

“What do you propose to do with the boy?” he had asked.

“Take care of him,” she had replied defiantly, “and save the farm for him.”

It was then that Jarvis had risen, crushing his gray felt hat angrily between his hands.

“You’re likely to find it impossible to do either the one or the other,” he said coldly. “The boy is a chip of the old block. As for the farm, I’ve been trying to make you understand for the last half hour that it does not belong to you, unless you can meet the payments before the date I set; and you’ve just told me you can’t do that.”

“Let me pop the corn, Barb’ra!” begged Jimmy, sniffing ecstatically at the molasses which was beginning to seethe and bubble fragrantly in the little round kettle. “I like birfdays,” he went on sociably; “don’t; you, Barb’ra? I mean I like birthdays. Did I say that right, Barb’ra?”

“Yes, dear,” said his sister absent-mindedly. She was drawing out the little round mahogany table. “I’m going to put on the pink china,” she announced, with a defiant toss of her dark head. The defiance was for the Honorable Stephen Jarvis.

“It’s beginning to pop!” cried Jimmy excitedly, as he drew the corn-popper back and forth on the hot griddles with a busy scratching sound.

“Don’t let it burn,” warned Barbara. “How would you like some little hot biscuits, Jimmy, and some strawberry preserves?”

“Strawberry ’serves?” he echoed. “I didn’t know we had any ’serves.”

“Well, we have. I’ve been saving ’em for—for your birthday, Jimmy.”

“Oh, I’m glad!” cried the little boy, redoubling his efforts. “See me work, Barb’ra. Don’t I work hard?”

“Yes, indeed, dear.” She hesitated, then added in a low voice, “You always will work hard; won’t you, Jimmy?”

The child watched her gravely while she shook the crisp white kernels into a bowl. He was thinking of her question.

“Do you think I’ll have to go to school much longer, Barb’ra?” he asked. “It takes such a long time to go to school.”

The girl wheeled sharply about.

“What put that notion into your head?” she demanded. “Of course you’ve got to go school till—till you’re educated—like father.” Her voice faltered a little, and a dark flush crept into her cheeks.

The boy’s eyes were on her face.

“Of course father was—he was sick, Jimmy, sick and unhappy. You don’t remember him as I do; but he——”

“Yes, I know,” the child said simply.

Then he threw his arms about Barbara and hugged her. He didn’t know why exactly, except that Barbara liked his rough boyish caresses. And he wanted to make her smile again.

She did smile, winking back the tears.

“I want you to study—hard, Jimmy,” she went on in a low tremulous voice; “and grow to be a good man—the best kind of a man. You must! I couldn’t bear it, if you——”

“Well, I won’t, Barb’ra,” promised the child gravely. He eyed his sister with a sudden flash of comprehension as he added stoutly, “You don’t have to worry ’bout me. I’m growin’ jus’ ’s fas’ ’s I can, an’ I know mos’ all my tables, ’ceptin’ seven an’ nine an’ some of eight.”

Barbara laughed, and there was the same odd ring of defiance in the sound. Then she opened a cupboard in the wall and took out a cake covered with pink icing.

Jimmy’s blue eyes grew wide with wonder. “What’s that?” he demanded.

Barbara was setting six small candles around the edge; last of all she planted one in the middle.

“You couldn’t guess if you tried,” she said gaily. “I just know you couldn’t. You’re such a dull boy.”

“I can guess, too!” cried Jimmy with a shout of rapture. “It’s a cake! It’s my birfday cake! An’ it’s got six candles on it an’ one to grow on. I ’member last year it had only five an’ one to grow on; but I growed that one all up. I want Peg to see it. Can I go out t’ the barn an’ get him? Can I, Barb’ra?”

The girl hesitated as she cast a troubled eye on the table set daintily with the pink china, and the few carefully cherished bits of old silver.

“You may ask Peg to come in and have supper with you, if you like,” she said slowly. “Just this once—because it’s your birthday.”

Jimmy didn’t wait for a second bidding; he dashed out of the back door with a boyish whoop, carefully studied from the big boys in school.

Peg (shortened from Peleg) Morrison had worked on the Preston farm for so many years that he appeared almost as much a part of the place as the shabby old house itself, or the rambling structures at its rear known indeterminately as “the barns.” He slept over the carriage-house, in quarters originally intended for the coachman. Here also he cooked handily for himself on a rusty old stove, compounding what he called “tried an’ tested receipts” out of a queer old yellow-leaved book bound in marbled boards, its pages written over in Peg’s own scrawling chirography.

“I wouldn’t part with that thar book for its weight in gold an’ di’mon’s,” he was in the habit of saying solemnly to Jimmy. “No, Cap’n, I reelly wouldn’t. I begun to write down useful inf’mation in it when I wasn’t much bigger’n you be now, an’ I’ve kep’ it up.”

“Vallable Information, by Peleg Morrison,” was the legend inscribed on its thumbed cover. Jimmy admired this book beyond words, and quite in private had started one of his own on pieces of brown paper accumulated in the attic chamber where he played on rainy days.

“Hello, Cap’n!” observed Peg with a genial smile, as the little boy thrust his yellow head in at the door of his quarters. “Say! I do b’lieve you’ve growed some since I seen you last. It must be them popcorn balls, I reckon. Pop-corn’s mighty tasty and nourishin’.”

“I haven’t eaten ’em—not yet!” said Jimmy breathlessly. “An’, Peg, I’ve got a birfday cake—an’ it’s got six candles on it, an’ one to grow on; an’—an’ it’s all pink on top; an’ Barb’ra, she’s made a whole lot of biscuits; an’ we’ve got some strawberry ’serves, an’—an’ we want you to come to supper; jus’ this once, ’cause it’s my birfday. Barb’ra said to tell you. An’ she’s put on the pink dishes, too!”

“Wall, now, Cap’n, that surely is kind of Miss Barb’ry. But you see I ain’t got my comp’ny clo’es on. M’ swallow-tail coat’s got the rear buttons off, an’ m’ high collar ’n boiled shirt’s to m’ wash-lady’s.”

Peg winked humorously at Jimmy, in token that his remarks were to be interpreted as being in a purely jocular vein.

“We don’t care ’bout clo’es—me an’ Barb’ra,” said Jimmy, grandly. “An’ I want you to see my cake wiv the candles burning. I’m goin’ to blow ’em out when we are all through wiv supper; then we’re goin’ to eat the cake.”

“Wall, now I’ll tell you, Cap’n. I’ll mosey in ’long ’bout time you get t’ the cake. I wouldn’t miss seein’ them candles blowed out fer anythin’. You c’n tell Miss Barb’ry I’m obleeged to her fer th’ invitation—mind you say Miss Barb’ry, Jimmy. ’Cause that’s manners, seein’ I’m hired man on this ’ere farm.”

“Does Barb’ra pay you lots o’ money?” asked Jimmy, with sudden grave interest.

Peg puckered up his mouth judicially.

“You don’t want t’ git in th’ habit o’ askin’ pers’nal questions, Cap’n,” he said, with a serious look in his kind old eyes. “‘Tain’t reelly p’lite, you know. An’ the’s times when it’s kind o’ embarrassin’ to answer ’em. But, in this ’ere case, I’m pertickler glad to tell you, Cap’n, that Barb’ry—I mean Miss Barb’ry—does pay me all I ask fur, an’ a whole lot besides. You see I hev special privileges here on this place that ain’t come by ev’ry day, an’ I value ’em—I value ’em highly. An’ that reminds me, Cap’n, that I’ve got a little present fer you, seein’ you’re six, goin’ on seven, an’ big an’ hefty fer your age. Jest you clap yer eyes onto that an’ tell me what you think of it. ’Tain’t what you’d call reelly val’able now; but you keep it fer—say fifty years an’ do what I’ve done with mine, an’ money won’t buy it f’om you.”

“Oh, Peg!” gasped Jimmy, in a rapture too deep and pervasive for words, “is it—a val’able inf’mation book?”

“That’s what it is, Cap’n,” chuckled Peg, holding off the book and gazing at it with honest pride. “Y’ see, I couldn’t find th’ mate to mine in looks; but this ’ere red cover beats mine all holler, an’ you see I’ve put ‘Vallable Information by James Embury Preston’ on it in handsome red letters. Take it, boy, an’ don’t put nothin’ into it ’at won’t be true an’ useful, is the prayer o’ Peg Morrison.”

The old man’s tone was solemn and his blue eyes gleamed suddenly moist in the midst of their network of wrinkles.

“The’s folks in this world,” he went on soberly, “‘at would be mighty glad if they had a book like that, full o’ tried an’ tested rules—fer conduct, as well as fer hoss liniment an’ pies an’ cakes. In the front page o’ mine I put down more’n twenty years ago, ‘Never promise anythin’ that you ain’t willin’ to set ’bout doin’ the nex’ minute.’ That’s a good sentiment fer man or beast. Ye c’n turn to a rule fer mos’ anythin’, f’om what to do fer a colt ’at’s et too much green clover, up to how to set on a jury. But I’ve took my time to it, an’ ain’t never wrote anythin’ down jus’ t’ fill paper. Now you trot along, Cap’n; an’ I’ll be with you before you git them candles blowed out.”

“I—I’d like to shake hands, Peg,” said Jimmy fervently. “I’m too big an’ hefty to kiss people for thank you. But I like this book better’n anyfing—I mean anything.”

He put out his small brown hand on which babyish dimples still lingered, and the old man grasped and shook it solemnly.

“You’re more’n welcome, Cap’n!” he said heartily. “An’ thinkin’ y’ might like to set down a few sentiments I got you a bottle o’ red ink an’ a new steel pen. I like red ink m’self. It makes a handsome page.”

“I never s’posed I’d have a whole bottle of red ink,” said Jimmy, with a rapturous sigh of contentment filled to the brim and running over. “Don’t forget to come and see my cake,” he called out as the old man convoyed him to the foot of the stairs with a nautical lantern.

“I’m goin’ right back up to put on m’ swallow-tail,” Peg assured him. “You’ll see me in ’bout half an hour.”

Barbara knit her fine dark brows a little over the birthday book with its quaint inscription.

“I shouldn’t like you to suppose that was the way to spell valuable information,” she said crisply. “Suppose we put another card over this one, dear. I’ll write it for you.”

Jimmy pondered this proposal in silence for a few minutes, then he shook his head.

“I want my book to be ’zactly like Peg’s,” he said firmly. “It’s a val’able inf’mation book; that’s what it is.”

He kept it by him all the while they were eating their supper off the pink and white china Grandfather Embury brought from foreign parts, while the seven candles cast bright lights and wavering shadows across the table on the boy’s rosy little face and the girl’s darker beauty.

“Peg’s comin’ in’s soon’s he puts on his swallow-tail,” said Jimmy placidly. “I like Peg better’n anybody, ’ceptin’ you, Barb’ra. He’s so durned square.”

“You shouldn’t say such words, Jimmy,” Barbara said, with a vexed pucker between her brows. “You must remember that you are a gentleman.”

“So is Peg a gentleman,” said Jimmy, valiantly ready to do battle for his friend. “An’ he says durned.”

Barbara shook her head impatiently at the child.

“If you say that word again, Jimmy,” she threatened, “I shall be obliged to forbid you going out to the barn at all.”

“I guess you don’t mean that, Barb’ra,” the little boy said firmly. “Course I have to go out to the barn; but I promise I won’t say durned ’cept when I plough.”

A sound of hard knuckles cautiously applied to the back kitchen door announced Mr. Morrison, attired in his best suit of rusty black, his abundant iron-gray hair, ordinarily standing up around his ruddy, good-humored face like a halo, severely plastered down with soap and water.

“Good-evenin’, Cap’n,” he said ceremoniously, “I hope you fin’ yourself in good health on this ’ere auspicious occasion, sir; an’ you, too, Miss Barb’ry, as a near relation of the Cap’n’s. I hope I see you well an’—an’ happy, ma’am.”

“See my cake, Peg,” shouted Jimmy, capering wildly about the old man. “See the candles!”

Peg pretended to shade his eyes from the overpowering illumination. “Wall, now, I mus’ say!” he exclaimed. “If that ain’t wo’th coverin’ ten miles o’ bad goin’ t’ see. That cert’nly is a han’some cake, Miss Barb’ry, an’ the Cap’n here tells me you made it.”

Barbara smiled, rather sadly.

“Yes,” she said, “I made it. If you’ll blow out the candles now, Jimmy, I’ll cut it and we’ll each have a piece.”

The little boy climbed up in his chair.

“I have to sit down when I blow,” he said seriously, and sent the first current of air across the table from his puckered lips. “One of ’em’s out!” he announced triumphantly.

“Give it to ’em agin, Cap’n!” cried Peg. “Give ’em a good one. That’s right! Now the nigh one’s gone; but that off candle’s a sticker. I dunno whether you’ll fetch that one or not, Cap’n.”

The child drew in a mighty breath, his puffed cheeks flushing to a brilliant scarlet, and blew with all his might, the flame of the one lighted candle waned, flared sidewise, and disappeared, leaving a light wreath of smoke behind.

“There! I blowed ’em out, all by myself,” he exulted. “I’ve got a strong wind in my breaf, haven’t I, Peg?”

“I declar’, I’d hate to have you try it on the roof o’ the barn, Cap’n. The loose shingles’d fly, I bet,” Peg assured him jocularly.

Barbara was cutting the cake, her troubled eyes bent upon her task. Mr. Morrison glanced at her anxiously.

“I seen a rig hitched out t’ the side door this afternoon,” he said slowly. “‘Twant a—a sewin’-machine agent; was it, Miss Barb’ry?”

“No,” said the girl shortly; her look forbade further questions.

“I’ll tell you who ’twas, Peg,” said Jimmy sociably, as he began to nibble the edges of his slice of cake. “It was the Hon’rable Stephen Jarvis. An’ his horse’s tail is cut off short so’t it can’t switch ’round, an’ it makes him cross. I guess it would make me some cross, too, if I was a horse. Wouldn’t it make you, Peg?”

“I reckon’t would, Cap’n,” said the old man, fetching a heavy sigh for no apparent reason. He turned to Barbara, whose red lips were set in an expression of haughty reserve.

“If I’d ’a’ knowed ’twas the Hon’rable Stephen Jarvis fer certain,” he went on, with an effort after careless ease of manner, “I b’lieve I’d ’a’ took the opportunity to talk over crops with him fer a spell. We’re goin’ to have a first-rate crop o’ buckwheat this year, an’ winter wheat’s lookin’ fine. The’d ought to be plenty of apples, too. I pruned the trees in the spring an’ manured ’em heavy last fall.”

Barbara gazed steadily at the table. She did not answer.

“I was thinkin’ some o’ plantin’ onions in the five acre field this year,” went on Peg, an agitated tremor in his voice. “They’re a heap o’ work, onions is, what with weedin’ ’em an’ cultivatin’ ’em; but the’s big money in ’em; white, red, an’ yellow sorts. What would you say to onions, Miss Barb’ry?”

“There’s no use,” said the girl, “of our planting—anything.” She turned her back abruptly on pretence of pulling down a window shade. “I’ll speak to you to-morrow—about the work.”

III

After Jimmy had said his prayers and was tucked up in bed, tired but happy, the book of “Vallable Information” under his pillow, Barbara sat for awhile by the open window in the dusk of the April night. The wind had gone down since sunset, and in the stillness she could hear the “peepers,” singing in the distant marshes, and the soft roar of the river, filled to its brim with the melted snows from the hills. Something in the sound of the swollen river and the gleam of a single star, seen dimly between drifting clouds, brought the remembrance of other April nights to Barbara’s mind.

Her thoughts went back to the day when her father, then a proud, handsome man in his prime, had brought his new wife to the farm. Her own passionately mourned mother seemed strangely forgotten in the joy of the home-coming and the girl had resented it in the dumb, pathetic fashion of childhood. After a little, though, she had come to love the gentle creature who had won her father’s heart. There followed a few happy years, regretfully remembered through a blur of tears, when the little mother, as Barbara learned to call her, filled the old house to overflowing with sunshine. Then on an April night when the river lifted up its plaintive voice in the stillness that fell after a wild, windy day, Jimmy came, and the little mother went—hastily, as if summoned out of the dark by some voice unheard by the others. Barbara remembered well the night of her going, and of how, with a last effort, she had lifted the tiny baby and placed him in her own strong young arms.

“Love—him—dear,” whispered the failing voice. Then she had smiled once, as if with a great content, and was gone.

Jimmy’s voice broke sleepily through these bitter-sweet memories.

“Barb’ra!” he called, “are you there? I forgot somethin’.”

“What did you forget, dear?” asked the girl, going to his bed.

“I love you, Barb’ra!” murmured the little boy, snuggling his hand in hers.

She stooped to kiss him all warm and sweet with sleep. Then drew the blankets closer about his shoulders.

“It was—a—a—letter,” the drowsily-sweet little voice went on. “I—forgot——”

“Jimmy,” said Barbara the next morning, as she brushed the child’s yellow hair, “what was it you said last night about a letter?”

“Oh, I bringed—no, I brought a letter home to you in my coat pocket, and I forgot to give it to you.”

“It isn’t in either of your pockets, dear. I looked there last night. Try and think what you did with it.”

The little boy looked troubled.

“The man gave it to me, an’ it was blue. An’ he said it was f’om way out west, an’ he asked me who did you know out west; an’ I said I didn’t know; but I’d ask you. I put it in my pocket.”

“Perhaps it wasn’t anything important,” Barbara said slowly, “but——”

“No, I guess it wasn’t,” agreed Jimmy placidly. “Say, Barb’ra, can I have two popcorn balls to take to school?”

“But what do you suppose became of the letter?” persisted Barbara. “Which pocket did you put it in?”

Jimmy eyed the small garment uncertainly.

“It was in this one,” he decided; “I ’member I put the letter in my pocket an’ it stuck out, ’cause it was too long.”

“Did you come straight home from the post-office?” demanded Barbara. “Did you, Jimmy?”

Jimmy reflected.

“I walked along,” he said, “an’ ’nen I looked in through the fence to see the deer an’ the shiny blue round things—you know, Barb’ra, when the sun shines you c’n see——”

“I know,” said the girl, with a touch of impatience.

“An’ ’nen I saw the horse wiv a short tail come out, an’ I p’tended I was drivin’ an’ goin’ awful fast! But I couldn’t trot real fas’ because the m’lasses spilled. I had to stop an’ lick it off lots of times.”

“Why, Jimmy!” said the girl rebukingly.

“Wiv my fingers,” explained Jimmy mildly. “You know you have to do something when it comes out all bubbles ’round the edge; an’—an’ ’nen I——”

“You must have dropped the letter somewhere along the road,” interrupted his sister.

“Uh-huh! I guess I did,” assented the culprit. “But I didn’t mean to, Barb’ra. Truly I didn’t.”

His lip quivered as he looked up at her stormy face.

The girl controlled herself with an effort.

“Of course you didn’t mean to, darling,” she said, kissing the rosy mouth, which had begun to droop dolefully at the corners. “Perhaps it was just an advertisement, anyway, and not worth bothering over. I’ll walk along with you and see if we can find it.”

But the letter, snugly hidden under a clump of unfolding fern, gave no token of its presence as the two walked slowly past it, their eyes searching the road and the tangled growths on either side.

Barbara walked swiftly to the post-office, after she had left Jimmy at the schoolhouse. It had occurred to her that someone might have returned the missing letter to the office.

Al Hewett, when questioned, shook his head.

“Nope,” he said, “the’ ain’t nobody brought it here. ’Course I’d ’a’ saved it fer you if they had. I remember the letter all right, I happened to notice the postmark. It was fo’m Tombstone, Arizony. Know anybody out there?”

The girl shook her head. “Was there any printing—or—writing on the envelope?” she asked.

“Not that I recall,” said Mr. Hewlett, mindful of his official state. “Of course you understan’ with the amount of mail we handle in this office that we couldn’t be expected to notice any one letter in pertickler. I’m real sorry, Barb’ra,” he added, with genuine good feeling. “Jimmy’s pretty small t’ deliver mail. He’s a nice little shaver, though. Anythin’ in the line o’ groceries to-day?”

“Not to-day,” said Barbara, her cheeks flushing.

Then she looked up with sudden determination. “Is your father here?” she asked, in a low voice. “If he is—I’d like to see him.”

“Pa’s in the back room makin’ up accounts,” the younger Hewett informed her. “I’ll call him, if you say so.—Pa!”

“No; don’t, please,” objected Barbara hastily. “I’ll go and speak to him there.”

But Mr. Abram Hewett had already appeared in answer to the summons and was advancing briskly behind a counter gay with new prints and ginghams. His face stiffened at sight of Barbara, and he darted an impatient look at his son.

“Could I speak with you—just a moment, Mr. Hewett?” asked Barbara, in a low, determined voice, “on business?”

The man coldly scrutinized the flushed face the girl lifted to his.

“If it was ’bout the balance o’ that account o’ yours——” he began, “I was just lookin’ it over, ’long with some others like it. You c’n come in here.”

Barbara followed his short, bent figure, her heart beating heavily. But she had found a remnant of her vanished self-possession by the time Mr. Hewett had climbed to the high stool behind the long-legged desk, which represented the financial centre of the establishment. “Well?” he said interrogatively, fixing his lowering regard upon her.

Barbara glanced at the two fly-specked legends which flanked the desk on either side, reading respectively, “My time is money; don’t steal it,” and “This is my busy day.”

“I didn’t come to finish paying that bill to-day,” she said, a flush of shame mounting to her forehead. “But the hens are beginning to lay now, and——”

“Eggs is cheap an’ plentiful,” demurred Mr. Hewett, with unconcealed impatience. “I couldn’t agree t’ allow ye much on eggs.”

“It wasn’t the bill I came to see you about,” said Barbara, with a proud look at him. “I shall pay it in money as soon as I possibly can.”

“Oh!” interjected Mr. Hewett. Then he added sharply “Humph!” drumming meanwhile on the lid of his desk to denote the lapse of unfruitful minutes.

Barbara still hesitated, while she strove to find words to introduce the difficult business she had in mind.

Mr. Hewett cleared his throat suggestively.

“There’s a mortgage on the farm,” she said slowly, “and we’re going to lose it, unless——”

“Unless you pay up,” suggested Mr. Hewett briskly. “Yes; jes’ so. I’ve been wonderin’ how you managed to hang on to it s’ long’s you have.”

“I’ve worked,” said Barbara, in a low, tense voice. “I’ve worked early and late, ever since father died, and before that. But—there was unpaid interest, and interest on that; and last year the apples failed, and so——”

“He’s goin’ to foreclose on ye. Yes, yes; exac’ly. I s’pose likely Jarvis holds the mortgage?”

“Yes,” said Barbara breathlessly. “But if I only had a little more time I could manage it—somehow. I must keep the farm for Jimmy. I promised father he should have it.”

Mr. Hewett was silent, his plump face drawn into the semblance of a dubious smile.

“I’ve come to ask you to take up the mortgage for me, and give me more time to pay it. Will you do it?” asked Barbara, avoiding the man’s look.

Mr. Hewett shifted his gaze to the ink-well, around the edge of which a lean black fly was crawling dispiritedly.

“W’y, no,” he said decidedly. “I shouldn’t like to interfere; I couldn’t do it.”

“Why couldn’t you?” demanded Barbara. “If we have a good apple year, I could pay the mortgage in two years. It doesn’t cost us much to live.”

“If it’s a good apple year, apples’ll be a drug on the market,” Mr. Hewett prophesied gloomily. “Nope! I’m sorry; but I guess you’ll have to let Jarvis foreclose on ye. I shouldn’t like to run up against Jarvis, y’ know.”

“But—there’s Jimmy!” The girl’s voice rang out in a sharp cry.

“Put the boy in an institootion, or bind him out,” advised Mr. Hewett, drumming impatiently on the lid of his desk. “The’s folk a-plenty that wouldn’t mind raisin’ a healthy boy to work.”

Barbara turned swiftly.

“Say!” called Mr. Hewett; “hold on a minute!” Then, as Barbara paused, “This ’ere account’s been standin’ since long before your pa died. I’ve been pretty easy on you to date, but I guess I’ll have to attach somethin’ before Jarvis gits his hold onto things. You’ve got some stock, I b’lieve, an’——”

But Barbara was already out of hearing, hurrying as if pursued. Two or three women, looking over dress goods at the counter, turned to look after the slim figure in its black dress.

“She don’t ’pear to see common folks any better’n her father did,” said one, with a spiteful laugh.

“Well, I don’t see’s she’s got much to be stuck up about,” put in another. “What with her father drinkin’ himself to death, an’——”

“Was that what ailed him?” inquired a newcomer in the neighborhood. “I remember he was buried a year ago last winter, just after we moved here. But I never heard he was a drinking man.”

“None of us suspicioned it for quite a spell,” explained the first speaker volubly. “Donald Preston was too awful stylish and uppity to go to the tavern an’ get drunk like common folks; he used to sen’ for his liquor f’om out of town. The best of brandy, so they say; then he’d drink, an’ drink till he was dead to the world, shut up in his room. He kind of lost his mind ’long toward the last, they say. He lived more’n two years that way ’fore he finally died.”

“She didn’t take care of him like that, did she?”

“Yes, she did. Her an’ the hired man; an’ I guess they had their hands full part the time. He used to cry an’ holler nights like a baby towards the last. Me an’ Mr. Robinson heard him once when we was comin’ home f’om a revival meetin’ over to the Corners. Seth, he was for stoppin’ an’ seein’ if there was anythin’ we could do, but I says, ‘No, I don’t want to mix up in it,’ I says. Afterwards I was kind of sorry; I’d like to have seen the upstairs rooms in that house.”

The subject of these manifold revelations and censures was walking rapidly down the village street, her mind a maze of unhappy reflections. She stopped short at the end of the sidewalk, as Jimmy had done the day before.

“I don’t suppose there’s any use,” she thought, her eyes fixed on the imposing front which the Jarvis residence presented to the public gaze. “But I’ll try, anyway. If he’d give me a year—or even six months longer, I’m sure I could get the interest paid up.”

Without waiting for her elusive courage to vanish into thin air the girl pushed open the front gate, which clanged decisively shut behind her. The harsh metallic sound appeared to pursue her relentlessly up the long gravelled walk, past the stiff figures of the cast-iron deer, past the blossoming shrubs and the glittering blue glass globes—quite up to the pillared entrance. A sour-faced woman opened the door.

Mr. Jarvis was at home, she informed Barbara. “But he’s busy,” she added importantly. “The’ can’t nobody see him this mornin’, an’ he’s goin’ away to-morrow.”

“Then I must see him,” Barbara said firmly. “Tell Mr. Jarvis that Miss Preston would like to see him—on—on business.”

Stephen Jarvis had spent several hours shut up in his library that morning, during which period he had opened and examined his mail, read the morning papers, published in a neighboring city, and the county papers, one of which he owned, and whose editorial utterances he controlled.

The morning sun, streaming cheerfully through the clear windows, lay across his paper-strewn desk, bringing into prominence its handsome fittings and the large sinewy hand which reached purposefully for a pen. As he sat there in the revealing light Stephen Jarvis appeared very nearly what he had made of himself in the course of some thirty laborious years. Nature had provided him with a big-boned, powerful body, topped by a head in no wise remarkable for its beauty, yet significant as the compact rounded end of a steel projectile; eyes of no particular color, deep-set beneath penthouse brows; a nose, high in its bony structure, curving at the tip, with a suggestion of scorn; a jaw, heavy but clear-cut, well furnished with strong, even teeth. Jarvis was born a farmer’s son, poor with the poverty of sparse acres, sparsely cultivated through successive generations of uncalculating, simple-hearted men, content to live and die as had their forbears. It was far otherwise with Stephen Jarvis. His initial conclusion, derived from keen-eyed observation and comparison, resulted in an active hatred of the grinding poverty his fathers had accepted with settled stoicism as the common lot. He would not, he resolved, remain poor. He would in some way—in any way—acquire houses, lands, money. This single idea, planted, rooted, and grown mighty, brought forth fruit after its kind. In ten years’ time he had climbed out of the walled pit where he had found himself; in the decade which followed, having learned, experimentally, of the compelling power of the fixed idea doggedly adhered to, he had gone on, adding more houses, more lands, more money to what he already possessed; and this process having by now become somewhat monotonously easy, he had reached for and seized political power of the sort most easily grasped by the large hand of wealth. He still continued almost mechanically to loan money at a high rate of interest, to execute and foreclose mortgages, but there was no longer zest or excitement in the game. And there intervened disquieting moments like the present when he perceived that, after all, he was not successful, as the world counted success; nor rich, as the world counted wealth; moments when he realized his loneliness and the coldness of his hearth-stone, where neither friends nor children gathered.

His wife, dead more than two years, had been a dull, emotionless woman, with a flat, pale, expressionless face and a high-shouldered, angular figure. Jarvis had married her without pretence of passion because she had money, and in his poverty-pinched youth he had thought of little else. He had never been unkind to the woman who bore his name. He had, in fact, paid very little attention to her, and she had trodden the dull round of her existence unprotestingly and died as unobtrusively as she had lived. A portrait of the late Mrs. Jarvis in the cold medium of black and white crayons, hung above the mantel. The man’s eyes rested upon it mechanically as he lifted them from the dull report of a dully rancorous speech delivered on a late public occasion by his political opponent in the county. The portrait failed to arouse memories either sweet or bitter; but Jarvis observed that his housekeeper in her annual spring cleaning had taken the pains to protect the picture in its showy, expensive frame. He frowned as he noticed the barred pink netting from behind which his wife’s plain features looked forth with a suggestion of pained protest. The effect was distinctly unpleasing. He caught himself wondering irritably why the picture should confront him thus; portraits were foolish, unmeaning things, anyway; shrouded with pink tarlatan they became impossible. His gaze still lingered frowningly upon the picture when there came a dubious tap upon the panels of the door.

“What d’you want?” demanded Jarvis sharply, as he recognized the intruder. “I thought I told you not to disturb me this morning.”

“Well, I told her so; but she wouldn’t go away,” the woman apologized. “I guess ’f I let her stan’ there till she’s good an’ tired o’ waitin’, she’ll——”

“Kindly acquaint me with the name of the person who wishes to see me, Mrs. Dumser,” he interrupted, with a quick, choleric lift of the hand.

“It’s that Preston girl,” the woman said sullenly. “I told her you was busy and——”

“Show her in at once,” her employer ordered briefly. On the whole he welcomed the interruption. There was a certain excitement akin to that experienced by the sportsman when he subdues some struggling wild creature to his will. It was a species of weak folly, he told himself, to entertain anything like compassion for borrowers of money who could not pay. And Stephen Jarvis was not a weak man. He was, moreover, thoroughly familiar with all the various excuses, subterfuges and pitiful expedients of such luckless individuals, as well as complete master of the final processes by which he was wont to detach them from their forfeited possessions. His mouth, long, straight, expressionless, and shaded by a closely clipped mustache, tightened as Barbara Preston entered.

He glanced at her sharply as the girl sank into a chair opposite the desk without waiting to be asked.

The light from the long French windows fell full upon the slender young figure in its plain black gown, and her face, seen against the sombre background afforded by rows of leather-bound law-books, appeared vividly alive, defiantly youthful, like a spray of peach blossoms against a leaden sky.

“You wished to see me, I believe,” said Jarvis, perceiving that the girl was struggling with involuntary fear of him, a fear heightened by her surroundings. “What can I do for you?”

She met his gaze unflinchingly.

“I have come,” she said, “to see if you will give me a little more time. It is going to be a good apple year, and—and I’ll work—hard to save the farm.”

Her eyes darkened and widened; a quick color sprang to lips and cheeks, as when a flag is suddenly unfurled to the wind.

“If you’ll only give me a chance!” she cried.

“What sort of a chance are you looking for?” he wanted to know.

Barbara’s eyes fell before his steady gaze.

“I—want——” she began, and stopped, obviously searching for forgotten words and phrases.

He waited imperturbably for her to go on.

“I want you to let me stay—in my home.”

He lifted his eyebrows.

“I thought we discussed that matter pretty thoroughly yesterday afternoon,” he said. “I can think of nothing more to say on the subject.”

“But,” she persisted, “I don’t intend to give it up. I—can’t.”

He was silent. But his look angered her unreasonably.

“You don’t want the farm!” she burst out, with sudden hot indignation. “You’ve got most of the farms about here now, and you’ll have the others in time, I suppose.”

“You appear to know a good deal about my business,” he said ironically. “But you’re right. I don’t want the Preston farm. I don’t want any of ’em. Why should I? Most of them are like yours, worn out, worthless. But the owners want my money—your father did. And I let him have what he asked for. I might have refused. But I let him have a thousand dollars, and he took it, did as he liked with it—drank it up, for all I know. And now you come here begging——”

The girl sprang to her feet; her gray eyes blazed angrily upon him.

“I’m not begging!” she cried. “All I want is the chance to pay you—every cent, and I could do it—I will do it.”

“Perhaps you will tell me how you are going about it,” he said coldly.

She sank back into her chair.

“Yes!” she said slowly. “I am—begging. I am begging for time. Give me another year—give me this summer, and let me—try!”

He was studying the girl’s passionate face with a curious interest. A singular idea had presented itself to him, and he was considering it half mockingly. Nevertheless it lent a human sound to his voice as he answered her.

“See here, Miss Preston,” he said. “I admire your pluck and energy. But let me tell you that you don’t want to hold on to that farm. The orchards are too old to be productive; the land needs fertilizers, rotation, all sorts of things that require brains and money. That old fool, Morrison, hasn’t managed the place properly, and can’t. It’s a losing fight, and you’d better give it up—peaceably.”

“But I want it,” she urged, “for Jimmy. I want to hold the place for him. He’ll soon grow up now, and—he’s the last of the Prestons.”

She stopped short and sprang to her feet, with a little gasp of angry protest.

“You are laughing at me!” she cried indignantly. “You have no right——”

She was mistaken; Stephen Jarvis seldom indulged in laughter; but his hard-set mouth had relaxed somewhat under his clipped mustache. His greenish brown eyes shone with an unaccustomed light. He was thinking his own thoughts, and for once, at least, he found a singular pleasure in them.

“Don’t get excited,” he advised her coolly. “Sit down and we’ll talk this over. You want to keep the farm for that half-brother of yours, you say. Well, I’m disposed to give it to you to do as you like with, if you——”

She gazed at him almost incredulously.

“You’ll give me time to try?” she asked breathlessly. “Oh, thank you!”

He answered her impetuous question with another. “Did you notice the person who showed you in? Yes; I see you did, particularly. Well, she’s my housekeeper. She’s been here since my—since I buried the late Mrs. Jarvis. But I—well; I’m tired of seeing the woman about. I shall need somebody to take her place, and—Stop! I want you to hear me out.”

The girl had not resumed her seat at Jarvis’s bidding. She retreated swiftly toward the door. The man’s imperious voice followed her.

“Come back! I’m not done with what I had to say!”

But Barbara had already closed the door definitely behind her. The woman in black silk stood just outside. She had, in fact, been listening.

“Well!” she breathed explosively, staring at Barbara. Then she rustled toward the front door, her ample draperies filling the narrow twilight passage with a harsh, swishing sound.

“You better not show your face here again!” she said in a low, fierce voice, as she held the door wide for Barbara to pass out.

IV

Jimmy Preston sat curled up on one foot by the table in Peg Morrison’s loft. His yellow hair was damp and towsled, for he had run bare-headed through the rain, bearing his precious book of “Vallable Information” tucked under his blouse.

“I didn’t bring my red ink,” he explained breathlessly to Peg, “‘cause I was ’fraid I’d spill it. I fought I could borrow some of yours.”

“You can, an’ welcome, son,” agreed Peg, “but remember that’ll give me an option on yours. Them that borrows ought to be willin’ to lend. They ain’t though, as a gen’ral thing. Borrowers is spenders, and lenders is savers, as a rule.”

“I’ll lend you my whole bottle of red ink an’ I’ll lend you my pen, too,” said Jimmy magnificently.

The little boy spread his book open on the table for Mr. Morrison’s inspection. “You see I’ve begun it already,” he said with pride.

“Le’ me see; what you got here?” and Peg traced the first wavering line with a horny forefinger.

“That’s how not to lose a letter,” said Jimmy proudly. “Barb’ra says sometimes letters are ’portant, an’ you don’t want to lose ’em.”

“‘Lev letters in the posoffis. They wil be saf ther,’” read Peg slowly. He paused and screwed his mouth in a noiseless whistle.

“Don’t you think that’s a vallable inf’mation?” demanded Jimmy anxiously. “If I hadn’t taken that letter and put it in my pocket, I shouldn’t have lost it. Barb’ra could have got it herself, and maybe it was ’portant. You can’t tell ’thout you read a letter whether it’s ’portant or not; an’ you can’t read a letter when it’s lost.”

“So you lost a letter ’dressed to Barb’ry, did you? H’m! Where’d you lose it?”

“If I knew, I’d go an’ find it,” said Jimmy soberly. “I put it in my pocket, an’ it was blue, an’ it was f’om out west. Barb’ra doesn’t know who it was f’om. But she’d like to know.”

“H’m!” repeated Peg. “You’d ought to carried it all the way right in your han’, where you c’d see it. Pockets are kind o’ dangerous when it comes to letters. I know a whole row o’ little boys ’at ain’t alive at all, ’count o’ a letter bein’ lost. They never was born,” he added by way of explanation.

Jimmy drew a deep sigh of sustained interest.

“You see it was this way,” continued Peg circumstantially. “The’ was a young feller ’at I used to know, an’ he was workin’ in a lumber-camp one winter where the’ wasn’t any pos’offis; one o’ the men used to carry the letters in an’ out, a matter o’ fifteen miles. One time he lost a letter this young feller wrote to his girl, an’ didn’t think to say nothin’ ’bout it; an’ she got all worked up ’cause she didn’t hear f’om him, an’ after a spell she up an’ married another man; an’ so the young man I was speakin’ of never got married, an’ never had any little boys o’ his own. He felt awful bad ’bout it fer a long time, but he ain’t never los’ a letter ’at b’longed to anybody else.”

The pattering sound of the rain on the barn roof increased to a steady roar as Peg related this short but instructive tale.

“I sh’d think those little boys would feel bad,” said Jimmy sympathetically. “I’d hate not to be alive.”

“Mebbe they do; an’ ag’in, mebbe they don’t,” observed Peg cautiously. “Anyhow, some of ’em would be growed up by this time; farmin’ it, mebbe, or keepin’ store.” His eyes wore a far-away look.

Jimmy dipped Peg’s pen in the red ink bottle.

“How do you spell not, Peg?” he inquired.

“K-n-o-t,” replied the old man, with a sigh.

Jimmy was silent for a long minute, his pen travelling slowly along the blue line and leaving a trail of wabbly red letters behind.

“‘Hough knot to los a letter,’” he read aloud, with honest pride in his achievement. “What’ll I say next, Peg?”

“Keep yer mind an’ yer eyes onto it till you get it t’ the person it’s meant for,” the old man said, with some sternness. “You’ve got to do that with ev’rythin’ you do,” he went on. “You can’t go moseyin’ ’long thinkin’ ’bout ev’rythin’ under the sun ’cept what you’re doin’. If you’re ploughin’, plough, an’ put all the grit an’ gumption you’ve got onto ploughin’. Most folks ain’t so smart ’at they c’n afford to run a d’partment store in their minds. Hold on! Don’t try to write all that. Jus’ say, pay attention to that letter. You know, Cap’n,” he went on impressively, “you come of awful fine stock. The Prestons was always smart; your great-gran’father, he was smarter ’an all possess, an’ your gran’father, he was jes’ the same.”

“An’ my father was, too,” interrupted Jimmy, eying the old man with a pucker between his brown eyes. “Wasn’t he smarter’n all possess, Peg?”

“‘Course he was, Cap’n,” agreed the old man hastily. “Up to the time he was took sick, he was A number one. An’ Barb’ry—I mean Miss Barb’ry, she’s awful smart an’ ambitious, too, fer a female. Oh, you’ll get along in the world, Cap’n, ’course you’ll get along! But losin’ letters is like losin’ other things, such as money an’—an’ health, an’ reputation an’—farms. It all comes o’ lettin’ yer mind kind o’ wander. You won’t do that, will you, Cap’n?”

The man’s voice trembled; he seemed anxiously intent on the little boy’s answer.

“I won’t, if I can help it, Peg,” Jimmy answered honestly. “But,” he added candidly, “I like to think ’bout things in school—all kind o’ things. When I look out the windows an’ see the trees wavin’ an’ hear the birds I like t’ p’tend I’m outdoors playin’.”

“Don’t you do it, Cap’n,” Peg spoke almost solemnly. “You keep a stiddy holt on them thoughts o’ yourn’ an’ nail ’em down to readin’, writin’, an’ ’rithmetic. If you ketch ’em a-wanderin’ out the window, you fetch ’em back an’ make ’em work. You c’n do it, every trip.”

“But if I don’t want to——”

“There you got it! Struck the nail square on the head, Cap’n. You’ve got to make yourself want to. You ain’t too young to learn, neither. Gracious! I wisht somebody’d told me what I’m tellin’ you, when I was ’bout your age. I’ve kind o’ reasoned it out, watchin’ folks an’ their doin’s, an’ noticin’ how I try an’ squirm out o’ doin’ things. The’s two folks in ev’rybody, Cap’n; a lazy, good-fer-nothin’ sort o’ a chap, that won’t do nothin’ in school, nor anywheres else if he c’n help it, an’ there’s a smart, good, up-an’-a-goin’ feller ’at’s anxious to git along in the world. I know ’em both inside o’ me. An’ ol’ lazybones come nigh onto ruinin’ me when I was a boy. Lord! I jes’ wouldn’ work! Ust t’ lie half th’ day in the sun an’ think o’ nothin’, when I’d ought t’ been hoein’ corn. Then I’d come in an’—say I had the backache, or th’ headache or—mos’ anythin’ I could think of. Ol’ lazybones is an awful liar, Cap’n. You don’t want t’ listen to anythin’ he says. You want to shet him up an’ keep him shet. He’ll lead a man t’ drink an’ to steal other folks’ time an’ money; he’s meaner’n pusley an’ slyer’n—well, he’s s’ durned sly, Cap’n, that you gotta be on his track all the endurin’ while.”

“Do you think I’ve got two folks in me, Peg?” asked Jimmy, laying his hand over the pit of his stomach with a worried look.

“I’m reelly ’fraid ye have, Cap’n,” said Peg firmly. “I never see anybody ’at hadn’t. But ef you git th’ upper han’ o’ ol’ lazybones now’t you’re small, you won’t have much trouble with him.”

“I’m not small, Peg,” Jimmy corrected him. “You said I was large an’—an’ hefty fer my age.”

“Sure you be, Cap’n, but you ain’t reelly a man growed. That’s what I mean, an’ I want you should grow up into an A number one man, full o’ grit an’ gumption. An’ you can’t do it unless you start right. You see, Cap’n, I’m gittin’ ’long in life an’ I’ve figgered it out ’at ’bout six folks out o’ every ten kind o’ see-saws back an’ forth betwixt bein’ lazy an’ lyin’ an’ no ’count, an’ bein’ industrious an’ truthful. Folks like that gits ’long so-so; they don’t hev no partickler good luck—ol’ lazybones keeps ’em f’om that; but they don’t git nowheres neither, ’cause they don’t stick to biz. Then the’s ’bout three out o’ ev’y ten thet gives right up to ol’ lazybones f’om the start; an’ he runs ’em right into th’ ground ’s fas’ ’s possible. The tenth man, he stomps on ol’ lazybones ev’ry time he opens his head t’ speak, an’ bimeby he gits on the right track s’ stiddy an’ constant ’at nobody c’n stop ’im. An’ he’s the one thet gits thar! I want you should be that kind o’ a man, Cap’n. An’ that’s one reason I give you that book o’ Vallable Info’mation. It’ll help you to kind o’ think over differ’nt things that happens. Now I’ll bet you won’t lose another letter in a hurry.”

“No, I won’t,” Jimmy said earnestly. “An’ I’m goin’ to try an’ stomp on ol’ lazybones.”

“That’s right, Cap’n,” cried Peg. “You jes’ stomp on him hard an’ proper. You git th’ upper han’ o’ him b’fore he grows too big and hefty, an’ bimeby he won’t bother you.”

“Peg,” said Jimmy, after a period devoted to reflection, “the Hon’rable Stephen Jarvis is in our house.”

“Dear me! You don’t say so!” ejaculated Peg, with a frightened start.

“He makes Barb’ra cry,” said Jimmy, scowling fiercely. “I wanted to stay an’ keep him f’om doin’ it; but Barb’ra said for me to come out here and see you. I’d like to stomp on him—hard!”

The subject of these dubious comments and conjectures, more ill at ease than his worst enemy had ever hoped to see him, sat in the dull light of the rainy afternoon, looking at Barbara Preston with new eyes: to wit, the eyes of a man.

“I suppose,” the girl said steadily, “you have come to tell me that you will foreclose the mortgage.” She gripped her hands close in her lap.

“No,” said Stephen Jarvis, “that was not my intention. As I have already informed you, the mortgage will foreclose itself, when the time comes.”

He stopped short and narrowed his lids frowningly.

“I have been thinking about you,” he said harshly, “since you left me so abruptly yesterday. Why did you do it? And yet, I am glad, on the whole, that you did. I want to tell you that I stood in my library door and witnessed my housekeeper’s dismissal of you from my house. Her own followed without delay.”

“I am sorry,” Barbara told him mechanically. She was noticing dazedly that Jarvis was dressed as she had occasionally seen him in church, and that his gloves and linen were quite fresh and immaculate.

“Why should you be sorry?” he demanded with a straight look at her.

“I—why, I think I should be sorry for any woman who had lost what she wanted to keep,” Barbara answered. “If you discharged her because I——”

“You were not primarily the cause of her dismissal,” he said coolly. “I had already told you that I was tired of seeing the woman about.”

He was silent for a long time, gazing frowningly at the floor.

Suddenly he looked up and, meeting Barbara’s astonished and somewhat indignant eyes, held them steadily with his own.

“You are wondering why I came here to-day. You are afraid of me, and you doubtless fancy with the rest of the world that you—dislike me exceedingly.”

Barbara opened her lips to reply.

“Don’t take the trouble to deny it,” he went on, with a faint sneer. “I know what most people think of me, perhaps with reason. But I am myself, not another; and so far, fear—dislike have seemed to me unavoidable.” Again his rigid lips relaxed into something like a smile, and he looked questioningly at the girl.

“It ought to be easy,” she said uncertainly, “to make people like you. You might——”

“I know what you are thinking of,” he interrupted rudely. “But it wouldn’t do. People fear and hate a hard man; they despise a fool. I refuse to be despised.”

He rose and walked up and down the room impatiently as if his thoughts irked him. Finally he paused before the window where a scarlet geranium blossomed on the sill, and turned a singularly flushed face upon the girl. For a dazed instant she wondered with a thrill of painfully remembered fear if he had been drinking.

“You will be startled at what I am about to say to you,” he said, in a changed voice. “I should have laughed at the idea if anyone had suggested it to me a week ago. But—I want you to marry me. I want you to be my wife. No! don’t answer; don’t refuse! You haven’t thought what it means. You cannot consider the matter so suddenly. But this much you can understand, I will give you this place on our wedding-day—to do with as you like, and I will attach no conditions to the gift.”

Barbara had not removed her fascinated gaze from his face. She felt like one dreaming fantastically and struggling unavailingly to awake.

“Perhaps you do not realize what you have asked of me,” she said at last. “But—I will not sell myself for this farm. That is what you have asked me to do.”

Her eyes sparkled blue fire; her lips curled disdainfully.

“Don’t be a fool,” he said roughly. “I want nothing of the sort. I want you—you! I need you. I am more sure of it now than ever.”

He took three steps toward her, his rugged face alive with determination—the grim determination which had wrested all that he possessed from the grip of a hostile world.

“When I want anything,” he said doggedly, “I always get it. Didn’t you know that? I want you.”

“You’ll not get me—ever!” cried Barbara.

She knew it must be war to the bitter end between them, and she flung the gage of battle full in his face with fine recklessness.

“You may take everything I have, if you can. But you’ll not get me!”

He stood up and buttoned his frock coat over his white waistcoat.

“I’ll not take your answer to-day,” he said, quite unmoved by her anger. “I had no intention of doing so.”

He strode to the door without another look at her, signalled his coachman, stepped into his closed carriage, shut the door hard behind him and rolled away, with a smooth whir of shining wheels.

V

“I’ll give her time to think before I see her again,” Jarvis decided, as his swift-stepping bays carried him along through the April rain. He dropped the window of his brougham and drew in deep satisfying breaths of the moist air. He was glad that she had not yielded supinely, as a weaker woman might have done. There was to his mind something heroic, splendid in her attitude as she defied him. For the first time in his life, Stephen Jarvis felt the stir of half-awakened passion; and the savage within his breast, never wholly eliminated or even tamed by an imperfect civilization, exulted at the thought of the imminent conflict of wills, the flight, the pursuit, the inevitable capture.

“I’ll give her time to think—to be afraid!” he repeated; “then——”

The blood hammered in his temples and involuntarily he clenched his strong hands, as if already crushing that weaker woman’s will and subduing it to his own.

But Barbara Preston was not thinking of the fact that Stephen Jarvis had asked her to be his wife. Being a woman, and, moreover, hard driven by cruel necessity, she might have been pardoned, if for a moment she had allowed her thoughts to linger upon the interview which had just ended. She might even have recalled with a certain speculative interest the luxurious interior of the carriage into which he had stepped and the smooth roll of the wheels which had borne him away, safe shut from the wind and the weather. So might she be lifted and sheltered from the bleak peltings of poverty, and life become a smooth progression instead of a painful pilgrimage. The girl sat quite still by the window looking out through misty panes into a mistier world, and only vaguely aware of dripping lilac sprays, ruddy with swelling buds, and of the flash of wet brown wings athwart the gray sky.

Stephen Jarvis, master of fate, and thrilling with the clash of his will upon hers, could hardly have known that the ghost of another man stood between him and the object of this new, urgent desire of his. He would have laughed the shadowy presence to scorn had he known it.

Yet it was this mere shadow of a man which chained Barbara’s thoughts while the April rain softened the landscape to a soft green blur. After all it was but natural that her one pitiful little love story should come back to her now, even to a vision of David Whitcomb’s eager face, his dark impatient eyes, and tossed hair, and the strong clasp of his hand upon hers in the dusk of the summer twilight.

It was Jimmy who had come between them; little motherless Jimmy, then a baby a year old, with big appealing eyes under a fluff of soft yellow hair, and a voice sweeter than any bird’s. All the woman’s heart in her had gone out to the helpless little creature who nestled in her arms at night, and whose eyes and voice followed her as she went about her work by day. This in the days when her father, grown suddenly old and apathetic, had begun to shut himself up in his library, for what purpose Barbara did not guess, at first. When she did know it was too late. The leaves of the book had been long closed and sealed, but the heart within her shivered at the remembrance of what was written there.

“If you really loved me,” David had said hotly, “you would not let anyone or anything come between us.”

She told him that she could not go to him over the bodies of a sick father and a helpless child. And since he had asked this of her, she did not, indeed, love him.

After this stormy scene—the last between them, since David Whitcomb had gone away, no one knew whither, nor indeed cared, since he was young and friendless and poor—Barbara had cried herself to sleep for many successive nights, quietly, so as not to disturb the sleeping child. But one does not weep overlong at night whose brain and hands and feet are employed in the daytime. Only the beggared rich may give themselves to the indolent luxury of grief. After many nights of weeping followed by days of anxiety and uncounted labors, the pain of that parting subsided to a dull aching memory, which wakened once to cry out bitterly when she heard that he had been seen on a ship bound to the Yukon region in the early days of the gold fever. Many perished along the trail that year. It was rumored that David Whitcomb was among the number. No word ever came back to contradict the rumor, which after the lapse of months was accepted as a fact, and so—forgotten.

It was a long time—as youth measures time—since she had thought of David Whitcomb. Now she deliberately travelled back over the years between, and stood looking at her anguished young self, torn between love and duty, and at her one lover, who was not noble enough—she saw this with mournful certainty now—to help her lift and carry her heavy burden. Nevertheless she forgave him—as she had done hundreds of times in the past, excusing him tenderly, as a mother might have done, for his hot young selfishness, which refused to share her heart with a dying man and a helpless little child.

“I am glad,” she said aloud to the shadowy presence of her one lover, “glad that I did not yield.”

But her face was grave and sorrowful as she rose to answer a gentle knock at the kitchen door.

Peg Morrison stood there under the shelter of an ancient green umbrella, his puckered face smiling and healthily pink against the pale green of the outside world.

“I lef’ the Cap’n a-studyin’ over his book,” he chuckled, as he stepped into the kitchen, carefully wiping his feet on the braided rug inside. “He takes to vallable info’mation as the sparks fly upwards, an’ I’m glad to see it. Thinks I, as I looked at him settin’ down improvin’ maxims in red ink, this is a good time to talk over the situation with Miss Barb’ry.”

Barbara drew a deep breath.

“Come in,” she said briefly.

Then, as Peg seated himself in a wooden chair, ceremoniously arranging his coat-tails on either side, she added, “There isn’t much to say.”

“Wall, I’ve been thinkin’ fer quite a spell back that mebbe you’d like t’ lease th’ farm to me, ’stid o’ my workin’ it on shares, as heretofore. I’m——”

“But you haven’t had any share, Peg,” Barbara said, with a shade of impatience. “And that is why I have felt so—so unwilling to have you stay here and work, when I couldn’t possibly pay you what I knew you were earning.”

Peg struck one heavy palm upon his knee before he answered, his kindly face drawn into myriad comical puckers.

“Now, look-a-here, Miss Barb’ry,” he began. “You an’ me’s argued this ’ere question over more’n once. If I don’t get my share I’d like to know who does? I git m’ livin’, don’t I? An’ I git free house-rent, don’t I? An’ them two items, livin’ an’ house-rent, ’s ’bout all mos’ folks git. W’y, Miss Barb’ry, I live luxurious to what lots o’ folks do. And then ag’in you mus’ remember that I ain’t a reelly d’sirable farm laborer. I’m gittin’ ’long in life, an’ I can’t put in the kind and description o’ a day’s work folks’ll pay good wages fer. I’ll bet you——”

And the old man raised his voice to the argumentative pitch commonly employed in heated controversies around the stove in Hewett’s grocery.

“I’ll bet you a dollar an’ a half ’at I couldn’t git a place on a farm ’round here to save my neck! I’ll bet I’d git turned down quicker’n scat ev’ry place I’d try. ‘What!’ they’d say, ’ol’ Peg Morrison wants a place? That ol’ coot? Why, he ain’t wo’th his victuals!’ ’Tain’t reelly fur f’om charity, Miss Barb’ry, fer you to keep me here, givin’ me all the veg’tables an’ po’k I want, with now an’ then a fresh egg, er a—chicken. Sakes alive! I tell ye I’m grateful of a winter night when I creep under that nice patchwork quilt you give me ’at I’m workin’ fer a lady—on shares.”

Barbara laughed, an irrepressible girlish laugh, even while she shook her head.

“I couldn’t pay you for what you’ve done for Jimmy and me since—since father died, and—before, too. And I can’t thank you, either. I couldn’t find words to do it if I tried.”

“Thank me!” echoed the old man exuberantly. “Say, excuse me fer appearin’ to smile, Miss Barb’ry.” His voice grew suddenly grave. “I guess ther’ ain’t any pertickler use in quarrellin’ ’bout it, after all. I’ll do what I can fer you an’ the boy—bein’ a poor shakes of a laborer—jes’ ’s long ’s I live, an’ you c’n d’pend upon it. But now what do you think ’bout leasin’ th’ farm—say, fer a thousand dollars?”

Peg’s eyes grew round, and he gasped a little at the magnitude of the proposition.

“I’ve got a dollar or two laid by fer a rainy day, an’ I’ll put that down in advance,” he went on, with a chuckle, “an’ the way I’ve figgered it I’ll make big money on the deal. W’y, look-a-here,” and he drew a soiled newspaper from his pocket, “I come ’cross this ’ere article th’ other day. I’d like t’ read t’ you what it says on the subjec’ o’ onions. ‘Thirty-three acres o’ land in onions netted John Closner of Hidalgo, Texas, ’leven thousan’ dollars!’ Hear that, will ye? He says he perduced thirty-six carloads off’n his farm—more’n a carload t’ an acre!’ Hold on! that ain’t all—’course that’s in Texas. But listen t’ this, Miss Barb’ry——”

“But, Peg, there isn’t any use of talking,” interrupted the girl, “the mortgage is going to be foreclosed the first of June, unless I——”

“Foreclosed—eh? Foreclosed!” echoed the old man. “Wall, I was ’fraid of it when I seen his buggy here yist’day an’ ag’in t’-day. Farmers ’round here say they hate th’ sight o’ that red-wheeled buggy worse’n pison snakes. It gene’ally means business o’ th’ kind they ain’t lookin’ fer. Say! I wisht I’d got a-holt o’ this ’ere article on onion-growin’ before. I reelly do. Jes’ listen t’ this: ‘Onions are profitably grown in th’ north, also. Ebenezer N. Foote of Northampton, Mass., has perduced av’rage crops ’s high es nine hunderd an’ ten bushels t’ th’ acre! He says he expects to raise that to twelve hunderd! The annual value of his crop ranges f’om five hunderd to six hunderd dollars per acre!’”

Peg’s voice swelled into a veritable pæan in a high key; his face glowed with the ecstasies of his imaginings. He carefully folded the newspaper and stuffed it into a capacious pocket.

“Now, y’ see,” he went on oratorically, “exclusive o’ the orchards, which had ought to net us at least five hunderd dollars this year, we could put in, say, twenty acres o’ onions, at five hunderd dollars per acre, that would net us—l’me see, five hunderd dollars times twenty acres ’ud make. Here, lemme figger that out.”

The old man fumbled in his vest pocket for a stubbed pencil.

“I ain’t th’ lightnin’ calculator you’d expect fer such a schemin’ ol’ cuss,” he murmured apologetically, as he wet the lead preparatory to computation.

Barbara smiled. “It would be ten thousand dollars,” she said. “But, Peg, don’t you see——”

“Ten thousand dollars! Whew! I guess that ’ud make a mortgage look kind o’ sick, wouldn’t it? We’d ought to hold on a spell longer an’ give onions a try.”

“But we can’t, Peg. It’s only six weeks before the first of June, and I’ve only twenty dollars in the world.”

Barbara leaned back in her chair, her face relaxed and weary and unutterably sad.

“You must look for another place right away, Peg,” she went on, “I’ll try and find one for you. Then, if I can get a school, or—some sort of work. I don’t care much what it is, if it will keep Jimmy and me.”

“The’s a whole lot o’ money in p’tatoes, too,” grumbled Peg, his anxious blue eyes on her face. “I’d ought to ’ave sowed peas an’ oats on that hill lot las’ fall an’ ploughed ’em in this spring. It says in this ’ere article on big crops that’ll grow p’tatoes like all possessed. I wisht I’d come acrost th’ inf’mation b’fore.”

“Mr. Jarvis says the farm is worn out,” Barbara said, a growing despondency in her voice. “He says the orchards are worthless, too; they are old.”

“Shucks!” exploded Peg. “‘Course Jarvis’d talk like that when he’s gittin’ it away f’om you fer nothin’ like its value. I’ll bet he’d have another story to tell ef anybody was to try ’n buy it of him. Values has a way o’ risin’ over night like bread dough once Stephen Jarvis gits a-holt o’ a piece o’ prop’ty.”

“He asked me to marry him,” said Barbara abruptly. Then bit her lip angrily at the old man’s look of amazed incredulity. “I’m sure I don’t know why I told you, only I—haven’t anyone to speak to, and—no one to advise me.”

Peg’s face grew suddenly grave.

“Don’t you be afraid I’ll mention it, Miss Barb’ry,” he said gently. “‘Course I was kind o’ s’prised—at first. But I don’t know’s I be, come t’ think o’ it. He asked you to be Mis’ Jarvis? Wall! You goin’ to do it, Miss Barb’ry?”

“He said he would give me the farm,” Barbara went on slowly, “to do as I liked with. I could—give it to Jimmy.”

She looked at him with a child’s unconscious appeal.

“Do you think I ought to—to marry him, Peg?”

The old man was still eyeing her soberly, even wistfully.

“I’ve knowed you sence you was a little girl no higher’n my knee, Miss Barb’ry,” he began. “I’ve seed you grow up. An’ I’ve seed you go through some pretty hard experiences. Now, I ain’t the kind to talk very much ’bout my religion, an’ the’s times when I don’t ’pear to have a nawful lot of it; but the’s a God that hears an’—an’ takes notice. That much I’ve found out, an’ ef I was you I’d go to headquarters an’ git th’ best advice. But I’ll say this, ef the farm is wore out,—es he says,—it ’pears t’ me he’s askin’ a pretty high price fer th’ prop’ty. He wants your youth, Miss Barb’ry, an’ your pretty looks, an’ your life. An’ es fer the Cap’n—Wall, I’d ruther not d’pend too much on th’ Hon’rable Stephen Jarvis, when it comes t’ th’ Cap’n. That’s the way it looks to me. ’Course I don’t p’tend to be a good jedge o’ what’s best in th’ world. I don’t look like it, do I?”

He glanced down at his patched and faded clothes with a cheerfully acquiescent smile.

“I’ve a notion,” he went on, “that the Lord’ll advise ye ’long th’ same lines ’s I hev. But don’t take my word fer it.”

“None of my prayers have been answered,” Barbara said, her red lips setting themselves in obstinate lines. “I’ve given up expecting anything so foolish. I prayed to have father get well, and he—died.”

“But he got well,” put in Peg quietly. “You c’n bet he did. Mebbe the Lord couldn’t fetch it ’round any other way. The’ was so many things ag’in him.”

Barbara’s delicate brows went up scornfully.

“I don’t call dying getting well,” she said.

“H’m!” murmured the old man gently. “Mebbe we don’t always call things by their right names.”

He got to his feet slowly.

“Wall, I mus’ be gittin’ out t’ the barn.”

He fixed his friendly, anxious eyes on the girl.

“I guess I’d figger a spell on that marryin’ proposition, ef I was you,” he said softly, and shook his head.

He turned, with his hand on the latch, to cast a dubious look back at the girl.

“It ’pears t’ me you ain’t cut out right for the second Mis’ Jarvis,” he said. “She’d ought b’ rights t’ be a big, upstandin’ female, with—with red hair.”

He shut the door hastily behind him.

VI

It is a well-worn, yet none the less true saying that every human life is a chain of causes and effects; each effect a cause, and each cause an effect, stretching back to an unimagined and unimaginable First Cause; and on and on into endless, undreamed of vistas of the future. Yet the realization of this vague, yet tremendous fact comes but seldom even to the thoughtful mind, so busy are we forging link on link of the chain which binds us alike to past and future.

Barbara Preston, stopping aimlessly to read the notice of an auction of farm stock and household furniture advertised to take place in a neighboring township, could not guess that the trivial impulse that stayed her feet by the big chestnut at the roadside linked itself with events already slowly shaping in her future. The notice was printed in bold red letters on a buff background, calculated to seize and hold the eye of the passerby, and set forth the fact that one Thomas Bellows, Auctioneer, would, on the twenty-fifth day of April, sell to the highest bidder, on the premises of the owner, four milch cows, three farm horses, and sixty-four sheep. Also one young carriage horse, well broken, sound, kind, and willing. Other items relating to household gear and poultry followed, set down in due order of their relative importance.

The red letters on the buff ground passed into Barbara’s eyes—as indeed they were purposefully intended—and impressed themselves on her memory. She considered them half angrily as she pursued her way to the post-office, picturing to herself the day when Thomas Bellows or another, would noisily exploit the contents of her own well-loved home. There was little there to bring money, and the mortgage covered stock and furniture as well as the land itself. She had learned this from a curt letter addressed to her by Stephen Jarvis in reply to questions of her own as concisely put.

Apart from her half-dazed recollection of the rainy afternoon a week since, their relations as ruthless creditor and hopeless debtor appeared to be unchanged. During the interval she had gone doggedly about her self-imposed labors, rising in the faint light of dawn to set strawberry and lettuce plants, wintered carefully on the south side of the big barns, with the vague unreasoning hope that somehow or other she might be permitted to reap the fruit of her toil. Between times she was casting about for another home and other modes of livelihood for herself and Jimmy. It would be difficult, if not impossible, she was told, to secure a position to teach. Only normal-school graduates stood any chance of preferment, and there appeared to be no prospect of a vacancy of any kind before fall. To become a dressmaker’s apprentice was possible; but the woman who provided the opportunity offered instruction for the first six months in lieu of wages. And obviously one could not live on information alone, however valuable. Household servants were always in brisk demand, she had been reminded; but pride of race wrestled with the untold humiliation of such a lot. Besides, there was Jimmy. Her heart grew faint at the thought of the loving, carefully-shielded child in the cold shelter of an “asylum” or the bound property of some shrewd farmer, an investment involving a grudging expenditure of coarse food and scanty, insufficient clothing and forced to yield an ever-increasing increment of labor. Oh, life was cruel at its best. Her flesh and her soul cried out at the thought of what its worst might be. If there was a way of escape, why not accept it?

She was turning these things wearily over in her mind when the quick whir of wheels sounded at her back. She stepped aside to allow the vehicle to pass, without raising her eyes.

A harsh, domineering voice, the sort of voice to be slavishly obeyed, ordered the horse to stand still.

She looked up quickly to meet the eager gaze of the man who was in her thoughts. A vivid color, of which she was angrily conscious, rose to her forehead. She stammered some sort of greeting, her eyes drooping before the dominant insistence in his.

“I was just on my way to your house,” he said.

His voice, as well as his eyes, was eager, insistent.

“Get in, won’t you, and ride with me? I have something to say to you.”

The girl hesitated, her cheeks paling. He sprang to the ground, speaking sharply to his young, restive horse.

“Allow me to assist you,” he said, with a politeness wholly unfamiliar to Barbara.

She gave him an astonished look, which he interpreted correctly, with the acumen of a trained politician.

“You have been thinking that I was exceedingly abrupt—even rude, in the way I spoke to you the other day,” he said, as he took her firmly by the hand and lifted her to a seat in the vehicle which was “dreaded more’n pison snakes” by the delinquent debtors in the countryside, according to Peg Morrison.

He bent to look keenly into her face, as he seated himself at her side. “Isn’t that so,—Barbara?”

At the sound of her name in that new, strange voice of his the girl started and almost shivered. She was beginning to be afraid of herself—this no less new and strange self, who was tired of being poor and hardworked and anxious, and who longed after comfort and ease and affection of some strong, compelling sort. She lifted her eyes to his.

“I have been thinking many things,” she murmured, “since—since you——”

He laughed under his breath.

“Yes; and you have been doing some things, too,” he said. “I heard you were looking for a place to teach, and—it didn’t encourage me to suppose that you were thinking very favorably of what I proposed. Did you secure a position?”

“N-o, I didn’t,” she acknowledged. She hesitated visibly, then added, “They told me you were a school commissioner, and that I must apply to you.”

“Why didn’t you apply to me?” he wanted to know. “Didn’t you think I would be a good sort of person to help you in your desire for independence?”

“I didn’t ask you,” she said, “because——”

“Well?” he questioned sharply. “You didn’t ask me for help because——”

“How could I?” she demanded, with a spirited lift of her head. “I asked you for help before and you refused.”

He looked at her with piercing keenness.

“Did I?” he said gravely. “Well, I offered you—a position. You haven’t forgotten, have you?”

Barbara’s heart beat suffocatingly fast. His eyes were on her face, compelling her, mastering her.

“Would you—Could I take care of Jimmy just the same?” she asked, in a muffled voice.

He gave his horse a sharp cut with the whip before he answered.

“I can’t see why you should bring the boy into our affairs,” he said coldly. “But he can live with us—for the present, if you like. Then there is the Preston farm; as I’ve already told you, you may do as you like with it.”

Barbara looked mistily away over the fields past which they were driving, the sound of meadow-larks, calling and answering, and the soft jubilant gurgle of a bluebird on a nearer fence-rail reaching her like vaguely reproachful voices out of a dead past. Then as now had the meadow-larks called “Sweet! oh, my sweet!”—in the one spring-time when David Whitcomb loved her.

“I shall have to—to think,” she murmured. “I am afraid——”

“Of what?” he demanded. “Of me?”

She did not answer, and again he cut the horse impatiently with his keen whip-lash, holding the spirited creature with a strong grasp on the reins as he did so.

“Well,” he said, after a long silence, “I’m afraid I can’t make myself over, even for you. But I’ll tell you something, my girl, there are worse men in the world than Stephen Jarvis, and perhaps you’ll fall in with some of ’em, if you turn me down. Look at me, will you?”

Unwillingly she turned her face to his.

“I shall not take a silly no for an answer,” he said under his breath. “I never have, and I shan’t begin with you. I need you, and you need me.”

His eyes held her powerfully.

“Do you love another man?”

“No,” said Barbara faintly. She could not bring herself to uncover her one dead love before those pitiless eyes, while the meadow-larks were calling and answering with such piercing sweetness. David Whitcomb was dead. If she had ever loved him it was as another self in a dim past, growing ever dimmer.

“Then,” said the Honorable Stephen Jarvis quietly, “you will marry me.” He broke into a short laugh. “Do you know I couldn’t bear to think of your loving another man? Is that being in love? Tell me, Barbara.”

He laughed again softly, as he bent to peer into her averted face. She felt herself yielding, her weak hold on past and future loosening.

She did not answer, but her red mouth quivered.

He experienced a sudden thrilling desire to touch the fresh innocent lips with his.

“It would be curious,” he murmured unsteadily, “if I should learn what love is for the first time. Shall I tell you how old I am, Barbara?”

She looked up at him without curiosity.

“Well, I’m thirty-seven; and I’ve never loved any woman—I have never loved anything, except money and success. But now—Barbara!”

He bent toward her, his cold eyes alive with passion.

“No—no!” she cried, shrinking from him in sudden terror.

His face stiffened into its accustomed mask.

“You’re thinking I’ve waited too long,” he said bitterly, and the curling lash stung the bay horse in the flank.

Neither spoke again while the wheels spun dizzily along over the mile of road which brought them to the big stone gate-posts of the Preston farm.

He drew up his foaming horse sharply.

“I won’t come in,” he said, “if you’ll get out here.”

She felt herself vaguely humiliated as she stepped down from the high vehicle without assistance.

“Stop!” he ordered as she passed quickly inside, as if in haste to gain shelter.

She looked up at him uncertainly, her eyes wide with an emotion akin to terror.

“I shall not humiliate myself by coaxing or cajoling you,” he said haughtily. “You are best left alone for the present.”

He lifted his hat with a sweeping bow, and the red-wheeled buggy dashed away.

Barbara drew a long, struggling sigh. She felt curiously light and free, as if she had made a breathless escape from some grasping hand, outstretched to seize her.

The sight of Jimmy running swiftly down the driveway toward her heightened the sensation to almost passionate relief.

“Hello, Barb’ra!” shouted the little boy. “I came home from school, an’ you wasn’t here. An’ you can’t guess what I’ve got for you!”

The child’s face, glowing rosily with health and mischief, was uplifted to hers. She stooped and kissed it tenderly.

“What have you got for me, Jimmy?”

“Guess!”

“I can’t guess,” she answered soberly. “You’ll have to tell me.”

“You ain’t cross wiv me, are you, Barb’ra?”

“No, dear, of course I’m not. Why should I be cross? Why, it—it’s a letter! Where did you get it, Jimmy?”

“It’s the one I lost,” said the child, puckering up his chin disappointedly. “I fought you’d be glad. Peg found it. He said he ’membered the wind was blowin’ that day; so he looked all along the road on bof sides, an’ he found it right under a bush.”

Barbara hastily tore the sodden envelope apart. Her fingers trembled as she unfolded the large stained sheet.

“Is it all spoiled?” asked Jimmy anxiously. “Can’t you read it?”

VII

Barbara stared at the stained and defaced sheet with wide, frightened eyes. Her hands trembled.

“Can’t you read it, Barb’ra?” pleaded Jimmy anxiously, standing on tip-toe to peep at the letter. “Peg said he was ’fraid you couldn’t; but he said maybe you’d know who it was from, an’ if it was ’portant.”

Barbara did not answer. The rain-soaked paper in her trembling fingers faced her like a mute accusing ghost out of the past. The lines of writing folded close upon each other and soaked with rain and the stain of the wet brown earth had been completely obliterated; but two words of the many had escaped; her own name at the beginning of the letter, and another at its close.

“He is not dead!” she murmured. “He is not dead!”

Jimmy clutched her sleeve, dancing up and down in his impatience.

“Is it ’portant, Barb’ra—is it? Can you read it?” he persisted.

She faced the child, her eyes clouded with despair and anger.

“No, I can’t read it!” she cried. “Oh! if you had only brought it to me!”

She turned swiftly and hurried toward the house, leaving the child lagging forlornly in the rear, his blue eyes brimmed with tears.

Peg Morrison, digging a patch of garden in the rear of the house, his battered straw hat drawn low over his eyes, his teeth firmly closed on a twig of apple-tree wood, became presently aware of a small dejected figure lurking in the shadow of the blossoming tree.

“Hello, Cap’n!” he called out cheerfully, relinquishing the twig in favor of a spent dandelion stalk. “Did ye find Barb’ry—heh? An’ did ye give her the letter?”

“I gave it to her; but she—can’t read it. An’—’n’ I’m ’fraid it was ’portant. She’s mad wiv me, Barb’ra is; ’n’ I haven’t had any dinner, either.”

The child manfully swallowed the sob that rose in his throat. Then he selected a tall dandelion with a plumy top which he put in his mouth in imitation of Peg, who watched him with a dubious smile.

“Wall, now, that’s too bad, Cap’n,” sympathized the old man. “But ef Barb’ry can’t read the letter it mus’ be ’cause ’tain’t best she should. Things don’t happen b’ chance, Cap’n. You want t’ remember that. There’s Somebody a-lookin’ out fer things as don’t make no mistakes.”

Jimmy pondered this dark saying while the dandelion stem slowly uncurled itself into a dangling spiral.

“Then it was all right for me to lose that letter, ‘N’ you said——”

Peg frowned thoughtfully at the antics of a pair of barn-swallows swooping in and out from under the eaves.

“No; it wa’n’t right fer you to be careless an’ lose the letter, Cap’n,” he said decidedly. “But the Lord—wall, you see, the Lord is consid’able smarter’n what we be, an’ He c’n fix things up that go wrong. Kind o’ arranges it so’t the universe won’t fly the track, no matter what we do. We ain’t p’mitted t’ disturb the gen’ral peace t’ any great extent. You’ll understan’ these things better when you’re growed up, Cap’n.”

“Will I?” said Jimmy hopefully.

Peg thrust his spade into the ground.

“Guess I’d better walk over t’ the house with you, an’ see if the’s anythin’ I c’n do,” he said briefly.

Barbara was setting the table with quick darting movements of her lithe figure when the two came in range of the kitchen door. She paused abruptly at sight of them.

“You must come in and eat your dinner quick, Jimmy,” she called, “or you’ll be late to school.”

“You g’wan in, Cap’n,” Peg urged in a diplomatic whisper. “I guess she’s pretty nigh all right. But I wouldn’t pester her none ’bout that letter ef I was you. Mebbe she’d ruther not talk ’bout it yet.”

The child stole into the kitchen with hanging head and sat down at the table spread for two. He was very much ashamed of himself in the stormy light of Barbara’s gray eyes; but Mr. Morrison’s remarks concerning the Maker of the universe appeared worthy of passing on. He fortified himself with a large slice of brown bread and butter, thickly overlaid with apple-sauce.

“It couldn’t have been very ’portant, Barb’ra,” he said blandly.

The girl faced about in the act of taking two boiled potatoes out of a saucepan.

“But it was, Jimmy. I know that much, and I can’t read it.”

“Peg says there’s Somebody a-lookin’ out for things, an’ He made that letter fall out o’ my pocket.”

“Peg,” interrupted Barbara wrathfully, “knows nothing about it.”

“‘N’ He let it rain, too,” pursued Jimmy determinedly. “‘N’ He let the ink run, ’n’ the mud get on it. Do you want me to tell you who it was? Do you, Barb’ra?”

“Well, who do you suppose it was?”

“God!” exploded the child dramatically. “Peg said——”

“I don’t want to hear what Peg said. He doesn’t know.”

“I shall put it,” said the child, “in red ink, in my Vallable Inf’mation book. It’s a vallable inf’mation.”

“It would be, if it was true.”

“An’ if it isn’t true, it’s a vallable inf’mation. I’ll put it down that way.”

“I would,” advised Barbara gloomily. Then she repented herself and stooped to kiss the child’s quivering lips. “Anyway,” she said, “I love you; and you didn’t mean to lose the letter.”

After Jimmy’s inquisitive blue eyes were tight shut that night, Barbara examined the blurred sheet once more, holding it between her eyes and the bright light of the lamp. A word here and there appeared to emerge from the chaos, where the sharp penpoint had bitten the paper.

“... never forgotten,” was tolerably distinct. Then followed a hopeless blur of brown earth stains and purple ink. But further down the page she read,

“Write—if you——”

That was all, except his name, “David Whitcomb,” at the foot of the page.

The postmark had resisted the spoiling of both rain and mould, and read distinctly, as Al Hewett had declared, “Tombstone, Arizona,” in a blurred circle, with the date “April 2” and the hour of stamping “2-P.M.”

With a sudden glad impulse Barbara pulled a sheet of paper toward her.

“Dear David [she wrote], Your letter has just reached me, but I can only read a part of it, because——”

She paused and hesitated; then went on firmly:

“Jimmy lost it, and it lay out under a bush in the rain for more than a week. I can make out only a few words here and there, but those few tell me that you have not forgotten, and that you want me to write to you.”

The girl paused to draw a deep, wondering breath.

“I can’t tell you how strange it seems to be writing to you, because I have been thinking of you, David, for nearly three years as dead. They said you were lost on a trail in Alaska. And I thought it must be true. But your letter—even though I can’t read it—has brought me the assurance that you are not in some far-away heaven, where I have tried to picture you, David, but on earth.

“This letter may never reach you, for I can only be sure that your letter to me was mailed in Tombstone; but I want to tell you that only Jimmy and I are left. Father died a year ago, and since then I have been trying to hold the farm for Jimmy. We are the last of the Prestons, you know, and I do want——”

She stopped short, laid down her pen and listened breathlessly. She fancied she had heard the child’s voice calling her from the room above. She glided noiselessly to the foot of the stair, and listened, her slight figure seeming to melt, spirit-like, into the shadows. It was very lonely in the old house. The tall clock on the stair-landing ticked loud and solemnly in the stillness, and the wind in the budding trees without swept past the house with a long sighing breath. The girl shivered as she listened, then she went quickly back to the sitting-room with its cheerful circle of light and its drawn curtains, and paused to read the words she had written to David Whitcomb. They sounded stiff and trite after her brief absence in the shadowy hall. After all, was she not taking too much for granted? Perhaps he was merely asking for information, which he felt sure he could obtain from her on the score of old friendship. He had left some books in the bare little room he had occupied in the village for a year. The minister had them, she had been told. Her cheeks crimsoned slowly as she crumpled the half-written page and tossed it into the waste basket.

Then she chose a fresh sheet and wrote slowly, with frequent pauses: “Dear David: I was very much surprised to receive a letter from you after all these years. I must explain that though I received your letter to-day I have not been able to read it. It had been quite spoiled with rain and mildew. If this reaches you—and I cannot be sure of it, because I have only the postmark to go by—please write to me again, and I will answer at once.”

She signed the letter quite formally and simply with her full name, Barbara Allen Preston.

She mailed the letter the next morning, passing the great Jarvis mansion on her way to the post-office with averted looks. On the sixteenth morning thereafter she received back her letter written to David Whitcomb, with the words printed across the envelope, “Not called for.” She scarcely knew how much she had been expecting from David till her own unopened letter reached her with the effect of a door hard shut in the face of entreaty.

It was on that same day, as she walked slowly toward home, leaving her fruitless letter in a trail of tiny white fragments behind her, that the high-stepping bay horse and the red-wheeled buggy again passed her. She looked up involuntarily, her face white and sad, to receive a cold stare and curt nod from the man on the high seat. His whip-lash curled cruelly around the slender flank of his horse as he passed, and the sensitive creature sprang forward with a lunge and a quiver, only to receive a second and third stinging cut from the lash.

Barbara straightened herself as she watched the light vehicle disappear around a turn in the road.

She was thinking with a vague terror that so he would have tortured and driven her, cruelly, with no hope of escape. She was not prepared to see him return almost immediately at the same furious speed, and still less for his words as he pulled up his foaming horse.

“Get in,” he ordered her roughly. “I must speak to you.”

She looked up at him, her gray eyes sparkling defiance from under their long curling lashes.

“No,” she said loudly, “I will not.”

“Will not?” he repeated. “But I say you shall listen to me.”

She walked on quietly. He stared after her with a muttered oath, as if half-minded to go on. Then he leaped down, jerked his horse roughly to the fence-rail, tied him fast, and strode after the slim figure in the shabby black gown.

He overtook her in a few long strides. She turned to face him in the middle of the muddy road.

“I told you I would leave you to yourself. I meant to. I intended to let you be frightened, harassed, driven to the wall; but I can’t,” he said in a low, choked voice. “I—love you! I love you! Do you hear me?”

She shrank back trembling before the man’s white face and blazing eyes.

“I never knew before what it was like to—to love,” he stammered. “But I do now. What did you mean by saying that you would not—sell yourself for a worn-out farm? Sell yourself—to me? Why, girl, I’d give you all that I have—and my soul to the devil for—— I’ll do anything you say, if you’ll only marry me! I’ll give you a dozen farms. I’ll——”

“Stop!” cried Barbara, her face slowly whitening. “I—I am sorry I said that. I didn’t mean——”

“Do you mean that you’ll marry me, Barbara—Barbara!”

His eyes devoured her.

“Listen,” he went on. “I’ve put in ten such days and nights as I never expected to spend in this or any other world.”

He gripped her by the arm.

“You—must love me,” he stormed. “I—I can’t give you up!”

His shaken voice dropped into a low, pleading tone.

“You’ll not believe it, Barbara. But I—didn’t know what it was like to love anyone. Why should I? I married for money—I’m not ashamed to tell you. But Barbara! Barbara!”

The words rang out in a stifled cry, as he read the fear—the aversion in hers.

She writhed out of his grasp, her breath coming and going in little gasps.

“Stop!” she cried. “I—can’t listen!”

She clutched at the fence-rail as if she feared his violence.

He folded his arms quietly, his face grown suddenly rigid.

“Something has happened since the other day,” he said. “What is it?”

She was silent.

He took two long steps and stood over her, big, powerful, threatening.

“You shall answer me. Who or what is it that has come between us?”

Again he waited for her to speak; but she stood mute with bent head.

His clenched hands dropped at his side.

“You’ll not answer me,” he said, in a cold, hard voice. “Well, be it so; go your way, and I’ll go mine. But—I shall not give you up. You’re killing yourself with hard work; it is I who force you to it. I am your master. You can’t escape me!”

“You are not my master!” she said wildly. “I’m free—free!”

He turned without another look at her, his savage heel grinding an innocent clover blossom into the mud of the road.

VIII

Barbara stole softly down the creaking stair in the gray obscurity of dawn, her shoes in one hand, a smoking candle in the other. There was much to be done, much to be thought of, and Jimmy must not wake up to hinder for two full hours yet.

It was cold in the kitchen, and the faint pink light streaming from the east shone in uncertainty through misted panes. Barbara sat down, her red lips sternly compressed, her dark brows drawn in a frowning line above her eyes, and applied herself briskly to lacing up her shoes. It was a relief to be accomplishing something real, tangible, after the whirling mist of dreams from which she had emerged shaken and breathless. Dreams of any description seldom visited Barbara’s healthily tired brain, but the vanished darkness of the past night had been haunted with confused visions. Now Stephen Jarvis was pursuing her through trackless forests, where long branches reached down like crooked, grasping hands. Always she managed to elude her pursuer and always he followed, his panting breath in her ears, till suddenly stumbling and falling through a vast crevasse in the darkness she found herself on a wide plain, starred with narcissus, swaying spirit-like in the bright air; high overhead white clouds floated and the winds of May blew cool fragrance into her face. At first she was alone, seeking for something, she knew not what; then David Whitcomb stood at her side.

“Come!” he cried imperiously, and his blue eyes pleaded with hers. “We must make haste to escape before the child overtakes us!”

She turned to follow his pointing finger and saw Jimmy running toward them, his arms outstretched, his bare, rosy feet stumbling amid the folds of his long white gown. Then, with the wild irrelevancy of dreams she heard the raucous voice of Thomas Bellows, the auctioneer from Greenfield Centre, shouting something indistinguishable in the far distance. Instantly the wide plain, the impassioned lover, and the running, stumbling little figure vanished. She was at home now, hurrying in anxious haste from room to room to find everything empty and desolate and the sun shining in through dimmed window-panes on the bare floors. Outside on the lawn a confused pile of household furniture, books, and carpets, looking sadly worn and old in the pitiless light of day, were being rapidly sold under the hammer.

“Here you are, ladies an’ gents,” shouted the auctioneer, “lot number twenty-four, a strong, healthy young woman, kind an’ willin’! A good cook an’ housekeeper. How much am I offered? Come, ladies, let me hear your bids!”

The faint light of morning touching her closed eyelids like a cool finger-tip suddenly aroused the girl to a consciousness of reality (if indeed the experiences of this mortal life be more real than dreams). She rose at once, dressed hastily, and having by now finished the lacing up of her shoes stood gazing out at the familiar door-yard with gathered brows.

“I ought,” said Barbara half-aloud in the silence of the kitchen, “to be good for something.” She looked down at her young strong hands; hands skilled in many uses, her forehead still puckered with unaccustomed thoughts.

Then she opened the back door quietly, for she was still mindful of the sleeping child above, and went out into the frosty dawn. A robin was singing loudly in the top of the budding elm down by the gate.

“Cheer up! Cheer up!” the jubilant bird voice seemed to be saying. Then the song ceased and the strong brown wings spread and carried the voice toward the dawn, which now flung long streamers of rose and gold athwart the frigid blue of the sky. A bright, cold moon swung low in the west and the distant houses of the village, huddled close among dark folds of the hills, began to send up delicate spirals of smoke which ascended and hung motionless in mid-heaven, like unshriven ghosts.

Peg Morrison was washing the mud off the wheels of the old buggy to the tune of Denis, lugubriously wafted to the winds of morning through his nose.

“Blest be-hee th’ tie-hi which bi-inds,
Aour ha-ur-uts in Chris-his-chun lo-ove;
Th’ fe-hell-o-shi-hip of ki-hin-dred mi-hinds,
Is li-hike to tha-hat above!”

“Peg!” cried Barbara, in her imperious young voice.

The old man stopped short in his rendition of Fawcett’s immortal stanzas, an apologetic smile over-spreading his features.

“Good-mornin’, Miss Barb’ry,” he said. “A nice, pleasant mornin’, ain’t it? Thinks I, I’ll wash up this ’ere buggy an’ make it look’s well’s I kin. Then, mebbe, ’long towards arternoon I’ll git ’round t’ call on th’ Hon’rable Stephen Jarvis. I reckon I——”

“No,” interrupted Barbara decidedly, “you mustn’t do that. It wouldn’t do any good,” she added, in anticipation of protest.

“It’s th’ matter o’ th’ onions I was thinkin’ o’ bringin’ to his attention,” said Peg, raising his voice. “‘F I c’n prove to th’ Hon’rable Stephen Jarvis that onions’ll raise that goll-durned mortgage within one year f’om date, I——”

“Peg,” protested Barbara indignantly, “how do you suppose I’m ever going to train Jimmy to speak properly if you persist in using such language?”

“Meanin’ th’ expression goll-durned, o’ course, Miss Barb’ry,” acquiesced the old man meekly. “You’re right, I ain’t no manner o’ business to use swear words b’fore ladies. But that consarned, measly——”

The girl stamped her foot impatiently.

“There’s no use talking to you,” she said sharply. “I’ll just have to keep Jimmy away from you.”

“Don’t do that, Miss Barb’ry; please don’t!” pleaded Peg. “I won’t do him no real harm. I ain’t no-ways vicious, ner—ner low-down; an’ that little chap—— Why, Miss Barb’ry, me an’ th’ Cap’n ’s been a chumin’ it sence he could crawl out t’ th’ barn on ’is han’s an’ knees. Ef he don’t fall int’ no worse comp’ny ’n Peleg Morrison’s, I guess the Cap’n ’ll come out all right. An’ you kin bet your bottom dollar onto it.”

Peg swashed the remaining water in his pail over the hind wheel of the buggy with an air of stern finality.

“Of course I know you’re good, Peg,” murmured Barbara contritely. “I didn’t mean——”

“Don’t mention it, Miss Barb’ry,” interrupted Mr. Morrison, with generous politeness. “Your tongue gits the start o’ your jedgment occasionally, same’s your pa’s ust to, but I shan’t lay it up ’gainst you. Any more”—and he raised his voice in anticipation of a possible interruption—“any more’n I done in the past.” His eyes twinkled kindly at the girl.

“I want you to harness the buggy for me after breakfast, Peg,” Barbara said soberly. “I’m going—somewhere on business, and I want to start early.”

“Blest be he th’ tie-hi which bi-inds.”

warbled Peg unmelodiously, as he stooped to apply his wet sponge to the rear springs.

“Did you hear me, Peg?” demanded Barbara.

The old man gazed reproachfully at the girl through the spokes of the wheel.

“W’y, I’m goin’ to use the horses fer ploughin’ this mornin’, Miss Barb’ry,” he said soothingly. “An’ they’ll be all tuckered out b’ night.”

“But there’s no use of doing any more ploughing. I told you that last week. Unless I can manage somehow to—to raise the money, the farm——”

“Don’t say it!” interrupted Peg. “I don’t b’lieve in namin’ troubles. It helps ’em to ketch a body, someway, to notice ’em too much. I b’lieve in actin’ ’s if the’ wa’nt anythin’ th’ matter ’s long ’s ye kin.”

“Yes, and while you’re doing it the mortgage will foreclose itself,” Barbara said, recalling Stephen Jarvis’ curt phrase with a thrill of anger. “You hitch up Billy for me and bring him around at seven o’clock. Will you do it, please, Peg?”

“The fe-hell-o-shi-hip of k-hin-dred mi-hinds!”

chanted Mr. Morrison, with entire irrelevance.

“Very well, if you won’t, I’ll walk. It’s ten miles there and back, but you won’t care, as long as you have your own way.”

“Where was you thinkin’ of goin’, Miss Barb’ry?” demanded Peg cautiously. “Ye know I ain’t set on anythin’ that ain’t fer your good—yours an’ the Cap’n’s.”

But Barbara had already disappeared in a flutter of angry haste.

“Now, I s’pose,” soliloquized Mr. Morrison, “that I’ll actually hev to give up ploughin’ the hill lot this mornin’, an’ all ’long o’ that young female.” He shook his head solemnly.

“O Lord!” he burst out, “you know Miss Barb’ry, prob’bly’s well’s I do. She’s a mighty nice girl an’ always hes been; but she’s turrible set in her ways, an’ I declar’ I can’t see what in creation she’s a-goin’ to do; what with everythin’—you know now—I’ve spoke ’bout it frequent enough. Then the’s the Hon’rable Stephen Jarvis—him that holds th’ mortgage—he wants t’ marry her. But I don’ trust that man, Lord. I don’t know how he looks to you. But to me he ’pears hard-fisted, an’ closer’n the bark to a tree, an’ I c’n tell you he licks the hide off’n his horses right along. But the’ may be some good in him. Ef the’ is, bring it out, O Lord, so ’t folks kin see it. An’ fix things up with Miss Barb’ry, somehow. Kind o’ overrule Jarvis an’ the mortgage an’ all the rest, the way you know how. Amen!”

Peleg Morrison was on intimate terms with his Creator, and on this occasion, as in the past, he derived such satisfaction from his converse with the Almighty that he was enabled presently to go on with his vocal exercises. The washing of the buggy was thus happily completed, the worn cushions dusted, and the horses fed and watered by the time the sun peeped over the fringes of dark woods. At seven o’clock, as he was tying the wall-eyed bay to the hitching-post in the side yard, Barbara appeared in the open door, a brown loaf in her hand.

“Here’s some fresh bread for your breakfast, Peg,” she said. She glanced at the horse. “I shan’t be gone very long. You can plough when I come back, if you want to. It won’t hurt the ground to plough it.”

“The mare’s kind o’ skittish this mornin’,” replied Peg, accepting the addition to his meagre bill of fare with an appreciative grin. “Mebbe I’d better go ’long an’ drive.” He glanced anxiously at the girl. “I wouldn’t do nothin’ rash ef I was you, Miss Barb’ry; like—like gittin’ engaged to be married, or anythin’ like that.”

“Don’t worry, Peg,” Barbara said soberly, “that’s precisely what I don’t mean to do.”

She felt entirely sure of herself now, even while her cheeks burned hotly at the remembrance of Jarvis’ look when he said, “I am your master.”

“I’ll scrub floors for a living,” she promised herself, “before I yield to him.”

All the pride of a strong nature shone in her eyes as she stooped over Jimmy, sitting at the table, his short legs dangling, his slate pencil squeakily setting down queer crooked figures in straggling rows.

“I’m ahead in my ’rithmetic,” the little boy announced triumphantly. “I’m doin’ reg’lar zamples. I like zamples. An’ bimeby I’ll be all growed up, an’ nen I’ll take care of you, Barb’ra.”

She kissed him underneath the short yellow curls in the back of his neck.

“Oh, Jimmy,” she sighed, “I wish you were grown up now!”

The child straightened himself anxiously.

“My head’s way above your belt when I stand up,” he said, “‘n’ I ate lots of brown bread an’ milk for breakfast. I’m growing jus’ as fast’s I can.”

Barbara hugged him remorsefully.

“You’re just big enough—for six,” she assured him. “And—and we’ll come out all right, somehow. We just will, precious!”

“‘Course we will,” echoed the child. He slipped from his chair and eyed his sister with a searching gaze.

“If you’re scared of anybody, Barb’ra,” he said valiantly, “I’ll take a big stick, ’n’—’n’—I’ll—I’ll—I won’t let anybody hurt you, Barb’ra!”

The girl laughed rather unsteadily as she hurried him into his coat and cap. “Learn a lot at school, dear,” she murmured, “and you’ll have the best kind of a big stick.”

The remembrance of his warm little arms about her neck comforted her as she drove the wall-eyed mare along the road. She was going to do a very strange thing. Something she had never heard of any woman doing before. Just how the idea had taken form and substance in her mind she did not know. She appeared to herself to have awakened with the resolve fully formed, distinctly outlined, even to the small details, which she busily reviewed while she was tying the horse before the house of Thomas Bellows, auctioneer. There was a shop in the lower front story of the house, which had once been a piazza, but now protruded with two bulging front windows to the edge of the sidewalk. The windows disclosed a variety of objects in the line of household appurtenances, clocks, flatirons, a pile of tin-ware, likewise a yellow placard reading, “Auction to-day,” surmounted by a professional flag of a faded red color.

Mr. Bellows himself, in blue overalls and a pink shirt, was occupied in wiping off an exceedingly dusty and ancient sewing machine with an oily rag. He looked up sharply as the discordant jangle of the bell announced the opening of his shop door.

“Good-mornin’, miss,” he said as Barbara entered. “If you don’t mind shuttin’ that door behind you. It beats all how cold the wind stays, don’t it? You want to look over some o’ these goods, heh? Household effects of the widow Small down to the Corners. Died las’ week, an’ her daughter don’t want to keep none o’ her things. They’ll be sold at two sharp. It ain’t a bad idea to cast yer eye around a little b’fore the biddin’ begins. Things show off better. Now this ’ere machine——”

“I don’t want to buy anything,” stammered Barbara. “I—want you to sell something for me.”

“Yas,” assented Mr. Bellows explosively, standing up and resting a grimy hand on either hip, the while he surveyed Barbara’s slim figure attentively. “Jus’ so! Well?” he added tentatively. “Sellin’ things fer folks is my business. What d’ye offer: goods, stock, or real estate? It’s all the same to me.”

“It—it isn’t—— Could you sell my work for me? I mean——”

The man stared hard at the girl, his squinting eyes puckered, his mouth drawn close at the corners.

“I’m a gen’ral auctioneer,” he announced conclusively. “It’s m’ business to sell household effects, stock, or real estate, on commission.”

“I want some money—a good deal of money,” Barbara went on, “and I want it right away.”

“I’ve seen folks in your fix before,” commented the auctioneer dryly, as he again applied himself to the sewing machine. “I gen’rally make out t’ sell what’s offered. But I can’t guarantee prices.”

“You sell horses, don’t you?” demanded Barbara.

“Horses? Sure!”

“And—and oxen. They’re meant to work, and people buy them to work. That’s what I want to do. I want to work for three—or four years, if I must; and I want the money all at once—in advance.”

“I don’t know as I ketch your idee,” said Mr. Bellows. “You want money, an’ you want it right away, an’ you want me to sell——”

“I want you to sell my work—honest work, housework, any kind of work that I can do, for—for a term of years.”

Mr. Bellows abandoned further efforts at bettering the condition of the late Widow Small’s sewing machine. He stood up and scowled meditatively at Barbara.

“Seems t’ me I’ve seen you b’fore, somewheres; haven’t I?”

“My name is Barbara Preston,” the girl said haughtily.

“An’ you want I should——”

“When people buy a horse they really buy and pay for the labor of that horse in advance,” Barbara said composedly. “I am more valuable than a horse. I have skill, intelligence; I wish to sell—my skill, my intelligence to the highest bidder.”

“Well, I swan!” exclaimed Mr. Bellows. Then he fell to laughing noisily, his wizened countenance drawn into curious folds and puckers of mirth.

Barbara waited unsmilingly.

“Say! d’you know I’ve been asked to sell mos’ everythin’ you ever heard of,” said Mr. Bellows, getting the better of his hilarity, “but I never was asked to sell—a girl. A good-lookin’, smart, likely girl. I guess you’re jokin’, miss. It wouldn’t do, you know.”

“Why wouldn’t it?” urged Barbara.

“Well, it wouldn’t; that’s all. I’ve got m’ reputation as an auctioneer to think about; an’—lemme see, your folks is all dead, ain’t they?”

“No,” said Barbara. “I have a brother six years old.”

Her dry tongue refused to add to this statement. She was conscious of an inward tremor of fear lest he should refuse.

“Whatever put such a curious notion into your head?” Mr. Bellows wanted to know.

“I may as well tell you,” the girl said bitterly. “You’ll be asked to sell me out soon. We’re going to lose everything we’ve got—Jimmy and I; the farm, the—furniture—everything.”

“You don’t say!” Mr. Bellows commented doubtfully. “Well, that had ought to net you something—eh?”

“We shan’t have anything; everything will be gone,” the girl said coldly.

“Sho! that’s too bad,” Mr. Bellows said good-naturedly. He stuck his thumbs into the arm-holes of his vest, and scowled absent-mindedly into space. Then he looked at Barbara again. “Mortgage—eh?” he suggested. “Coverin’ pretty much everythin’—eh?”

“Everything,” repeated Barbara, in a dull tone.

“Everythin’—save an’ exceptin’ one smart, willin’ young woman—eh? You’d ought to bring a purty good figger—in the right market.”

Mr. Bellows paused to give way to mirth once more.

“The matrimonial market’s the one partic’lar field I ain’t had much ’xperience in,” he concluded. “An’ auctionin’ off goods of the sort you mention ain’t ’xactly in my line, an’ that’s a fac’, miss. So I guess——”

“You don’t understand,” Barbara interrupted quickly. “Let me explain. When I found that everything was lost”—her voice trembled in spite of herself—“I thought at first I would teach school—let the farm go and teach——”

“Well, why don’t you do that?” Mr. Bellows inquired. He was a kind-hearted man, with sympathies somewhat blunted by his professional zeal in a calling which for the most part concerned itself with clearing away the wreckage of human hopes. “You’d make a right smart school-ma’am, I should say.”

“I’m not a normal school graduate,” Barbara told him. “Besides, they have no vacancies. Then I tried to get sewing to do. I can sew neatly. But I might easily starve on what I could earn with my needle. A woman told me she knew of someone who wanted—a—servant,” Barbara’s voice shook, but she went on bravely. “She said that people sometimes paid as much as twenty-five dollars a month for such work. And that it wasn’t easy to find women who could do that kind of work well. I said I would not work in another woman’s kitchen. But I—I am willing to do it, if I can sell my work for twelve hundred dollars.”

“Whew!” ejaculated Mr. Bellows.

“It sounds like a lot of money, I know,” Barbara went on; “but it is four years’ service at twenty-five dollars a month. I want it all at once. Then I can pay the mortgage on our farm, and keep it.”

“Huh!” commented Mr. Bellows explosively.

“I could lease the farm while I was working, and it would bring in enough money to take care of Jimmy.”

Her face clouded swiftly at the thought of the possible separation.

“Wall, I don’t know of anybody who’d be willin’ to pay down any twelve hundred dollars spot cash for a hired girl,” objected Mr. Bellows. “Y’ couldn’t get nobody to bid on a proposition like that. Y’ might”—the man hesitated, then went on harshly, “y’ might up an’ die, or——”

“A man on the farm next to ours paid three hundred dollars for a horse, and it died the next week,” Barbara said quietly. “Then he bought another. He had to have a horse.”

“Well, he owned it for good an’ all, an’ you——”

“I’ll work four years-or five for the money,” said Barbara steadily. “And I shall be worth far more than an ordinary servant.”

Mr. Bellows wagged his head argumentatively. “I’d hev to charge you five per cent.,” he warned her. “An’ you couldn’t get any bidders, anyhow.”

“That,” said Barbara, “would be my affair. What I want to know is, will you sell me?”

The blood hammered in her temples; her hands and feet were icy cold; but she eyed the man steadily.

Mr. Bellows had been making a rapid mental calculation.

“W’y, I don’ know,” he said, scratching his head reflectively. “I don’t want to go int’ no fool job fer nothin’. M’ time’s valu’ble.”

“I’ll pay you—ten dollars, if—if—no one buys me,” said Barbara faintly.

Mr. Bellows bit his thumb-nail thoughtfully.

“All right!” he burst out at length. “You name the day, git th’ bidders t’gether an’ I’ll auction ye off. Gracious! It don’t sound right, some way.”

He looked at the girl carefully, real human kindness in his eyes and voice.

“Who holds your mortgage, anyhow?” he asked indignantly. “I sh’d think most anybody’d be ashamed o’ themselves t’ drive a nice young woman like you to——”

“If I can realize enough money to pay what I owe I shall be—glad,” the girl said. “I am obliged to work hard anyway. My plan will pay, if it succeeds; don’t you see it will?”

“W’y, yes; I see all right. I don’t b’lieve you c’n work it, though,” was Mr. Bellows’ opinion.

Barbara did not explain her intentions further. She requested Mr. Bellows to say nothing of what had passed between them, and this he readily promised.

“‘Tain’t a matter t’ make common talk of,” he agreed, with a dubious shake of the head. “The’s folks that might not ketch the right idee. Sellin’ a pretty girl at auction ’ud draw a crowd all right; but I’d advise you t’ let me use my jedgment ’bout biddin’ ye in, if it’s necessary.”

IX

As a man thinketh in his heart, so is that man, was the Nazarene’s succinct announcement of a law as ancient and immutable as the correlated principles which govern gravity and motion. From the beginning of things visible, when the thoughts of the great I Am first began to fashion new and strange creations out of the whirling fire mist, until now, the thoughts of a God—of a man, continually and inevitably mould his appearance and the circumstances of his existence. As there can be no question as to the reality of this fundamental principle at the root of all phenomena, so there can be no evasion of its action and effect.

Stephen Jarvis, having successfully achieved wealth by a constant and unremitting application of his powerful ego to the thoughts of money-getting by any and all means, looked the part. No man can do otherwise. Having chosen his rôle, he proceeds to a make-up more skilful and complete than can be conceived by the bungler in the actor’s dressing-room. Upon the plastic mask of the body his thoughts etch themselves, his habits paint themselves, his character blazons itself, till at middle age, he cannot longer hide himself from the observant eye of the world. He is, in appearance, in reality, what his thoughts have made him.

If it be possible to imagine the havoc which the oft-quoted bull in the china shop would create by a sudden and unpremeditated use of his brute force, one may, perhaps, conceive of the inward tumult, the confusion, the very real loss, and consequent anguish entailed upon a man like Jarvis by the sudden invasion of a genuine passion.

A thousand times he railed at himself, profanely calling himself many varieties of a fool. Once and again he strove to restore to cold, passionless order the seething maelstrom of his thoughts. Why, he demanded fiercely of himself, should he long to possess this girl with every aching fibre of his being? The mere urge and fever of animal passion did not explain the matter; there was something deeper, more elemental still in the fury of the desire which possessed him, which drove him forth out of his comfortable house by night and by day as if pursued by the furies. Because Jarvis was a strong man, his nature hardened by years of stern, unrelaxing self-discipline, the utter rout and confusion of his cold, passionless self was the more complete and disastrous. He hated himself for loving a woman who disdained him, and hating himself, he loved her with a despair akin to torment. That she was poor, helpless, already fast closed in his savage grip, like a bird in a snare, he knew; and yet for the first time he dimly realized the illusive part of her which successfully evaded his grasp, defied his power, despised his threats. He might, if he would, crush her by main force; he could not compel her to love him.

The thought of his own strength, helpless before her weakness, maddened him. Houses, lands, money, had become passively obedient to the power of his will. He controlled these things, did with them as he pleased, in effect an overlord, haughty, unbending, merciless; but this one thing which he had put out his hand to take—carelessly, as one will pluck a ripe apple from the bough at the languid prompting of appetite—this girl, who had for years been no more to him than the birds hopping in the trees outside his window, how and by what means had she suddenly contrived to gain this monstrous ascendency over him? What uncanny power in those clear gray eyes of hers had metamorphosed Stephen Jarvis, cool, middle-aged man of affairs, into the weak creature he had always despised in his saner moments?

During these days of inward tumult he carried on the dull routine of his business, forcing himself to the task with all the powers of a will suddenly turned traitor to its master. In spite of himself he seemed to see her there in his lonely house over against the sombre rows of books, her face vividly alive, defiantly youthful. Despite his resolves she perpetually came between him and the printed page which he strove to read; worst of all, she haunted his restless slumbers by night, now pleading with him; now defying him; mocking him with elfin laughter, as she fled before him, the child in her arms; while he pursued leaden-footed through uncounted miles of shadowy country.

The two did not meet face to face, while the rains and chilling winds of April gradually spent themselves, and the grass, illumined with a thousand cheerful sunbursts of dandelions, grew long under the blossoming trees. The mated birds sang only at dawn now, being too busy with the rapturous labors of nest-building to pause for vocal expression of their gladness. In the fields staid farm-horses indulged in unwonted gambols and nosed their mates with little whinnying cries; grazing cattle lifted their heads from the sweet springing grass to gaze with large wistful eyes at the widespread landscape. Once, long ago, they had roamed the unfenced pastures of the world in May, herded cows and yearlings, and the lordly bulls leading on, while the urge and rapture of the returning sun brooded the earth, compelling it to bring forth after its kind. Though she did not see him, yet none the less Jarvis obtruded his harsh visage into Barbara’s thoughts by day and by night. Nor could a wiser man than Jarvis have guessed that the girl was literally enfolded in cloudy thought forms, projected toward her from his own brain, with all the accuracy and certainty of an electric current traversing the viewless paths of air between wireless stations. That we do not understand these phenomena with any degree of accuracy does not render them the less effective.

It was still early in May when Jarvis drove over to inspect a wood-pulp factory in the neighborhood of Greenfield Centre. Its proprietor had borrowed capital heavily within the past year, and Jarvis had been narrowly watching the gradual ebb of the factory’s output. It was the old story of misapplied energy, paralyzed into inaction by impending failure. Jarvis scored the luckless proprietor mercilessly during their brief interview; later he sought the services of Thomas Bellows, the auctioneer.

“You may sell him out, plant, machinery, and all; reserve nothing,” Jarvis ordered; and, referring to his book of memoranda, added the date.

Another entry that he saw there met his sombre eyes. He stared at it frowningly.

“Anythin’ more in my line in the near future?” Mr. Bellows wanted to know.

He rubbed his hands as he asked the question. The Honorable Stephen Jarvis was, as he put it, “a stiddy customer and a good one,” being constantly in need of Mr. Bellows’ services.

“Yes,” said Jarvis, a dull red flush rising in his sallow face. “The contents of the Preston house, the stock, and implements, must be sold on June first.”

Mr. Bellows struck one hairy fist into the other by way of preface to his words. He was not afraid of Stephen Jarvis, being sufficiently well provided with worldly goods, albeit these were for the most part second-hand, and in the nature of left-overs from many auctions.

“It seems a pity,” quoth Bellows, “to sell her out. Couldn’t you wait till fall, say, and give the little Preston girl a chance? I ain’t what you might call soft m’self; but I’m blamed if I could help feelin’ sorry for the girl when she come in here one day last week t’ engage my professional services.”

“What is Miss Preston proposing to sell?” demanded Jarvis. Something in his voice gave Mr. Bellows a curious sensation. He gave Jarvis a sharp look as he answered.

“Nothing that belongs to you, I reckon.”

“Tell me what it is,” repeated Jarvis. “I’ll be the best judge of that,” His voice shook, and also the hand which held the leather book of fateful dates and occasions.

“I’m sorry; but I guess I can’t ’commodate you,” responded the other. “Perfessional etiquette, you know; in this ’ere case binding.”

“You have no right to refuse,” said Jarvis, and something of the real nature of his secret thoughts flared up in his eyes. “Everything that concerns Miss Preston concerns me.”

Mr. Bellows was puzzled.

“Meanin’, of course, that you hold the lien on her prop’ty,” he hazarded. “But you don’t”—and he paused to chuckle to himself—“hold no lien on what she’s propos in’ to sell to the highest bidder?”

“What do you mean?” demanded Jarvis.

His tone was menacing, and he fixed angry eyes, red from sleeplessness, on the old auctioneer.

“You’ll either explain yourself,” he said, “or—you’ll get no more business from me, to-day or any other day.”

Mr. Bellows expectorated violently in the general direction of the opposite wall.

“I ain’t,” he declared valiantly, “afeard of no threats, nor yet of nobody. But I’m goin’ to tell you, ’cause it’s you that’s drove her to it, an’ you’d ought to know what sort of girl she is. I had three-quarters of a notion to tell you anyhow, an’ I tol’ m’ wife so, when I found it was you that held the lien on her house an’ furniture. Business is business with me as well as any other man; but I’d be ashamed to drive a woman to the point of sellin’ herself.”

“Selling herself!” echoed Jarvis.

The observant eyes of Mr. Bellows were upon him, as he fell back a pace or two and strove to steady himself.

“That’s what I said. Yes, sir; she asked me right here in this shop to sell her at public auction. ‘I’ve lost everythin’,’ she says; ‘but I’ve got myself, an’ I’ll sell that, an’ pay what I owe.’”

“My God!” breathed Jarvis. “I—drove her to it!”

“You’re right, you did,” agreed Mr. Bellows.

“You can’t do it, man. I forbid it!”

“Oh, y’ do; do ye? Wall, I don’t see how you’re going to make out to prevent it. The girl’s got a right to herself, and I’ve got a right to——”

“I shall prevent it,” Jarvis interrupted fiercely. “It’s inhuman—uncivilized, monstrous!”

“Well, that’s the way it struck me—at first,” acquiesced Mr. Bellows; “but the way she put it up t’ me kind of won me over. She’s a takin’ sort of girl, kind o’ good-lookin’, an’ innercent. W’y, Lord bless you, she’s no more idee of the way a man—like you, for instance—might look at it than a child. She wants to work out—for a matter o’ four or five years, she says; an’ she thinks she c’n get some fool woman to bid twelve hunderd dollars spot cash fer bein’ sure of a hired girl all that time—‘W’y,’ I says to her, ‘you might up an’ die,’ ‘Yes,’ she says, ‘so might a horse; but folks hes to hev horses!’ I tell you she’s cute an’ bright, an’ I’m goin’ to sell her to the highest bidder, same’s I agreed to.”

Jarvis was silent for a long minute, his eyes fixed unseeingly on the miscellaneous collection of shabby and broken furniture in the rear of the shop.

“Is it to be a public sale?” he asked coolly.

“Well, as t’ that, I can’t rightly tell you. I left the advertisin’ o’ the goods, an’ the date o’ sale to the young lady. I reelly hope you will call it off. I s’pose you c’n easy fix things up so ’t she——”

“Did she ask you to tell me this?” demanded Jarvis suddenly. “Tell me the facts.”

“Did she ask me—to tell you?” echoed Mr. Bellows wonderingly. “You bet she didn’t! You wasn’t named betwixt us. I asked her who held the lien on her prop’ty, an’ she didn’t answer. Thought it was none o’ my business, likely. I suspicioned it was you, though. You get most of ’em around these parts.”

Jarvis made no reply. He closed the red leather book, slipped it into an inside pocket, then deliberately drew on his driving gloves.

“Can you tell me the date of this—this sale?” he asked.

“What you want t’ know for? Thinkin’ of puttin’ in a bid?” chuckled Mr. Bellows.

Jarvis gave him a terrible look.

“I’d advise you to keep still about this. Don’t attempt to interest anyone else in Miss Preston’s affairs. Do you hear?”

“I ain’t deef,” responded Mr. Bellows in an aggrieved voice. “‘N’ I don’t know’s I see what business ’tis of yours, anyhow. Mebbe she’ll get the money an’ pay you. ’Twouldn’t surprise me if she did. She’s bound she will, an’ where there’s a will there’s a way, I’ve heard tell.”

“The date, man; give me the date!”

“Seein’ I’ve told you so much, I s’pose you might as well know; the sale’s set for the eighteenth.”

“Where?”

“At her house.”

“And you’re actually going to—— No; she’ll never do it. She won’t be able to bring herself to it.”

“Wall, I’ll bet you ten dollars she will; d’ye take me?”

Jarvis turned without another word and left the place. He suddenly felt the need of the outdoor air. Barbara’s desperate expedient convinced him as no words of hers could have done of the hopelessness of his case. “She hates me,” he told himself; and for the first time he looked within for a reason for her aversion.

He drove slowly, his thoughts a mad whirl of fury and despair. For the first time he saw himself as he fancied he must look to her, a man past his first youth, cold, forbidding, harsh, unlovely. He perceived with a flash of prescience that she cared nothing for money, save as it signified the thing she held most dear; nothing for the position, power, and luxury for which he had sold his honor and his manhood. Stripped of these things, what must he appear in her eyes? A monster of selfishness and greed, no less; to be feared, detested, escaped by any means even to the sacrifice of brain and body. He groaned aloud in the scorching flame of his humiliation.

He told himself that he would go to her, beg her forgiveness, offer her all that she had asked for, and more. He would give her the farm free of all indebtedness. Then he realized, with sickening certainty, that she would not accept anything from him. He had told her that he was her master. To escape this slavery she was about to sell herself to another. The thought was insupportable. Even while he perceived her perfect ingenuousness and the practical realization of her own worth which lay beneath this fantastic and seemingly impossible plan of hers, he sensed its frightful danger. In order to attract bidders she would be forced to advertise her plans. Who would respond? Who would buy, and for what purpose?

He whipped his horse to a furious speed and soon reached his house. The newspapers, unread for days, were piled on a table near his desk. He seized one, turned to its advertising columns and rapidly reviewed their contents, then another, and another in rapid succession. At last his devouring eyes lighted and fastened upon a single paragraph, hidden among the miscellaneous advertisements where a puzzled proofreader had doubtless placed it:

“For Sale at Auction [he read]: A young woman in good health, able and willing to do housework and plain sewing; or could teach a little child and care for it, would like to secure a position with a respectable family for a term of years. Her services will be disposed of at private auction to the highest bidder, for a term of three, four, or five years. Please communicate with B., Telegram.”

Jarvis crushed the paper in his hands savagely, as though he would destroy the strange little appeal to an unfriendly world. Then he sought for and read it again, his eyes fixed and frowning.

X

There are times when to the unintelligent observer the affairs of this world appear a hopeless tangle, a web without a pattern, a heap of unclassified material without an architect, a wild, unmeaning chaos of things animate and inanimate, all grinding, groaning, clashing together, sport of the gods or of demons, tending towards nothing, useless, hideous. But to one who views the world from another and higher level there sometimes appear illumining hints of harmony and completeness, tokens of a Master Mind working continually among the affairs of men and universes, setting all in divine order, either with or without the understanding and co-operation of the lesser intelligences.

Thus when Barbara Preston was impelled, she knew not how, to send forth her strange and piteous little appeal to the unknown, it found instant response, and proceeded to fit itself into the scheme of things as perfectly and as cunningly as a tiny bit in a picture puzzle. The paper in which it appeared passed into the hands of a great number of persons, who glanced carelessly at its glaring headlines or searched painstakingly through its losts and founds or things offered, or help wanted, according to their varied tastes or necessities. On the second day thereafter, as was also to be expected, the particular edition containing the queer little unclassified appeal, found its way to many ash-cans, waste-paper baskets, bureau drawers, and pantry shelves; in its progress it helped to build numberless fires, it wrapped parcels of every conceivable shape and size; it fluttered out of car windows, across decks of steamers and ferry-boats; it floated and dissolved in many waterways, and finally disappeared, swallowed in the abyss which appears always to yawn for all things of human creation. Having vanished mysteriously, unobtrusively, as must every printed page sooner or later, it nevertheless left its mark on the lives of many. Plans were changed, voyages undertaken or abandoned, marriages made and unmade. In a word, prosperity, ruin, joy, sadness, glory, despair—all came about through its appearance, and persisted in ever widening circles after it had passed from sight and mind.

Four men and ten women, to be exact, of those who chanced to notice Barbara’s somewhat absurd little advertisement, cut it out of the doomed sheet, and placed it in securer quarters, for further consideration. Of the women four wrote to Barbara asking for references; of the men, one conceived it to be “a business opportunity,” not to be written of here; one was a widower blessed with three small unruly children and little appetite for further matrimonial experience; another a rich, crabbed old miser, bent on escaping designing relatives, and the fourth an enterprising young mining engineer, very deeply in love with a pretty girl and anxious to marry her and take her with him to a region remote from civilization. The girl had sighed, demurred, wept—she was of the delicate, clinging vine variety, and totally unfit for the hard experiences of a mining camp. But to this fact the amorous engineer was quite naturally oblivious. He dilated glowingly upon the wonderful efficiency of Chinese servants, who could, he assured her, beat creation in the expert disguising of the inevitable “canned goods,” which formed the staple of provision. Her questions and those of her mother elicited the fact that there were no women to be hired in any capacity, the wives of the miners, for the most part, being of a free and independent nature, and, moreover, entirely occupied with their own affairs.

Mamma looked at Ethel, and Ethel looked at Mamma; Mamma’s glance being dubious and Ethel’s timidly imploring.

“I couldn’t think of allowing darling Ethel to go away out there to that dreary, lonely place, with no one to wait on her and take care of her except a Chinese man,” Mamma said tearfully. She added that Ethel was delicate, very delicate.

“The mountain air will make her strong,” declared the engineer enthusiastically. Then he gazed lovingly at the slight, pale, fashionably gowned young woman who somehow managed to hold the wealth of his honest affections in her small, highly manicured hands, and in whom he fancied all possible happiness was embodied “forever” (as he would have put it).

The end of it all was Mamma’s ultimatum, strongly backed up by Ethel’s dutiful acquiescence, to the effect that a suitable maid must be secured; a person who would combine in one the capabilities of cook, ladies’ maid, seamstress, and nurse, and who would accompany the timid bride on her long journey away from Mamma’s side.

Imagine, then, the bridegroom’s dilemma, and his anxiety to secure the advertising young person, who upon further inquiry promised so exactly to fill the conditions of his happiness.

These persons, therefore, or their representatives foregathered at the Preston farm on the morning of the eighteenth of May. With them also appeared a half dozen or so of neighbors, curious and prying, and the usual complement of shabby individuals, mysteriously aware of the unusual, and always to be seen at village weddings, funerals, and public auctions.

Thomas Bellows, alert, business-like, came early in the morning.

“Say, if you want to back out even now,” he said to Barbara, “I c’n tell th’ folks th’ auction’s off. I guess you’re feelin’ kind of frightened an’ sorry you was so rash, ain’t you?”

“No,” said Barbara composedly. “I am not—frightened or sorry.” But her face was unnaturally white, and her eyes, deeply circled with shadowy blue, belied the statement. “Must I—stand up and be—sold, like—like——”

“No, ma’am!” exclaimed Mr. Bellows decidedly. “Not by a jugful! You’ve heard from some of the folks interested, you said?”

“Yes,” said Barbara, “I’ve had a number of letters. Two women are looking for a girl to do all their housework; one needs a nursery governess—she is going with her family to South America to stay five years; another requires a reliable person to look after an imbecile child.”

“Huh!” exploded Mr. Bellows, “that all?”

By way of answer Barbara produced the letter of the elderly man who required a competent housekeeper, and that of the widower, the engineer, and the type-written communication of the person who promised a luxurious home in exchange for “slight occasional services of a sort easily rendered.”

“Huh!” commented Mr. Bellows, after a deliberate perusal of these epistles. “Did you tell ’em all to show up to-day?”

He looked sharply at the girl, as he tapped the rustling sheets with a blunt, tobacco-stained forefinger. “The sale ’ll have to be made conditional on satisfactory evidence that the highest bidder is an honest, respectable sort of person.

“The’s folks,” he added darkly, “‘at I wouldn’t sell a cat to—if I cared shucks ’bout the cat.”

“I’m not afraid,” said Barbara, “to do any sort of work.”

“Mebbe not,” Mr. Bellows acquiesced dryly. “Wall, guess I’ll wait till I git a good look int’ their faces. I’ll bet,” he added, “‘at I c’n size ’em up all right. An’ I’ll see t’ it ’at the right bidder gits the goods. An’ now I’ll tell you what to do. You set here inside the parlor, same’s if you was the corpse, we’ll say, at a funeral, an’ I’ll let the bidders come in one b’ one an’ kind o’ size you up. ’Course they’ve got to know the general specifications, an’ mebbe they’ll want to ask a few questions. But you’d best let me talk up the article like I know how. That’s m’ business; an’ I won’t make no fool mistakes.”

Barbara drew a deep breath.

“What,” she faltered, “are you going to say?”

“Oh, you don’t have to worry none ’bout what I’ll say. I’ll crack you up sky-high same’s I would a first-class horse. All you’ve got to do is to set right still an’ let me do th’ auctioneerin’. I’ll run you up to fifteen hunderd, if I kin.”

“Tell them I—I’ll work—hard and faithfully,” faltered Barbara.

She choked a little over the last word, her eyes bright with unshed tears.

“If I was you, ma’am, I’d put on a red ribbon or—or somethin’ cheerful-lookin’,” advised Mr. Bellows, with awkward sympathy. “I like a good bright red m’self. An’ say, don’t you worry none. You ain’t ’bliged to accept anybody’s bid, unless you feel like it. I’m goin’ t’ bid ye in m’self, if things don’t go right. Where’s the little boy?” he asked suddenly.

Barbara controlled herself with an effort.

“In school,” she replied briefly. “He—Jimmy isn’t to know, till—till afterward.”

“Mebbe you c’n take him along,” hazarded Mr. Bellows, “to—South America, say, or——”

“I shall leave him here,” Barbara told him with stony calm. “I have arranged everything.”

A stamping of feet on the porch brought a defiant light to the girl’s eyes and a scarlet flush to her cheeks; Mr. Bellows surveyed her with open satisfaction.

“That’s right!” he encouraged her. “Perk right up! You look wo’th th’ money now all right. I’ll open the front door and let the folks pass right in. Ye don’t need to do a thing but set right still an’ let me manage things. Biddin’ ’ll begin at ten-thirty, sharp!”

And he bustled away full of importance.

Barbara stood quite still in the spot where he had left her, her eyes fastened with a kind of fascinated terror upon the groups of persons coming toward the house. The day was bright and warm and the clumps of old-fashioned shrubs on either side of the driveway, lilac and bridal wreath and snowball, were in full bloom. On the other side of the fence long lines of apple trees laden with odorous pink and white bloom, lifted their gnarled limbs to the blue sky. Barbara saw a woman pointing out the trees to the man at her side. She knew the woman, and fancied she might be speaking of the great yield of fruit to be expected that year from the once famous Preston orchards.

For two years past the girl had been toiling to bring the trees back to a thrifty condition; this spring for the first time they promised heavy returns for all her labors.

She clenched her strong brown hands in a passion of unavailing protest against the cruel fate which flaunted the myriads of blossoms in her face to-day.

More people were coming than she had expected. Her face burned with shame at sight of the two shabby hired hacks among the groups of pedestrians. A woman in one of them thrust her head out of the window and asked some questions of the driver. He nodded his head and presently drew up in front of the house.

“Well, I declare,” she heard in a high-pitched feminine voice, “this seems like quite a nice place. I thought——”

The buzzing of tongues in the rooms across the narrow hall increased; the people were congregating there. She could hear the occasional sound of Mr. Bellows’ creaking boots and his loud authoritative voice, as he answered questions and arranged the chairs, which two of the shabby men under his direction were bringing from various parts of the house.

There was something dreadfully suggestive of a funeral in the subdued hum of voices, the solemnly inquisitive glances levelled towards the house, and the active, creaking steps of Mr. Bellows. Alone in the dim old parlor, peering through the shutters, alternately cold with apprehension and hot with shame, Barbara found herself threatened with hysterical laughter. They will come in presently and look at me, she thought, and stiffened into instant rigidity at sound of the creaking knob.

“Yes, ma’am,” she heard the old auctioneer saying. “You’ll find the young woman right in here. She’s ready t’ be interviewed, an’ I’ll guarantee she’s wo’th double the price anybody’ll bid for her. One at a time, if you please. An’ five minutes only allowed.”

The door opened, and a tall, showily dressed woman entered. She stared at Barbara through a lorgnette.

“Are you the young woman who is to be sold at auction?” she asked, in an unbelieving voice. “I am Mrs. Perkins, the housekeeper at Clifton Grange. I wrote you, with reference to a boy of six. He is large of his age, and not easy to care for. But his mother, who is an invalid, won’t hear to his being sent away from home. Yes; I received your references. But you don’t look old enough to attempt the position I speak of. But I shall have to bid, I suppose, for we can’t keep a nurse in the house. They simply will not stay through more than one of his fractious spells. And of course, if we buy you, you’ll be obliged to remain. Are you strong in your hands?”

“Yes, very,” said Barbara, conscious of the increasing dryness of her lips and throat.

“You have rather a nice face,” observed the woman dubiously. “And I do hope you’re naturally lively and cheerful; you’ll get along better with him if you are. If he takes a notion to you, he’ll be pretty good most of the time. But if he don’t—— Are you used to children?”

“I have a brother.”

“How old?”

“Six years.”

“Well, I declare! Quite a coincidence. Is your brother an ordinary child?”

“He is perfectly normal, if that is what you mean,” Barbara managed to say. It was being harder than she thought.

“One thing more,” the woman was saying. “You didn’t answer one question I asked. How did you ever come to think of doing anything so strange as selling your services at auction? And why should you demand all the money at once? If your references—your pastor’s letter and others—hadn’t been so satisfactory, we shouldn’t have thought of considering you. But we do want to secure someone who will stay, and of course you’ll be obliged to; though I’m not allowed to bid above a certain sum. Now I shall expect a truthful answer to——”

Mr. Bellows obtruded his puckered face into the room.

“Time’s up, ma’am,” he said authoritatively. “Other bidders waitin’ their opportunity.”

Barbara could not afterward recall all that passed during the intolerable period before the bidding began. She was vaguely aware of women, tall and short, curious, eager, clutching hand-bags, presumably containing large sums of money. There were men, too. The representative of the Boston widower, the young mining engineer, more eager and determined than ever after his short interview with Barbara.

“I’ll bid every cent I can on you,” he assured the girl, with boyish sincerity. “You’re just the one for us, and I know you’d enjoy the life out there. We wouldn’t treat you like an ordinary servant; you’d be more like a friend, I can see that, and I’m sure Ethel—Mrs. Selfridge [he blushed at his own delightful mendacity] will like you very much. She’ll want to see you at once, if I am the lucky winner.”

It was all strange, dream-like, and for the most part intolerable. Barbara raised her heavy eyes once more at the sound of the hard-shut door. Stephen Jarvis stood looking at her in silence. She felt rather than saw that some great though subtle change had come over him.

“Why,” he asked in a voice as changed as his looks, “have you done this thing?”

She did not answer, and he drew a step nearer.

“Tell me,” he said under his breath, “will you give it up? if I—agree to all that you asked for—time to meet the payments?”

He hesitated as if choosing his words with care.

“You were right about the orchards,” he went on. “There will be a good yield—more than enough.” He stretched out his hands imploringly, “Spare me, Barbara,” he entreated. “Don’t put yourself and me to shame before them all!”

The door swung open a little way.

“Did you say the young woman was in here?” inquired a feminine voice, sharp with curiosity. Barbara caught a momentary glimpse of a militant-looking turban glittering with jet beads. Jarvis shut the door, and stood against it, a tall sombre figure of authority.

“Let me put a stop to it all, Barbara,” he urged. “Barbara!—in God’s name! I can’t let you do it!”

“It is—too late,” she said, speaking slowly because of the dryness of her throat and mouth. “Don’t you see—I must go on with it, and I—shall pay you—every cent!”

He drew a difficult breath that was almost a sob.

“You—will—pay—me,” he repeated, a dreadful self-loathing struggling with the despair in his eyes. Then he went away, quietly, as he had come.

XI

Peg Morrison smote the rough brown backs of his horses with a practised slap of the lines.

“Y’ remind me o’ the sect in gen’ral,” he observed, in a loud, critical voice, as the off member of the team backed and fidgeted uneasily. “When y’ want a female, woman er hoss, to go, thet’s th’ pertickler time they elect t’ stan’ still, an’ when y’ want ’em to stan ’still—— Whoa, thar; can’t ye?”

Mr. Morrison paused to wipe the moisture from his brow with an ancient handkerchief of red and white, while he gazed lovingly at the wide expanse of glistening brown earth which had been deeply ploughed, and more or less levelled into smoothness under the action of the harrow which the horses were dragging.

“Planted t’ onions,” he went on, still addressing his observations to the horses, whose heads drooped sleepily toward the fresh-smelling ground, “this ’ere ten acres ’ll net, anyway you figger it, four hunderd an’ fifty dollars t’ the acre; an’ that’ll total—l’me see, somethin’ like——”

Mr. Morrison’s gaze being wholly introspective at this stage of the mental problem under consideration, he failed to notice the man who came swinging along the road at a smart rate of speed. At sight of the old man leaning meditatively against the fence, a spent dandelion stalk in his mouth, the pedestrian halted.

“Why, hello, Peg!” he called out in a clear and somewhat authoritative voice.

The stranger wore a rough suit of weather-stained tweeds; and his felt hat, set at a becoming angle on his curly head, shaded a face bronzed by sun and wind almost to the color of the full brown beard curling away from his red mouth with a careless boldness repeated in the humorous blue eyes which roved over the shabby old figure by the fence.

He laughed outright at the puzzled look in Morrison’s face.

Then he folded his arms on top of the fence.

“Well, how goes it, old man?” he inquired. “Same lazy old horses—eh? Same job, same season of the year, same old clothes, I should say—even to the red and white bandanna. Makes me feel as if I’d been dreaming. Maybe I have; who knows?”

“Who be ye?” demanded Peg. “Seems ’s ’o I’d seen ye somewhars; but I can’t think whar.”

“Don’t be hasty, my friend,” advised the other, pulling his hat over his laughing eyes. “You’ve forgotten me, and so, apparently, has everyone else. I saw Al Hewett at the station and he told me Miss Preston was unmarried and still at home, and that old Don Preston had gone to his reward a couple of years ago.”

“I c’n see you used t’ live ’round here,” hazarded Peg, shaking his head, “but I can’t seem t’ rec’lect who ye be; ’nless—— If I didn’t know he was dead I might think you was the young feller ’at used t’ teach school in th’ village. Whitcomb, his name was. But he’s been dead a matter o’ three years.”

“That being the case,” said the stranger coolly, “perhaps you’ll tell me about the auction up at the farm. I heard some women asking questions about it at the station.”

“Auction?” repeated Peg. “The’ ain’t no auction at our place—not yet. But you sure do remind me o’ that young school-teacher feller. He got gold crazy, an’ went off——”

“Yes, I know; and got lost on a trail and froze to death,” interrupted the stranger. “So I heard. Sad, wasn’t it? Did they find the body?”

“Not,” said Peg, his puzzled eyes still searching the stranger’s face, “as I heerd tell of.”

“Then you think the coast is clear up at the farm? Is Barbara—Miss Preston—at home?”

“Miss Barb’ry was to home when I come away at six-thirty this mornin’. Say, are you——?”

“I’ll walk over and call on her,” interrupted the young man, with some impatience. “Perhaps Barbara will remember an old friend. Her eyes used to be bright enough.”

Peg unhitched the harrow with fine deliberation.

“Hold on a minute,” he requested, “an’ I’ll step ’long with ye. It’s gittin’ ’long towards noon, anyhow.”

He was furtively studying the younger man’s face and figure, as he let down the bars and drove his horses through.

“B’en doin’ any school-teachin’ sence ye left these parts?” he drawled, as the two struck the road at a pace commensurate to the unhurried gait of the old horses.

“No,” said the stranger. He plunged his hands deep in his pockets, the merriment suddenly gone from his face and eyes.

“Ye look consid’ble older’n ye did,” observed Peg mildly, “an’ the whiskers gives ye a diff’rent look; but come t’ take notice, most anybody’d know ye, though ye must hev knocked ’round consid’able. Hev any luck minin’?”

Whitcomb laughed, throwing back his head as if the question afforded him a vast deal of amusement.

“Luck?” he echoed. “Certainly; a man’s bound to strike luck of one sort or another.”

“That’s a fac’,” agreed Peg sententiously, “an’ you can’t most always sometimes tell one sort f’om the other. What passes fer the worst sort o’ luck ’ll frequent turn out to be fust-rate. I knew a man once——”

He stopped short, his jaw dropping at sight of the numerous vehicles congregated near the house which they were approaching. “I swan!” he ejaculated. “It sure does look like—— But Miss Barb’ry never said nothin’ t’ me. She never tol’ me——”

“I’m going in,” said David Whitcomb, scowling.

Several women congregated near the door stared at him with a resentful air as he made his way masterfully among them.

At one end of the long, low room, his back to the open windows, stood Thomas Bellows, a small bare table in front of him, on which he rested the flat of his outspread hands while haranguing the company ranged on either side, the women for the most part comfortably seated, the men standing in the rear, as if half ashamed to be present.

“Eight hunderd, do I hear?” inquired the auctioneer in a tone of passionate protest, “it bein’ understood there’ll be a five years’ lease on the prop’ty in question? Ladies an’ gents, that ain’t right! Eight hunderd ain’t a patch on what she’s worth. I’ve told you what sort of goods you’re biddin’ on an’ you’ve had the opportunity to see fer yourselves. Eight hunderd ten, do I hear? Who’ll make it a fifty? Eight hunderd fifty; who’ll make it nine hunderd? Come! let me hear some good lively biddin’ on the part of the lady in the green dress. This lady is lookin’ fer an honest, permanent hired girl; she told me so b’fore the biddin’ begun. She’s had a terrible time with hired help; she’s paid ’em high wages, an’ they break her china dishes, steal her clo’es, an——

“That’s right! eight hunderd sixty-five from the young man in the comer. That gentleman knows what’s what; an’ he’s lookin’ fer an A number one helper t’ take west t’ help his wife do the cookin’. W’y, this is the opportunity of a lifetime, an’ if you let it pass—eight hunderd seventy dollars I’m offered, who’ll make it nine hunderd? I’ll tell ye, straight, ladies, this perfec’ly healthy, honest, willin’, agreeable, faithful young woman ain’t goin’t’ be knocked down t’ any of ye at nine hunderd dollars. Don’t think it fer a minute! She’s goin’ to git her price, an’ I know what it is.”

“For God’s sake, what’s going on here?” asked Whitcomb of a man in a fashionable light suit, with a diamond in his shirt-front. “What is the man selling?”

By way of answer the man held up his two hands, the fingers outstretched.

“There you are, ten hunderd dollars I’m offered; one thousand dollars! Who’ll make it eleven? A thousand dollars may sound like a pretty good sum t’ slap down all at once, ladies; but do a little figurin’, if you please! You pay eighteen, twenty, twenty-five dollars a month for a raw, untrained foreigner; can’t speak English, can’t cook, can’t do nothin’, an’ once you get her trained off she goes’s lively’s a flea. Five years of domestic peace in yer home! Five years of perfec’ happiness! Ain’t it worth more’n a measly thousand dollars? The gentleman in the comer says it is; he bids ten hunderd fifty. Ten hunderd fifty, ten hunderd sixty! Oh, come, let’s run ’er up faster! I can’t stan’ here all day foolin’. The gentleman in the corner again. Yes, sir, eleven hunderd! Who’ll make it twelve?”

“Stop long enough to tell me what you’re selling, man,” called the latest comer, in a loud, clear voice. “I didn’t get here in time to find out, and no one will tell me.”

A general murmur of protest arose all over the room. A tall woman, with a high-peaked nose set midway in a large expanse of purplish-red face, arose.

“I’m through!” she announced acidly. “Let me out of here.”