THE SPENDERS

A TALE OF THE THIRD GENERATION

BY HARRY LEON WILSON

Illustrated by O'NEILL LATHAM

1902

To L. L. J.

FOREWORD

The wanderers of earth turned to her—outcast of the older lands—
With a promise and hope in their pleading, and she reached them pitying hands;
And she cried to the Old-World cities that drowse by the Eastern main:
"Send me your weary, house-worn broods and I'll send you Men again!
Lo, here in my wind-swept reaches, by my marshalled peaks of snow,
Is room for a larger reaping than your o'ertilled fields can grow.
Seed of the Main Seed springing to stature and strength in my sun,
Free with a limitless freedom no battles of men have won,"
For men, like the grain of the corn fields, grow small in the huddled crowd,
And weak for the breath of spaces where a soul may speak aloud;
For hills, like stairways to heaven, shaming the level track,
And sick with the clang of pavements and the marts of the trafficking pack.
Greatness is born of greatness, and breadth of a breadth profound;
The old Antaean fable of strength renewed from the ground
Was a human truth for the ages; since the hour of the Edenbirth
That man among men was strongest who stood with his feet on the earth!

SHARLOT MABRIDTH HALL.

[CHAPTER I. The Second Generation is Removed]

[CHAPTER II. How the First Generation Once Righted Itself]

[CHAPTER III. Billy Brue Finds His Man]

[CHAPTER IV. The West Against the East]

[CHAPTER V. Over the Hills]

[CHAPTER VI. A Meeting and a Clashing]

[CHAPTER VII. The Rapid-fire Lorgnon Is Spiked]

[CHAPTER VIII. Up Skiplap Canon]

[CHAPTER IX. Three Letters, Private and Confidential]

[CHAPTER X. The Price of Averting a Scandal]

[CHAPTER XI. How Uncle Peter Bines Once Cut Loose]

[CHAPTER XII. Plans for the Journey East]

[CHAPTER XIII. The Argonauts Return to the Rising Sun]

[CHAPTER XIV. Mr. Higbee Communicates Some Valuable Information]

[CHAPTER XV. Some Light With a Few Side-lights]

[CHAPTER XVI. With the Barbaric Hosts]

[CHAPTER XVII. The Patricians Entertain]

[CHAPTER XVIII. The Course of True Love at a House Party]

[CHAPTER XIX. An Afternoon Stroll and an Evening Catastrophe]

[CHAPTER XX. Doctor Von Herzlich Expounds the Hightower Hotel and Certain Allied Phenomena]

[CHAPTER XXI. The Diversions of a Young Multi-millionaire]

[CHAPTER XXII. The Distressing Adventure of Mrs. Bines]

[CHAPTER XXIII. The Summer Campaign Is Planned]

[CHAPTER XXIV. The Sight of a New Beauty, and Some Advice from Higbee]

[CHAPTER XXV. Horace Milbrey Upholds the Dignity of His House]

[CHAPTER XXVI. A Hot Day in New York, with News of an Interesting Marriage]

[CHAPTER XXVII. A Sensational Turn in the Milbrey Fortunes]

[CHAPTER XXVIII. Uncle Peter Bines Comes to Town With His Man]

[CHAPTER XXIX. Uncle Peter Bines Threatens to Raise Something]

[CHAPTER XXX. Uncle Peter Inspires His Grandson to Worthy Ambitions]

[CHAPTER XXXI. Concerning Consolidated Copper and Peter Bines as Matchmakers]

[CHAPTER XXXII. Devotion to Business and a Chance Meeting]

[CHAPTER XXXIII. The Amateur Napoleon of Wall Street]

[CHAPTER XXXIV. How the Chinook Came to Wall Street]

[CHAPTER XXXV. The News Broken, Whereupon an Engagement is Broken]

[CHAPTER XXXVI. The God in the Machine]

[CHAPTER XXXVII. The Departure of Uncle Peter—And Some German Philosophy]

[CHAPTER XXXVIII. Some Phenomena Peculiar to Spring]

[CHAPTER XXXIX. An Unusual Plan of Action Is Matured]

[CHAPTER XL. Some Rude Behaviour, of Which Only a Western Man Could Be Guilty]

[CHAPTER XLI. The New Argonauts]

ILLUSTRATIONS

["The fair and sometimes uncertain daughter of the house of Milbrey"]

["'Well, Billy Brue,--what's doin'?'"]

["The spell was broken"]

["'Why, you'd be Lady Casselthorpe, with dukes and counts takin' off their crowns to you'"]

["'Remember that saying of your pa's, "it takes all kinds of fools to make a world"'"]

["'Say it that way--" Miss Milbrey is engaged with Mr. Bines, and can't see you"'"]

THE SPENDERS

[!-- CH1 --]

CHAPTER I.

The Second Generation is Removed

When Daniel J. Bines died of apoplexy in his private car at Kaslo Junction no one knew just where to reach either his old father or his young son with the news of his death. Somewhere up the eastern slope of the Sierras the old man would be leading, as he had long chosen to lead each summer, the lonely life of a prospector. The young man, two years out of Harvard, and but recently back from an extended European tour, was at some point on the North Atlantic coast, beginning the season's pursuit of happiness as he listed.

Only in a land so young that almost the present dwellers therein have made it might we find individualities which so decisively failed to blend. So little congruous was the family of Bines in root, branch, and blossom, that it might, indeed, be taken to picture an epic of Western life as the romancer would tell it. First of the line stands the figure of Peter Bines, the pioneer, contemporary with the stirring days of Frémont, of Kit Carson, of Harney, and Bridger; the fearless strivers toward an ever-receding West, fascinating for its untried dangers as for its fabled wealth,—the sturdy, grave men who fought and toiled and hoped, and realised in varying measure, but who led in sober truth a life such as the colours of no taleteller shall ever be high enough to reproduce.

Next came Daniel J. Bines, a type of the builder and organiser who followed the trail blazed by the earlier pioneer; the genius who, finding the magic realm opened, forthwith became its exploiter to its vast renown and his own large profit, coining its wealth of minerals, lumber, cattle, and grain, and adventurously building the railroads that must always be had to drain a new land of savagery.

Nor would there be wanting a third—a figure of this present day, containing, in potency at least, the stanch qualities of his two rugged forbears,—the venturesome spirit that set his restless grandsire to roving westward, the power to group and coordinate, to "think three moves ahead" which had made his father a man of affairs; and, further, he had something modern of his own that neither of the others possessed, and yet which came as the just fruit of the parent vine: a disposition perhaps a bit less strenuous, turning back to the risen rather than forward to the setting sun; a tendency to rest a little from the toil and tumult; to cultivate some graces subtler than those of adventure and commercialism; to make the most of what had been done rather than strain to the doing of needless more; to live, in short, like a philosopher and a gentleman who has more golden dollars a year than either philosophers or gentlemen are wont to enjoy.

And now the central figure had gone suddenly at the age of fifty-two, after the way of certain men who are quick, ardent, and generous in their living. From his luxurious private car, lying on the side-track at the dreary little station, Toler, private secretary to the millionaire, had telegraphed to the headquarters of one important railway company the death of its president, and to various mining, milling, and lumbering companies the death of their president, vice-president, or managing director as the case might be. For the widow and only daughter word of the calamity had gone to a mountain resort not far from the family home at Montana City.

There promised to be delay in reaching the other two. The son would early read the news, Toler decided, unless perchance he were off at sea, since the death of a figure like Bines would be told by every daily newspaper in the country. He telegraphed, however, to the young man's New York apartments and to a Newport address, on the chance of finding him.

Locating old Peter Bines at this season of the year was a feat never lightly to be undertaken, nor for any trivial end. It being now the 10th of June, it could be known with certainty only that in one of four States he was prowling through some wooded canon, toiling over a windy pass, or scaling a mountain sheerly, in his ancient and best loved sport of prospecting. Knowing his habits, the rashest guesser would not have attempted to say more definitely where the old man might be.

The most promising plan Toler could devise was to wire the superintendent of the "One Girl" Mine at Skiplap. The elder Bines, he knew, had passed through Skiplap about June 1st, and had left, perhaps, some inkling of his proposed route; if it chanced, indeed, that he had taken the trouble to propose one.

Pangburn, the mine superintendent, on receipt of the news, despatched five men on the search in as many different directions. The old man was now seventy-four, and Pangburn had noted when last they met that he appeared to be somewhat less agile and vigorous than he had been twenty years before; from which it was fair to reason that he might be playing his solitary game at a leisurely pace, and would have tramped no great distance in the ten days he had been gone. The searchers, therefore, were directed to beat up the near-by country. To Billy Brue was allotted the easiest as being the most probable route. He was to follow up Paddle Creek to Four Forks, thence over the Bitter Root trail to Eden, on to Oro Fino, and up over Little Pass to Hellandgone. He was to proceed slowly, to be alert for signs along the way, and to make inquiries of all he met.

"You're likely to get track of Uncle Peter," said Pangburn, "over along the west side of Horseback Ridge, just beyond Eden. When he pulled out he was talking about some likely float-rock he'd picked up over that way last summer. You'd ought to make that by to-morrow, seeing you've got a good horse and the trail's been mended this spring. Now you spread yourself out, Billy, and when you get on to the Ridge make a special look all around there."

Besides these directions and the telegram from Toler, Billy Brue took with him a copy of the Skiplap Weekly Ledge, damp from the press and containing the death notice of Daniel J. Bines, a notice sent out by the News Association, which Billy Brue read with interest as he started up the trail. The item concluded thus:

"The young and beautiful Mrs. Bines, who had been accompanying her husband on his trip of inspection over the Sierra Northern, is prostrated with grief at the shock of his sudden death."

Billy Brue mastered this piece of intelligence after six readings, but he refrained from comment, beyond thanking God, in thought, that he could mind his own business under excessive provocation to do otherwise. He considered it no meddling, however, to remember that Mrs. Daniel J. Bines, widow of his late employer, could appear neither young nor beautiful to the most sanguine of newsgatherers; nor to remember that he happened to know she had not accompanied her husband on his last trip of inspection over the Kaslo Division of the Sierra Northern Railway.

[!-- CH2 --]

CHAPTER II.

How the First Generation Once Righted Itself

By some philosophers unhappiness is believed—rather than coming from deprivation or infliction—to result from the individual's failure to select from a number of possible occupations one that would afford him entire satisfaction with life and himself. To this perverse blindness they attribute the dissatisfaction with great wealth traditional of men who have it. The fault, they contend, is not with wealth inherently. The most they will admit against money is that the possession of much of it tends to destroy that judicial calm necessary to a wise choice of recreations; to incline the possessor, perhaps, toward those that are unsalutary.

Concerning the old man that Billy Brue now sought with his news of death, a philosopher of this school would unhesitatingly declare that he had sounded the last note of human wisdom. Far up in some mountain solitude old Peter Bines, multimillionaire, with a lone pack-mule to bear his meagre outfit, picked up float-rock, tapped and scanned ledges, and chipped at boulders with the same ardour that had fired him in his penniless youth.

Back in 1850, a young man of twenty-four, he had joined the rush to California, working his passage as deck-hand on a vessel that doubled the Horn. Landing without capital at San Francisco, the little seaport settlement among the shifting yellow sand-dunes, he had worked six weeks along the docks as roustabout for money to take him back into the hills whence came the big fortunes and the bigger tales of fortunes. For six years he worked over the gravelly benches of the California creeks for vagrant particles of gold. Then, in the late fifties, he joined a mad stampede to the Frazer River gold-fields in British Columbia, still wild over its first knowledge of silver sulphurets, he was drawn back by the wonder-tales of the Comstock lode.

Joining the bedraggled caravan over the Carson trail, he continued his course of bitter hardship in the Washoe Valley. From a patch of barren sun-baked rock and earth, three miles long and a third of a mile wide, high up on the eastern slope of Mount Davidson, he beheld more millions taken out than the wildest enthusiast had ever before ventured to dream of. But Peter Bines was a luckless unit of the majority that had perforce to live on the hope produced by others' findings. The time for his strike had not come.

For ten years more, half-clad in flannel shirt and overalls, he lived in flimsy tents, tattered canvas houses, and sometimes holes in the ground. One abode of luxury, long cherished in memory, was a ten-by-twelve redwood shanty on Feather River. It not only boasted a window, but there was a round hole in the "shake" roof, fastidiously cut to fit a stove-pipe. That he never possessed a stove-pipe had made this feature of the architecture not less sumptuous and engaging. He lived chiefly on salt pork and beans, cooked over smoky camp-fires.

Through it all he was the determined, eager, confident prospector, never for an instant prey to even the suggestion of a doubt that he would not shortly be rich. Whether he washed the golden specks from the sand of a sage-brush plain, or sought the mother-ledge of some wandering golden child, or dug with his pick to follow a promising surface lead, he knew it to be only the matter of time when his day should dawn. He was of the make that wears unbending hope as its birthright.

Some day the inexhaustible placer would be found; or, on a mountainside where the porphyry was stained, he would carelessly chip off a fragment of rock, turn it up to the sun, and behold it rich in ruby silver; or, some day, the vein instead of pinching out would widen; there would be pay ore almost from the grass-roots—rich, yellow, free-milling gold, so that he could put up a little arastra, beat out enough in a week to buy a small stamp-mill, and then, in six months—ten years more of this fruitless but nourishing certainty were his,—ten years of the awful solitudes, shared sometimes by his hardy and equally confident wife, and, at the last, by his boy, who had become old enough to endure with his father the snow and ice of the mountain tops and the withering heat of the alkali wastes.

Footsore, hungry most of the time, alternately burned and frozen, he lived the life cheerfully and tirelessly, with an enthusiasm that never faltered.

When his day came it brought no surprise, so freshly certain had he kept of its coming through the twenty years of search.

At his feet, one July morning in 1870, he noticed a piece of dark-stained rock in a mass of driftstones. So small was it that to have gone a few feet to either side would have been to miss it. He picked it up and examined it leisurely. It was rich in silver.

Somewhere, then, between him and the mountain top was the parent stock from which this precious fragment had been broken. The sun beat hotly upon him as it had on other days through all the hard years when certainty, after all, was nothing more than a temperamental faith. All day he climbed and searched methodically, stopping at noon to eat with an appetite unaffected by his prospect.

At sunset he would have stopped for the day, camping on the spot. He looked above to estimate the ground he could cover on the morrow. Almost in front of him, a few yards up the mountainside, he looked squarely at the mother of his float: a huge boulder of projecting silicate. It was there.

During the following week he ascertained the dimensions of his vein of silver ore, and located two claims. He named them "The Stars and Stripes" and "The American Boy," paying thereby what he considered tributes, equally deserved, to his native land and to his only son, Daniel, in whom were centred his fondest hopes.

A year of European travel had followed for the family, a year of spending the new money lavishly for strange, long-dreamed-of luxuries—a year in which the money was joyously proved to be real. Then came a year of tentative residence in the East. That year was less satisfactory. The novelty of being sufficiently fed, clad, and sheltered was losing its fine edge.

Penniless and constrained to a life of privation, Peter Bines had been strangely happy. Rich and of consequence in a community where the ways were all of pleasantness and peace, Peter Bines became restless, discontented, and, at last, unmistakably miserable.

"It can't be because I'm rich," he argued; "it's a sure thing my money can't keep me from doin' jest what I want to do."

Then a suspicion pricked him; for he had, in his years of solitude, formed the habit of considering, in a leisurely and hospitable manner, even the reverse sides of propositions that are commonly accepted by men without question.

"The money can't prevent me from doin' what I jest want to—certain—but, maybe, don't it? If I didn't have it I'd fur sure be back in the hills and happy, and so would Evalina, that ain't had hardly what you could call a good day since we made the strike."

On this line of reasoning it took Peter Bines no long time to conclude that he ought now to enjoy as a luxury what he had once been constrained to as a necessity.

"Even when I was poor and had to hit the trail I jest loved them hills, so why ain't it crafty to pike back to 'em now when I don't have to?"

His triumphant finale was:

"When you come to think about it, a rich man ain't really got any more excuse fur bein' mis'able than a poor man has!"

Back to the big hills that called him had he gone; away from the cities where people lived "too close together and too far apart;" back to the green, rough earth where the air was free and quick and a man could see a hundred miles, and the people lived far enough apart to be neighbourly.

There content had blessed him again; content not slothful but inciting; a content that embraced his own beloved West, fashioning first in fancy and then by deed, its own proud future. He had never ceased to plan and stimulate its growth. He not only became one with its manifold interests, but proudly dedicated the young Daniel to its further making. He became an ardent and bigoted Westerner, with a scorn for the East so profound that no Easterner's scorn for the West hath ever by any chance equalled it.

Prospecting with the simple outfit of old became his relaxation, his sport, and, as he aged, his hobby. It was said that he had exalted prospecting to the dignity of an art, and no longer hunted gold as a pot-hunter. He was even reputed to have valuable deposits "covered," and certain it is that after Creede made his rich find on Mammoth Mountain in 1890, Peter Bines met him in Denver and gave him particulars about the vein which as yet Creede had divulged to no one. Questioned later concerning this, Peter Bines evaded answering directly, but suggested that a man who already had plenty of money might have done wisely to cover up the find and be still about it; that Nat Creede himself proved as much by going crazy over his wealth and blowing out his brains.

To a tamely prosperous Easterner who, some years after his return to the West, made the conventional remark, "And isn't it amazing that you were happy through those hard years of toil when you were so poor?" Peter Bines had replied, to his questioner's hopeless bewilderment: "No. But it is surprisin' that I kept happy after I got rich—after I got what I wanted.

"I reckon you'll find," he added, by way of explaining, "that the proportion of happy rich to unhappy rich is a mighty sight smaller than the proportion of happy poor to the unhappy poor. I'm one of the former minority, all right,—but, by cripes! it's because I know how to be rich and still enjoy all the little comforts of poverty!"

[!-- CH3 --]

CHAPTER III.

Billy Brue Finds His Man

Each spring the old man grew restive and raw like an unbroken colt. And when the distant mountain peaks began to swim in their summer haze, and the little rushing rivers sang to him, pleading that he come once more to follow them up, he became uncontrollable. Every year at this time he alleged, with a show of irritation, that his health was being sapped by the pernicious indulgence of sleeping on a bed inside a house. He alleged, further, that stocks and bonds were but shadows of wealth, that the old mines might any day become exhausted, and that security for the future lay only in having one member of the family, at least, looking up new pay-rock against the ever possible time of adversity.

"They ain't got to makin' calendars yet with the rainy day marked on 'em," he would say. "A'most any one of them innocent lookin' Mondays or Tuesdays or Wednesdays is liable to be it when you get right up on to it. I'll have to start my old bones out again, I see that. Things are beginnin' to green up a'ready." When he did go it was always understood to be positively for not more than two weeks. A list of his reasons for extending the time each year to three or four months would constitute the ideal monograph on human duplicity. When hard-pushed on his return, he had once or twice been even brazen enough to assert that he had lost his way in the mountain fastnesses. But, for all his protestations, no one when he left in June expected to see him again before September at the earliest. In these solitary tours he was busy and happy, working and playing. "Work," he would say, "is something you want to get done; play is something you jest like to be doin'. Snoopin' up these gulches is both of 'em to me."

And so he loitered through the mountains, resting here, climbing there, making always a shrewd, close reading of the rocks.

It was thus Billy Brue found him at the end of his second day's search. A little off the trail, at the entrance to a pocket of the cañon, he towered erect to peer down when he heard the noise of the messenger's ascent. Standing beside a boulder of grey granite, before a background of the gnarled dwarf-cedars, his hat off, his blue shirt open at the neck, his bare forearms brown, hairy, and muscular, a hammer in his right hand, his left resting lightly on his hip, he might have been the Titan that had forged the boulder at his side, pausing now for breath before another mighty task. Well over six feet tall, still straight as any of the pines before him, his head and broad shoulders in the easy poise of power, there was about him from a little distance no sign of age. His lines were gracefully full, his bearing had still the alertness of youth. One must have come as near as Billy Brue now came to detect the marks of time in his face. Not of age—merely of time; for here was no senility, no quavering or fretful lines. The grey eyes shone bright and clear from far under the heavy, unbroken line of brow, and the mouth was still straight and firmly held, a mouth under sure control from corner to corner. A little had the years brought out the rugged squareness of the chin and the deadly set of the jaws; a little had they pressed in the cheeks to throw the high bones into broad relief. But these were the utmost of their devastations. Otherwise Peter Bines showed his seventy-four years only by the marks of a well-ordered maturity. His eyes, it is true, had that look of knowing which to the young seems always to betoken the futility of, and to warn against the folly of, struggle against what must be; yet they were kind eyes, and humourous, with many of the small lines of laughter at their corners. Reading the eyes and mouth together one perceived gentleness and sternness to be well matched, working to any given end in amiable and effective compromise. "Uncle Peter" he had long been called by the public that knew him, and his own grandchildren had come to call him by the same term, finding him too young to meet their ideal of a grandfather. Billy Brue, riding up the trail, halted, nodded, and was silent. The old man returned his salutation as briefly. These things by men who stay much alone come to be managed with verbal economy. They would talk presently, but greetings were awkward.

Billy Brue took one foot from its stirrup and turned in his saddle, pulling the leg up to a restful position. Then he spat, musingly, and looked back down the cañon aimlessly, throwing his eyes from side to side where the grey granite ledges showed through the tall spruce and pine trees.

But the old man knew he had been sent for.

"Well, Billy Brue,—what's doin'?"

Billy Brue squirmed in the saddle, spat again, as with sudden resolve, and said:

"Why,—uh—Dan'l J.—he's dead."

The old man repeated the words, dazedly.

"Dan'l J.—he's dead;—why, who else is dead, too?"

Billy Brue's emphasis, cunningly contrived by him to avoid giving prominence to the word "dead," had suggested this inquiry in the first moment of stupefaction.

"Nobody else dead—jest Dan'l J.—he's dead."

"Jest Dan'l J.—my boy—my boy Dan'l dead!"

His mighty shape was stricken with a curious rigidity, erected there as if it were a part of the mountain, flung up of old from the earth's inner tragedy, confounded, desolate, ancient.

Billy Brue turned from the stony interrogation of his eyes and took a few steps away, waiting. A little wind sprang up among the higher trees, the moments passed, and still the great figure stood transfixed in its curious silence. The leathers creaked as the horse turned. The messenger, with an air of surveying the canon, stole an anxious glance at the old face. The sorrowful old eyes were fixed on things that were not; they looked vaguely as if in search.

"Dan'l!" he said.

It was not a cry; there was nothing plaintive in it. It was only the old man calling his son: David calling upon Absalom. Then there was a change. He came sternly forward.

"Who killed my boy?"

"Nobody, Uncle Peter; 'twas a stroke. He was goin' over the line and they'd laid out at Kaslo fer a day so's Dan'l J. could see about a spur the 'Lucky Cuss' people wanted—and maybe it was the climbin' brought it on."

The old man looked his years. As he came nearer Billy Brue saw tears tremble in his eyes and roll unnoted down his cheeks. Yet his voice was unbroken and he was, indeed, unconscious of the tears.

"I was afraid of that. He lived too high. He et too much and he drank too much and was too soft—was Dan'l.—too soft—"

The old voice trembled a bit and he stopped to look aside into the little pocket he had been exploring. Billy Brue looked back down the canon, where the swift stream brawled itself into white foam far below.

"He wouldn't use his legs; I prodded him about it constant—"

He stopped again to brace himself against the shock. Billy Brue still looked away.

"I told him high altitudes and high livin' would do any man—" Again he was silent.

"But all he'd ever say was that times had changed since my day, and I wasn't to mind him." He had himself better in hand now.

"Why, I nursed that boy when he was a dear, funny little red baby with big round eyes rollin' around to take notice; he took notice awful quick—fur a baby. Oh, my! Oh, dear! Dan'l!"

Again he stopped.

"And it don't seem more'n yesterday that I was a-teachin' him to throw the diamond hitch; he could throw the diamond hitch with his eyes shut —I reckon by the time he was nine or ten. He had his faults, but they didn't hurt him none; Dan'l J. was a man, now—" He halted once more.

"The dead millionaire," began Billy Brue, reading from the obituary in the Skiplap Weekly Ledge, "was in his fifty-second year. Genial, generous to a fault, quick to resent a wrong, but unfailing in his loyalty to a friend, a man of large ideas, with a genius for large operations, he was the type of indefatigable enterprise that has builded this Western empire in a wilderness and given rich sustenance and luxurious homes to millions of prosperous, happy American citizens. Peace to his ashes! And a safe trip to his immortal soul over the one-way trail!"

"Yes, yes—it's Dan'l J. fur sure—they got my boy Dan'l that time. Is that all it says, Billy? Any one with him?"

"Why, this here despatch is signed by young Toler—that's his confidential man."

"Nobody else?"

The old man was peering at him sharply from under the grey protruding brows.

"Well, if you must know, Uncle Peter, this is what the notice says that come by wire to the Ledge office," and he read doggedly:

"The young and beautiful Mrs. Bines, who had been accompanying her husband on his trip of inspection over the Sierra Northern, is prostrated by the shock of his sudden death."

The old man became for the first time conscious of the tears in his eyes, and, pulling down one of the blue woollen shirt sleeves, wiped his wet cheeks. The slow, painful blush of age crept up across the iron strength of his face, and passed. He looked away as he spoke.

"I knew it; I knew that. My Dan'l was like all that Frisco bunch. They get tangled with women sooner or later. I taxed Dan'l with it. I spleened against it and let him know it. But he was a man and his own master—if you can rightly call a man his own master that does them things. Do you know what-fur woman this one was, Billy?"

"Well, last time Dan'l J. was up to Skiplap, there was a swell party on the car—kind of a coppery-lookin' blonde. Allie Ash, the brakeman on No. 4, he tells me she used to be in Spokane, and now she'd got her hooks on to some minin' property up in the Coeur d'Alene. Course, this mightn't be the one."

The old man had ceased to listen. He was aroused to the need for action.

"Get movin', Billy! We can get down to Eden to-night; we'll have the moon fur two hours on the trail soon's the sun's gone. I can get 'em to drive me over to Skiplap first thing to-morrow, and I can have 'em make me up a train there fur Montana City. Was he—"

"Dan'l J. has been took home—the noozepaper says."

They turned back down the trail, the old man astride Billy Brue's horse, followed by his pack-mule and preceded by Billy.

Already, such was his buoyance and habit of quick recovery and readjustment under reverses, his thoughts were turning to his grandson. Daniel's boy—there was the grandson of his grandfather—the son of his father—fresh from college, and the instructions of European travel, knowing many things his father had not known, ready to take up the work of his father, and capable, perhaps, of giving it a better finish. His beloved West had lost one of its valued builders, but another should take his place. His boy should come to him and finish the tasks of his father; and, in the years to come, make other mighty tasks of empire-building for himself and the children of his children.

It did not occur to him that he and the boy might be as far apart in sympathies and aims as at that moment they were in circumstance. For, while the old man in the garb of a penniless prospector, toiled down the steep mountain trail on a cheap horse, his grandson was reading the first news of his father's death in one of the luxurious staterooms of a large steam yacht that had just let down her anchor in Newport Harbour. And each—but for the death—had been where most he wished to be—one with his coarse fare and out-of-doors life, roughened and seamed by the winds and browned by the sun to mahogany tints; aged but playing with boyish zest at his primitive sport; the other, a strong-limbed, well-marrowed, full-breathing youth of twenty-five, with appetites all alert and sharpened, pink and pampered, loving luxury, and prizing above all things else the atmosphere of wealth and its refinements.

[!-- CH4 --]

CHAPTER IV.

The West Against the East

Two months later a sectional war was raging in the Bines home at Montana City. The West and the East were met in conflict,—the old and the new, the stale and the fresh. And, if the bitterness was dissembled by the combatants, not less keenly was it felt, nor less determined was either faction to be relentless.

A glance about the "sitting-room" in which the opposing forces were lined up, and into the parlour through the opened folding-doors, may help us to a better understanding of the issue involved. Both rooms were large and furnished in a style that had been supremely luxurious in 1878. The house, built in that year, of Oregon pine, had been quite the most pretentious piece of architecture in that section of the West. It had been erected in the first days of Montana City as a convincing testimonial from the owner to his faith in the town's future. The plush-upholstered sofas and chairs, with their backs and legs of carved black walnut, had come direct from New York. For pictures there were early art-chromos, among them the once-prized companion pieces, "Wide Awake" and "Fast Asleep." Lithography was represented by "The Fisherman's Pride" and "The Soldier's Dream of Home." In the handicrafts there were a photographic reproduction of the Lord's Prayer, illustrated originally by a penman with uncommon genius for scroll-work; a group of water-lilies in wax, floating on a mirror-lake and protected by a glass globe; a full-rigged schooner, built cunningly inside a bottle by a matricide serving a life-sentence in the penitentiary at San Quinten; and a mechanical canarybird in a gilded cage, acquired at the Philadelphia Centennial,—a bird that had carolled its death—lay in the early winter of 1877 when it was wound up too hard and its little insides snapped. In the parlour a few ornamental books were grouped with rare precision on the centre-table with its oval top of white marble. On the walls of the "sitting-room" were a steel engraving of Abraham Lincoln striking the shackles from a kneeling slave, and a framed cardboard rebus worked in red zephyr, the reading of which was "No Cross, No Crown."

Thus far nothing helpful has been found.

Let us examine, then, the what-not in the "sitting-room" and the choice Empire cabinet that faces it from the opposite wall of the parlour.

The what-not as an American institution is obsolete. Indeed, it has been rather long since writers referred to it even in terms of opprobrious sarcasm. The what-not, once the cherished shrine of the American home, sheltered the smaller household gods for which no other resting-place could be found. The Empire cabinet, with its rounding front of glass, its painted Watteau scenes, and its mirrored back, has come to supplant the humbler creation in the fulfilment of all its tender or mysterious offices.

Here, perchance, may be found a clue in symbol to the family strife.

The Bines what-not in the sitting-room was grimly orthodox in its equipment. Here was an ancient box covered with shell-work, with a wavy little mirror in its back; a tender motto worked with the hair of the dead; a "Rock of Ages" in a glass case, with a garland of pink chenille around the base; two dried pine cones brightly varnished; an old daguerreotype in an ornamental case of hard rubber; a small old album; two small China vases of the kind that came always in pairs, standing on mats of crocheted worsted; three sea-shells; and the cup and saucer that belonged to grandma, which no one must touch because they'd been broken and were held together but weakly, owing to the imperfections of home-made cement.

The new cabinet, haughty in its varnished elegance, with its Watteau dames and courtiers, and perhaps the knowledge that it enjoys widespread approval among the elect,—this is a different matter. In every American home that is a home, to-day, it demands attention. The visitor, after eyeing it with cautious side-glances, goes jauntily up to it, affecting to have been stirred by the mere impulse of elegant idleness. Under the affectedly careless scrutiny of the hostess he falls dramatically into an attitude of awed entrancement. Reverently he gazes upon the priceless bibelots within: the mother-of-pearl fan, half open; the tiny cup and saucer of Sèvres on their brass easel; the miniature Cupid and Psyche in marble; the Japanese wrestlers carved in ivory; the ballet-dancer in bisque; the coral necklace; the souvenir spoon from the Paris Exposition; the jade bracelet; and the silver snuff-box that grandfather carried to the day of his death. If the gazing visitor be a person of abandoned character he makes humourous pretence that the householder has done wisely to turn a key upon these treasures, against the ravishings of the overwhelmed and frenzied connoisseur. He wears the look of one who is gnawed with envy, and he heaves the sigh of despair.

But when he notes presently that he has ceased to be observed he sneaks cheerfully to another part of the room.

The what-not is obsolete. The Empire cabinet is regnant. Yet, though one is the lineal descendant of the other—its sophisticated grandchild—they are hostile and irreconcilable.

Twenty years hence the cabinet will be proscribed and its contents catalogued in those same terms of disparagement that the what-not became long since too dead to incur. Both will then have attained the state of honourable extinction now enjoyed by the dodo.

The what-not had curiously survived in the Bines home—survived unto the coming of the princely cabinet—survived to give battle if it might.

Here, perhaps, may be found the symbolic clue to the strife's cause.

The sole non-combatant was Mrs. Bines, the widow. A neutral was this good woman, and a well-wisher to each faction.

"I tell you it's all the same to me," she declared, "Montana City or Fifth Avenue in New York. I guess I can do well enough in either place so long as the rest of you are satisfied."

It had been all the same to Mrs. Bines for as many years as a woman of fifty can remember. It was the lot of wives in her day and environment early to learn the supreme wisdom of abolishing preferences. Riches and poverty, ease and hardship, mountain and plain, town and wilderness, they followed in no ascertainable sequence, and a superiority of indifference to each was the only protection against hurts from the unexpected.

This trained neutrality of Mrs. Bines served her finely now. She had no leading to ally herself against her children in their wish to go East, nor against Uncle Peter Bines in his stubborn effort to keep them West. She folded her hands to wait on the others.

And the battle raged.

The old man, sole defender of the virtuous and stalwart West against an East that he alleged to be effete and depraved, had now resorted to sarcasm,—a thing that Mr. Carlyle thought was as good as the language of the devil.

"And here, now, how about this dog-luncheon?" he continued, glancing at a New York newspaper clutched accusingly in his hand. "It was give, I see, by one of your Newport cronies. Now, that's healthy doin's fur a two-fisted Christian, ain't it? I want to know. Shappyronging a select company of lady and gentlemen dogs from soup to coffee; pressing a little more of the dog-biscuit on this one, and seein' that the other don't misplay its finger-bowl no way. How I would love to read of a Bines standin' up, all in purty velvet pants, most likely, to receive at one of them bow-wow functions;—functions, I believe, is the name of it?" he ended in polite inquiry.

"There, there, Uncle Peter!" the young man broke in, soothingly; "you mustn't take those Sunday newspapers as gospel truth; those stories are printed for just such rampant old tenderfoots as you are; and even if there is one foolish freak, he doesn't represent all society in the better sense of the term."

"Yes, and you!" Uncle Peter broke out again, reminded of another grievance. "You know well enough your true name is Peter—Pete and Petie when you was a baby and Peter when you left for college. And you're ashamed of what you've done, too, for you tried to hide them callin'-cards from me the other day, only you wa'n't quick enough. Bring 'em out! I'm bound your mother and Pish shall see 'em. Out with 'em!"

The young man, not without embarrassment, drew forth a Russia leather card-case which the old man took from him as one having authority.

"Here you are, Marthy Bines!" he exclaimed, handing her a card; "here you are! read it! Mr. P. Percival Bines.' Now don't you feel proud of havin' stuck out for Percival when you see it in cold print? You know mighty well his pa and me agreed to Percival only fur a middle name, jest to please you—and he wa'n't to be called by it;—only jest Peter or 'Peter P.' at most; and now look at the way he's gone and garbled his good name."

Mr. P. Percival Bines blushed furiously here, but rejoined, nevertheless, with quiet dignity, that a man's name was something about which he should have the ruling voice, especially where it was possible for him to rectify or conceal the unhappy choice of his parents.

"And while we're on names," he continued, "do try to remember in case you ever get among people, that Sis's name is Psyche and not Pish."

The blond and complacent Miss Bines here moved uneasily in her patent blue plush rocker and spoke for the first time, with a grateful glance at her brother.

"Yes, Uncle Peter, for mercy's sake, do try! Don't make us a laughing-stock!" "But your name is Pish. A person's name is what their folks name 'em, ain't it? Your ma comes acrost a name in a book that she likes the looks of, and she takes it to spell Pish, and she ups and names you Pish, and we all calls you Pish and Pishy, and then when you toddle off to public school and let 'em know how you spell it they tell you it's something else—an outlandish name if spellin' means anything. If it comes to that you ought to change the spellin' instead of the name that your poor pa loved."

Yet the old man had come to know that he was fighting a lost fight,—lost before it had ever begun.

"It will be a good chance," ventured Mrs. Bines, timidly, "for Pishy—I mean Sike—Sicky—to meet the right sort of people."

"Yes, I should say—and the wrong sort. The ingagin' host of them lady and gentlemen dogs, fur instance."

"But Uncle Peter," broke in the young man, "you shouldn't expect a girl of Psyche's beauty and fortune to vegetate in Montana City all her life. Why, any sort of brilliant marriage is possible to her if she goes among the right people. Don't you want the family to amount to something socially? Is our money to do us no good? And do you think I'm going to stay here and be a moss-back and raise chin whiskers and work myself to death the way my father did?"

"No, no," replied the old man, with a glance at the mother; "not jest the way your pa did; you might do some different and some better; but all the same, you won't do any better'n he did any way you'll learn to live in New York. Unless you was to go broke there," he added, thoughtfully; "in that case you got the stuff in you and it'd come out; but you got too much money to go broke."

"And you'll see that I lead a decent enough life. Times have changed since my father was a young man."

"Yes; that's what your pa told me,—times had changed since I was a young man; but I could 'a' done him good if he'd 'a' listened."

"Well, we'll try it. The tide is setting that way from all over the country. Here, listen to this editorial in the Sun." And he read from his own paper:

"A GOOD PLACE TO MOVE TO.

"One of the most interesting evidences of the growth of New York is the news that Mr. Anson Ledrick of the Consolidated Copper Company has purchased an extensive building site on Riverside Drive and will presently improve it with a costly residence. Mr. Ledrick's decision to move his household effects to Manhattan Island is in accordance with a very marked tendency of successful Americans.

"There are those who are fond of depreciating New York; of assailing it with all sorts of cheap and sensational vituperation; of picturing it as the one great canker spot of the Western hemisphere, as irretrievably sunk in wickedness and shame. The fact remains, however, that the city, as never before, is the great national centre of wealth, culture, and distinction of every kind, and that here the citizen, successful in art, literature, or practical achievement, instinctively seeks his abiding-place.

"The restlessness of the average American millionaire while he remains outside the city limits is frequently remarked upon. And even the mighty overlords of Chicago, falling in with the prevailing fashion, have forsaken the shores of the great inland sea and pitched their tents with us; not to speak of the copper kings of Montana. Why is it that these interesting men, after acquiring fortune and fame elsewhere, are not content to remain upon the scene of their early triumphs? Why is it that they immediately pack their carpet-bags, take the first through train to our gates, and startle the investing public by the manner in which they bull the price of New York building lots?"

The old man listened absently.

"And probably some day I'll read of you in that same centre of culture and distinction as P. Percival Bines, a young man of obscure fam'ly, that rose by his own efforts to be the dashin' young cotillion leader and the well-known club-man, and that his pink teas fur dogs is barked about by every fashionable canine on the island."

The young man continued to read: "These men are not vain fools; they are shrewd, successful men of the world. They have surveyed New York City from a distance and have discovered that, in spite of Tammany and in spite of yellow journals, New York is a town of unequalled attractiveness. And so they come; and their coming shows us what we are. Not only millionaires; but also painters and novelists and men and women of varied distinction. The city palpitates with life and ambition and hope and promise; it attracts the great and the successful, and those who admire greatness and success. The force of natural selection is at work here as everywhere; and it is rapidly concentrating in our small island whatever is finest, most progressive, and best in the American character."

"Well, now do me a last favour before you pike off East," pleaded the old man. "Make a trip with me over the properties. See 'em once anyway, and see a little more of this country and these people. Mebbe they're better'n you think. Give me about three weeks or a month, and then, by Crimini, you can go off if you're set on it and be 'whatever is finest and best in the American character' as that feller puts it. But some day, son, you'll find out there's a whole lot of difference between a great man of wealth and a man of great wealth. Them last is gettin' terrible common."

[!-- CH5 --]

CHAPTER V.

Over the Hills

So the old man and the young man made the round of the Bines properties. The former nursed a forlorn little hope of exciting an interest in the concerns most vital to him; to the latter the leisurely tour in the private car was a sportive prelude to the serious business of life, as it should be lived, in the East. Considering it as such he endured it amiably, and indeed the long August days and the sharply cool nights were not without real enjoyment for him.

To feel impartially a multitude of strong, fresh wants—the imperative need to live life in all its fulness, this of itself makes the heart to sing. And, above the full complement of wants, to have been dowered by Heaven with a stanch disbelief in the unattainable,—this is a fortune rather to be chosen than a good name or great riches; since the name and riches and all things desired must come to the call of it.

Our Western-born youth of twenty-five had the wants and the sense of power inherited from a line of men eager of initiative, the product of an environment where only such could survive. Doubtless in him was the soul and body hunger of his grandfather, cramping and denying through hardship year after year, yet sustained by dreaming in the hardest times of the soft material luxuries that should some day be his. Doubtless marked in his character, too, was the slightly relaxed tension of his father; the disposition to feast as well as the capacity to fast; to take all, feel all, do all, with an avidity greater by reason of the grinding abstinence and the later indulgence of his forbears. A sage versed in the lore of heredity as modified by environment may some day trace for us the progress across this continent of an austere Puritan, showing how the strain emerges from the wilderness at the Western ocean with a character so widely differing from the one with which he began the adventurous journey,—regarding, especially, a tolerance of the so-called good and many of the bad things of life. Until this is done we may, perhaps, consider the change to be without valid cause.

Young Bines, at all events, was the flower of a pioneer stock, and him the gods of life cherished, so that all the forces of the young land about him were as his own. Yet, though his pulses rhymed to theirs he did not perceive his relation to them: neither he nor the land was yet become introspective. So informed was he with the impetuous spirit of youth that the least manifestation of life found its answering thrill in him. And it was sufficient to feel this. There was no time barren enough of sensation to reason about it. Uncle Peter's plan for an inspection of the Bines properties had at first won him by touching his sense of duty. He anticipated no interest or pleasure in the trip. Yet from the beginning he enjoyed it to the full. Being what he was, the constant movement pleased him, the out-of-doors life, the occasional sorties from the railroad by horse to some remote mining camp, or to a stock ranch or lumber-camp. He had been away for six years, and it pleased him to note that he was treated by the people he met with a genuine respect and liking as the son of his father. In the East he had been accustomed to a certain deference from very uncertain people because he was the son of a rich man. Here he had prestige because he was the son of Daniel Bines, organiser and man of affairs. He felt sometimes that the men at mine, mill, or ranch looked him over with misgiving, and had their cautious liking compelled only by the assurance that he was indeed the son of Daniel. They left him at these times with the suspicion that this bare fact meant enough with them to carry a man of infelicitous exterior.

He was pleased, moreover, to feel a new respect for Uncle Peter. He observed that men of all degrees looked up to him, sought and relied upon his judgment; the investing capitalist whom they met not less than the mine foreman; the made man and the labourer. In the drawing-room at home he had felt so agreeably superior to the old man; now he felt his own inferiority in a new element, and began to view him with more respect. He saw him to be the shrewd man of affairs, with a thorough grasp of detail in every branch of their interests; and a deep man, as well; a little narrow, perhaps, from his manner of life, but of unfailing kindness, and with rather a young man's radicalism than an old man's conservatism; one who, in an emergency, might be relied upon to take the unexpected but effective course.

For his own part, old Peter Bines learned in the course of the trip to understand and like his grandson better. At bottom he decided the young man to be sound after all, and he began to make allowance for his geographical heresies. The boy had been sent to an Eastern college; that was clearly a mistake, putting him out of sympathy with the West; and he had never been made to work, which was another and a graver mistake, "but he'd do more'n his father ever did if 'twa'n't fur his father's money," the old man concluded. For he saw in their talks that the very Eastern experience which he derided had given the young fellow a poise and a certain readiness to grasp details in the large that his father had been a lifetime in acquiring.

For a month they loitered over the surrounding territory in the private car, gliding through fertile valleys, over bleak passes, steaming up narrow little canons along the down-rushing streams with their cool shallow murmurs.

They would learn one day that a cross-cut was to be started on the Last Chance, or that the concentrates of the True Grit would thereafter be shipped to the Careless Creek smelter. Next they would learn that a new herd of Galloways had done finely last season on the Bitter Root ranch; that a big lot of ore was sacked at the Irish Boy, that an eighteen-inch vein had been struck in the Old Crow; that a concentrator was needed at Hellandgone, and that rich gold-bearing copper and sand bearing free gold had been found over on Horseback Ridge.

Another day they would drive far into a forest of spruce and hemlock to a camp where thousands of ties were being cut and floated down to the line of the new railway.

Sometimes they spent a night in one of the smaller mining camps off the railroad, whereof facetious notes would appear in the nearest weekly paper, such as:

"The Hon. Peter Bines and his grandson, who is a chip of the old block, spent Tuesday night at Rock Rip. Young Bines played the deal from soda card to hock at Lem Tully's Turf Exchange, and showed Lem's dealer good and plenty that there's no piker strain in him."

Or, it might be:

"Poker stacks continue to have a downward tendency. They were sold last week as low as eighty chips for a dollar; It is sad to see this noble game dragging along in the lower levels of prosperity, and we take as a favourable omen the appearance of Uncle Peter Bines and his grandson the other night. The prices went to par in a minute. Young Bines gave signs of becoming as delicately intuitional in the matter of concealed values as his father, the lamented Daniel J."

Again it was:

"Uncle Peter Bines reports from over Kettle Creek way that the sagebrush whiskey they take a man's two bits for there would gnaw holes in limestone. Peter is likelier to find a ledge of dollar bills than he is good whiskey this far off the main trail. The late Daniel J. could have told him as much, and Daniel J.'s boy, who accompanies Uncle Peter, will know it hereafter."

The young man felt wholesomely insignificant at these and other signs that he was taken on sufferance as a son and a grandson.

He was content that it should be so. Indeed there was little wherewith he was not content. That he was habitually preoccupied, even when there was most movement about them, early became apparent to Uncle Peter. That he was constantly cheerful proved the matter of his musings to be pleasant. That he was proner than most youths to serious meditation Uncle Peter did not believe. Therefore he attributed the moods of abstraction to some matter probably connected with his project of removing the family East. It was not permitted Uncle Peter to know, nor was his own youth recent enough for him to suspect, the truth. And the mystery stayed inviolate until a day came and went that laid it bare even to the old man's eyes.

They awoke one morning to find the car on a siding at the One Girl mine. Coupled to it was another car from an Eastern road that their train had taken on sometime in the night. Percival noted the car with interest as he paced beside the track in the cool clear air before breakfast. The curtains were drawn, and the only signs of life to be observed were at the kitchen end, where the white-clad cook could be seen astir. Grant, porter on the Bines car, told him the other car had been taken on at Kaslo Junction, and that it belonged to Rulon Shepler, the New York financier, who was aboard with a party of friends.

As Percival and Uncle Peter left their car for the shaft-house after breakfast, the occupants of the other car were bestirring themselves.

From one of the open windows a low but impassioned voice was exhausting the current idioms of damnation in sweeping dispraise of all land-areas north and west of Fifty-ninth Street, New York.

Uncle Peter smiled grimly. Percival flushed, for the hidden protestant had uttered what were his own sentiments a month before.

Reaching the shaft-house they chatted with Pangburn, the superintendent, and then went to the store-room to don blouses and overalls for a descent into the mine.

For an hour they stayed underground, traversing the various levels and drifts, while Pangburn explained the later developments of the vein and showed them where the new stoping had been begun.

[!-- CH6 --]

CHAPTER VI.

A Meeting and a Clashing

As they stepped from the cage at the surface Percival became aware of a group of strangers between him and the open door of the shaft-house,—people displaying in dress and manner the unmistakable stamp of New York. For part of a minute, while the pupils of his eyes were contracting to the light, he saw them but vaguely. Then, as his sight cleared, he beheld foremost in the group, beaming upon him with an expression of pleased and surprised recognition, the girl whose face and voice had for nearly half a year peopled his lover's solitude with fair visions and made its silence to be all melody.

Had the encounter been anticipated his composure would perhaps have failed him. Not a few of his waking dreams had sketched this, their second meeting, and any one of the ways it had pleased him to plan it would assuredly have found him nervously embarrassed. But so wildly improbable was this reality that not the daringest of his imagined happenings had approached it. His thoughts for the moment had been not of her; then, all at once, she stood before him in the flesh, and he was cool, almost unmoved. He suspected at once that her father was the trim, fastidiously dressed man who looked as if he had been abducted from a morning stroll down the avenue to his club; that the plump, ruddy, high-bred woman, surveying the West disapprovingly through a lorgnon, would be her mother. Shepler he knew by sight, with his big head, massive shoulders, and curiously short, tapering body. Some other men and a woman were scanning the hoisting machinery with superior looks.

The girl, before starting toward him, had waited hardly longer than it took him to eye the group. And then came an awkward two seconds upon her whose tact in avoiding the awkward was reputed to be more than common.

With her hand extended she had uttered, "Why, Mr.—" before it flashed upon her that she did not know the name of the young man she was greeting.

The "Mister" was threatening to prolong itself into an "r" of excruciating length and disgraceful finality, an "r" that is terminated neatly by no one but hardened hotel-clerks. Then a miner saved the day. "Mr. Bines," he said, coming up hurriedly behind Percival with several specimens of ore, "you forgot these."

"-r-r-r. Bines, how do you do!" concluded the girl with an eye-flash of gratitude at the humble instrument that had prevented an undue hiatus in her salutation. They were apart from the others and for the moment unnoticed.

The young man took the hand so cordially offered, and because of all the things he wished and had so long waited to say, he said nothing.

"Isn't it jolly! I am Miss Milbrey," she added in a lower tone, and then, raising her voice, "Mamma, Mr. Bines—and papa," and there followed a hurried and but half-acknowledged introduction to the other members of the party. And, behold! in that moment the young man had schemed the edifice of all his formless dreams. For six months he had known the unsurpassable luxury of wanting and of knowing what he wanted. Now, all at once, he saw this to be a world in which dreams come more than true.

Shepler and the party were to go through the mine as a matter of sight-seeing. They were putting on outer clothes from the store-room to protect them from the dirt and damp.

Presently Percival found himself again at the bottom of the shaft. During the descent of twelve hundred feet he had reflected upon the curious and interesting fact that her name should be Milbrey. He felt dimly that this circumstance should be ranked among the most interesting of natural phenomena,—that she should have a name, as the run of mortals, and that it should be one name more than another. When he discovered further that her Christian name was Avice the phenomenon became stupendously bewildering. They two were in the last of the party to descend. On reaching bottom he separated her with promptness and guile from two solemn young men, copies of each other, and they were presently alone. In the distance they could see the others following ghostly lamps. From far off mysterious recesses came the muffled musical clink of the sledges on the drills. An employee who had come down with them started to be their guide. Percival sent him back.

"I've just been through; I can find my way again."

"Ver' well," said the man, "with the exception that it don't happen something,—yes?" And he stayed where he was.

Down one of the cross-cuts they started, stepping aside to let a car of ore be pushed along to the shaft.

"Do you know," began the girl, "I am so glad to be able to thank you for what you did that night."

"I'm glad you are able. I was beginning to think I should always have those thanks owing to me."

"I might have paid them at the time, but it was all so unexpected and so sudden,—it rattled me, quite."

"I thought you were horribly cool-headed."

"I wasn't."

"Your manner reduced me to a groom who opened your carriage door."

"But grooms don't often pick strange ladies up bodily and bear them out of a pandemonium of waltzing cab-horses. I'd never noticed before that cab-horses are so frivolous and hysterical."

"And grooms know where to look for their pay."

They were interrupting nervously, and bestowing furtive side-looks upon each other.

"If I'd not seen you," said the girl, "glanced at you—before—that evening, I shouldn't have remembered so well; doubtless I'd not have recognised you to-day."

"I didn't know you did glance at me, and yet I watched you every moment of the evening. You didn't know that, did you?"

She laughed.

"Of course I knew it. A woman has to note such things without letting it be seen that she sees."

"And I'd have sworn you never once so much as looked my way."

"Don't we do it well, though?"

"And in spite of all the time I gave to a study of your face I lost the detail of it. I could keep only the effect of its expression and the few tones of your voice I heard. You know I took those on a record so I could make 'em play over any time I wanted to listen. Do you know, that has all been very sweet to me, my helping you and the memory of it,—so vague and sweet."

"Aren't you afraid we're losing the others?"

She halted and looked back.

"No; I'm afraid we won't lose them; come on; you can't turn back now. And you don't want to hear anything about mines; it wouldn't be at all good for you, I'm sure. Quick, down this way, or you'll hear Pangburn telling some one what a stope is, and think what a thing that would be to carry in your head."

"Really, a stope sounds like something that would 'get you' in the night! I'm afraid!"

Half in his spirit she fled with him down a dimly lighted incline where men were working at the rocky wall with sledge and drill. There was that in his manner which compelled her quite as literally as when at their first meeting he had picked her up in his arms.

As they walked single-file through the narrowing of a drift, she wondered about him. He was Western, plainly. An employee in the mine, probably a manager or director or whatever it was they called those in authority in mines. Plainly, too, he was a man of action and a man who engaged all her instinctive liking. Something in him at once coerced her friendliest confidence. These were the admissions she made to herself. She divined him, moreover, to be a blend of boldness and timidity. He was bold to the point of telling her things unconventionally, of beguiling her into remote underground passages away from the party; yet she understood; she knew at once that he was a determined but unspoiled gentleman; that under no provocation could he make a mistake. In any situation of loneliness she would have felt safe with him—"as with a brother"—she thought. Then, feeling her cheeks burn, she turned back and said:

"I must tell you he was my brother—that man—that night."

He was sorry and glad all at once. The sorrow being the lesser and more conventional emotion, he started upon an awkward expression of it, which she interrupted.

"Never mind saying that, thank you. Tell me something about yourself, now. I really would like to know you. What do you see and hear and do in this strange life?"

"There's not much variety," he answered, with a convincing droop of depression. "For six months I've been seeing you and hearing you—seeing you and hearing you; not much variety in that—nothing worth telling you about."

Despite her natural caution, intensified by training, she felt herself thrill to the very evident sincerity of his tones, so that she had to affect mirth to seem at ease.

"Dear, dear, what painful monotony; and how many men have said it since these rocks were made; and now you say it,—well, I admit—"

"But there's nothing new under the sun, you know."

"No; not even a new excuse for plagiarism, is there?"

"Well, you see as long as the same old thing keeps true the same old way of telling it will be more or less depended upon. After a few hundred years of experiment, you know, they hit on the fewest words that tell the most, and everybody uses them because no one can improve them. Maybe the prehistoric cave-gentleman, who proposed to his loved one with a war club just back of her left ear, had some variation of the formula suiting his simple needs, after he'd gotten her home and brought her to and she said it was 'all so sudden;' and a man can work in little variations of his own to-day. For example—"

"I'm sure we'd best be returning."

"For example, I could say, you know, that for keeping the mind active and the heart working overtime the memory of you surpasses any tonic advertised in the backs of the magazines. Or, that—"

"I think that's enough; I see you could vary the formula, in case—"

"—have varied it—but don't forget I prefer the original unvaried. After all, there are certain things that you can't tell in too few words. Now, you—"

"You stubborn person. Really, I know all about myself. I asked you to tell me about yourself."

"And I began at once to tell you everything about myself—everything of interest—which is yourself."

"I see your sense of values is gone, poor man. I shall question you. Now you are a miner, and I like men of action, men who do things; I've often wondered about you, and seriously, I'm glad to find you here doing something. I remembered you kindly, with real gratitude, indeed. You didn't seem like a New York man either, and I decided you weren't. Honestly, I am glad to find you here at your work in your miner's clothes. You mustn't think we forget how to value men that work."

On the point of saying thoughtlessly, "But I'm not working here—I own the mine," he checked himself. Instead he began a defence of the man who doesn't work, but who could if he had to. "For example," he continued, "here we are at a place that you must be carried over; otherwise you'd have to wade through a foot of water or go around that long way we've come. I've rubber boots on, and so I pick you up this way—" He held her lightly on his arm and she steadied herself with a hand between his shoulders.

"And staggering painfully under my burden, I wade out to the middle of this subterranean lake." He stopped.

"You see, I've learned to do things. I could pick you from that slippery street and put you in your carriage, and I can pick you up now without wasting words about it—"

"But you're wasting time—hurry, please—and, anyway, you're a miner and used to such things."

He remained standing.

"But I'm not wasting time, and I'm not a miner in the sense you mean. I own this mine, and I suppose for the most part I'm the sort of man you seem to have gotten tired of; the man who doesn't have to do anything. Even now I'm this close to work only because my grandfather wanted me to look over the properties my father left."

"But, hurry, please, and set me down."

"Not until I warn you that I'm just as apt to do things as the kind of man you thought I was. This is twice I've picked you up now. Look out for me;—next time I may not put you down at all."

She gave a low little laugh, denoting unruffled serenity. She was glorying secretly in his strength, and she knew his boldness and timidity were still justly balanced. And there was the rather astonishing bit of news he had just given her. That needed a lot of consideration.

With slow, sure-footed steps he reached the farther side of the water and put her on her feet.

"There, I thought I'd reveal the distressing truth about myself while I had you at my mercy."

"I might have suspected, but I gave the name no thought. Bines, to be sure. You are the son of the Bines who died some months ago. I heard Mr. Shepler and my father talking about some of your mining properties. Mr. Shepler thought the 'One Girl' was such a funny name for your father to give a mine."

Now they neared the foot of the shaft where the rest of the party seemed to await them. As they came up Percival felt himself raked by a broadside from the maternal lorgnon that left him all but disabled. The father glowered at him and asked questions in the high key we are apt to adopt in addressing foreigners, in the instinctive fallacy that any language can be understood by any one if it be spoken loudly enough. The mother's manner was a crushing rebuke to the young man for his audacity. The father's manner was meant to intimate that natives of the region in which they were then adventuring were not worthy of rebuke, save such general rebukes as may be conveyed by displaying one's natural superiority of manner. The other members of the party, excepting Shepler, who talked with Pangburn at a little distance, took cue from the Milbreys and aggressively ignored the abductor of an only daughter. They talked over, around, and through him, as only may those mortals whom it hath pleased heaven to have born within certain areas on Manhattan Island.

The young man felt like a social outcast until he caught a glance from Miss Milbrey. That young woman was still friendly, which he could understand, and highly amused, which he could not understand. While the temperature was at its lowest the first load ascended, including Miss Milbrey and her parents, a chatty blonde, and an uncomfortable little man who, despite his being twelve hundred feet toward the centre thereof, had three times referred bitterly to the fact that he was "out of the world." "I shall see you soon above ground, shall I not?" Miss Milbrey had asked, at which her mother shot Percival a parting volley from her rapid-fire lorgnon, while her father turned upon him a back whose sidelines were really admirable, considering his age and feeding habits. The behaviour of these people appeared to intensify the amusement of their child. The two solemn young men who remained continued to chat before Percival as they would have chatted before the valet of either. He began to sound the spiritual anguish of a pariah. Also to feel truculent and, in his own phrase, "Westy." With him "Westy" meant that you were as good as any one else "and a shade better than a whole lot if it came to a show-down." He was not a little mortified to find how easy it was for him to fall back upon that old cushion of provincial arrogance. It was all right for Uncle Peter, but for himself,—well, it proved that he was less finely Eastern than he had imagined.

As the cage came down for another ascent, he let the two solemn young men go up with Shepler and Pangburn, and went to search for Uncle Peter.

"There, thank God, is a man!" he reflected.

[!-- CH7 --]

CHAPTER VII.

The Rapid-fire Lorgnon Is Spiked

He found Uncle Peter in the cross-cut, studying a bit of ore through a glass, and they went back to ascend.

"Them folks," said the old man, "must be the kind that newspaper meant, that had done something in practical achievement. I bet that girl's mother will achieve something practical with you fur cuttin' the girl out of the bunch; she was awful tormented; talked two or three times about the people in the humbler walks of life bein' strangely something or other. You ain't such a humble walker now, are you, son? But say, that yellow-haired woman, she ain't a bit diffident, is she? She's a very hearty lady, I must say!"

"But did you see Miss Milbrey?"

"Oh, that's her name is it, the one that her mother was so worried about and you? Yes, I saw her. Peart and cunnin', but a heap too wise fur you, son; take my steer on that. Say, she'd have your pelt nailed to the barn while you was wonderin' which way you'd jump."

"Oh, I know I'm only a tender, teething infant," the young man answered, with masterly satire. "Well, now, as long's you got that bank roll you jest look out fur cupboard love—the kind the old cat has when she comes rubbin' up against your leg and purrin' like you was the whole thing."

The young man smiled, as they went up, with youth's godlike faith in its own sufficiency, albeit he smarted from the slights put upon him.

At the surface a pleasant shock was in store for him. There stood the formidable Mrs. Milbrey beaming upon him. Behind her was Mr. Milbrey, the pleasing model of all a city's refinements, awaiting the boon of a hand-clasp. Behind these were the uncomfortable little man, the chatty blonde, and the two solemn young men who had lately exhibited more manner than manners. Percival felt they were all regarding him now with affectionate concern. They pressed forward effusively.

"So good of you, Mr. Bines, to take an interest in us—my daughter has been so anxious to see one of these fascinating mines." "Awfully obliged, Mr. Bines." "Charmed, old man; deuced pally of you to stay by us down in that hole, you know." "So clever of you to know where to find the gold—"

He lost track of the speakers. Their speeches became one concerted effusion of affability that was music to his ears.

Miss Milbrey was apart from the group. Having doffed the waterproofs, she was now pluming herself with those fussy-looking but mysteriously potent little pats which restore the attire and mind of women to their normal perfection and serenity. Upon her face was still the amused look Percival had noted below.

"And, Mr. Bines, do come in with that quaint old grandfather of yours and lunch with us," urged Mrs. Milbrey, who had, as it were, spiked her lorgnon. "Here's Mr. Shepler to second the invitation—and then we shall chat about this very interesting West."

Miss Milbrey nodded encouragement, seeming to chuckle inwardly.

In the spacious dining compartment of the Shepler car the party was presently at lunch.

"You seem so little like a Western man," Mrs. Milbrey confided graciously to Percival on her right.

"We cal'late he'll fetch out all straight, though, in a year or so," put in Uncle Peter, from over his chop, with guileless intent to defend his grandson from what he believed to be an attack. "Of course a young man's bound to get some foolishness into him in an Eastern college like this boy went to."

Percival had flushed at the compliment to himself; also at the old man's failure to identify it as such.

Mr. Milbrey caressed his glass of claret with ardent eyes and took the situation in hand with the easy confidence of a master.

"The West," said he, affably, "has sent us some magnificent men. In truth, it's amazing to take count of the Western men among us in all the professions. They are notable, perhaps I should say, less for deliberate niceties of style than for a certain rough directness, but so adaptable is the American character that one frequently does not suspect their—er—humble origin."

"Meaning their Western origin?" inquired Shepler, blandly, with secret intent to brew strife.

"Well—er—to be sure, my dear fellow, not necessarily humble,—of course—perhaps I should have said—"

"Of course, not necessarily disgraceful, as you say, Milbrey," interrupted Shepler, "and they often do conceal it. Why, I know a chap in New York who was positively never east of Kansas City until he was twenty-five or so, and yet that fellow to-day"—he lowered his voice to the pitch of impressiveness—"has over eighty pairs of trousers and complains of the hardship every time he has to go to Boston."

"Fancy, now!" exclaimed Mrs. Drelmer, the blonde. Mr. Milbrey looked slightly puzzled and Uncle Peter chuckled, affirming mentally that Rulon Shepler must be like one of those tug-boats, with most of his lines under the surface.

"But, I say, you know, Shepler," protested one of the solemn young men, "he must still talk like a banjo."

"And gargle all his 'r's,'" added the other, very earnestly. "They never get over that, you know."

"Instead of losin' 'em entirely," put in Uncle Peter, who found himself feeling what his grandson called "Westy." "Of course, he calls it 'Ne' Yawk,' and prob'ly he don't like it in Boston because they always call 'em 'rawroystahs.'"

"Good for the old boy!" thought Percival, and then, aloud: "It is hard for the West and the East to forgive each other's dialects. The inflated 'r' and the smothered 'r' never quite harmonise."

"Western money talks good straight New York talk," ventured Miss Milbrey, with the air of one who had observed in her time.

Shepler grinned, and the parents of the young woman resisted with indifferent success their twin impulses to frown.

"But the service is so wretched in the West," suggested Oldaker, the carefully dressed little man with the tired, troubled eyes, whom the world had been deprived of. "I fancy, now, there's not a good waiter this side of New York."

"An American," said Percival, "never can make a good waiter or a good valet. It takes a Latin, or, still better, a Briton, to feel the servility required for good service of that sort. An American, now, always fails at it because he knows he is as good as you are, and he knows that you know it, and you know that he knows you know it, and there you are, two mirrors of American equality face to face and reflecting each other endlessly, and neither is comfortable. The American is as uncomfortable at having certain services performed for him by another American as the other is in performing them. Give him a Frenchman or an Italian or a fellow born within the sound of Bow Bells to clean his boots and lay out his things and serve his dinner and he's all right enough."

"Hear, hear!" cried Uncle Peter.

"Fancy, now," said Mrs. Drelmer, "a creature in a waiter's jacket having emotions of that sort!"

"Our excellent country," said Mr. Milbrey, "is perhaps not yet what it will be; there is undeniably a most distressing rawness where we might expect finish. Now in Chicago," he continued in a tone suitably hushed for the relation of occult phenomena, "we dined with a person who served champagne with the oysters, soup, fish, and entrée, and for the remainder of the dinner—you may credit me or not—he proffered a claret of 1875—. I need hardly remind you, the most delicate vintage of the latter half of the century—and it was served frappé." There was genuine emotion in the speaker's voice.

"And papa nearly swooned when our host put cracked ice and two lumps of sugar into his own glass—"

"Avice, dear!" remonstrated the father in a tone implying that some things positively must not be mentioned at table.

"Well, you shouldn't expect too much of those self-made men in Chicago," said Shepler.

"If they'd only make themselves as well as they make their sausages and things," sighed Mr. Milbrey.

"And the self-made man will talk shop," suggested Oldaker. "He thinks you're dying to hear how he made the first thousand of himself."

"Still, those Chicago chaps learn quickly enough when they settle in New York," ventured one of the young men.

"I knew a Chicago chap who lived East two years and went back not a half bad sort," said the other. "God help him now, though; his father made him go back to work in a butcher shop or something of the sort."

"Best thing I ever heard about Chicago," said Uncle Peter, "a man from your town told me once he had to stay in Chicago a year, and, says he, 'I went out there a New Yorker, and I went home an American,' he says." The old man completed this anecdote in tones that were slightly inflamed.

"How extremely typical!" said Mrs. Milbrey. "Truly the West is the place of unspoiled Americanism and the great unspent forces; you are quite right, Mr. Bines."

"Think of all the unspent forces back in that silver mine," remarked Miss Milbrey, with a patent effort to be significant.

"My perverse child delights to pose as a sordid young woman," the fond mother explained to Percival, "yet no one can be less so, and you, Mr. Bines, I am sure, would be the last to suspect her of it. I saw in you at once those sterling qualities—"

"Isn't it dreadfully dark down in that sterling silver mine?" observed Miss Milbrey, apropos of nothing, apparently, while her mother attacked a second chop that she had meant not to touch.

"Here's hoping we'll soon be back in God's own country," said Oldaker, raising his glass.

"Hear, hear!" cried Uncle Peter, and drained his glass eagerly as they drank the toast. Whereat they all laughed and Mrs. Drelmer said, "What a dear, lively wit, for an old gentleman."

"Oldaker," said Shepler, "has really been the worst sufferer. This is his first trip West."

"Beg pardon, Shepler! I was West as far as Buffalo—let me see—in 1878 or '79."

"Dear me! is that so?" queried Uncle Peter. "I got East as fur as Cheyenne that same year. We nearly run into each other, didn't we?"

Shepler grinned again.

"Oldaker found a man from New York on the train the other day, up in one of the emigrant cars. He was a truck driver, and he looked it and talked it, but Oldaker stuck by him all the afternoon."

"Well, he'd left the old town three weeks after I had, and he'd been born there the same year I was—in the Ninth ward—and he remembered as well as I did the day Barnum's museum burned at Broadway and Ann. I liked to hear him talk. Why, it was a treat just to hear him say Broadway and Twenty-third Street, or Madison Square or City Hall Park. The poor devil had consumption, too, and probably he'll never see them again. I don't know if I shall ever have it, but I'd never leave the old town as he was doing."

"That's like Billy Brue," said Uncle Peter. "Billy loves faro bank jest as this gentleman loves New York. When he gets a roll he has to play. One time he landed in Pocatello when there wa'n't but one game in town. Billy found it and started in. A friend saw him there and called him out. 'Billy,' says he, 'cash in and come out; that's a brace game.' 'Sure?' says Billy. 'Sure,' says the feller. 'All right,' says Billy, 'much obliged fur puttin' me on.' And he started out lookin' fur another game. About two hours later the feller saw Billy comin' out of the same place and Billy owned up he'd gone back there and blowed in every cent. 'Why, you geezer,' says his friend, 'didn't I put you on that they was dealin' brace there?' 'Sure,' says Billy, 'sure you did. But what could I do? It was the only game in town!'"

"That New York mania is the same sort," said Shepler, laughing, while Mrs. Drelmer requested everybody to fancy immediately.

"Your grandfather is so dear and quaint," said Mrs. Milbrey; "you must certainly bring him to New York with you, for of course a young man of your capacity and graces will never be satisfied out of New York."

"Young men like yourself are assuredly needed there," remarked Mr. Milbrey, warmly.

"Surely they are," agreed Miss Milbrey, and yet with a manner that seemed almost to annoy both parents. They were sparing no opportunity to make the young man conscious of his real oneness with those about him, and yet subtly to intimate that people of just the Milbreys' perception were required to divine it at present. "These Westerners fancy you one of themselves, I dare say," Mrs. Milbrey had said, and the young man purred under the strokings. His fever for the East was back upon him. His weeks with Uncle Peter going over the fields where his father had prevailed had made him convalescent, but these New Yorkers—the very manner and atmosphere of them—undid the work. He envied them their easier speech, their matter-of-fact air of omniscience, the elaborate and cultivated simplicity of their dress, their sureness and sufficiency in all that they thought and said and did. He was homesick again for the life he had glimpsed. The West was rude, desolate, and depressing. Even Uncle Peter, whom he had come warmly to admire, jarred upon him with his crudity and his Western assertiveness.

And there was the woman of the East, whose presence had made the day to seem dream-like; and she was kind, which was more than he would have dared to hope, and her people, after their first curious chill of indifference, seemed actually to be courting him. She, the fleeting and impalpable dream-love, whom the thought of seeing ever again had been wildly absurd, was now a human creature with a local habitation, the most beautiful name in the world, and two parents whose complaisance was obvious even through the lover's timidity.

[!-- CH8 --]

CHAPTER VIII.

Up Skiplap Canon

The meal was ending in smoke, the women, excepting Miss Milbrey, having lighted cigarettes with the men. The talk had grown less truculently

Mr. Milbrey described with minute and loving particularity the preparation of oeufs de Faisan, avec beurre au champagne.

Mrs. Milbrey related an anecdote of New York society, not much in itself, but which permitted the disclosure that she habitually addressed by their first names three of the foremost society leaders, and that each of these personages adopted a like familiarity toward her.

Mrs. Drelmer declared that she meant to have Uncle Peter Bines at one of her evenings the very first time he should come to New York, and that, if he didn't let her know of his coming, she would be offended. Oldaker related an incident of the ball given to the Prince of Wales, travelling as Baron Renfrew, on the evening of October 12, 1860, in which his father had figured briefly before the royal guest to the abiding credit of American tact and gentility.

Shepler was amused until he became sleepy, whereupon he extended the freedom of his castle to his guests, and retired to his stateroom.

Uncle Peter took a final shot at Oldaker. He was observed to be laughing, and inquiry brought this:

"I jest couldn't help snickerin' over his idee of God's own country. He thinks God's own country is a little strip of an island with a row of well-fed folks up and down the middle, and a lot of hungry folks on each side. Mebbe he's right. I'll be bound, it needs the love of God. But if it is His own country, it don't make Him any connysoor of countries with me. I'll tell you that."

Oldaker smiled at this assault, the well-bred, tolerant smile that loyal New Yorkers reserve for all such barbaric belittling of their empire. Then he politely asked Uncle Peter to show Mrs. Drelmer and himself through the stamp mill.

At Percival's suggestion of a walk, Miss Milbrey was delighted.

After an inspection of the Bines car, in which Oldaker declared he would be willing to live for ever, if it could be anchored firmly in Madison Square, the party separated. Out into the clear air, already cooling under the slanting rays of the sun, the young man and the girl went together. Behind them lay the one street of the little mining camp, with its wooden shanties on either side of the railroad track. Down this street Uncle Peter had gone, leading his charges toward the busy ant-hill on the mountainside. Ahead the track wound up the canon, cunningly following the tortuous course of the little river to be sure of practicable grades. On the farther side of the river a mountain road paralleled the railway. Up this road the two went, followed by a playful admonition from Mrs. Milbrey: "Remember, Mr. Bines, I place my child in your keeping."

Percival waxed conscientious about his charge and insisted at once upon being assured that Miss Milbrey would be warm enough with the scarlet golf-cape about her shoulders; that she was used to walking long distances; that her boots were stoutly soled; and that she didn't mind the sun in their faces. The girl laughed at him.

Looking up the canon with its wooded sides, cool and green, they could see a grey, dim mountain, with patches of snow near its top, in the far distance, and ranges of lesser eminences stepping up to it. "It's a hundred miles away," he told her.

Down the canon the little river flickered toward them, like a billowy silver ribbon "trimmed with white chiffon around the rocks," declared the girl. In the blue depths of the sky, an immense height above, lolled an eagle, lazy of wing, in lordly indolence. The suggestions to the eye were all of spacious distances and large masses—of the room and stuff for unbounded action.

"Your West is the breathingest place," she said, as they crossed a foot-bridge over the noisy little stream and turned up the road. "I don't believe I ever drew a full breath until I came to these altitudes."

"One has to breathe more air here—there's less oxygen in it, and you must breathe more to get your share, and so after awhile one becomes robust. Your cheeks are already glowing, and we've hardly started. There, now, there are your colours, see—"

Along the edge of the green pines and spruce were lavender asters. A little way in the woods they could see the blue columbines and the mountain phlox, pink and red.

"There are your eyes and your cheeks."

"What a dangerous character you'd be if you were sent to match silks!"

On the dry barren slopes of gravel across the river, full in the sun's glare, grew the Spanish bayonet, with its spikes of creamy white flowers.

"There I am, more nearly," she pointed to them; "they're ever so much nearer my disposition. But about this thin air; it must make men work harder for what comes easier back in our country, so that they may become able to do more—more capable. I am thinking of your grandfather. You don't know how much I admire him. He is so stanch and strong and fresh. There's more fire in him now than in my father or Launton Oldaker, and I dare say he's a score of years older than either of them. I don't think you quite appreciate what a great old fellow he is."

"I admire Uncle Peter much more, I'm sure, than he admires me. He's afraid I'm not strong enough to admire that Eastern climate of yours—social and moral."

"I suppose it's natural for you to wish to go. You'd be bored here, would you not? You couldn't stay in these mountains and be such a man as your grandfather. And yet there ought to be so much to do here; it's all so fresh and roomy and jolly. Really I've grown enthusiastic about it."

"Ah, but think of what there is in the East—and you are there. To think that for six months I've treasured every little memory of you—such a funny little lot as they were—to think that this morning I awoke thinking of you, yet hardly hoping ever to see you, and to think that for half the night we had ridden so near each other in sleep, and there was no sign or signal or good omen. And then to think you should burst upon me like some new sunrise that the stupid astronomers hadn't predicted.

"You see," he went on, after a moment, "I don't ask what you think of me. You couldn't think anything much as yet, but there's something about this whole affair, our meeting and all, that makes me think it's going to be symmetrical in the end. I know it won't end here. I'll tell you one way Western men learn. They learn not to be afraid to want things out of their reach, and they believe devoutly—because they've proved it so often—that if you want a thing hard enough and keep wanting it, nothing can keep it away from you."

A bell had been tinkling nearer and nearer on the road ahead. Now a heavy wagon, filled with sacks of ore, came into view, drawn by four mules. As they stood aside to let it pass he scanned her face for any sign it might show, but he could see no more than a look of interest for the brawny driver of the wagon, shouting musically to his straining team.

"You are rather inscrutable," he said, as they resumed the road.

She turned and smiled into his eyes with utter frankness.

"At least you must be sure that I like you; that I am very friendly; that I want to know you better, and want you to know me better. You don't know me at all, you know. You Westerners have another way, of accepting people too readily. It may work no harm among yourselves, but perhaps Easterners are a bit more perilous. Sometimes, now, a very Eastern person doesn't even accept herself—himself—very trustingly; she—he—finds it so hard to get acquainted with himself."

The young man provided one of those silences of which a few discerning men are instinctively capable and for which women thank them.

"This road," she said, after a little time of rapid walking, "leads right up to the end of the world, doesn't it? See, it ends squarely in the sun." They stopped where the turn had opened to the west a long vista of grey and purple hills far and high. They stood on a ridge of broken quartz and gneiss, thrown up in a bygone age. To their left a few dwarf Scotch firs threw shadows back toward the town. The ball of red fire in the west was half below the rim of the distant peak.

"Stand so,"—she spoke in a slightly hushed tone that moved him a step nearer almost to touch her arm,—"and feel the round little earth turning with us. We always think the sun drops down away from us, but it stays still. Now remember your astronomy and feel the earth turn. See—you can actually see it move—whirling along like a child's ball because it can't help itself, and then there's the other motion around the sun, and the other, the rushing of everything through space, and who knows how many others, and yet we plan our futures and think we shall do finely this way or that, and always forget that we're taken along in spite of ourselves. Sometimes I think I shall give up trying; and then I see later that even that feeling was one of the unknown motions that I couldn't control. The only thing we know is that we are moved in spite of ourselves, so what is the use of bothering about how many ways, or where they shall fetch us?"

"Ah, Miss Khayyam, I've often read your father's verses."

"No relation whatever; we're the same person—he was I."

"But don't forget you can see the earth moving by a rising as well as by a setting star, by watching a sun rise—"

"A rising star if you wish," she said, smiling once more with perfect candour and friendliness.

They turned to go back in the quick-coming mountain dusk.

As they started downward she sang from the "Persian Garden," and he blended his voice with hers:

"Myself when young did eagerly frequent
Doctor and Saint and heard great argument
About it and about: but evermore
Came out by the same door where in I went."
"With them the seed of Wisdom did I sow,
And with my own hand wrought to make it grow;
And this was all the Harvest that I reaped—'
I came like Water and like Wind I go.'"

"I shall look forward to seeing you—and your mother and sister?—in New York," she said, when they parted, "and I am sure I shall have more to say when we're better known to each other."

"If you were the one woman before, if the thought of you was more than the substance of any other to me,—you must know how it will be now, when the dream has come true. It's no small thing for your best dream to come true."

"Dear me! haven't we been sentimental and philosophic? I'm never like this at home, I assure you. I've really been thoughtful."

From up the cañon came the sound of a puffing locomotive that presently steamed by them with its three dingy little coaches, and, after a stop for water and the throwing of a switch, pushed back to connect with the Shepler car.

The others of the party crowded out on to the rear platform as Percival helped Miss Milbrey up the steps. Uncle Peter had evidently been chatting with Shepler, for as they came out the old man was saying, "'Get action' is my motto. Do things. Don't fritter. Be something and be it good and hard. Get action early and often."

Shepler nodded. "But men like us are apt to be unreasonable with the young. We expect them to have their own vigour and our wisdom, and the infirmities of neither."

The good-byes were hastily said, and the little train rattled down the cañon. Miss Milbrey stood in the door of the car, and Percival watched her while the glistening rails that seemed to be pushing her away narrowed in perspective. She stood motionless and inscrutable to the last, but still looking steadily toward him—almost wistfully, it seemed to him once.

"Well," he said cheerfully to Uncle Peter.

"You know, son, I don't like to cuss, but except one or two of them folks I'd sooner live in the middle kittle of hell than in the place that turns 'em out. They rile me—that talk about 'people in the humbler walks of life.' Of course I am humble, but then, son, if you come right down to it, as the feller said, I ain't so damned humble!"

[!-- CH9 --]

CHAPTER IX.

Three Letters, Private and Confidential

From Mr. Percival Bines to Miss Psyche Bines, Montana City.

On car at Skiplap, Tuesday Night.

Dear Sis:—When you kept nagging me about "Who is the girl?" and I said you could search me, you wouldn't have it that way. But, honestly, until this morning I didn't know her myself. Now that I can put you next, here goes.

One night last March, after I'd come back from the other side, I happened into a little theatre on Broadway where a burlesque was running. It's a rowdy little place—a music hall—but nice people go there because, though it's stuffy, it's kept decent.

She was in a box with two men—one old and one young—and an older woman. As soon as I saw her she had me lashed to the mast in a high sea, with the great salt waves dashing over me. I never took much stock in the tales about its happening at first sight, but they're as matter-of-fact as market reports. Soon as I looked at her it seemed to me I'd known her always. I was sure we knew each other better than any two people between the Battery and Yonkers, and that I wasn't acting sociable to sit down there away from her and pretend we were Strangers Yet. Actually, it rattled me so I had to take the full count. If I hadn't been wedged in between a couple of people that filled all the space, and then some, it isn't any twenty to one that I wouldn't have gone right up to her and asked her what she meant by cutting me. I was udgy enough for it. But I kept looking and after awhile I was able to sit up and ask what hit me.

She was dressed in something black and kind of shiny and wore a big black hat fussed up with little red roses, and her face did more things to me in a minute than all the rest I've ever seen. It was full of little kissy places. Her lips were very red and her teeth were very white, and I couldn't tell about her eyes. But she was bred up to the last notch, I could see that.

Well, I watched her through the tobacco smoke until the last curtain fell. They were putting on wraps for a minute or so, and I noticed that the young fellow in the party, who'd been drinking all through the show, wasn't a bit too steady to do an act on the high-wire. They left the box and came down the stairs and I bunched into the crowd and let myself ooze out with them, wondering if I'd ever see her again.

I fetched up at an exit on the side street, and there they were directly in front of me. I just naturally drifted to one side and continued my little private corner in crude rubber. It was drizzling in a beastly way, the street was full of carriages, numbers were being called, cab-drivers were insulting each other hoarsely, people dashing out to see if their carriages weren't coming—everything in a whirl of drizzle and dark and yells, with the horses' hoofs on the pavement sounding like castanets. The two older people got into a carriage and were driven off, while she and the young fellow waited for theirs. I could see then that he was good and soused. He was the same lad they throw on the screen when the "Old Homestead" Quartet sings "Where Is My Wandering Boy To-night?" I could see she was annoyed and a little worried, because he was past taking notice.

The man kept yelling the number of their carriage from time to time, while the others he'd called were driving up—it was 249 if any one ever tries to worm it out of you—and then I saw from her face that 249 had wriggled pretty near to the curb, but was still kept away by another carriage. She said something to the drunken cub and started to reach the carriage by going out into the street behind the one in its way. At the same time their carriage started forward, and the inebriate, instead of going with her, started the other way to meet it, and so, there she was alone on the slippery pavement in this muddle of prancing horses and yelling terriers. If you can get any bets that I was more than two seconds getting out there to her, take them all, and give better than track odds if necessary. Then I guess she got rattled, for when I would have led her back to the curb she made a dash the other way and all but slipped under a team of bays that were just aching to claw the roses off her hat. I saw she was helpless and "turned around," so I just naturally grabbed her and she was so frightened by this time that she grabbed me, and the result was that I carried her to the sidewalk and set her down. Their carriage still stood there with little Georgie Rumlets screaming to the driver to go on. I had her inside in a jiffy, and they were off. Not a word about "My Preserver!" though, of course, with the fright and noise and her mortification, that was natural.

After that, you can believe it or not, she was the girl. And I never dreamed of seeing her any place but New York again.

Well, this morning when I came up from below at the mine she was standing there as if she had been waiting for me. She is Miss Avice Milbrey, of New York. Her father and mother—fine people, the real thing, I judge—were with her, members of a party Rulon Shepler has with him on his car. They've been here all day; went through the mine; had lunch with them, and later a walk with her, they leaving at 5.30 for the East. We got on fairly well, considering. She is a wonder, if anybody cross-examines you. She is about your height, I should judge, about five feet four, though not so plump as you; still her look of slenderness is deceptive. She's one of the build that aren't so big as they look, nor yet so small as they look. Thoroughbred is the word for her, style and action, as the horse people say, perfect. The poise of her head, her mettlesome manner, her walk, show that she's been bred up like a Derby winner. Her face is the one all the aristocrats are copied from, finely cut nose, chin firm but dainty, lips just delicately full and the reddest ever, and her colour when she has any a rose-pink. I don't know that I can give you her eyes. You only see first that they're deep and clear, but as near as anything they are the warm slatish lavender blue you see in the little fall asters. She has so much hair it makes her head look small, a sort of light chestnut, with warmish streaks in it. Transparent is another word for her. You can look right through her—eyes and skin are so clear. Her nature too is the frank, open kind, "step in and examine our stock; no trouble to show goods" and all that, and she is so beautifully unconscious of her beauty that it goes double. At times she gave me a queer little impression of being older at the game than I am, though she can't be a day over twenty, but I guess that's because she's been around in society so much. Probably she'd be called the typical New York girl, if you wanted to talk talky talk.

Now I've told you everything, except that the people all asked kindly after you, especially her mother and a Mrs. Drelmer, who's a four-horse team all by herself. Oh, yes! No, I can't remember very well; some kind of a brown walking skirt, short, and high boots and one of those blue striped shirt-waists, the squeezy looking kind, and when we went to walk, a red plaid golf cape; and for general all-around dearness—say, the other entries would all turn green and have to be withdrawn. If any one thinks this thing is going to end here you make a book on it right away; take all you can get. Little Willie Lushlets was her brother—a lovely boy if you get to talking reckless. With love to Lady Abercrombie, and trusting, my dear Countess, to have the pleasure of meeting you at Henley a fortnight hence, I remain,

Most cordially yours,

E. MALVERN DEVYR ST. TREVORS,

Bart. & Notary Public.

From Mrs. Joseph Drelmer to the Hon. Cecil G. H. Mauburn, New York.

EN ROUTE, August 28th.

MY DEAR MAUBURN:—Ever hear of the tribe of Bines? If not, you need to. The father, immensely wealthy, died a bit ago, leaving a widow and two children, one of the latter being a marriageable daughter in more than the merely technical sense. There is also a grandfather, now a little descended into the vale of years, who, they tell me, has almost as many dollars as you or I would know what to do with, a queer old chap who lounges about the mountains and looks as if he might have anything but money. We met the son and the old man at one of their mines yesterday. They have a private car as large as Shepler's and even more sybaritic, and they'd been making a tour of inspection over their properties. They lunched with us. Knowing the Milbreys, you will divine the warmth of their behaviour toward the son. It was too funny at first. Avice was the only one to suspect at once that he was the very considerable personage he is, and so she promptly sequestered him, with a skill born of her long practice, in the depths of the earth, somewhere near China, I fancy. Her dear parents were furious. Dressed as one of the miners they took him to be an employee. The whole party, taking the cue from outraged parenthood, treated him icily when he emerged from one of those subterranean galleries with that tender sprig of girlishness. That is, we were icy until, on the way up, he remaining in the depths, Avice's dear mother began to rebuke the thoughtless minx for her indiscretion of strolling through the earth with a working person. Then Avice, sweet chatterbox, with joyful malice revealed that the young man, whose name none of us had caught, was Bines, and that he owned the mine we were in, and she didn't know how many others, nor did she believe he knew himself. You should have felt the temperature rise. It went up faster than we were going.

By the time we reached the surface the two Milbreys wore looks that would have made the angel of peace and good-will look full of hatred and distrust. Nothing would satisfy them but that we wait to thank the young Croesus for his courtesy. I waited because I remembered the daughter, and Oldaker and the Angstead twins waited out of decency. And when the genius of the mine appeared from out his golden catacombs we fell upon him in desperate kindness.

Later in the day I learned from him that he expects to bring his mother and sister to New York this fall, and that they mean to make their home there hereafter. Of course that means that the girl has notions of marriage. What made me think so quickly of her is that in San Francisco, at a theatre last winter, she was pointed out to me, and while I do you not the injustice of supposing it would make the least difference to you, she is rather a beauty, you'll find; figure fullish, yellow hair, and a good-natured, well-featured, pleasing sort of face; a bit rococo in manner, I suspect; a little too San Francisco, as so many of these Western beauties are, but you'd not mind that, and a year in New York will tone her down anyway.

Now if your dear uncle will only confer a lasting benefit upon the world and his title upon you, by paying the only debt he is ever liable to pay, I am persuaded you could be the man here. I know nothing of how the fortune was left, nor of its extent, except that it's said to be stiffish, and out here that means a big, round sum. The reason I write promptly is that you may not go out of the country just now. That sweet little Milbrey chit—really, Avice is far too old now for ingenue parts—has not only grappled the son with hooks of steel, but from remarks the good mother dropped concerning the fine qualities of her son, she means to convert the daughter's dot into Milbrey prestige, also. What a glorious double stroke it would be, after all their years of trying. However, with your title, even in prospective, Fred Milbrey is no rival for you to fear, providing you are on the ground as soon as he, which is why I wish you to stay in New York.

I am indeed gratified that you have broken off whatever affair there may have been between you and that music-hall person. Really, you know, though they talk so about us, a young man can't mess about with that sort of thing in New York as he can in London. So I'm glad she's gone back, and as she is in no position to harm you I should pay no attention to her threats. What under heaven did the creature expect? Why should she have wanted to marry you?

I shall see you probably in another fortnight.

You know that Milbrey girl must get her effrontery direct from where they make it. She pretended that at first she took young Bines for what we all took him, an employee of the mine. You can almost catch them winking at each other, when she tells it, and dear mamma with such beautiful resignation, says, "My Avice is so impulsively democratic." Dear Avice, you know, is really quite as impulsive as the steel bridge our train has just rattled over. Sincerely,

JOSEPHINE PRESTON DRELMER.

From Miss Avice Milbrey to Mrs. Cornelia Van Geist, New York.

Mütterchen, dearest, I feel like that green hunter you had to sell last spring—the one that would go at a fence with the most perfect display of serious intentions, and then balk and bolt when it came to jumping. Can it be that I, who have been trained from the cradle to the idea of marrying for money, will bolt the gate after all the expense and pains lavished upon my education to this end; after the years spent in learning how to enchant, subdue, and exploit the most useful of all animals, and the most agreeable, barring a few? And yet, right when I'm the fittest—twenty-four years old, knowing all my good points and just how to coerce the most admiration for each, able nicely to calculate the exact disturbing effect of the ensemble upon any poor male, and feeling confident of my excessively eligible parti when I decide for him—in this situation, striven for so earnestly, I feel like bolting the bars. How my trainer and jockey would weep tears of rage and despair if they guessed it!

There, there—I know your shrewd grey eyes are crackling with curiosity and, you want to know what it's all about, whether to scold me or mother me, and will I please omit the entrées and get to the roast mutton. But you dear, dear old aunt, you, there is more vagueness than detail, and I know I'll strain your patience before I've done. But, to relieve your mind, nothing at all has really happened. After all, it's mostly a troublesome state of mind, that I shall doubtless find gone when we reach Jersey City,—and in two ways this Western trip is responsible for it. Do you know the journey itself has been fascinating. Too bad so many of us cross the ocean twenty times before we know anything of this country. We loiter in Paris, do the stupid German watering-places, the Norway fjords, down to Italy for the museums, see the chateaux of the Loire, or do the English race-tracks, thinking we're 'mused; and all the time out here where the sun goes down is an intensely interesting and beautiful country of our own that we overlook. You know I'd never before been even as far as Chicago. Now for the first time I can appreciate lots of those things in Whitman, that—

"I think heroic deeds were all conceived in the open air, and free poems, also. Now I see the secret of making the best persons: It is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth."

I mayn't have quoted correctly, but you know the sort of thing I mean, that sounds so breezy and stimulating. And they've helped me understand the immensity of the landscapes and the ideas out here, the big, throbbing, rough young life, and under it all, as Whitman says, "a meaning—Democracy, American Democracy." Really it's been interesting, the jolliest time of my life, and it's got me all unsettled. More than once in watching some scene typical of the region, the plain, busy, earnest people, I've actually thrilled to think that this was my country—felt that queer little tickling tingle that locates your spine for you. I'm sure there's no ennui here. Some one said the other day, "Ennui is a disease that comes from living on other people's money." I said no, that I'd often had as fine an attack as if I'd been left a billion, that ennui is when you don't know what to do next and wouldn't do it if you did. Well, here they always do know what to do next, and as one of them told me, "We always get up early the day before to do it."

Auntie, dear, the trip has made me more restless and dissatisfied than ever. It makes me want to do something—to risk something, to want to want something more than I've ever learned to want.

That's one reason I'm acting badly. The other will interest you more.

It's no less a reason than the athletic young Bayard who cheated those cab-horses of their prey that night Fred didn't drink all the Scotch whiskey in New York. Our meeting, and the mater's treatment of him before she discovered who he was, are too delicious to write. I must wait to tell you.

It is enough to say that now I heard his name it recalled nothing to me, and I took him from his dress to be a workingman in the mine we visiting, though from his speech and manner of a gentleman, someone in authority. Dear, he was so dear and so Westernly breezy and progressive and enterprising and so appallingly candid. I've been the "one woman", the "unknown but remembered ideal" since that encounter. Of course, that was to be said, but strangely enough he meant it. He was actually and unaffectedly making love to me. He's not so large or tall, but quick and springy, and muscled like a panther. He's not beautiful either but pleasant to look at, one of those broad high-cheeked faces one sees so much in the West, with the funniest quick yellowish grey eyes and the most disreputable moustache I ever saw, yellow and ragged, If he must eat it, I wish he would eat it off even clear across. And he's likely to talk the most execrable slang, or to quote Browning. But he was making real love, and you know I'm not used to that. I'm accustomed to go my pace before sharply calculating eyes, to show if I'm worth the asking price. But here was real love being made off down in the earth (we'd run away from the others because I liked him at once). I don't mind telling you he moved me, partly because I had wondered about him from that night, and partly because of all I had come to feel about this new place and the new people, and because he seemed such a fine, active specimen of Western manhood. I won't tell you all the wild, lawless thoughts that scurried and sneaked through my mind—they don't matter now—for all at once it came out that he was the only son of that wealthy Bines who died awhile ago—you remember the name was mentioned that night at your house when they were discussing the exodus of Western millionaires to New York; some one named the father as one who liked coming to New York to dissipate occasionally, but who was still rooted in the soil where his millions grew.

There was the son before me, just an ordinary man of millions, after all—and my little toy balloon of romance that I'd been floating so gaily on a string of sentiment was pricked to nothing in an instant. I felt my nostrils expand with the excitement of the chase, and thereafter I was my coldly professional self. If that young man has not now a high estimate of my charms of person and mind, then have my ways forgot their cunning and I be no longer the daughter of Margaret Milbrey, née van Schoule.

But, Mütterchen, now comes the disgraceful part. I'm afraid of myself, even in spite of our affairs being so bad. Dad has doubtless told you something must be done very soon, and I seem to be the only one to do it. And yet I am shying at the gate. This trip has unsettled me, I tell you, letting me, among other things, see my old self. Before I always rather liked the idea of marriage, that is, after I'd been out a couple of years—not too well, but well enough—and now some way I rebel, not from scruples, but from pure selfishness. I'm beginning to find that I want to enjoy myself and to find, further, that I'm not indisposed to take chances—as they say out here. Will you understand, I wonder? And do women who sell themselves ever find any real pleasure in the bargain? The most eloquent examples, the ones that sell themselves to many men, lead wretched lives. But does the woman who sells herself to but one enjoy life any more? She's surely as bad, from any standpoint of morals, and I imagine sometimes she is less happy. At any rate, she has less freedom and more obligations under her contract. You see I am philosophising pretty coldly. Now be horrified if you will.

I am selfish by good right, though. "Haven't we spent all our surplus in keeping you up for a good marriage?" says the mater, meaning by a good marriage that I shall bring enough money into the family to "keep up its traditions." I am, in other words, an investment from which they expect large returns. I told her I hoped she could trace her selfishness to its source as clearly as I could mine, and as for the family traditions, Fred was preserving those in an excellent medium. Which was very ugly in me, and I cried afterwards and told her how sorry I was.

Are you shocked by my cold calculations? Well, I am trying to let you understand me, and I--

"...have no time to waste In patching fig-leaves for the naked truth."

I am cursed not only with consistent feminine longings and desires, but, in spite of my training and the examples around me, with a disinclination to be wholly vicious. Awhile ago marriage meant only more luxury and less worry about money. I never gave any thought to the husband, certainly never concerned myself with any notions of duty or obligation toward him. The girls I know are taught painstakingly how to get a husband, but nothing of how to be a wife. The husband in my case was to be an inconvenience, but doubtless an amusing one. For all his oppression, if there were that, and even for the mere offence of his existence, I should wreak my spite merrily on his vulgar dollars.

But you are saying that I like the present eligible. That's the trouble. I like him so well I haven't the heart to marry him. When I was twenty I could have loved him devotedly, I believe. Now something seems to be gone, some freshness or fondness. I can still love—I know it only too well night and day—but it must be a different kind of man. He is so very young and reverent and tender, and in a way so unsophisticated. He is so afraid of me, for all his pretence of boldness.

Is it because I must be taken by sheer force? I'll not be surprised if it is. Do we not in our secret soul of souls nourish this beatitude: "Blessed is the man who destroys all barriers"? Florence Akemit said as much one day, and Florence, poor soul, knows something of the matter. Do we not sit defiantly behind the barriers, insolently challenging—threatening capital punishment for any assault, relaxing not one severity, yet falling meek and submissive and glad, to the man who brutally and honestly beats them down, and destroys them utterly? So many fail by merely beating them down. Of course if an untidy litter is left we make a row. We reconstruct the barrier and that particular assailant is thenceforth deprived of a combatant's rights. What a dear you are that I can say these things to you! Were girls so frank in your time?

Well, my knight of the "golden cross" (joke; laughter and loud applause, and cries of "Go on!") has a little, much indeed, of the impetuous in him, but, alas! not enough. He has a pretty talent for it, but no genius. If I were married to him to-morrow, as surely as I am a woman I should be made to inflict pain upon him the next day, with an insane stress to show him, perhaps, I was not the ideal woman he had thought me—perhaps out of a jealousy of that very ideal I had inspired—rational creatures, aren't we?—beg pardon—not we, then, but I. Now he, being a real likable man of a man, can I do that—for money? Do I want the money badly enough? Would I not even rather be penniless with the man who coerced every great passion and littlest impulse, body and soul—perhaps with a very hateful insolence of power over me? Do you know, I suspect sometimes that I've been trained down too fine, as to my nerves, I mean. I doubt if it's safe to pamper and trim and stimulate and refine a woman in that hothouse atmosphere—at least if she's a healthy woman. She's too apt sometime to break her gait, get the bit of tradition between her teeth, and then let her impulses run away with her.

Oh, Mütterchen, I am so sick and sore, and yet filled with a strange new zest for this old puzzle of life. Will I ever be the same again? This man is going to ask me to marry him the moment I am ready for him to. Shall I be kind enough to tell him no, or shall I steel myself to go in and hurt him—make him writhe?

And yet do you know what he gave me while I was with him? I wonder if women feel it commonly? It was a desire for motherhood—a curiously vivid and very definite longing—entirely irrespective of him, you understand, although he inspired it. Without loving him or being at all moved toward him, he made me sheerly want to be a mother! Or is it only that men we don't love make us feel motherly?

Am I wholly irrational and selfish and bad, or what am I? I know you'll love me, whatever it is, and I wish now I could snuggle on that soft, cushiony shoulder of yours and go to sleep.

Can anything be more pitiful than "a fine old family" afflicted with dry-rot like ours? I'm always amused when I read about the suffering in the tenements. The real anguish is up in the homes like ours. We have to do without so very many more things, and mere hunger and cold are easy compared to the suffering we feel.

Perhaps when I'm back to that struggle for appearances, I'll relent and "barter my charms" as the old novels used to say, sanely and decently like a well brought-up New York girl—with certain reservations, to a man who can support the family in the style to which it wants to become accustomed. Yet there may be a way out. There is a Bines daughter, for example, and mamma, who never does one half where she can as well do two, will marry her to Fred if she can. On the other hand, Joe Drelmer was putting in words for young Mauburn, who will be Lord Casselthorpe when his disreputable old uncle dies.

She hasn't yet spent what she got for introducing the Canovass prince to that oldest Elarton girl, so if she secures this prize for Mauburn, she'll be comfortable for a couple of more years. Perhaps I could turn my hand to something like that. I know the ropes as well as she does.

There, it is a punishment of a letter, isn't it, dear? But I've known every bad place in it, and I've religiously put in your "Come, come, child!" every time it belonged, so you've not still to scold me, for which be comforted a little; and give me only a few words of cheerful approval if your conscience will let you. I need that, after all, more than advice. Look for us in a week. With a bear-hug for you,

AVICE.

P.S. Is it true that Ned Ristine and his wife have fixed it up and are together again since his return? Not that I'm interested especially, but I chanced to hear it gossiped the other day here on the car. Indeed, I hope you know how thoroughly I detest that man!

[!-- CH10 --]

CHAPTER X.

The Price of Averting a Scandal

As the train resumed speed after stopping at a station, Grant, the porter, came back to the observation room of the Bines car with a telegram for Uncle Peter. The old man read it and for a time mused himself into seeming oblivion. Across the car, near by, Percival lounged in a wicker arm-chair and stared cheerfully out into the gathering night. He, too, was musing, his thoughts keeping pleasantly in time with the rhythmic click of the wheels over the rail-joints. After a day in the open air he was growing sleepy.

Uncle Peter aroused him by making his way back to the desk, the roll-top of which he lifted with a sudden rattle. He called to Percival. Sitting down at the desk he read the telegram again and handed it to the young man, who read:

"Party will try to make good; no bluff. Won't compromise inside limit set. Have seen paper and wish another interview before following original instructions. Party will wait forty-eight hours before acting. Where can you be seen? Wire office to-night.

"TAFE & COPLEN."

The young man looked up with mild interest. Uncle Peter was writing on a telegraph blank.

"TAFE & COPLEN, Butte, Montana.

"Due Butte 7.30 A.M. to-morrow. Join me on car nought sixteen, go to Montana City.

"PETER BINES.

"D.H.F. 742."

To the porter who answered his ring he handed the message to be put off at the first stop.

"But what's it all about?" asked Percival, seeing by Uncle Peter's manner that he was expected to show concern.

Uncle Peter closed the desk, lighted one of his best cigars, and dropped into a capacious chair. The young man seated himself opposite.

"Well, son, it's a matter I cal'lated first off to handle myself, but it looks now as if you better be in on it. I don't know just how much you knew about your pa's ways, but, anyhow, you wouldn't play him to grade much higher above standard than the run of 'em out here that has had things comin' too easy for 'em. He was all right, Dan'l J. was. God knows I ain't discountin' the comfort I've always took in him. He'd stand acid all right, at any stage of the game. Don't forget that about your pa."

The young man reflected.

"The worst story I ever heard of pa was about the time he wanted to draw twenty thousand dollars from the bank in Tacoma. They telegraphed the Butte National to wire his description, and the answer was 'tall and drunk.'"

"Well, son, his periodicals wa'n't all. Seems as if this crowd has a way fur women, and they generally get the gaff because they're so blamed easy. You don't hear of them Eastern big men gettin' it so often, but I've seen enough of 'em to know it ain't because they're any straighter. They're jest a little keener on business propositions. They draw a fine sight when it comes to splittin' pennies, while men out here like your pa is lavish and careless. You know about lots of the others.

"There's Sooley Pentz, good-hearted a man as ever sacked ore, and plenty long-headed enough for the place he's bought in the Senate, but Sooley is restless until he's bought up one end of every town he goes into, from Eden plumb over to Washington, D. C.,—and 'tain't ever the Sunday-school end Sooley buys either. If he was makin' two million a month instead of one Sooley'd grieve himself to death because they don't make that five-dollar kind of wine fast enough.

"Then there was Seth Larby. We're jest gettin' to the details of Seth's expense account after he found the Lucky Cuss. I see the courts have decided against the widow and children, and so they'll have to worry off about five or six millions for the poor lady he duped so outrageously—with a checker on the chips.

"As fur old Nate Kranil, a lawyer from Cheyenne was tellin' me his numerous widows by courtesy was goin' to form an association and share his leavin's pro raty. Said they'd all got kind of acquainted and made up their minds they was such a reg'lar band of wolves that none of 'em was able to do any of the others in the long run, so they'd divide even.

"Then there was Dave Kisber, and—"

"Never mind any more—" Percival broke in. "Do you mean that my father was mixed up like those old Indians?"

"Looks now as if he was. That telegram from Coplen is concernin' of a lady—a party that was with him when he died. The press report sent out that the young and beautiful Mrs. Bines was with her husband, and was prostrated with grief. Your ma and Pishy was up to Steamin' Springs at the time, and I kep' it from them all right."

"But how was he entangled?—to what extent?"

"That's what we'll get more light on in the morning. She made a play right after the will was filed fur probate, and I told Coplen to see jest what grounds she had, and I'd settle myself if she really had any and wa'n't unreasonable."

"It's just a question of blackmail, isn't it? What did you offer?"

"Well, she has a slew of letters—gettin' them is a matter of sentiment and keepin' the thing quiet. Then she claims to have a will made last December and duly witnessed, givin' her the One Girl outright, and a million cash. So you can see she ain't anything ordinary. I told Coplen to offer her a million cash for everything rather'n have any fuss. I was goin' to fix it up myself and keep quiet about it."

"And this telegram looks as if she wanted to fight."

"Well, mebbe that and mebbe it means that she knows we don't want to fight considerable more than a million dollars' worth."

"How much do you think she'll hold out for?"

"Can't tell; you don't know how big pills she's been smokin'."

"But, damn it all, that's robbery!"

"Yes—but it's her deal. You remember when Billy Brue was playin' seven-up with a stranger in the Two-Hump saloon over to Eden, and Chiddie Fogle the bartender called him up front and whispered that he'd jest seen the feller turn a jack from the bottom. 'Well,' says Billie, looking kind of reprovin' at Chiddie, 'it was his deal, wa'n't it?' Now it's sure this blond party's deal, and we better reckon ahead a mite before we start any roughhouse with her. You're due to find out if you hadn't better let her turn her jack and trust to gettin' even on your deal. You got a claim staked out in New York, and a scandal like this might handicap you in workin' it. And 'tain't as if hushin' her up was something we couldn't well afford. And think of how it would torment your ma to know of them doin's, and how 'twould shame Pish in company. Of course, rob'ry is rob'ry, but mebbe it's our play to be sporty like Billy Brue was."

"Pretty bad, isn't it? I never suspected pa was in anything of this sort."

"Well, I knew Dan'l J. purty well, and I spleened against some of his ways, but that's done fur. Now the folks out in this part of the country have come to expect it from a man like him. They don't mind so much. But them New York folks—well, I thought mebbe you'd like to take a clean bill of health when you settle in that centre of culture and enlightenment,—and remember your ma and Pish."

"Of course the exposure would mean a lot of cheap notoriety—"

"Well, and not so all-fired cheap at that, even if we beat. I've heard that lawyers are threatenin' to stop this thing of workin' entirely fur their health. There's that to weigh up."

"But I hate to be done."

"Well, wouldn't you be worse done if you let a matter of money, when you're reekin' with it, keep you from protectin' your pa's name? Do you want folks to snicker when they read that 'lovin' husband and father' business on his gravestone? My! I guess that young woman and her folks we met the other day'd be tickled to death to think they knew you after they'd read one of them Sunday newspaper stories with pictures of us all, and an extry fine one of the millionaire's dupe, basely enticed from her poor but honest millinery business in Spokane."

Percival shuddered.

"Well, let's see what Coplen has to say in the morning. If it can be settled within reason I suppose we better give up."

"That's my view now, and the estate bein' left as simply as it was, we can make in the payments unbeknownst to the folks."

They said good-night, and Percival went off to dream that a cab-horse of mammoth size was threatening to eat Miss Milbrey unless he drove it to Spokane Falls and bought two million millinery shops.

When he was jolted to consciousness they were in the switching yard at Butte, and the car was being coupled to the rear of the train made up for Montana City. He took advantage of the stop to shave. By the time he was dressed they were under way again, steaming out past the big smelters that palled the sky with heavy black smoke.

At the breakfast-table he found Uncle Peter and Coplen.

"I'm inclined," said the lawyer, as Percival peeled a peach, "to agree with your grandfather. This woman—if I may use the term—is one of the nerviest leg-pullers you're ever likely to strike."

"Lord! I should hope so," said Percival, with hearty emphasis.

"She studied your father and she knew him better than any of us, I judge. She certainly knew he was liable to go at any time, in exactly the way he did go. Why, she even had a doctor down from 'Frisco to Monterey when they were there about a year ago—introduced him as an old friend and had him stay around three days—just to give her a private professional opinion on his chances. As to this will, the signature is undoubtedly genuine, but my judgment is she procured it in some way on a blank sheet of paper and had the will written above on sheets like it. As it conforms to the real will word for word, excepting the bequests to her, she must have had access to that before having this one written. Of course that helps to make it look as if the testator had changed his mind only as to the one legatee—makes it look plausible and genuine. The witnesses were of course parties to the fraud, but I seriously question our ability to prove there was fraud. We think they procured a copy of the will we kept in our safe at Butte through the clerk that Tafe fired awhile back because of his drinking habits and because he was generally suspicious of him. Of course that's only surmise."

"But can't we fight it?" demanded Percival, hungrily attacking the crisp, brown little trout.

"Well, if we allowed it to come to a contest, we might expose the whole thing, and then again we might not. I tell you she's clever. She's shown it at every step. Now then, if you do fight," and the lawyer bristled, as if his fighting spirit were not too far under the control of his experience-born caution, "why, you have litigation that's bound to last for years, and it would be pretty expensive. I admit the case is tempting to a lawyer, but in the end you don't know what you'll get, especially with this woman. Why, do you know she's already, we've found, made up to two different judges that might be interested in any litigation she'd have, and she's cultivating others. The role of Joseph," he continued, "has never, to the best of my belief, been gracefully played in the world's history, and you may have noticed that the members of the Montana judiciary seem to be particularly awkward in their essays at it. In the end, then, you'll be out a lot of money even if you win. On the other hand, you have a chance to settle it for good and all, getting back everything—excepting the will, which, of course, we couldn't touch or even concede the existence of, but which would, if such an instrument were extant, be destroyed in the presence of a witness whose integrity I could rely upon—well—as upon my own. The letters which she has, and which I have seen, are also such as would tend to substantiate her claims and make the large bequests to her seem plausible—and they're also such letters as—I should infer—the family would rather wish not to be made public, as they would be if it came to trial."

"Jest what I told him," remarked Uncle Peter.

"What she'll hold out for I don't know, but I'd suggest this, that I meet her attorney and put the case exactly as I've found it out as to the will, letting them suspect, perhaps, that we have admissions of some sort from Hornby, the clerk, that might damage them. Then I can put it that, while we have no doubt of our ability to dispose of the will, we do wish to avoid the scandal that would ensue upon a publication of the letters they hold and the exposure of her relations with the testator, and that upon this purely sentimental ground we are willing to be bled to a reasonable extent. The One Girl is a valuable mine, but my opinion is she'll be glad to get two million if we seem reluctant to pay that much."

With that gusto of breakfast-appetite which arouses the envy of persons whose alimentation is not what it used to be, Percival had devoured ruddy peaches and purple grapes, trout that had breasted their swift native currents that very morning, crisp little curls of bacon, muffins that were mere flecks of golden foam, honey with the sweetness of a thousand fragrant blossoms, and coffee that was oily with richness. For a time he had seemed to make no headway against his hill-born appetite. The lawyer, who had broken his fast with a strip of dry toast and a cup of weak tea, had watched him with unfeigned and reminiscent interest. Grant, who stood watchful to replenish his plate, and whose pleasure it was to see him eat, regarded him with eyes fairly dewy from sympathy. To A. L. Jackson, the cook, on a trip for hot muffins, he observed, "He eats jes' like th' ole man. I suttin'y do love t' see that boy behave when he got his fresh moral appetite on him. He suttin'y do ca'y hisse'f mighty handsome."

With Coplen's final recommendation to settle Percival concluded his meal, and after surveying with fondly pleasant regret the devastation he had wrought, he leaned back in his chair and lighted a cigar. He was no longer in a mood to counsel fight, even though he disliked to submit.

"You know," he reminded Uncle Peter, "what that editorial in the Rock Rip Champion said about me when we were over there: 'We opine that the Junior Bines will become a warm piece of human force if he isn't ground-sluiced too early in the game.' Well—and here I'm ground-sluiced the first rattle out of the box."

But the lawyer went over the case again point by point, and Percival finally authorised him to make the best settlement possible. He cared as little for the money as Uncle Peter did, large sum though it was. And then his mother and sister would be spared a great humiliation, and his own standing where most he prized it would not be jeopardised.

"Settle the best you can," was his final direction to Coplen. The lawyer left them at the next station to wait for a train back to Butte.

[!-- CH11 --]

CHAPTER XI.

How Uncle Peter Bines Once Cut Loose

As the train moved on after leaving Coplen, Percival fell to thinking of the type of man his father had been.

"Uncle Peter," he said, suddenly, "they don't all cut loose, do they? Now you never did?"

"Yes, I did, son. I yanked away from all the hitchin' straps of decency when I first struck it, jest like all the rest of 'em. Oh, I was an Indian in my time—a reg'ler measly hop-pickin' Siwash at that.

"You don't know, of course, what livin' out in the open on bacon and beans does fur a healthy man's cravin's. He gets so he has visions day and night of high-livin'—nice broiled steaks with plenty of fat on 'em, and 'specially cake and preserves and pies like mother used to make—fat, juicy mince pies that would assay at least eight hundred dollars a ton in raisins alone, say nothing of the baser metals. He sees the crimp around the edges made with a fork, and the picture of a leaf pricked in the middle to vent the steam, and he gets to smellin' 'em when they're pulled smokin' hot out of the oven. And frosted cake, the layer kind—about five layers, with stratas of jelly and custard and figs and raisins and whatever it might be. I saw 'em fur years, with a big cuttin' out to show the cross-section.

"But a man that has to work by the day fur enough to take him through the prospectin' season can't blow any of his dust on frivolous things like pie. The hard-workin' plain food is the kind he has to tote, and I never heard of pie bein' in anybody's grub-stake either.

"Well, fur two or three years at a time the nearest I'd ever get to them dainties would be a piece of sour-dough bread baked on a stove-lid. But whenever I was in the big camps I'd always go look into the bake-shop windows and just gloat.—'rubber' they call it now'days. My! but they would be beautiful. Son, if I could 'a' been guaranteed that kind of a heaven, some of them times, I'd 'a' become the hottest kind of a Christian zealot, I'll tell you that. That spell of gloatin' was what I always looked forward to when I was lyin' out nights.

"Well, the time before I made the strike I outfitted in Grand Bar. The bake-joint there was jest a mortal aggravation. Sakes! but it did torment a body so! It was kep' by a Chink, and the star play in the window was a kind of two-story cake with frostin' all over the place—on top and down the sides, and on the bottom fur all I knew, it looked that rich. And it had cocoanut mixed in with it. Say, now, that concrete looked fit to pave the streets of the New Jerusalem with—and a hunk was cut out, jest like I'd always dream of so much—showin' a cross-section of rich yellow cake and a fruity-lookin' fillin' that jest made a man want to give up.

"I was there three days, and every day I'd stop in front of that window and jest naturally hone fur a slice of that vision. The Chink was standin' in the door the first day.

"'Six doll's,' he says, kind of enticin' me.

"He might as well 'a' said six thousand. I shook my head.

"Next day I was there again, yearnin'. The Chink see me and come out.

"'One doll' li'l piece", he says.

"I says, 'No, you slant-eyed heathen,' or some such name as that. But when you're looking fur tests of character, son, don't let that one hide away from you. I'd play that fur the heftiest moral courage I've ever showed, anyway.

"The third day it was gone and a lemon pie was there, all with nice kind of brownish snow on top. I was on my way out then, pushin' the mule. I took one lingerin' last look and felt proud of myself when I saw the hump in the pack made by my bag of beans.

"'That-like flummery food's no kind of diet to be trackin' up pay-rock on,' I says to kind of cheer myself.

"Four weeks later I struck it. And six weeks after that I had things in shape so't I was able to leave. I was nearer to other places 'twas bigger, but I made fur Grand Bar, lettin' on't I wanted to see about a claim there. I'd 'a' felt foolish to have anyone know jest why I was makin' the trip.

"On the way I got to havin' night-mares, 'fear that Chink would be gone. I knew if he was I'd go down to my grave with something comin' to me because I'd never found jest that identical cake I'd been famishin' fur.

"When I got up front of the window, you can believe it or not, but that Chink was jest settin' down another like it. Now you know how that Monte Cristo carried on after he'd proved up. Well, I got into his class, all right. I walked in past a counter where the Chink had crullers and gingerbread and a lot of low-grade stuff like that, and I set down to a little table with this here marble oil-cloth on it.

"'Bring her back,' I says, kind of tremblin', and pointin' to the window.

"The Chink pattered up and come back with a little slab of it on a tin plate. I jest let it set there.

"'Bring it all,' I says; 'I want the hull ball of wax.'

"'Six doll's,' he says, kind of cautious.

"I pulled out my buckskin pouch. 'Bring her back and take it out of that,' I says—'when I get through,' I says.

"He grinned and hurried back with it. Well, son, nothing had ever tasted so good to me, and I ain't say'n' that wa'n't the biggest worth of all my money't I ever got. I'd been trainin' fur that cake fur twenty odd year, and proddin' my imagination up fur the last ten weeks.

"I et that all, and I et another one with jelly, and a bunch of little round ones with frostin' and raisins, and a bottle of brandied peaches, and about a dozen cream puffs, and half a lemon pie with frostin' on top, and four or five Charlotte rushes. The Chink had learned to make 'em all in 'Frisco.

"That meal set me back $34.75. When I went out I noticed the plain sponge cakes and fruit cakes and dried-apple pies—things that had been out of my reach fur twenty years, and—My! but they did look common and unappetisin'. I kind of shivered at the sight of 'em.

"I ordered another one of the big cakes and two more lemon pies fur the next day.

"Fur four days I led a life of what they call 'unbridled licentiousness' while that Chink pandered to me. I never was any hand fur drink, but I cut loose in that fancy-food joint, now I tell you.

"The fifth day I begun to taper off. I begun to have a suspicion the stuff was made of sawdust with plasty of Paris fur frostin'. The sixth day I was sure it was sawdust, and my shameful debauch comes to an end right there. I remembered the story about the feller that cal'lated his chickens wouldn't tell any different, so he fed 'em sawdust instead of corn-meal, and by-and-bye a settin' of eggs hatched out—twelve of the chickens had wooden legs and the thirteenth was a woodpecker. Say, I felt so much like two cords of four-foot stove wood that it made me plumb nervous to ketch sight of a saw-buck.

"It took jest three weeks fur me to get right inside again. My, but meat victuals and all like that did taste mighty scrumptious when I could handle 'em again.

"After that when I'd been out in the hills fur a season I'd get that hankerin' back, and when I come in I'd have a little frosted-cake orgy now and then. But I kep' myself purty well in hand. I never overdone it like that again, fur you see I'd learned something. First off, there was the appetite. I soon see the gist of my fun had been the wantin' the stuff, the appetite fur it, and if you nursed an appetite along and deluded it with promises it would stay by you like one of them meachin' yellow dogs. But as soon as you tried to do the good-fairy act by it, and give it all it hankered fur, you killed it off, and then you wouldn't be entertained by it no more, and kep' stirred up and busy.

"And so I layed out to nurse my appetite, and aggravate it by never givin' it quite all it wanted. When I was in the hills after a day's tramp I'd let it have its fling on such delicacies as I could turn out of the fryin'-pan myself, but when I got in again I'd begin to act bossy with it. It's wantin' reasonably that keeps folks alive, I reckon. The mis-a-blest folks I've ever saw was them that had killed all their wants by overfeedin' 'em.

"Then again, son, in this world of human failin's there ain't anything ever can be as pure and blameless and satisfyin' as the stuff in a bake-shop window looks like it is. Don't ever furget that. It's jest too good to be true. And in the next place—pastry's good in its way, but the best you can ever get is what's made fur you at home—I'm talkin' about a lot of things now that you don't probably know any too much about. Sometimes the boys out in the hills spends their time dreamin' fur other things besides pies and cakes, but that system of mine holds good all through the deal—you can play it from soda to hock and not lose out. And that's why I'm outlastin' a lot of the boys and still gettin' my fun out of the game.

"It's a good system fur you, son, while you're learnin' to use your head. Your pa played it at first, then he cut loose. And you need it worse'n ever he did, if I got you sized up right. He touched me on one side, and touched you on the other. But you can last longer if you jest keep the system in mind a little. Remember what I say about the window stuff."

Percival had listened to the old man's story with proper amusement, and to the didactics with that feeling inevitable to youth which says secretly, as it affects to listen to one whom it does not wish to wound, "Yes, yes, I know, but you were living in another day, long ago, and you are not me!"

He went over to the desk and began to scribble a name on the pad of paper.

"If a man really loves one woman he'll behave all right," he observed to Uncle Peter.

"Oh, I ain't preachin' like some do. Havin' a good time is all right; it's the only thing, I reckon, sometimes, that justifies the misery of livin'. But cuttin' loose is bad jedgment. A man wakes up to find that his natural promptin's has cold-decked him. If I smoked the best see-gars now all the time, purty soon I'd get so't I wouldn't appreciate 'em. That's why I always keep some of these out-door free-burners on hand. One of them now and then makes the others taste better."

The young man had become deaf to the musical old voice.

He was writing:

"MY DEAR MISS MILBREY:—I send you the first and only poem I ever wrote. I may of course be a prejudiced critic, but it seems to me to possess in abundance those graces of metre, rhyme, high thought in poetic form, and perfection of finish which the critics unite in demanding. To be honest with you—and why should I conceal that conceit which every artist is said secretly to feel in his own production?—I have encountered no other poem in our noble tongue which has so moved and captivated me.

"It is but fair to warn you that this is only the first of a volume of similar poems which I contemplate writing. And as the theme appears now to be inexhaustible, I am not sure that I can see any limit to the number of volumes I shall be compelled to issue. Pray accept this author's copy with his best and hopefullest wishes. One other copy has been sent to the book reviewer of the Arcady Lyre, in the hope that he, at least, will have the wit to perceive in it that ultimate and ideal perfection for which the humbler bards have hitherto striven in vain.

"Sincerely and seriously yours,

"P. PERCIVAL BINES"

Thus ran the exalted poem on a sheet of note-paper:

"AVICE MILBREY.
Avice Milbrey, Avice Milbrey, Avice Milbrey,
Avice Milbrey, Avice Milbrey, Avice Milbrey,
Avice Milbrey, Avice Milbrey,
Avice Milbrey, Avice Milbrey,
Avice Milbrey, Avice Milbrey, Avice Milbrey.
And ninety-eight thousand other verses quite like it."

[!-- CH12 --]

CHAPTER XII.

Plans for the Journey East

Until late in the afternoon they rode through a land that was bleak and barren of all grace or cheer. The dull browns and greys of the landscape were unrelieved by any green or freshness save close by the banks of an occasional stream. The vivid blue of a cloudless sky served only to light up its desolation to greater disadvantage. It was a grim unsmiling land, hard to like.

"This may be God's own country," said Percival once, looking out over a stretch of grey sage-brush to a mass of red sandstone jutting up, high, sharp, and ragged, in the distance—"but it looks to me as if He got tired of it Himself and gave up before it was half finished."

"A man has to work here a few years to love it," said Uncle Peter, shortly.

As they left the car at Montana City in the early dusk, that thriving metropolis had never seemed so unattractive to Percival; so rough, new, garish, and wanting so many of the softening charms of the East. Through the wide, unpaved streets, lined with their low wooden buildings, they drove to the Bines mansion, a landmark in the oldest and most fashionable part of the town. For such distinctions are made in Western towns as soon as the first two shanties are built. The Bines house had been a monument to new wealth from the earliest days of the town, which was a fairly decent antiquity for the region. But the house and the town grated harshly now upon the young man. He burned with a fever of haste to be off toward the East—over the far rim of hills, and the farther higher mountain range, to a land that had warmed genially under three hundred years of civilised occupancy—where people had lived and fraternised long enough to create the atmosphere he craved so ardently.

While Chinese Wung lighted the hall gas and busied himself with their hats and bags, Psyche Bines came down the stairs to greet them. Never had her youthful freshness so appealed to her brother. The black gown she wore emphasised her blond beauty. As to give her the aspect of mourning one might have tried as reasonably to hide the radiance of the earth in springtime with that trifling pall.

Her brother kissed her with more than his usual warmth. Here was one to feel what he felt, to sympathise warmly with all those new yearnings that were to take him out of the crude West. She wanted, for his own reasons, all that he wanted. She understood him; and she was his ally against the aged and narrow man who would have held them to life in that physical and social desert.

"Well, sis, here we are!" he began. "How fine you're looking! And how is Mrs. Throckmorton? Give her my love and ask her if she can be ready to start for the effete East in twenty minutes."

It was his habit to affect that he constantly forgot his mother's name. He had discovered years before that he was sometimes able thus to puzzle her momentarily.

"Why, Percival!" exclaimed this excellent lady, coming hurriedly from the kitchen regions, "I haven't a thing packed. Twenty minutes! Goodness! I do declare!"

It was an infirmity of Mrs. Bines that she was unable to take otherwise than literally whatever might be said to her; an infirmity known and played upon relentlessly by her son.

"Oh, well!" he exclaimed, with a show of irritation. "I suppose we'll be delayed then. That's like a woman. Never ready on time. Probably we can't start now till after dinner. Now hurry! You know that boat leaves the dock for Tonsilitis at 8.23—I hope you won't be seasick."

"Boat—dock—" Mrs. Bines stopped to convince herself beyond a certainty that no dock nor boat could be within many hundred miles of her by any possible chance.

"Never mind," said Psyche; "give ma half an hour's notice and she can start for any old place."

"Can't she though!" and Percival, seizing his astounded mother, waltzed with her down the hall, leaving her at the far end with profusely polite assurances that he would bring her immediately a lemon-ice, an ice-pick, and a cold roast turkey with pink stockings on.

"Never mind, Mrs. Cartwright," he called back to her—"oh, beg pardon—Bines? yes, yes, to be sure—well, never mind, Mrs. Brennings. We'll give you time to put your gloves and a bottle of horse-radish and a nail-file and hammer into that neat travelling-bag of yours.

"Now let me go up and get clean again. That lovely alkali dust has worked clear into my bearings so I'm liable to have a hot box just as we get the line open ninety miles ahead."

At dinner and afterwards the new West and the old aligned themselves into hostile camps, as of yore. The young people chatted with lively interest of the coming change, of the New York people who had visited the mine, of the attractions and advantages of life in New York.

Uncle Peter, though he had long since recognised his cause as lost, remained doggedly inimical to the migration. The home was being broken up and he was depressed.

"Anyhow, you'll soon be back," he warned them. "You won't like it a mite. I tried it myself thirty years ago. I'll jest camp here until you do come back. My! but you'll be glad to get here again."

"Why not have Billy Brue come stay with you," suggested Mrs. Bines, who was hurting herself with pictures of the old man's loneliness, "in case you should want a plaster on your back or some nutmeg tea brewed, or anything? That Wung is so trifling."

"Maybe I might," replied the old man, "but Billy Brue ain't exactly broke to a shack like this. I know just what he'd do all his spare time; he'd set down to that new-fangled horseless piano and play it to death."

Uncle Peter meant the new automatic piano in the parlour. As far as the new cabinet was from the what-not this modern bit of mechanism was from the old cottage organ—the latter with its "Casket of Household Melodies" and the former with its perforated paper repertoire of "The World's Best Music," ranging without prejudice from Beethoven's Fifth Symphony to "I Never Did Like a Nigger Nohow," by a composer who shall be unnamed on this page.

"And Uncle Peter won't have any one to bother him when he makes a litter with all those old plans and estimates and maps of his," said Psyche; "you'll be able to do a lot more work, Uncle Peter, this winter."

"Yes, only I ain't got any more work to do than I ever had, and I always managed to do that, no matter how you did clean up after me and mix up my papers. I'm like old Nigger Pomeroy. He was doin' a job of whitewashin' one day, and he had an old whitewash brush with most of the hair gone out of it. I says to him, 'Pomeroy, why don't you get you a new brush? you could do twice as much work.' And Pomeroy says, 'That's right, Mr. Bines, but the trouble is I ain't got twice as much work to do.' So don't you folks get out on my account," he concluded, politely.

"And you know we shall be in mourning," said Psyche to her brother.

"I've thought of that. We can't do any entertaining, except of the most informal kind, and we can't go out, except very informally; but, then, you know, there aren't many people that have us on their lists, and while we're keeping quiet we shall have a chance to get acquainted a little."

"I hear they do have dreadful times with help in New York," said Mrs. Bines.

"Don't let that bother you, ma," her son reassured her. "We'll go to the Hightower Hotel, first. You remember you and pa were there when it first opened. It's twice as large now, and we'll take a suite, have our meals served privately, our own servants provided by the hotel, and you won't have a thing to worry you. We'll be snug there for the winter. Then for the summer we'll go to Newport, and when we come back from there we'll take a house. Meantime, after we've looked around a bit, we'll build, maybe up on one of those fine corners east of the Park."

"I almost dread it," his mother rejoined. "I never did see how they kept track of all the help in that hotel, and if it's twice as monstrous now, however do they do it—and have the beds all made every day and the meals always on time?"

"And you can get meals there," said Percival.

"I've been needing a broiled lobster all summer—and now the oysters will be due—fine fat Buzzard's Bays—and oyster crabs."

"He ain't been able to touch a morsel out here," observed Uncle Peter, with a palpably false air of concern. "I got all worried up about him, barely peckin' at a crumb or two."

"I never could learn to eat those oysters out of their shells," Mrs. Bines confessed. "They taste so much better out of the can. Once we had them raw and on two of mine were those horrid little green crabs, actually squirming. I was going to send them back, but your pa laughed and ate them himself—ate them alive and kicking."

"And terrapin!" exclaimed Percival, with anticipatory relish.

"That terrapin stew does taste kind of good," his mother admitted, "but, land's sakes! it has so many little bits of bones in it I always get nervous eating it. It makes me feel as if all my teeth was coming out."

"You'll soon learn all those things, ma," said her daughter—"and not to talk to the waiters, and everything like that. She always asks them how much they earn, and if they have a family, and how many children, and if any of them are sick, you know," she explained to Percival.

"And I s'pose you ain't much of a hand fur smokin' cigarettes, are you, ma?" inquired Uncle Peter, casually.

"Me!" exclaimed Mrs. Bines, in horror; "I never smoked one of the nasty little things in my life."

"Son," said the old man to Percival, reproachfully, "is that any way to treat your own mother? Here she's had all this summer to learn cigarette smokin', and you ain't put her at it—all that time wasted, when you know she's got to learn. Get her one now so she can light up."

"Why, Uncle Peter Bines, how absurd!" exclaimed his granddaughter.

"Well, them ladies smoked the other day, and they was some of the reg'ler original van Vanvans. You don't want your poor ma kep' out of the game, do you? Goin' to let her set around and toy with the coppers, or maybe keep cases now and then, are you? Or, you goin' to get her a stack of every colour and let her play with you? Pish, now, havin' been to a 'Frisco seminary—she can pick it up, prob'ly in no time; but ma ought to have practice here at home, so she can find out what brand she likes best. Now, Marthy, them Turkish cigarettes, in a nice silver box with some naked ladies painted on the outside, and your own monogram 'M.B.' in gold letters on every cigarette—"

"Don't let him scare you, ma," Percival interrupted. "You'll get into the game all right, and I'll see that you have a good time."

"Only I hope the First M.E. Church of Montana City never hears of her outrageous cuttin's-up," said Uncle Peter, as if to himself. "They'd have her up and church her, sure—smokin' cigarettes with her gold monogram on, at her age!" "And of course we must go to the Episcopal church there," said Psyche. "I think those Episcopal ministers are just the smartest looking men ever. So swell looking, and anyway it's the only church the right sort of people go to. We must be awfully high church, too. It's the very best way to know nice people."

"I s'pose if every day'd be Sunday by-and-bye, like the old song says, it'd be easier fur you, wouldn't it?" asked the old man. "You and Petie would be 401 and 402 in jest no time at all."

Uncle Peter continued to be perversely frivolous about the most exclusive metropolitan society in the world. But Uncle Peter was a crabbed old man, lingering past his generation, and the young people made generous allowance for his infirmities.

"Only there's one thing," said his sister to Percival, when later they were alone, "we must be careful about ma; she will persist in making such dreadful breaks, in spite of everything I can do. In San Francisco last June, just before we went to Steaming Springs, there was one hot day, and of course everybody was complaining. Mrs. Beale remarked that it wasn't the heat that bothered us so, but the humidity. It was so damp, you know. Ma spoke right up so everybody could hear her, and said, 'Yes; isn't the humidity dreadful? Why, it's just running off me from every pore!'"

[!-- CH13 --]

CHAPTER XIII.

The Argonauts Return to the Rising Sun

It was mid-October. The two saddle-horses and a team for carriage use had been shipped ahead. In the private car the little party was beginning its own journey Eastward. From the rear platform they had watched the tall figure of Uncle Peter Bines standing in the bright autumn sun, aloof from the band of kerchief-waving friends, the droop of his head and shoulders showing the dejection he felt at seeing them go. He had resisted all entreaties to accompany them.

His last injunction to Percival had been to marry early.

"I know your stock and I know you" he said; "and you got no call to be rangin' them pastures without a brand. You never was meant fur a maverick. Only don't let the first woman that comes ridin' herd get her iron on you. No man knows much about the critters, of course, but I've noticed a few things in my time. You pick one that's full-chested, that's got a fairish-sized nose, and that likes cats. The full chest means she's healthy, the nose means she ain't finicky, and likin' cats means she's kind and honest and unselfish. Ever notice some women when a cat's around? They pretend to like 'em and say 'Nice kitty!' but you can see they're viewin' 'em with bitter hate and suspicion. If they have to stroke 'em they do it plenty gingerly and you can see 'em shudderin' inside like. It means they're catty themselves. But when one grabs a cat up as if she was goin' to eat it and cuddles it in her neck and talks baby-talk to it, you play her fur bein' sound and true. Pass up the others, son.

"And speakin' of the fair sex," he added, as he and Percival were alone for a moment, "that enterprisin' lady we settled with is goin' to do one thing you'll approve of.

"She's goin'," he continued, in answer to Percival's look of inquiry, "to take her bank-roll to New York. She says it's the only place fur folks with money, jest like you say. She tells Coplen that there wa'n't any fit society out here at all,—no advantages fur a lady of capacity and ambitions. I reckon she's goin' to be 403 all right."

"Seems to me she did pretty well here; I don't see any kicks due her."

"Yes, but she's like all the rest. The West was good enough to make her money in, but the East gets her when spendin' time comes."

As the train started he swung himself off with a sad little "Be good to yourself!"

"Thank the Lord we're under way at last!" cried Percival, fervently, when the group at the station had been shut from view. "Isn't it just heavenly!" exclaimed his sister.

"Think of having all of New York you want—being at home there—and not having to look forward to this desolation of a place."

Mrs. Bines was neither depressed nor elated. She was maintaining that calm level of submission to fate which had been her lifelong habit. The journey and the new life were to be undertaken because they formed for her the line of least resistance along which all energy must flow. Had her children elected to camp for the remainder of their days in the centre of the desert of Gobi, she would have faced that life with as little sense of personal concern and with no more misgivings.

Down out of the maze of hills the train wound; and then by easy grades after two days of travel down off the great plateau to where the plains of Nebraska lay away to a far horizon in brown billows of withered grass.

Then came the crossing of the sullen, sluggish Missouri, that highway of an earlier day to the great Northwest; and after that the better wooded and better settled lands of Iowa and Illinois.

"Now we're getting where Christians live," said Percival, with warm appreciation.

"Why, Percival," exclaimed his mother, reprovingly, "do you mean to say there aren't any Christians in Montana City? How you talk! There are lots of good Christian people there, though I must say I have my doubts about that new Christian Science church they started last spring." "The term, Mrs. Thorndike, was used in its social rather than its theological significance," replied her son, urbanely. "Far be it from me to impugn the religion of that community of which we are ceasing to be integers at the pleasing rate of sixty miles an hour. God knows they need their faith in a different kind of land hereafter!"

And even Mrs. Bines was not without a sense of quiet and rest induced by the gentler contours of the landscape through which they now sped.

"The country here does seem a lot cosier," she admitted.

The hills rolled away amiably and reassuringly; the wooded slopes in their gay colouring of autumn invited confidence. Here were no forbidding stretches of the grey alkali desert, no grim bare mountains, no solitude of desolation. It was a kind land, fat with riches. The shorn yellow fields, the capacious red barns, the well-conditioned homes, all told eloquently of peace and plenty. So, too, did the villages—those lively little clearing-houses for immense farming districts. To the adventurer from New York they seem always new and crude. To our travellers from a newer, cruder region they were actually aesthetic in their suggestions of an old and well-established civilisation.

In due time they were rattling over a tangled maze of switches, dodging interminable processions of freight-cars, barely missing crowded passenger trains whose bells struck clear and then flatted as the trains flew by; defiling by narrow water-ways, crowded with small shipping; winding through streets lined with high, gloomy warehouses, amid the clang and clatter, the strangely-sounding bells and whistles of a thousand industries, each sending up its just contribution of black smoke to the pall that lay always spread above; and steaming at last into a great roomy shed where all was system, and where the big engine trembled and panted as if in relief at having run in safety a gantlet so hazardous.

"Anyway, I'd rather live in Montana City than Chicago," ventured Mrs. Bines.

"Whatever pride you may feel in your discernment, Mrs. Cadwallader, is amply justified," replied her son, performing before the amazed lady a bow that indicated the lowest depths of slavish deference.

"I am now," he continued, "going out to pace the floor of this locomotive-boudoir for a few exhilarating breaths of smoke, and pretend to myself that I've got to live in Chicago for ever. A little discipline like that is salutary to keep one from forgetting the great blessing which a merciful Providence has conferred upon one."

"I'll walk a bit with you," said his sister, donning her jacket and a cap.

"Lest my remarks have seemed indeterminate, madam," sternly continued Percival at the door of the car, "permit me to add that if Chicago were heaven I should at once enter upon a life of crime. Do not affect to misunderstand me, I beg of you. I should leave no avenue of salvation open to my precious soul. I should incur no risk of being numbered among the saved. I should be b-a-d, and I should sit up nights to invent new ways of evil. If I had any leisure left from being as wicked as I could be, I should devote it to teaching those I loved how to become abandoned. I should doubtless issue a pamphlet, 'How to Merit Perdition Without a Master. Learn to be Wicked in your Own Home in Ten Lessons. Instructions Sent Securely Sealed from Observation. Thousands of Testimonials from the Most Accomplished Reprobates of the Day.' I trust Mrs. Llewellen Leffingwell-Thompson, that you will never again so far forget yourself as to utter that word 'Chicago' in my presence. If you feel that you must give way to the evil impulse, go off by yourself and utter the name behind the protection of closed doors—where this innocent girl cannot hear you. Come, sister. Otherwise I may behave in a manner to be regretted in my calmer moments. Let us leave the woman alone, now. Besides, I've got to go out and help the hands make up that New York train. You never can tell. Some horrible accident might happen to delay us here thirty minutes. Cheer up, ma; it's always darkest just before leaving Chicago, you know."

Thus flippantly do some of the younger sons of men blaspheme this metropolis of the mid-West—a city the creation of which is, by many persons of discrimination, held to be the chief romance and abiding miracle of the nineteenth century. Let us rejoice that one such partisan was now at hand to stem the torrent of abuse. As Percival held back the door for his sister to pass out, a stout little ruddy-faced man with trim grey sidewhiskers came quickly up the steps and barred their way with cheery aggressiveness.

"Ah! Mr. Higbee—well, well!" exclaimed Percival, cordially.

"Thought it might be some of you folks when I saw the car," said Higbee, shaking hands all around.

"And Mrs. Bines, too! and the girl, looking like a Delaware peach when the crop's 'failed.' How's everybody, and how long you going to be in the good old town?"

"Ah! we were just speaking of Chicago as you came in," said Percival, blandly. "Isn't she a great old town, though—a wonder!"

"My boy," said Higbee, in low, solemn tones that came straight from his heart, "she gets greater every day you live. You can see her at it, fairly. How long since you been here?"

"I came through last June, you know, after I left your yacht at Newport."

"Yes, yes; to be sure; so you did—poor Daniel J.—but say, you wouldn't know the town now if you haven't seen it since then. Why, I run over from New York every thirty days or so and she grows out of my ken every time, like a five-year-old boy. Say, I've got Mrs. Higbee up in the New York sleeper, but if you're going to be here a spell we'll stop a few days longer and I'll drive you around—what say?—packing houses—Lake Shore Drive—Lincoln Park—"

He waited, glowing confidently, as one submitting irresistible temptations.

Percival beamed upon him with moist eyes.

"By Jove, Mr. Higbee! that's clever of you—it's royal! Sis and I would like nothing better—but you see my poor mother here is almost down with nervous prostration and we've got to hurry her to New York without an hour's delay to consult a specialist. We're afraid"—he glanced anxiously at the astounded Mrs. Bines, and lowered his voice—"we're afraid she may not be with us long."

"Why, Percival," began Mrs. Bines, dazedly, "you was just saying—"

"Now don't fly all to pieces, ma!—take it easy—you're with friends, be sure of that. You needn't beg us to go on. You know we wouldn't think of stopping when it may mean life or death to you. You see just the way she is," he continued to the sympathetic Higbee—"we're afraid she may collapse any moment. So we must wait for another time; but I'll tell you what you do; go get Mrs. Higbee and your traps and come let us put you up to New York. We've got lots of room—run along now—and we'll have some of that ham, 'the kind you have always bought,' for lunch. A.L. Jackson is a miserable cook, too, if I don't know the truth." Gently urging Higbee through the door, he stifled a systematic inquiry into the details of Mrs. Bines's affliction.

"Come along quick! I'll go help you and we'll have Mrs. Higbee back before the train starts."

"Do you know," Mrs. Bines thoughtfully observed to her daughter, "I sometimes mistrust Percival ain't just right in his head; you remember he did have a bad fall on it when he was two years and five months old—two years, five months, and eighteen days. The way he carries on right before folks' faces! That time I went through the asylum at Butte there was a young man kept going on with the same outlandish rigmarole just like Percival. The idea of Percival telling me to eat a lemon-ice with an ice-pick, and 'Oh, why don't the flesh-brushes wear nice, proper clothes-brushes!' and be sure and hammer my nails good and hard after I get them manicured. And back home he was always wanting to know where the meat-augers were, saying he'd just bought nine hundred new ones and he'd have to order a ton more if they were all lost. I don't believe there is such a thing as a meat-auger. I don't know what on earth a body could do with one. And that other young man," she concluded, significantly, "they had him in a little bit of a room with an iron-barred door to it like a prison-cell."

[!-- CH14 --]

CHAPTER XIV.

Mr. Higbee Communicates Some Valuable Information

The Higbees were presently at home in the Bines car. Mrs. Higbee was a pleasant, bustling, plump little woman, sparkling-eyed and sprightly. Prominent in her manner was a helpless little confession of inadequacy to her ambitions that made her personality engaging. To be energetic and friendly, and deeply absorbed in people who were bold and confident, was her attitude.

She began bubbling at once to Mrs. Bines and Psyche of the latest fashions for mourners. Crepe was more swagger than ever before, both as trimming and for entire costumes.

"House gowns, my dear, and dinner gowns, made entirely of crepe in the Princesse style, will exactly suit your daughter—and on the dinner gowns she can wear a trimming of that dull jet passementerie."

From gowns she went naturally to the difficulty of knowing whom to meet in a city like New York—and how to meet them—and the watchfulness required to keep daughter Millie from becoming entangled with leading theatrical gentlemen. Amid Percival's lamentations that he must so soon leave Chicago, the train moved slowly out of the big shed to search in the interwoven puzzle of tracks for one that led to the East.

As they left the centre of the city Higbee drew Percival to one of the broad side windows.

"Pull up your chair and sit here a minute," he said, with a mysterious little air of importance. "There's a thing this train's going to pass right along here that I want you to look at. Maybe you've seen better ones, of course—and then again—"

It proved to be a sign some twenty feet high and a whole block long. Emblazoned upon its broad surface was "Higbee's Hams." At one end and towering another ten feet or so above the mammoth letters was a white-capped and aproned chef abandoning his mercurial French temperament to an utter frenzy of delight over a "Higbee's Ham" which had apparently just been vouchsafed to him by an invisible benefactor.

"There, now!" exclaimed Higbee; "what do you call that—I want to know—hey?"

"Great! Magnificent!" cried Percival, with the automatic and ready hypocrisy of a sympathetic nature. "That certainly is great."

"Notice the size of it?" queried Higbee, when they had flitted by.

"Did I!" exclaimed the young man, reproachfully.

"We went by pretty fast—you couldn't see it well. I tell you the way they're allowed to run trains so fast right here in this crowded city is an outrage. I'm blamed if I don't have my lawyer take it up with the Board of Aldermen—slaughtering people on their tracks right and left—you'd think these railroad companies owned the earth—But that sign, now. Did you notice you could read every letter in the label on that ham? You wouldn't think it was a hundred yards back from the track, would you? Why, that label by actual measure is six feet, four inches across—and yet it looks as small—and everything all in the right proportion, it's wonderful. It's what I call art," he concluded, in a slightly dogmatic tone.

"Of course it's art," Percival agreed; "er—all—hand-painted, I suppose?"

"Sure! that painting alone, letters and all, cost four hundred and fifty dollars. I've just had it put up. I've been after that place for years, but it was held on a long lease by Max, the Square Tailor—you know. You probably remember the sign he had there—'Peerless Pants Worn by Chicago's Best Dressers' with a man in his shirt sleeves looking at a new pair. Well, finally, I got a chance to buy those two back lots, and that give me the site, and there she is, all finished and up. That's partly what I come on this time to see about. How'd you like the wording of that sign?"

"Fine—simple and effective," replied Percival.

"That's it—simple and effective. It goes right to the point and it don't slop over beyond any, after it gets there. We studied a good deal over that sign. The other man, the tailor, had too many words for the board space. My advertisin' man wanted it to be, first, 'Higbee's Hams, That's All.' But, I don't know—for so big a space that seemed to me kind of—well—kind of flippant and undignified. Then I got it down to 'Eat Higbee's Hams.' That seemed short enough—but after studying it, I says, What's the use of saying 'eat'? No one would think, I says, that a ham is to paper the walls with or to stuff sofa-cushions with—so off comes 'eat' as being superfluous, and leaving it simple and dignified—'Higbee's Hams.'"

"By the way," said Percival, when they were sitting together again, later in the day, "where is Henry, now?"

Higbee chuckled.

"That's the other thing took me back this time—the new sign and getting Hank started. Henry is now working ten hours a day out to the packinghouse. After a year of that, he'll be taken into the office and his hours will be cut down to eight. Eight hours a day will seem like sinful idleness to Henry by that time."

Percival whistled in amazement.

"I thought you'd be surprised. But the short of it is, Henry found himself facing work or starvation. He didn't want to starve a little bit, and he finally concluded he'd rather work for his dad than any one else.

"You see Henry was doing the Rake's Progress act there in New York—being a gilded youth and such like. Now being a gilded youth and 'a well-known man about town' is something that wants to be done in moderation, and Henry didn't seem to know the meaning of the word. I put up something like a hundred and eighty thousand dollars for Hank's gilding last year. Not that I grudged him the money, but it wasn't doing him any good. He was making a monkey of himself with it, Henry was. A good bit of that hundred and eighty went into a comic opera company that was one of the worst I ever did see. Henry had no judgment. He was too easy. Well, along this summer he was on the point of making a break that would—well, I says to him, says I, 'Hank, I'm no penny-squeezer; I like good stretchy legs myself,' I says; 'I like to see them elastic so they'll give a plenty when they're pulled; but,' I says, 'if you take that step,' I says, 'if you declare yourself, then the rubber in your legs,' I says, 'will just naturally snap; you'll find you've overplayed the tension,' I says, 'and there won't be any more stretch left in them.'

"The secret is, Hank was being chased by a whole family of wolves—that's the gist of it—fortune-hunters—with tushes like the ravening lion in Afric's gloomy jungle. They were not only cold, stone broke, mind you, but hyenas into the bargain—the father and the mother and the girl, too.

"They'd got their minds made up to marry the girl to a good wad of money—and they'll do it, too, sooner or later, because she's a corker for looks, all right—and they'd all made a dead set for Hank; so, quick as I saw how it was, I says, 'Here,' I says, 'is where I save my son and heir from a passel of butchers,' I says, 'before they have him scalded and dressed and hung up outside the shop for the holiday trade,' I says, 'with the red paper rosettes stuck in Henry's chest,' I says."

"Are the New York girls so designing?" asked Percival.

"Is Higbee's ham good to eat?" replied Higbee, oracularly.

"So," he continued, "when I made up my mind to put my foot down I just casually mentioned to the old lady—say, she's got an eye that would make liquid air shiver—that cold blue like an army overcoat—well, I mentioned to her that Henry was a spendthrift and that he wasn't ever going to get another cent from me that he didn't earn just the same as if he wasn't any relation of mine. I made it plain, you bet; she found just where little Henry-boy stood with his kind-hearted, liberal old father.

"Say, maybe Henry wasn't in cold storage with the whole family from that moment. I see those fellows in the laboratories are puttering around just now trying to get the absolute zero of temperature—say, Henry got it, and he don't know a thing about chemistry.

"Then I jounced Hank. I proceeded to let him know he was up against it—right close up against it, so you couldn't see daylight between 'em. 'You're twenty-five,' I says, 'and you play the best game of pool, I'm told, of any of the chappies in that Father-Made-the-Money club you got into,' I says; 'but I've looked it up,' I says, 'and there ain't really what you could call any great future for a pool champion,' I says, 'and if you're ever going to learn anything else, it's time you was at it,' I says. 'Now you go back home and tell the manager to set you to work,' I says, 'and your wages won't be big enough to make you interesting to any skirt-dancer, either,' I says. 'And you make a study of the hog from the ground up. Exhaust his possibilities just like your father done, and make a man of yourself, and then sometime,' I says, 'you'll be able to give good medicine to a cub of your own when he needs it.'"

"And how did poor Henry take all that?"

"Well, Hank squealed at first like he was getting the knife; but finally when he see he was up against it, and especially when he see how this girl and her family throwed him down the elevator-shaft from the tenth story, why, he come around beautifully. He's really got sense, though he doesn't look it—Henry has—though Lord knows I didn't pull him up a bit too quick. But he come out and went to work like I told him. It's the greatest thing ever happened to him. He ain't so fat-headed as he was, already. Henry'll be a man before his dad's through with him."

"But weren't the young people disappointed?" asked Percival; "weren't they in love with each other?"

"In love?" In an effort to express scorn adequately Mr. Higbee came perilously near to snorting. "What do you suppose a girl like that cares for love? She was dead in love with the nice long yellow-backs that I've piled up because the public knows good ham when they taste it. As for being in love with Henry or with any man—say, young fellow, you've got something to learn about those New York girls. And this one, especially. Why, it's been known for the three years we've been there that she's simply hunting night and day for a rich husband. She tries for 'em all as fast as they get in line."

"Henry was unlucky in finding that kind. They're not all like that—those New York girls are not," and he had the air of being able if he chose to name one or two luminous exceptions.

"Silas," called Mrs. Higbee, "are you telling Mr. Bines about our Henry and that Milbrey girl?"

"Yep," answered Higbee, "I told him."

"About what girl?—what was her name?" asked Percival, in a lower tone.

"Milbrey's that family's name—Horace Milbrey—"

"Why," Percival interrupted, somewhat awkwardly, "I know the family—the young lady—we met the family out in Montana a few weeks ago."

"Sure enough—they were in Chicago and had dinner with us on their way out." "I remember Mr. Milbrey spoke of what fine claret you gave him."

"Yes, and I wasn't stingy with ice, either, the way those New York people always are. Why, at that fellow's house he gives you that claret wine as warm as soup.

"But as for that girl," he added, "say, she'd marry me in a minute if I wasn't tied up with the little lady over there. Of course she'd rather marry a sub-treasury; she's got about that much heart in her—cold-blooded as a German carp. She'd marry me—she'd marry you, if you was the best thing in sight. But say, if you was broke, she'd have about as much use for you as Chicago's got for St. Louis."

[!-- CH15 --]

CHAPTER XV.

Some Light With a Few Side-lights

The real spring in New York comes when blundering nature has painted the outer wilderness for autumn. What is called "spring" in the city by unreflecting users of the word is a tame, insipid season yawning into not more than half-wakefulness at best. The trees in the gas-poisoned soil are slow in their greening, the grass has but a pallid city vitality, and the rows of gaudy tulips set out primly about the fountains in the squares are palpably forced and alien.

For the sumptuous blending and flaunt of colour, the spontaneous awakening of warm, throbbing new life, and all those inspiring miracles of regeneration which are performed elsewhere in April and May, the city-pent must wait until mid-October.

This is the spring of the city's year. There be those to hint captiously that they find it an affair of false seeming; that the gorgeous colouring is a mere trick of shop-window cunning; that the time is juiceless and devoid of all but the specious delights of surface. Yet these, perhaps, are unduly imaginative for a world where any satisfaction is held by a tenure precarious at best. And even these carpers, be they never so analytical, can at least find no lack of springtime fervour in the eager throngs that pass entranced before the window show. They, the free-swinging, quick-moving men and women—the best dressed of all throngs in this young world—sun-browned, sun-enlivened, recreated to a fine mettle for enjoyment by their months of mountain or ocean sport—these are, indeed, the ones for whom this afterspring is made to bloom. And, since they find it to be a shifting miracle of perfections, how are they to be quarrelled with?

In the big polished windows waxen effigies of fine ladies, gracefully patient, display the latest dinner-gown from Paris, or the creamiest of be-ribboned tea-gowns. Or they pose in attitudes of polite adieux and greeting, all but smothered in a king's ransom of sable and ermine. Or, to the other extreme, they complacently permit themselves to be observed in the intimate revelations of Parisian lingerie, with its misty froth of embroideries, its fine-spun webs of foamy lace.

In another window, behold a sprightly and enlivening ballet of shapely silken hosiery, fitting its sculptured models to perfection, ranging in tints from the first tender green of spring foliage to the rose-pink of the spring sun's after-glow.

A few steps beyond we may study a window where the waxen ladies have been dismembered. Yet a second glance shows the retained portions to be all that woman herself considers important when she tries on the bird-toque or the picture hat, or the gauze confection for afternoons. The satisfied smiles of these waxen counterfeits show them to have been amply recompensed, with the headgear, for their physical incompleteness.

But if these terraces of colour and grace that line the sides of this narrow spring valley be said to contain only the dry husks of adornment, surely there may be found others more technically springlike.

Here in this broad window, foregathered in a congress of colours designed to appetise, are the ripe fruits of every clime and every season: the Southern pomegranate beside the hardy Northern apple, scarlet and yellow; the early strawberry and the late ruddy peach; figs from the Orient and pines from the Antilles; dates from Tunis and tawny persimmons from Japan; misty sea-green grapes and those from the hothouse—tasteless, it is true, but so lordly in their girth, and royal purple; portly golden oranges and fat plums; pears of mellow blondness and pink-skinned apricots. Here at least is the veritable stuff and essence of spring with all its attending aromas—of more integrity, perhaps, than the same colourings simulated by the confectioner's craft, in the near-by window-display of impossible sweets.

And still more of this belated spring will gladden the eye in the florist's window. In June the florist's shop is a poor place, sedulously to be shunned. Nothing of note blooms there then. The florist himself is patently ashamed of himself. The burden of sustaining his traditions he puts upon a few dejected shrubs called "hardy perennials" that have to labour the year around. All summer it is as if the place feared to compete with nature when colour and grace flower so cheaply on every southern hillside. But now its glories bloom anew, and its superiority over nature becomes again manifest. Now it assembles the blossoms of a whole long year to bewilder and allure. Its windows are shaded glens, vine-embowered, where spring, summer, and autumn blend in all their regal and diverse abundance; and the closing door of the shop fans out odours as from a thousand Persian gardens.

But spring is not all of life, nor what at once chiefly concerns us. There are people to be noted: a little series of more or less related phenomena to be observed.

One of the people, a young man, stands conveniently before this same florist's window, at that hour when the sun briefly flushes this narrow canon of Broadway from wall to wall.

He had loitered along the lively highway an hour or more, his nerves tingling responsively to all its stimuli. And now he mused as he stared at the tangled tracery of ferns against the high bank of wine-red autumn foliage, the royal cluster of white chrysanthemums and the big jar of American Beauties.

He had looked forward to this moment, too—when he should enter that same door and order at least an armful of those same haughty roses sent to an address his memory cherished. Yet now, the time having come, the zest for the feat was gone. It would be done; it were ungraceful not to do it, after certain expressions; but it would be done with no heart because of the certain knowledge that no one—at least no one to be desired—could possibly care for him, or consider him even with interest for anything but his money—the same kind of money Higbee made by purveying hams—"and she wouldn't care in the least whether it was mine or Higbee's, so there was a lot of it."

Yet he stepped in and ordered the roses, nor did the florist once suspect that so lavish a buyer of flowers could be a prey to emotions of corroding cynicism toward the person for whom they were meant.

From the florist's he returned directly to the hotel to find his mother and Psyche making homelike the suite to which they had been assigned. A maid was unpacking trunks under his sister's supervision. Mrs. Bines was in converse with a person of authoritative manner regarding the service to be supplied them. Two maids would be required, and madame would of course wish a butler—

Mrs. Bines looked helplessly at her son who had just entered.

"I think—we've—we've always did our own buttling," she faltered.

The person was politely interested.

"I'll attend to these things, ma," said Percival, rather suddenly. "Yes, we'll want a butler and the two maids, and see that the butler knows his business, please, and—here—take this, and see that we're properly looked after, will you?"

As the bill bore a large "C" on its face, and the person was rather a gentleman anyway, this unfortunate essay at irregular conjugation never fell into a certain class of anecdotes which Mrs. Bines's best friends could now and then bring themselves to relate of her.

But other matters are forward. We may next overtake two people who loiter on this bracing October day down a leaf-strewn aisle in Central Park.

"You," said the girl of the pair, "least of all men can accuse me of lacking heart."

"You are cold to me now."

"But look, think—what did I offer—you've had my trust,—everything I could bring myself to give you. Look what I would have sacrificed at your call. Think how I waited and longed for that call."

"You know how helpless I was."

"Yes, if you wanted more than my bare self. I should have been helpless, too, if I had wanted more than—than you."

"It would have been folly—madness—that way."

"Folly—madness? Do you remember the 'Sonnet of Revolt' you sent me? Sit on this bench; I wish to say it over to you, very slowly; I want you to hear it while you keep your later attitude in mind.

"Life—what is life? To do without avail The decent ordered tasks of every day: Talk with the sober: join the solemn play: Tell for the hundredth time the self-same tale Told by our grandsires in the self-same vale Where the sun sets with even, level ray, And nights, eternally the same, make way For hueless dawns, intolerably pale—'"

"But I know the verse."

"No; hear it out;—hear what you sent me:

"'And this is life? Nay, I would rather see
The man who sells his soul in some wild cause:
The fool who spurns, for momentary bliss,
All that he was and all he thought to be:
The rebel stark against his country's laws:
God's own mad lover, dying on a kiss.'"

She had completed the verse with the hint of a sneer in her tones.

"Yes, truly, I remember it; but some day you'll thank me for saving you; of course it would have been regular in a way, but people here never really forget those things—and we'd have been helpless—some day you'll thank me for thinking for you."

"Why do you believe I'm not thanking you already?"

"Hang it all! that's what you made me think yesterday when I met you." "And so you called me heartless? Now tell me just what you expect a woman in my position to do. I offered to go to you when you were ready. Surely that showed my spirit—and you haven't known me these years without knowing it would have to be that or nothing."

"Well, hang it, it wasn't like the last time, and you know it; you're not kind any longer. You can be kind, can't you?"

Her lip showed faintly the curl of scorn.

"No, I can't be kind any longer. Oh, I see you've known your own mind so little; there's been so little depth to it all; you couldn't dare. It was foolish to think I could show you my mind."

"But you still care for me?"

"No; no, I don't. You should have no reason to think so if I did. When I heard you'd made it up I hated you, and I think I hate you now. Let us go back. No, no, please don't touch me—ever again."

Farther down-town in the cosy drawing-room of a house in a side street east of the Avenue, two other persons were talking. A florid and profusely freckled young Englishman spoke protestingly from the hearth-rug to a woman who had the air of knowing emphatically better.

"But, my dear Mrs. Drelmer, you know, really, I can't take a curate with me, you know, and send up word won't she be good enough to come downstairs and marry me directly—not when I've not seen her, you know!" "Nonsense!" replied the lady, unimpressed. "You can do it nearly that way, if you'll listen to me. Those Westerners perform quite in that manner, I assure you. They call it 'hustling.'"

"Dear me!"

"Yes, indeed, 'dear you.' And another thing, I want you to forestall that Milbrey youth, and you may be sure he's no farther away than Tuxedo or Meadowbrook. Now, they arrived yesterday; they'll be unpacking to-day and settling to-morrow; I'll call the day after, and you shall be with me."

"And you forget that—that devil—suppose she's as good as her threat?"

"Absurd! how could she be?"

"You don't know her, you know, nor the old beggar either, by Jove!"

"All the more reason for haste. We'll call to-morrow. Wait. Better still, perhaps I can enlist the Gwilt-Athelston; I'm to meet her to-morrow. I'll let you know. Now I must get into my teaharness, so run along."

We are next constrained to glance at a strong man bowed in the hurt of a great grief. Horace Milbrey sits alone in his gloomy, high-ceilinged library. His attire is immaculate. His slender, delicate hands are beautifully white. The sensitive lines of his fine face tell of the strain under which he labours. What dire tragedies are those we must face wholly alone—where we must hide the wound, perforce, because no comprehending sympathy flows out to us; because instinct warns that no help may come save from the soul's own well of divine fortitude. Some hope, tenderly, almost fearfully, held and guarded, had perished on the day that should have seen its triumphant fruition. He raised his handsome head from the antique, claw-footed desk, sat up in his chair, and stared tensely before him. His emotion was not to be suppressed. Do tears tremble in the eyes of the strong man? Let us not inquire too curiously. If they tremble down the fine-skinned cheek, let us avert our gaze. For grief in men is no thing to make a show of.

A servant passed the open door bearing an immense pasteboard box with one end cut out to accommodate the long stems of many roses.

"Jarvis!"

"Yes, sir!"

"What is it?"

"Flowers, sir, for Miss Avice."

"Let me see—and the card?"

He took the card from the florist's envelope and glanced at the name.

"Take them away."

The stricken man was once more alone; yet now it was as if the tender beauty of the flowers had balmed his hurt—taught him to hope anew. Let us in all sympathy and hope retire.

For cheerfuller sights we might observe Launton Oldaker in a musty curio-shop, delighted over a pair of silver candlesticks with square bases and fluted columns, fabricated in the reign of that fortuitous monarch, Charles the Second; or we might glance in upon the Higbees in their section of a French chateau, reproduced up on the stately Riverside Drive, where they complete the details of a dinner to be given on the morrow.

Or perhaps it were better to be concerned with a matter more weighty than dinners and antique candlesticks. The search need never be vain, even in this world of persistent frivolity. As, for example:

"Tell Mrs. Van Geist if she can't come down, I'll run up to her."

"Yes, Miss Milbrey."

Mrs. Van Geist entered a moment later.

"Why, Avice, child, you're glowing, aren't you?"

"I must be, I suppose—I've just walked down from 59th Street, and before that I walked in the Park. Feel how cold my cheeks are,—Mütterchen."

"It's good for you. Now we shall have some tea, and talk."

"Yes—I'm hungry for both, and some of those funny little cakes."

"Come back where the fire is, dear; the tea has just been brought. There, take the big chair."

"It always feels like you—like your arms, Mütterchen—and I am tired."

"And throw off that coat. There's the lemon, if you're afraid of cream."

"I wish I weren't afraid of anything but cream."

"You told me you weren't afraid of that—that cad—any more."

"I'm not—I just told him so. But I'm afraid of it all; I'm tired trying not to drift—tired trying not to try, and tired trying to try—Oh, dear—sounds like a nonsense verse, doesn't it? Have you any one to-night? No? I think I must stay with you till morning. Send some one home to say I'll be here. I can always think so much better here—and you, dear old thing, to mother me!"

"Do, child; I'll send Sandon directly."

"He will go to the house of mourning."

"What's the latest?"

"Papa was on the verge of collapse this morning, and yet he was striving so bravely and nobly to bear up. No one knows what that man suffers; it makes him gloomy all the time about everything. Just before I left, he was saying that, when one considers the number of American homes in which a green salad is never served, one must be appalled. Are you appalled, auntie? But that isn't it."

"Nothing has happened?"

"Well, there'll be no sensation about it in the papers to-morrow, but a very dreadful thing has happened. Papa has suffered one of the cruellest blows of his life. I fancy he didn't sleep at all last night, and he looked thoroughly bowled over this morning."

"But what is it?"

"Well—oh, it's awful!—first of all there were six dozen of early-bottled, 1875 Château Lafitte—that was the bitterest—but he had to see the rest go, too—Château Margeaux of '80—some terribly ancient port and Madeira—the dryest kind of sherry—a lot of fine, full clarets of '77 and '78—oh, you can't know how agonising it was to him—I've heard them so often I know them all myself."

"But what on earth about them?"

"Nothing, only the Cosmopolitan Club's wine cellar—auctioned off, you know. For over a year papa has looked forward to it. He knew every bottle of wine in it. He could recite the list without looking at it. Sometimes he sounded like a French lesson—and he's been under a fearful strain ever since the announcement was made. Well, the great day came yesterday, and poor pater simply couldn't bid in a single drop. It needed ready money, you know. And he had hoped so cheerfully all the time to do something. It broke his heart, I'm sure, to see that Château Lafitte go—and only imagine, it was bid in by the butler of that odious Higbee. You should have heard papa rail about the vulgar nouveaux riches when he came home—he talked quite like an anarchist. But by to-night he'll be blaming me for his misfortunes. That's why I chose to stay here with you."

"Poor Horace. Whatever are you going to do?"

"Well, dearie, as for me, it doesn't look as if I could do anything but one thing. And here is my ardent young Croesus coming out of the West."

"You called him your 'athletic Bayard' once."

"The other's more to the point at present. And what else can I do? Oh, if some one would just be brave enough to live the raw, quivering life with me, I could do it, I give you my word. I could let everything go by the board—but I am so alone and so helpless and no man is equal to it, nowadays. All of us here seem to be content to order a 'half portion' of life."

"Child, those dreams are beautiful, but they're like those flying-machines that are constantly being tested by the credulous inventors. A wheel or a pinion goes wrong and down the silly things come tumbling."

"Very well; then I shall be wise—I suppose I shall be—and I'll do it quickly. This fortune of good gold shall propose marriage to me at once, and be accepted—so that I shall be able to look my dear old father in the face again—and then, after I'm married—well, don't blame me for anything that happens."

"I'm sure you'll be happy with him—it's only your silly notions. He's in love with you."

"That makes me hesitate. He really is a man—I like him—see this letter—a long review from the Arcady Lyre of the 'poem' he wrote, a poem consisting of 'Avice Milbrey.' The reviewer has been quite enthusiastic over it, too,—written from some awful place in Montana."

"What more could you ask? He'll be kind."

"You don't understand, Mütterchen. He seems too decent to marry that way—and yet it's the only way I could marry him. And after he found me out—oh, think of what marriage is—he'd have to find it out—I couldn't act long—doubtless he wouldn't even be kind to me then."

"You are morbid, child."

"But I will do it; I shall; I will be a credit to my training—and I shall learn to hate him and he will have to learn—well, a great deal that he doesn't know about women."

She stared into the fire and added, after a moment's silence:

"Oh, if a man only could live up to the verses he cuts out of magazines!"

[!-- CH16 --]

CHAPTER XVI.

With the Barbaric Hosts

History repeats itself so cleverly, with a variance of stage-settings and accessories so cunning, that the repetition seldom bores, and is, indeed, frequently undetected. Thus, the descent of the Barbarians upon a decadent people is a little tour de force that has been performed again and again since the oldest day. But because the assault nowadays is made not with force of arms we are prone to believe it is no longer made at all;—as if human ways had changed a bit since those ugly, hairy tribes from the Northern forests descended upon the Roman empire. And yet the mere difference that the assault is now made with force of money in no way alters the process nor does it permit the result to vary. On the surface all is cordiality and peaceful negotiation. Beneath is the same immemorial strife, the life-and-death struggle,—pitiless, inexorable.

What would have been a hostile bivouac within the city's gates, but for the matter of a few centuries, is now, to select an example which remotely concerns us, a noble structure on Riverside Drive, facing the lordly Hudson and the majestic Palisades that form its farther wall. And, for the horde of Goths and Visigoths, Huns and Vandals, drunkenly reeling in the fitful light of camp-fires, chanting weird battle-runes, fighting for captive vestals, and bickering in uncouth tongues over the golden spoils, what have we now to make the parallel convince? Why, the same Barbarians, actually; the same hairy rudeness, the same unrefined, all-conquering, animal force; a red-faced, big-handed lot, imbued with hearty good nature and an easy tolerance for the ways of those upon whom they have descended.

Here are chiefs of renown from the farthest fastnesses; they and their curious households: the ironmonger from Pittsburg, the gold-miner from Dawson, the copper chief from Butte, the silver chief from Denver, the cattle chief from Oklahoma, lord of three hundred thousand good acres and thirty thousand cattle, the lumber prince from Michigan, the founder of a later dynasty in oil, from Texas. And, for the unaesthetic but effective Attila, an able fashioner of pork products from Chicago.

Here they make festival, carelessly, unafraid, unmolested. For, in the lapse of time, the older peoples have learned not only the folly of resisting inevitables, but that the huge and hairy invaders may be treated and bartered with not unprofitably. Doubtless it often results from this amity that the patrician strain is corrupted by the alien admixture,—but business has been business since as many as two persons met on the face of the new earth.

For example, this particular shelter is builded upon land which one of the patrician families had held for a century solely because it could not be disposed of. Yet the tribesmen came, clamouring for palaces, and now this same land, with some adjoining areas of trifling extent, produces an income that will suffice to maintain that family almost in its ancient and befitting estate.

In this mammoth pile, for the petty rental of ten or fifteen thousand dollars a year, many tribes of the invaders have found shelter and entertainment in apartments of many rooms. Outwardly, in details of ornamentation, the building is said to duplicate the Chateaux Blois, those splendid palaces of Francis I. Inside are all the line and colour and device of elegant opulence, modern to the last note.

To this palace of an October evening comes the tribe of Bines, and many another such, for a triumphal feast in the abode of Barbarian Silas Higbee. The carriages pass through a pair of lordly iron gates, swung from massive stone pillars, under an arch of wrought iron with its antique lamp, and into the echoing courtyard flanked by trim hedges of box.

Alighting, the barbaric guests of Higbee are ushered through a marble-walled vestibule, from which a wrought-iron and bronze screen gives way to the main entrance-hall. The ceiling here reproduces that of a feudal castle in Rouen, with some trifling and effective touches of decoration in blue, scarlet, and gold. The walls are of white Caen stone, with ornate windows and balconies jutting out above. In one corner is a stately stone mantel with richly carved hood, bearing in its central panel the escutcheon of the gallant French monarch. Up a little flight of marble steps, guarded by its hand-rail of heavy metal, shod with crimson velvet, one reaches the elevator. This pretty enclosure of iron and glass, of classic detail in the period of Henry II., of Circassian walnut trim, with crotch panels, has more the aspect of boudoir than elevator. The deep seat is of walnut, upholstered with fat cushions of crimson velvet edged in dull gold galloon. Over the seat is a mirror cut into small squares by wooden muntins. At each side are electric candles softened by red silk shades. One's last view before the door closes noiselessly is of a bay-window opposite, set with cathedral glass casement-lights, which sheds soft colours upon the hall-bench of carven stone and upon the tessellated floor.

The door to the Higbee domain is of polished mahogany, set between lights of antique verte Italian glass, and bearing an ancient brass knocker. From the reception-room, with its walls of green empire silk, one passes through a foyer hall, of Cordova leather hangings, to the drawing-room with its three broad windows. Opposite the entrance to this superb room is a mantel of carved Caen stone, faced with golden Pavanazza marble, with old Roman andirons of gold ending in the fleur-de-lis. The walls are hung with blue Florentine silk, embossed in silver. Beyond a bronze grill is the music-room, a library done in Austrian oak with stained burlap panelled by dull-forged nails, a conservatory, a billiard-room, a smoking-room. This latter has walls of red damask and a mantel with "Post Tenebras Lux" cut into one of its marble panels,—a legend at which the worthy lessee of all this splendour is wont often to glance with respectful interest.

The admirable host—if one be broad-minded—is now in the drawing-room, seconding his worthy wife and pretty daughter who welcome the dinner-guests.

For a man who has a fad for ham and doesn't care who knows it, his bearing is all we have a right to expect that it should be. Among the group of arrivals, men of his own sort, he is speaking of the ever-shifting fashion in beards, to the evangel of a Texas oil-field who flaunts to the world one of those heavy moustaches spuriously extended below the corners of the mouth by means of the chin-growth of hair. Another, a worthy tribesman from Snohomish, Washington, wears a beard which, for a score of years, has been let to be its own true self; to express, fearlessly, its own unique capacity for variation from type. These two have rallied their host upon his modishly trimmed side-whiskers.

"You're right," says Mr. Higbee, amiably, "I ain't stuck any myself on this way of trimming up a man's face, but the madam will have it this way—says it looks more refined and New Yorky. And now, do you know, ever since I've wore 'em this way—ever since I had 'em scraped from around under my neck here—I have to go to Florida every winter. Come January or February, I get bronchitis every blamed year!"

Two of the guests only are alien to the barbaric throng.

There is the noble Baron Ronault de Palliac, decorated, reserved, observant,—almost wistful. For the moment he is picturing dutifully the luxuries a certain marriage would enable him to procure for his noble father and his aged mother, who eagerly await the news of his quest for the golden fleece. For the baron contemplates, after the fashion of many conscientious explorers, a marriage with a native woman; though he permits himself to cherish the hope that it may not be conditioned upon his adopting the manners and customs of the particular tribe that he means to honour. Monsieur the Baron has long since been obliged to confess that a suitable mesalliance is none too easy of achievement, and, in testimony of his vicissitudes, he has written for a Paris comic paper a series of grimly satiric essays upon New York society. Recently, moreover, he has been upon the verge of accepting employment in the candy factory of a bourgeois compatriot. But hope has a little revived in the noble breast since chance brought him and his title under the scrutiny of the bewitching Miss Millicent Higbee and her appreciative mother.

And to-night there is not only the pretty Miss Higbee, but the winning Miss Bines, whose dot, the baron has been led to understand, would permit his beloved father unlimited piquet at his club, to say nothing of regenerating the family chateau. Yet these are hardly matters to be gossiped of. It is enough to know that the Baron Ronault de Palliac when he discovers himself at table between Miss Bines and the adorable Miss Higbee, becomes less saturnine than has for some time been his wont. He does not forget previous disappointments, but desperately snaps his swarthy jaws in commendable superiority to any adverse fate.

"Je ne donne pas un damn," he says to himself, and translates, as was his practice, to better his English—"I do not present a damn. I shall take what it is that it may be."

The noble Baron de Palliac at this feast of the tribesmen was like the captive patrician of old led in chains that galled. The other alien, Launton Oldaker, was present under terms of honourable truce, willingly and without ulterior motive saving—as he confessed to himself—a consuming desire to see "how the other half lives." He was no longer the hunted and dismayed being Percival had met in that far-off and impossible Montana; but was now untroubled, remembering, it is true, that this "slumming expedition," as he termed it, had taken him beyond the recognised bounds of his beloved New York, but serene in the consciousness that half an hour's drive would land him safely back at his club.

Oldaker observed Miss Psyche Bines approvingly.

"We are so glad to be in New York!" she had confided to him, sitting at her right.

"My dear young woman," he warned her, "you haven't reached New York yet." The talk being general and loud, he ventured further.

"This is Pittsburg, Chicago, Kansas City, Denver—almost anything but New York."

"Of course I know these are not the swell old families."

Oldaker sipped his glass of old Oloroso sherry and discoursed.

"And our prominent families, the ones whose names you read, are not New York any more, either. They are rather London and Paris. Their furniture, clothing, plate, pictures, and servants come from one or the other. Yes, and their manners, too, their interests and sympathies and concerns, their fashions—and—sometimes, their—er—morals. They are assuredly not New York any more than Gobelin tapestries and Fortuny pictures and Louis Seize chairs are New York."

"How queerly you talk. Where is New York, then?"

Oldaker sighed thoughtfully between two spoonfuls of tortue verte, claire.

"Well, I suppose the truth is that there isn't much of New York left in New York. As a matter of fact I think it died with the old Volunteer Fire Department. Anyway the surviving remnant is coy. Real old New Yorkers like myself—neither poor nor rich—are swamped in these days like those prehistoric animals whose bones we find. There comes a time when we can't live, and deposits form over us and we're lost even to memory."

But this talk was even harder for Miss Bines to understand than the English speech of the Baron Ronault de Palliac, and she turned to that noble gentleman as the turbot with sauce Corail was served.

The dining-room, its wall wainscotted from floor to ceiling in Spanish oak, was flooded with soft light from the red silk dome that depended from its crown of gold above the table. The laughter and talk were as little subdued as the scheme of the rooms. It was an atmosphere of prodigal and confident opulence. From the music-room near by came the soft strains of a Haydn quartet, exquisitely performed by finished and expensive artists.

"Say, Higbee!" it was the oil chief from Texas, "see if them fiddlers of yours can't play 'Ma Honolulu Lulu!'"

Oldaker, wincing and turning to Miss Bines for sympathy, heard her say:

"Yes, do, Mr. Higbee! I do love those ragtime songs—and then have them play 'Tell Me, Pretty Maiden,' and the 'Intermezzo.'"

He groaned in anguish.

The talk ran mostly on practical affairs: the current values of the great staple commodities; why the corn crop had been light; what wheat promised to bring; how young Burman of the Chicago Board of Trade had been pinched in his own wheat corner for four millions—"put up" by his admiring father; what beef on the hoof commanded; how the Federal Oil Company would presently own the State of Texas.

Almost every Barbarian at the table had made his own fortune. Hardly one but could recall early days when he toiled on farm or in shop or forest, herded cattle, prospected, sought adventure in remote and hazardous wilds.

"'Tain't much like them old days, eh, Higbee?" queried the Crown Prince of Cripple Creek—"when you and me had to walk from Chicago to Green Bay, Wisconsin, because we didn't have enough shillings for stage-fare?" He gazed about him suggestively.

"Corn-beef and cabbage was pretty good then, eh?" and with sure, vigorous strokes he fell to demolishing his filet de dinde a la Perigueux, while a butler refilled his glass with Chateau Malescot, 1878.

"Well, it does beat the two rooms the madam and me started to keep house in when we was married," admitted the host. "That was on the banks of the Chicago River, and now we got the Hudson flowin' right through the front yard, you might say, right past our own yacht-landing."

From old days of work and hardship they came to discuss the present and their immediate surroundings, social and financial.

Their daughters, it appeared, were being sought in marriage by the sons of those among whom they sojourned.

"Oh, they're a nice band of hand-shakers, all right, all right," asserted the gentleman from Kansas City. "One of 'em tried to keep company with our Caroline, but I wouldn't stand for it. He was a crackin' good shinny player, and he could lead them cotillion-dances blowin' a whistle and callin', 'All right, Up!' or something, like a car-starter,—but, 'Tell me something good about him,' I says to an old friend of his family. Well, he hemmed and hawed—he was a New York gentleman, and says he, 'I don't know whether I could make you understand or not,' he says, 'but he's got Family,' jest like that, bearin' down hard on 'Family'—'and you've got money,' he says, 'and Money and Family need each other badly in this town,' he says. 'Yes,' says I, 'I met up with a number of people here,' I says, 'but I ain't met none yet that you'd have to blindfold and back into a lot of money,' I says, 'family or no family,' I says. 'And that young man,' he says, 'is a pleasant, charming fellow; why,' he says, 'he's the best-coated man in New York.' Well, I looked at him and I says, 'Well,' says I, 'he may be the best-coated man in New York, but he'll be the best-booted man in New York, too,' I says, 'if he comes around trying to spark Caroline any more,—or would be if I had my way. His chin's pushed too far back under his face,' I says, 'and besides,' I says, 'Caroline is being waited on by a young hardware drummer, a good steady young fellow travelling out of little old K.C.,' I says, 'and while he ain't much for fam'ly,' I says, he'll have one of his own before he gets through,' I says; 'we start fam'lies where I come from,' I says."

"Good boy! Good for you," cheered the self-made Barbarians, and drank success to the absent disseminator of hardware.

With much loud talk of this unedifying character the dinner progressed to an end; through selle d'agneau, floated in '84 champagne, terrapin convoyed by a special Madeira of 1850, and canvas-back duck with Romanee Conti, 1865, to a triumphant finale of Turkish coffee and 1811 brandy.

After dinner the ladies gossiped of New York society, while the barbaric males smoked their big oily cigars and bandied reminiscences. Higbee showed them through every one of the apartment's twenty-two rooms, from reception-hall to laundry, manipulating the electric lights with the skill of a stage-manager.

The evening ended with a cake-walk, for the musical artists had by rare wines been mellowed from their classic reserve into a mood of ragtime abandon. And if Monsieur the Baron with his ceremonious grace was less exuberant than the Crown Prince of Cripple Creek, who sang as he stepped the sensuous measure, his pleasure was not less. He joyed to observe that these men of incredible millions had no hauteur.

"I do not," wrote the baron to his noble father the marquis, that night, "yet understand their joke; why should it be droll to wish that the man whose coat is of the best should also wear boots of the best? but as for what they call une promenade de gateau, I find it very enjoyable. I have met a Mlle. Bines to whom I shall at once pay my addresses. Unlike Mlle. Higbee, she has not the father from Chicago nor elsewhere. Quel diable d'homme!"

[!-- CH17 --]

CHAPTER XVII.

The Patricians Entertain

To reward the enduring who read politely through the garish revel of the preceding chapter, covers for fourteen are now laid with correct and tasteful quietness at the sophisticated board of that fine old New York family, the Milbreys. Shaded candles leave all but the glowing table in a gloom discreetly pleasant. One need not look so high as the old-fashioned stuccoed ceiling. The family portraits tone agreeably into the halflight of the walls; the huge old-fashioned walnut sideboard, soberly ornate with its mirrors, its white marble top and its wood-carved fruit, towers majestically aloft in proud scorn of the frivolous Chippendale fad.

Jarvis, the accomplished and incomparable butler, would be subdued and scholarly looking but for the flagrant scandal of his port-wine nose. He gives finishing little fillips to the white chrysanthemums massed in the central epergne on the long silver plateau, and bestows a last cautious survey upon the cut-glass and silver radiating over the dull white damask. Finding the table and its appointments faultless, he assures himself once more that the sherry will come on irreproachably at a temperature of 60 degrees; that the Burgundy will not fall below 65 nor mount above 70; for Jarvis wots of a palate so acutely sensitive that it never fails to record a variation of so much as one degree from the approved standard of temperature.

How restful this quiet and reserve after the colour and line tumult of the Higbee apartment. There the flush and bloom of newness were oppressive to the right-minded. All smelt of the shop. Here the dull tones and decorous lines caress and soothe instead of overwhelming the imagination with effects too grossly literal. Here is the veritable spirit of good form.

Throughout the house this contrast might be noted. It is the brown-stone, high-stoop house, guarded by a cast-iron fence, built in vast numbers when the world of fashion moved North to Murray Hill and Fifth Avenue a generation ago. One of these houses was like all the others inside and out, built of unimaginative "builder's architecture." The hall, the long parlour, the back parlour or library, the high stuccoed ceilings—not only were these alike in all the houses, but the furnishings, too, were apt to be of a sameness in them all, rather heavy and tasteless, but serving the ends that such things should be meant to serve, and never flamboyant. Of these relics of a simpler day not many survive to us, save in the shameful degeneracy of boarding-houses. But in such as are left, we may confidently expect to find the traditions of that more dignified time kept unsullied;—to find, indeed, as we find in the house of Milbrey, a settled air of gloom that suggests insolvent but stubbornly determined exclusiveness.

Something of this air, too, may be noticed in the surviving tenants of these austere relics. Yet it would hardly be observed in this house on this night, for not only do arriving guests bring the aroma of a later prosperity, but the hearts of our host and hostess beat high with a new hope. For the fair and sometimes uncertain daughter of the house of Milbrey, after many ominous mutterings, delays, and frank rebellions, has declared at last her readiness to be a credit to her training by conferring her family prestige, distinction of manner and charms of person upon one equipped for their suitable maintenance.

Already her imaginative father is ravishing in fancy the mouldiest wine-cellars of Continental Europe. Already the fond mother has idealised a house in "Millionaire's Row" east of the Park, where there shall be twenty servants instead of three, and there shall cease that gnawing worry lest the treacherous north-setting current sweep them west of the Park into one of those hideously new apartment houses, where the halls are done in marble that seems to have been sliced from a huge Roquefort cheese, and where one must vie, perhaps, with a shop-keeper for the favours of an irreverent and materialistic janitor.

The young woman herself entertains privately a state of mind which she has no intention of making public. It is enough, she reasons, that her action should outwardly accord with the best traditions of her class; and indeed, her family would never dream of demanding more.

Her gown to-night is of orchard green, trimmed with apple-blossoms, a single pink spray of them caught in her hair. The rounding, satin grace of her slender arms, sloping to the opal-tipped fingers, the exquisite line from ear to shoulder strap, the melting ripeness of her chin and throat, the tender pink and white of her fine skin, the capricious, inciting tilt of her small head, the dainty lift of her short nose,—these allurements she has inventoried with a calculating and satisfied eye. She is glad to believe that there is every reason why it will soon be over.

And, since the whole loaf is notoriously better than a half, here is the engaging son of the house, also firmly bent upon the high emprise of matrimony; handsome, with the chin, it may be, slightly receding; but an unexcelled leader of cotillions, a surpassing polo-player, clever, winning, and dressed with an effect that has long made him remarked in polite circles, which no mere money can achieve. Money, indeed, if certain ill-natured gossip of tradesmen be true, has been an inconsiderable factor in the encompassment of this sartorial distinction. He waits now, eager for a first glimpse of the young woman whose charms, even by report, have already won the best devotion he has to give. A grievous error it is to suppose that Cupid's artillery is limited to bow and arrows.

And now, instead of the rude commercial horde that laughed loudly and ate uncouthly at the board of the Barbarian, we shall sit at table with people born to the only manner said to be worth possessing;—if we except, indeed, the visiting tribe of Bines, who may be relied upon, however, to behave at least unobtrusively.

As a contrast to the oppressively Western matron from Kansas City, here is Mistress Fidelia Oldaker on the arm of her attentive son. She would be very old but for the circumstance that she began early in life to be a belle, and age cannot stale such women. Brought up with board at her back, books on her head, to guard her complexion as if it were her fair name, to be diligent at harp practice and conscientious with the dancing-master, she is almost the last of a school that nursed but the single aim of subjugating man. To-night, at seventy-something, she is a bit of pink bisque fragility, bubbling tirelessly with reminiscence, her vivacity unimpaired, her energy amazing, and her coquetry faultless. From which we should learn, and be grateful therefor, that when a girl is brought up in the way she ought to go she will never be able to depart from it.

Here also is Cornelia Van Geist, sister of our admirable hostess—relict of a gentleman who had been first or second cousin to half the people in society it were really desirable to know, and whose taste in wines, dinners, and sports had been widely praised at his death by those who had had the fortune to be numbered among his friends. Mrs. Van Geist has a kind, shrewd face, and her hair, which turned prematurely grey while she was yet a wife, gives her a look of age that her actual years belie.

Here, too, is Rulon Shepler, the money-god, his large, round head turning upon his immense shoulders without the aid of a neck—sharp-eyed, grizzled, fifty, short of stature, and with as few illusions concerning life as the New York financier is apt to retain at his age.

If we be forced to wait for another guest of note, it is hardly more than her due; for Mrs. Gwilt-Athelstan is truly a personage, and the best people on more than one continent do not become unduly provoked at being made to wait for her. Those less than the very best frankly esteem it a privilege. Yet the great lady is not careless of engagements, and the wait is never prolonged. Mrs. Milbrey has time to say to her sister, "Yes, we think it's going; and really, it will do very well, you know. The girl has had some nonsense in her mind for a year past—none of us can tell what—but now she seems actually sensible, and she's promised to accept when the chap proposes." But there is time for no more gossip.

The belated guest arrives, enveloped in a vast cloak, and accompanied by her two nephews, whom Percival Bines recognises for the solemn and taciturn young men he had met in Shepler's party at the mine.

Mrs. Gwilt-Athelstan, albeit a decorative personality, is constructed on the same broad and generously graceful lines as her own victoria. The great lady has not only two chins, but what any fair-minded observer would accept as sufficient promise of a good third. Yet hardly could a slighter person display to advantage the famous Gwilt-Athelstan jewels. The rope of pierced diamonds with pigeon-blood rubies strung between them, which she wears wound over her corsage, would assuredly overweight the frail Fidelia Oldaker; the tiara of emeralds and diamonds was never meant for a brow less majestic; nor would the stomacher of lustrous grey pearls and glinting diamonds ever have clasped becomingly a figure that was svelte—or "skinny," as the great lady herself is frank enough to term all persons even remotely inclined to be svelte.

But let us sit and enliven a proper dinner with talk upon topics of legitimate interest and genuine propriety.

Here will be no discussion of the vulgar matter of markets, staples, and prices, such as we perforce endured through the overwined and too-abundant repast of Higbee. Instead of learning what beef on the hoof brings per hundred-weight, f.o.b. at Cheyenne, we shall here glean at once the invaluable fact that while good society in London used to be limited to those who had been presented at court, the presentations have now become so numerous that the limitation has lost its significance. Mrs. Gwilt-Athelstan thus discloses, as if it were a trifle, something we should never learn at the table of Higbee though we ate his heavy dinners to the day of ultimate chaos. And while we learned at that distressingly new table that one should keep one's heifers and sell off one's steer calves, we never should have been informed there that Dinard had just enjoyed the gayest season of its history under the patronage of this enterprising American; nor that Lady de Muzzy had opened a tea-room in Grafton Street, and Cynthia, Marchioness of Angleberry, a beauty-improvement parlour on the Strand "because she needs the money."

"Lots of 'em takin' to trade nowadays; it's a smart sayin' there now that all the peers are marryin' actresses and all the peeresses goin' into business." Mrs. Gwilt-Athelstan nodded little shocks of brilliance from her tiara and hungrily speared another oyster.

"Only trouble is, it's such rotten hard work collectin' bills from their intimate friends; they simply won't pay."

Nor at the barbaric Higbee's should we have been vouchsafed, to treasure for our own, the knowledge that Mrs. Gwilt-Athelstan had merely run over for the cup-fortnight, meaning to return directly to her daughter, Katharine, Duchess of Blanchmere, in time for the Melton Mowbray hunting-season; nor that she had been rather taken by the new way of country life among us, and so tempted to protract her gracious sojourn.

"Really," she admits, "we're comin' to do the right thing over here; a few years were all we needed. Hardly a town-house to be opened before Thanksgivin', I understand; and down at the Hills some of the houses will stay open all winter. It's coachin', ridin', and golf and auto-racin' and polo and squash; really the young folks don't go in at all except to dance and eat; and it's quite right, you know. It's quite decently English, now. Why, at Morris Park the other day, the crowd on the lawn looked quite like Ascot, actually."

Nor could we have learned in the hostile camp the current gossip of Tuxedo, Meadowbrook, Lenox, Morristown, and Ardsley; of the mishap to Mrs. "Jimmie" Whettin, twice unseated at a recent meet; of the woman's championship tournament at Chatsworth; or the good points of the new runner-up at Baltusrol, daily to be seen on the links. Where we might incur knowledge of Beaumont "gusher" or Pittsburg mill we should never have discovered that teas and receptions are really falling into disrepute; that a series of dinner-dances will be organised by the mothers of debutantes to bring them forward; and that big subscription balls are in disfavour, since they benefit no one but the caterers who serve poor suppers and bad champagne.

Mrs. takes only Scotch whiskey and soda.

"But I'm glad," she confides to Horace Milbrey on her left, "that you haven't got to followin' this fad of havin' one wine at dinner; I know it's English, but it's downright shoddy."

Her host's eyes swam with gratitude for this appreciation.

"I stick to my peg," she continued; "but I like to see a Chablis with the oysters and good dry sherry with the soup, and a Moselle with the fish, and then you're ready to be livened with a bit of champagne for the roast, and steadied a bit by Burgundy with the game. Phim sticks to it, too; tells me my peg is downright encouragement to the bacteria. But I tell him I've no quarrel with my bacteria. 'Live and let live' is my motto, I tell him,—and if the microbes and I both like Scotch and soda, why, what harm. I'm forty-two and not so much of a fool that I ain't a little bit of a physician. I know my stomach, I tell him."

"What about these Western people?" she asked Oldaker at her other side, after a little.

"Decent, unpretentious folks, somewhat new, but with loads of money."

"I've heard how the breed's stormin' New York in droves; but they tell me some of us need the money."

"I dined with one last night, a sugar-cured ham magnate from Chicago."

"Dear me! how shockin'!"

"But they're good, whole-souled people."

"And well-heeled—and that's what we need, it seems. Some of us been so busy bein' well-familied that we've forgot to make money."

"It's a good thing, too. Nature has her own building laws about fortunes. When they get too sky-scrapy she topples them over. These people with their thrifty habits would have all the money in time if their sons and daughters didn't marry aristocrats with expensive tastes who know how to be spenders. Nature keeps things fairly even, one way or another."

"You're thinkin' about Kitty and the duke."

"No, not then I wasn't, though that's one of the class I mean. I was thinking especially about these Westerners."

"Well, my grandfather made the best barrels in New York, and I'm mother-in-law of a chap whose ancestors for three hundred and fifty years haven't done a stroke of work; but he's the Duke of Blanchmere, and I hope our friends here will come as near gettin' the worth of their money as we did. And if that chap"—she glanced at Percival—"marries a certain young woman, he'll never have a dull moment. I'd vouch for that. I'm quite sure she's the devil in her."

"And if the yellow-haired girl marries the fellow next her—"

"He might do worse."

"Yes, but might she? He's already doing worse, and he'll keep on doing it, even if he does marry her."

"Nonsense—about that, you know; all rot! What can you expect of these chaps? So does the duke do worse, but you'll never hear Kitty complain so long as he lets her alone and she can wear the strawberry leaves. I fancy I'll have those young ones down to the Hills for Hallowe'en and the week-end. Might as well help 'em along."

At the other end of the table, the fine old ivory of her cheeks gently suffused with pink until they looked like slightly crumpled leaves of a la France rose, Mrs. Oldaker was flirting brazenly with Shepler, and prattling impartially to him and to one of the twin nephews of old days in social New York; of a time when the world of fashion occupied a little space at the Battery and along Broadway; of its migration to the far north of Great Jones Street, St. Mark's Place, and Second Avenue. In Waverly Place had been the flowering of her belle-hood, and the day when her set moved on to Murray Hill was to her still recent and revolutionary.

Between the solemn Angstead twins, Mrs. Bines had sat in silence until by some happy chance it transpired that "horse" was the word to unlock their lips. As Mrs. Bines knew all about horses the twins at once became voluble, showing her marked attention. The twins were notably devoid of prejudice if your sympathies happened to run with theirs.

Miss Bines and young Milbrey were already on excellent terms. Percival and Miss Milbrey, on the other hand, were doing badly. Some disturbing element seemed to have put them aloof. Miss Milbrey wondered somewhat; but her mind was easy, for her resolution had been taken.

Mrs. Gwilt-Athelstan extended her invitation to the young people, who accepted joyfully.

"Come down and camp with us, and help Phim keep the batteries of his autos run out. You know they deteriorate when they're left half-charged, and it's one of the cares of his life to see to the whole six of 'em when they come in. He gets in one and the men get in the others, and he leads a solemn parade around the stables until they've been run out. Tell me the leisure class isn't a hard-workin' class, now."

Over coffee and chartreuse in the drawing-room there was more general talk of money and marriage, and of one for the other.

"And so he married money," concluded Mrs. Gwilt-Athelstan of one they had discussed.

"Happy marriage!" Shepler called out.

"No; money talks! and this time, on my word, now, it made you want to put on those thick sealskin ear-muffs. Poor chap, and he'd been talkin' to me about the monotony of married life. 'Monotony, my boy,' I said to him, 'you don't know lovely woman!' and now he wishes jolly well that he'd not done it, you know."

Here, too, was earned by Mrs. Bines a reputation for wit that she was never able quite to destroy. There had been talk of a banquet to a visiting celebrity the night before, for which the menu was one of unusual costliness. Mr. Milbrey had dwelt with feeling upon certain of its eminent excellences, such as loin of young bear, a la Granville, and the boned quail, stuffed with goose-livers.

"Really," he concluded, "from an artistic standpoint, although large dinners are apt to be slurred and slighted, it was a creation of undoubted worth."

"And the orchestra," spoke up Mrs. Bines, who had read of the banquet, "played 'Hail to the Chef!'"

The laughter at this sally was all it should have been, even the host joining in it. Only two of those present knew that the good woman had been warned not to call "chef" "chief," as Silas Higbee did. The fact that neither should "chief" be called "chef" was impressed upon her later, in a way to make her resolve ever again to eschew both of the troublesome words.

When the guests had gone Miss Milbrey received the praise of both parents for her blameless attitude toward young Bines.

"It will be fixed when we come back from Wheatly," said that knowing young woman, "and now don't worry any more about it."

"And, Fred," said the mother, "do keep straight down there. She's a commonplace girl, with lots of mannerisms to unlearn, but she's pretty and sweet and teachable."

"And she'll learn a lot from Fred that she doesn't know now," finished that young man's sister from the foot of the stairway.

Back at their hotel Psyche Bines was saying:

"Isn't it queer about Mrs. Gwilt-Athelstan? We've read so much about her in the papers. I thought she must be some one awful to meet—I was that scared—and instead, she's like any one, and real chummy besides; and, actually, ma, don't you think her dress was dowdy—all except the diamonds? I suppose that comes from living in England so much. And hasn't Mrs. Milbrey twice as grand a manner, and the son—he's a precious—he knows everything and everybody; I shall like him."

Her brother, who had flung himself into a cushioned corner, spoke with the air of one who had reluctantly consented to be interviewed and who was anxious to be quoted correctly:

"Mrs. Gwilt-Athelstan is all right. She reminds me of what Uncle Peter writes about that new herd of short-horns: 'This breed has a mild disposition, is a good feeder, and produces a fine quality of flesh.' But I'll tell you one thing, sis," he concluded with sudden emphasis, "with all this talk about marrying for money I'm beginning to feel as if you and I were a couple of white rabbits out in the open with all the game laws off!"

[!-- CH18 --]

CHAPTER XVIII.

The Course of True Love at a House Party

Among sundry maxims and observations of King Solomon, collated by the discerning men of Hezekiah, it will be recalled that the way of a man with a maid is held up to wonder. "There be," says the wise king, who composed a little in the crisp manner of Mr. Kipling, "three things which are too wonderful for me; yea, four which I know not: the way of an eagle in the air; the way of a serpent upon a rock; the way of a ship in the midst of the sea; and the way of a man with a maid." Why he neglected to include the way of a maid with a man is not at once apparent. His unusual facilities for observation must seemingly have inspired him to wonder at the maid's way even more than at the man's; and wise men later than he have not hesitated to confess their entire lack of understanding in the matter. But if Solomon included this item in his summary, the men of Hezekiah omitted to report the fact, and by their chronicles we learn only that the woman "eateth and wipeth her mouth and saith 'I have done no wickedness.'" Perhaps it was Solomon's mischance to observe phenomena of this character too much in the mass.

Miss Milbrey's way, at any rate, with the man she had decided to marry, would undoubtedly have made more work for the unnamed Boswells of the king, could it have been brought to his notice.

For, as she journeyed to the meeting-place on a bright October afternoon, she confessed to herself that it was of a depth beyond her own fathoming. Lolling easily back in the wicker chair of the car that bore her, and gazing idly out over the brown fields and yellow forests of Long Island as they swirled by her, she found herself wishing once that her eyes were made like those of a doll. She had lately discovered of one that when it appeared to fall asleep, it merely turned its eyes around to look into its own head. With any lesser opportunity for introspection she felt that certain doubts as to her own motives and processes would remain for ever unresolved. It was not that she could not say "I have done no wickedness;" let us place this heroine in no false light. She was little concerned with the morality of her course as others might appraise it. The fault, if fault it be, is neither ours nor hers, and Mr. Darwin wrote a big book chiefly to prove that it isn't. From the force of her environment and heredity Miss Milbrey had debated almost exclusively her own chances of happiness under given conditions; and if she had, for a time, questioned the wisdom of the obvious course, entirely from her own selfish standpoint, it is all that, and perhaps more than, we were justified in expecting from her. Let her, then, cheat the reader of no sympathy that might flow to a heroine struggling for a high moral ideal. Merely is she clear-headed enough to have discovered that selfishness is not the thing of easy bonds it is reputed to be; that its delights are not certain; that one does not unerringly achieve happiness by the bare circumstance of being uniformly selfish. Yet even this is a discovery not often made, nor one to be lightly esteemed; for have not the wise ones of Church and State ever implied that the way of selfishness is a way of sure delight, to be shunned only because its joys endure not? So it may be, after all, no small merit we claim for this girl in that, trained to selfishness and a certain course, she yet had the wit to suspect that its joys have been overvalued even by its professional enemies. It is no small merit, perhaps, even though, after due and selfish reflection, she determined upon the obvious course.

If sometimes her heart was sick with the hunger to love and be loved by the one she loved, so that there were times when she would have bartered the world for its plenary feeding, it is all that, we insist, and more, than could be expected of this sort of heroine.

And so she had resolved upon surrender—upon an outward surrender. Inwardly she knew it to be not more than a capitulation under duress, whose terms would remain for ever secret except to those clever at induction. And now, as the train took her swiftly to her fate, she made the best of it.

There would be a town-house fit for her; a country-house at Tuxedo or Lenox or Westbury, a thousand good acres with greeneries, a game preserve, trout pond, and race-course; a cottage at Newport; a place in Scotland; a house in London, perhaps. Then there would be jewels such as she had longed for, a portrait by Chartran, she thought. And there was the dazzling thought of going to Felix or Doucet with credit unlimited.

And he—would the thought of him as it had always come to her keep on hurting with a hurt she could neither explain nor appease? Would he annoy her, enrage her perhaps, or even worse, tire her? He would be very much in earnest, of course, and so few men could be in earnest gracefully. But would he be stupid enough to stay so? And if not, would he become brutal? She suspected he might have capacities for that. Would she be able to hide all but her pleasant emotions from him,—hide that want, the great want, to which she would once have done sacrifice?

Well, it was easier to try than not to try, and the sacrifice—one could always sacrifice if the need became imperative.

"And I'm making much of nothing," she concluded. "No other girl I know would do it. And papa shall 'give me away.' What a pretty euphemism that is, to be sure!"

But her troubled musings ended with her time alone. From a whirl over the crisp, firm macadam, tucked into one of Phimister Gwilt-Athelstan's automobiles with four other guests, with no less a person than her genial host for chauffeur, she was presently ushered into the great hall where a huge log-fire crackled welcome, and where blew a lively little gale of tea-chatter from a dozen people.

Tea Miss Milbrey justly reckoned among the little sanities of life. Her wrap doffed and her veil pushed up, she was in a moment restored to her normal ease, a part of the group, and making her part of the talk that touched the latest news from town, the flower show, automobile show, Irving and Terry, the morning's meet, the weekly musicale and dinner-dance at the club; and at length upon certain matters of marriage and divorce.

"Ladies, ladies—this is degenerating into a mere hammer-fest." Thus spoke a male wit who had listened. "Give over, and be nice to the absent."

"The end of the fairy story was," continued the previous speaker, unheeding, "and so they were divorced and lived happily ever after."

"I think she took the Chicago motto, 'Marry early and often,'" said another, "but here she comes."

And as blond and fluffy little Mrs. Akemit, a late divorcee, joined the group the talk ranged back to the flourishing new hunt at Goshen, the driving over of Tuxedo people for the meet, the nasty accident to Warner Ridgeway when his blue-ribbon winner Musette fell upon him in taking a double-jump.

Miss Milbrey had taken stock of her fellow guests. Especially was she interested to note the presence of Mrs. Drelmer and her protege, Mauburn. It meant, she was sure, that her brother's wooing of Miss Bines would not be uncontested.

Another load of guests from a later train bustled in, the Bineses among them, and there was more tea and fresher gossip, while the butler circulated again with his tray for the trunk-keys.

The breezy hostess now took pains to impress upon all that only by doing exactly as they pleased, as to going and coming, could they hope to please her. Had she not, by this policy, conquered the cold, Scottish exclusiveness of Inverness-shire, so that the right sort of people fought to be at her house-parties during the shooting, even though she would persist in travelling back and forth to London in gowns that would be conspicuously elaborate at an afternoon reception, and even though, in any condition of dress, she never left quite enough of her jewels in their strong-box?

During the hour of dressing-sacque and slippers, while maids fluttered through the long corridors on hair-tending and dress-hooking expeditions, Mrs. Drelmer favoured her hostess with a confidential chat in that lady's boudoir, and, over Scotch and soda and a cigarette, suggested that Mr. Mauburn, in a house where he could really do as he pleased, would assuredly take Miss Bines out to dinner.

Mrs. Gwilt-Athelstan was instantly sympathetic.

"Only I can't take sides, you know, my dear, and young Milbrey will think me shabby if he doesn't have first go; but I'll be impartial; Milbrey shall take her in, and Mauburn shall be at her other side, and may God have mercy on her soul! These people have so much money, I hear, it amounts to financial embarrassment, but with those two chaps for the girl, and Avice Milbrey for that decent young chap, I fancy they'll be disembarrassed, in a measure. But I mustn't 'play favourites,' as those slangy nephews of mine put it."

And so it befell at dinner in the tapestried dining-room that Psyche Bines received assiduous attention from two gentlemen whom she considered equally and superlatively fascinating. While she looked at one, she listened to the other, and her neck grew tired with turning. Of anything, save the talk, her mind was afterward a blank; but why is not that the ideal dinner for any but mere feeders?

Nor was the dazzled girl conscious of others at the table,—of Florence Akemit, the babyish blond, listening with feverish attention to the German savant, Doctor von Herzlich, who had translated Goethe's "Iphigenie in Tauris" into Greek merely as recreation, and who was now justifying his choice of certain words and phrases by citing passages from various Greek authors; a choice which the sympathetic listener, after discreet intervals for reflection, invariably commended.

"Oh, you wonderful, wonderful man, you!" she exclaimed, resolving to sit by some one less wonderful another time.

Or there was Mrs. Gwilt-Athelstan, like a motherly Venus rising from a sea of pink velvet and white silk lace, asserting that some one or other would never get within sniffing-distance of the Sandringham set.

Or her husband, whose face, when he settled it in his collar, made the lines of a perfect lyre, and of whom it would presently become inaccurate to say that he was getting bald. He was insisting that "too many houses spoil the home," and that, with six establishments, he was without a place to lay his head, that is, with any satisfaction.

Or there was pale, thin, ascetic Winnie Wilberforce, who, as a theosophist, is understood to believe that, in a former incarnation, he came near to having an affair with a danseuse; he was expounding the esoterics of his cult to a high-coloured brunette with many turquoises, who, in turn, was rather inclined to the horse-talk of one of the nephews.

Or there were Miss Milbrey and Percival Bines, of whom the former had noted with some surprise that the latter was studying her with the eyes of rather cold calculation, something she had never before detected in him.

After dinner there were bridge and music from the big pipe-organ in the music-room, and billiards and some dancing.

The rival cavaliers of Miss Bines, perceiving simultaneously that neither would have the delicacy to withdraw from the field, cunningly inveigled each other into the billiard-room, where they watchfully consumed whiskey and soda together with the design of making each other drunk. This resulted in the two nephews, who invariably hunted as a pair, capturing Miss Bines to see if she could talk horse as ably as her mother, and, when they found that she could, planning a coaching trip for the morrow.

It also resulted in Miss Bines seeing no more of either cavalier that night, since they abandoned their contest only after every one but a sleepy butler had retired, and at a time when it became necessary for the Englishman to assist the American up the stairs, though the latter was moved to protest, as a matter of cheerful generality, that he was "aw ri'—entirely cap'le." At parting he repeatedly urged Mauburn, with tears in his eyes, to point out one single instance in which he had ever proved false to a friend.

To herself, when the pink rose came out of her hair that night, Miss Milbrey admitted that it wasn't going to be so bad, after all.

She had feared he might rush his proposal through that night; he had been so much in earnest. But he had not done so, and she was glad he could be restrained and deliberate in that "breedy" sort of way. It promised well, that he could wait until the morrow.

[!-- CH19 --]

CHAPTER XIX.

An Afternoon Stroll and an Evening Catastrophe

Miss Milbrey, the next morning, faced with becoming resignation what she felt would be her last day of entire freedom. She was down and out philosophically to play nine holes with her host before breakfast.

Her brother, awakening less happily, made a series of discoveries regarding his bodily sensations that caused him to view life with disaffection. Noting that the hour was early, however, he took cheer, and after a long, strong, cold drink, which he rang for, and a pricking icy shower, which he nerved himself to, he was ready to ignore his aching head and get the start of Mauburn.

The Englishman, he seemed to recall, had drunk even more than he, and, as it was barely eight o'clock, would probably not come to life for a couple of hours yet. He made his way to the breakfast-room. The thought of food was not pleasant, but another brandy and soda, beading vivaciously in its tall glass, would enable him to watch with fortitude the spectacle of others who might chance to be eating. And he would have at least two hours of Miss Bines before Mauburn's head should ache him back to consciousness.

He opened the door of the spacious breakfast-room. Through the broad windows from the south-east came the glorious shine of the morning sun to make him blink; and seated where it flooded him as a calcium was Mauburn, resplendent in his myriad freckles, trim, alive, and obviously hungry. Around his plate were cold mutton, a game pie, eggs, bacon, tarts, toast, and sodden-looking marmalade. Mauburn was eating of these with a voracity that published his singleness of mind to all who might observe.

Milbrey steadied himself with one hand upon the door-post, and with the other he sought to brush this monstrous illusion from his fickle eyes. But Mauburn and the details of his deadly British breakfast became only more distinct. The appalled observer groaned and rushed for the sideboard, whence a decanter, a bowl of cracked ice, and a siphon beckoned.

Between two gulps of coffee Mauburn grinned affably.

"Mornin', old chap! Feelin' a bit seedy? By Jove! I don't wonder. I'm not so fit myself. I fancy, you know, it must have been that beastly anchovy paste we had on the biscuits."

Milbrey's burning eyes beheld him reach out for another slice of the cold, terrible mutton.

"Life," said Milbrey, as he inflated his brandy from the siphon, "is an empty dream this morning."

"Wake up then, old chap!" Mauburn cordially urged, engaging the game pie in deadly conflict; "try a rasher; nothing like it; better'n peggin' it so early. Never drink till dinner-time, old chap, and you'll be able to eat in the morning like—like a blooming baby." And he proceeded to crown this notion of infancy's breakfast with a jam tart of majestic proportions.

"Where are the people?" inquired Milbrey, eking out his own moist breakfast with a cigarette.

"All down and out except some of the women. Miss Bines just drove off a four-in-hand with the two Angsteads—held the reins like an old whip, too, by Jove; but they'll be back for luncheon;—and directly after luncheon she's promised to ride with me. I fancy we'll have a little practice over the sticks."

"And I fancy I'm going straight back to bed,—that is, if it's all right to fancy a thing you're certain about."

Outside most of the others had scattered for life in the open, each to his taste. Some were on the links. Some had gone with the coach. A few had ridden early to the meet of the Essex hounds near Easthampton, where a stiff run was expected. Others had gone to follow the hunt in traps. A lively group came back now to read the morning papers by the log-fire in the big cheery hall. Among these were Percival and Miss Milbrey. When they had dawdled over the papers for an hour Miss Milbrey grew slightly restive.

"Why doesn't he have it over?" she asked herself, with some impatience. And she delicately gave Percival, not an opportunity, but opportunities to make an opportunity, which is a vastly different form of procedure.

But the luncheon hour came and people straggled back, and the afternoon began, and the request for Miss Milbrey's heart and hand was still unaccountably deferred. Nor could she feel any of those subtle premonitions that usually warn a woman when the event is preparing in a lover's secret heart.

Reminding herself of his letters, she began to suspect that, while he could write unreservedly, he might be shy and reluctant of speech; and that shyness now deterred him. So much being clear, she determined to force the issue and end the strain for both.

Percival had shown not a little interest in pretty Mrs. Akemit, and was now talking with that fascinating creature as she lolled on a low seat before the fire in her lacy blue house-gown. At the moment she was adroitly posing one foot and then the other before the warmth of the grate. It may be disclosed without damage to this tale that the feet of Mrs. Akemit were not cold; but that they were trifles most daintily shod, and, as her slender silken ankles curved them toward the blaze from her froth of a petticoat, they were worth looking at.

Miss Milbrey disunited the chatting couple with swiftness and aplomb.

"Come, Mr. Bines, if I'm to take that tramp you made me promise you, it's time we were off."

Outside she laughed deliciously. "You know you did make me promise it mentally, because I knew you'd want to come and want me to come, but I was afraid Mrs. Akemit mightn't understand about telepathy, so I pretended we'd arranged it all in words."

"Of course! Great joke, wasn't it?" assented the young man, rather awkwardly.

Down the broad sweep of roadway, running between its granite coping, they strode at a smart pace.

"You know you complimented my walking powers on that other walk we took, away off there where the sun goes down."

"Yes, of course," he replied absently.

"Now, he's beginning," she said to herself, noting his absent and somewhat embarrassed manner.

In reality he was thinking how few were the days ago he would have held this the dearest of all privileges, and how strange that he should now prize it so lightly, almost prefer, indeed, not to have it; that he should regard her, of all women, "the fairest of all flesh on earth" with nervous distrust.

She was dressed in tan corduroy; elation was in her face; her waist, as she stepped, showed supple as a willow; her suede-gloved little hands were compact and tempting to his grasp. His senses breathed the air of her perfect and compelling femininity. But sharper than all these impressions rang the words of the worldly-wise Higbee: "She's hunting night and day for a rich husband; she tries for them as fast as they come; she'd rather marry a sub-treasury—she'd marry me in a minute—she'd marry YOU; but if you were broke she'd have about as much use for you...."

Her glance was frank, friendly, and encouraging. Her deep eyes were clear as a trout-brook. He thought he saw in them once almost a tenderness for him.

She thought, "He does love me!"

Outside the grounds they turned down a bridle-path that led off through the woods—off through the golden sun-wine of an October day. The air bore a clean autumn spice, and a faint salty scent blended with it from the distant Sound. The autumn silence, which is the only perfect silence in all the world, was restful, yet full of significance, suggestion, provocation. From the spongy lowland back of them came the pleading sweetness of a meadow-lark's cry. Nearer they could even hear an occasional leaf flutter and waver down. The quick thud of a falling nut was almost loud enough to earn its echo. Now and then they saw a lightning flash of vivid turquoise and heard a jay's harsh scream.

In this stillness their voices instinctively lowered, while their eyes did homage to the wondrous play of colour about them. Over a yielding brown carpet they went among maple and chestnut and oak, with their bewildering changes through crimson, russet, and amber to pale yellow; under the deep-stained leaves of the sweet-gum they went, and past the dogwood with scarlet berries gemming the clusters of its dim red leaves.

But through all this waiting, inciting silence Miss Milbrey listened in vain for the words she had felt so certain would come.

Sometimes her companion was voluble; again he was taciturn—and through it all he was doggedly aloof.

Miss Milbrey had put herself bravely in the path of Destiny. Destiny had turned aside. She had turned to meet it, and now it frankly fled. Destiny, as she had construed it, was turned a fugitive. She was bruised, puzzled, and not a little piqued. During the walk back, when this much had been made clear, the silence was intolerably oppressive. Without knowing why, they understood perfectly now that neither had been ingenuous.