Whirligigs by O Henry (page 5)

room at the top of the building. In that chair Georgia would always sit when she came to the office for him of afternoons.

As time passed, the Commissioner seemed to grow more silent, solitary, and reserved. A new phase of mind developed in him. He could not endure the presence of a child. Often when a clattering youngster belonging to one of the clerks would come chattering into the big business-room adjoining his little apartment, the Com- missioner would steal softly and close the door. He would always cross the street to avoid meeting the school- children when they came dancing along in happy groups upon the sidewalk, and his firm mouth would close into a mere line.

It was nearly three months after the rains had washed the last dead flower-petals from the mound above little Georgia when the “land-shark” firm of Hamlin and Avery filed papers upon what they considered the “fattest” vacancy of the year.

It should not be supposed that all who were termed “land-sharks” deserved the name. Many of them were reputable men of good business character. Some of them could walk into the most august councils of the State and say: “Gentlemen, we would like to have this, and that, and matters go thus.” But, next to a three years’ drought and the boll-worm, the Actual Settler hated the Land-shark. The land-shark haunted the Land Office, where all the land records were kept, and hunted “vacancies” — that is, tracts of unappro- priated public domain, generally invisible upon the official maps, but actually existing “upon the ground.” The law entitled any one possessing certain State scrip to file by virtue of same upon any land not previously legally appropriated. Most of the scrip was now in the hands of the land-sharks. Thus, at the cost of a few hundred dollars, they often secured lands worth as many thousands. Naturally, the search for “vacancies” was lively.

But often — very often — the land they thus secured, though legally “unappropriated,” would be occupied by happy and contented settlers, who had laboured for years to build up their homes, only to discover that their titles were worthless, and to receive peremptory notice to quit. Thus came about the bitter and not unjustifiable hatred felt by the toiling settlers toward the shrewd and seldom merciful speculators who so often turned them forth destitute and homeless from their fruitless labours. The history of the state teems with their antagonism. Mr. Land-shark seldom showed his face on “locations” from which he should have to eject the unfortunate victims of a monstrously tangled land system, but let his emis- saxies do the work. There was lead in every cabin, moulded into balls for him; many of his brothers had enriched the grass with their blood. The fault of it all lay far back.

When the state was young, she felt the need of attract- ing newcomers, and of rewarding those pioneers already within her borders. Year after year she issued land scrip — Headrights, Bounties, Veteran Donations, Confeder- ates; and to railroads, irrigation companies, colonies, and tillers of the soil galore. All required of the grantee was that he or it should have the scrip properly surveyed upon the public domain by the county or district surveyor, and the land thus appropriated became the property of him or it, or his or its heirs and assigns, forever.

In those days — and here is where the trouble began – the state’s domain was practically inexhaustible, and the old surveyors, with princely — yea, even Western American — liberality, gave good measure and over- flowing. Often the jovial man of metes and bounds would dispense altogether with the tripod and chain. Mounted on a pony that could cover something near a “vara” at a step, with a pocket compass to direct his course, he would trot out a survey by counting the beat of his pony’s hoofs, mark his corners, and write out his field notes with the complacency produced by an act of duty well performed. Sometimes — and who could blame the surveyor? — when the pony was “feeling his oats,” he might step a little higher and farther, and in that case the beneficiary of the scrip might get a thousand or two more acres in his survey than the scrip called for. But look at the boundless leagues the state had to spare! However, no one ever had to complain of the pony under- stepping. Nearly every old survey in the state con- tained an excess of land.

In later years, when the state became more populous, and land values increased, this careless work entailed incalculable trouble, endless litigation, a period of riotous land-grabbing, and no little bloodshed. The land- sharks voraciously attacked these excesses in the old surveys, and filed upon such portions with new scrip as unappropriated public domain. Wherever the identi- fications of the old tracts were vague, and the corners were not to be clearly established, the Land Office would recognize the newer locations as valid, and issue title to the locators. Here was the greatest hardship to be found. These old surveys, taken from the pick of the land, were already nearly all occupied by unsuspecting and peaceful settlers, and thus their titles were demolished, and the choice was placed before them either to buy their land over at a double price or to vacate it, with their families and personal belongings, immediately. Land locators sprang up by hundreds. The country was held up and searched for “vacancies” at the point of a compass. Hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of splendid acres were wrested from their innocent purchasers and holders. There began a vast hegira of evicted settlers in tattered wagons; going nowhere, cursing injustice, stunned, purposeless, homeless, hopeless. Their children began to look up to them for bread, and cry.

It was in consequence of these conditions that Hamil- ton and Avery had filed upon a strip of land about a mile wide and three miles long, comprising about two thou- sand acres, it being the excess over complement of the Elias Denny three-league survey on Chiquito River, in one of the middle-western counties. This two-thousand- acre body of land was asserted by them to be vacant land, and improperly considered a part of the Denny survey. They based this assertion and their claim upon the land upon the demonstrated facts that the beginning corner of the Denny survey was plainly identified; that its field notes called to run west 5,760 varas, and then called for Chiquito River; thence it ran south, with the meanders — and so on — and that the Chiquito River was, on the ground, fully a mile farther west from the point reached by course and distance. To sum up: there were two thousand acres of vacant land between the Denny survey proper and Chiquito River.

One sweltering day in July the Commissioner called for the papers in connection with this new location. They were brought, and heaped, a foot deep, upon his desk — field notes, statements, sketches, affidavits, connecting lines-documents of every description that shrewdness and money could call to the aid of Hamlin and Avery.

The firm was pressing the Commissioner to issue a patent upon their location. They possesed inside infor- mation concerning a new railroad that would probably pass somewhere near this land.

The General Land Office was very still while the Com- missioner was delving into the heart of the mass of evi- dence. The pigeons could be heard on the roof of the old, castle-like building, cooing and fretting. The clerks were droning everywhere, scarcely pretending to earn their salaries. Each little sound echoed hollow and loud from the bare, stone-flagged floors, the plastered walls, and the iron-joisted ceiling. The impalpable, perpetual lime- stone dust that never settled, whitened a long streamer of sunlight that pierced the tattered window-awning.

It seemed that Hamlin and Avery had builded well. The Denny survey was carelessly made, even for a care- less period. Its beginning corner was identical with that of a well-defined old Spanish grant, but its other calls were sinfully vague. The field notes contained no other object that survived — no tree, no natural object save Chiquito River, and it was a mile wrong there. According to precedent, the Office would be justified in giving it its complement by course and distance, and considering the remainder vacant instead of a mere excess.

The Actual Settler was besieging the office with wild protests in re. Having the nose of a pointer and the eye of a hawk for the land-shark, he had observed his myrmi- dons running the lines upon his ground. Making inquiries, he learned that the spoiler had attacked his home, and he left the plough in the furrow and took his pen in hand.

One of the protests the Commissioner read twice. It was from a woman, a widow, the granddaughter of Elias Denny himself. She told how her grandfather had sold most of the survey years before at a trivial price — land that was now a principality in extent and value. Her mother had also sold a part, and she herself had suc- ceeded to this western portion, along Chiquito River. Much of it she had been forced to part with in order to live, and now she owned only about three hundred acres, on which she had her home. Her letter wound up rather pathetically:

“I’ve got eight children, the oldest fifteen years. I work all day and half the night to till what little land I can and keep us in clothes and books. I teach my children too. My neighbours is all poor and has big families. The drought kills the crops every two or three years and then we has hard times to get enough to eat. There is ten families on this land what the land-sharks is trying to rob us of, and all of them got titles from me. I sold to them cheap, and they aint paid out yet, but part of them is, and if their land should be took from them I would die. My grandfather was an honest man, and he helped to build up this state, and he taught his children to be honest, and how could I make it up to them who bought me? Mr. Commissioner, if you let them land-sharks take the roof from over my children and the little from them as they has to live on, whoever again calls this state great or its government just will have a lie in their mouths”

The Commissioner laid this letter aside with a sigh. Many, many such letters he had received. He had never been hurt by them, nor had he ever felt that they appealed to him personally. He was but the state’s servant, and must follow its laws. And yet, somehow, this reflection did not always eliminate a certain responsible feeling that hung upon him. Of all the state’s officers he was supremest in his department, not even excepting the Governor. Broad, general land laws he followed, it was true, but he had a wide latitude in particular ramifica- tions. Rather than law, what he followed was Rulings: Office Rulings and precedents. In the complicated and new questions that were being engendered by the state’s development the Commissioner’s ruling was rarely appealed from. Even the courts sustained it when its equity was apparent.

The Commissioner stepped to the door and spoke to a clerk in the other room — spoke as he always did, as if he were addressing a prince of the blood:

“Mr. Weldon, will you be kind enough to ask Mr. Ashe, the state school-land appraiser, to please come to my office as soon as convenient?”

Ashe came quickly from the big table where he was arranging his reports.

“Mr. Ashe,” said the Commissioner, “you worked along the Chiquito River, in Salado Colinty, during your last trip, I believe. Do you remember anything of the Elias Denny three-league survey?”

“Yes, sir, I do,” the blunt, breezy, surveyor answered. “I crossed it on my way to Block H, on the north side of it. The road runs with the Chiquito River, along the valley. The Denny survey fronts three miles on the Chiquito.”

“It is claimed,” continued the commissioner, “that it fails to reach the river by as much as a mile.”

The appraiser shrugged his shoulder. He was by birth and instinct an Actual Settler, and the natural foe of the land-shark.

“It has always been considered to extend to the river,” he said, dryly.

“But that is not the point I desired to discuss,” said the Commissioner. “What kind of country is this valley portion of (let us say, then) the Denny tract?”

The spirit of the Actual Settler beamed in Ashe’s face.

“Beautiful,” he said, with enthusiasm. “Valley as level as this floor, with just a little swell on, like the sea, and rich as cream. Just enough brakes to shelter the cattle in winter. Black loamy soil for six feet, and then clay. Holds water. A dozen nice little houses on it, with windmills and gardens. People pretty poor, I guess — too far from market — but comfortable. Never saw so many kids in my life.”

“They raise flocks?” inquired the Commissioner.

“Ho, ho! I mean two-legged kids,” lauched the surveyor; “two-legged, and bare-legged, and tow-headed.”

“Children! oh, children!” mused the Commissioner, as though a new view had opened to him; “they raise children!

“It’s a lonesome country, Commissioner,” said the surveyor. “Can you blame ’em?”

“I suppose,” continued the Commissioner, slowly, as one carefully pursues deductions from a new, stupendous theory, “not all of them are tow-headed. It would not be unreasonable, Mr. Ashe, I conjecture, to believe that a portion of them have brown, or even black, hair.”

“Brown and black, sure,” said Ashe; “also red.”

“No doubt,” said the Commissioner. “Well, I thank you for your courtesy in informing me, Mr. Ashe. I will not detain you any longer from your duties.”

Later, in the afternoon, came Hamlin and Avery, big, handsome, genial, sauntering men, clothed in white duck and low-cut shoes. They permeated the whole office with an aura of debonair prosperity. They passed among the clerks and left a wake of abbreviated given names and fat brown cigars.

These were the aristocracy of the land-sharks, who went in for big things. Full of serene confidence in them- selves, there was no corporation, no syndicate, no rail- road company or attorney general too big for them to tackle. The peculiar smoke of their rare, fat brown cigars was to be perceived in the sanctum of every department of state, in every committee-room of the Legislature, in every bank parlour and every private caucus-room in the state Capital. Always pleasant, never in a hurry, in seeming to possess unlimited leisure, people wondered when they gave their attention to the many audacious enterprises in which they were knnown to be engaged.

By and by the two dropped carelessly into the Com- missioner’s room and reclined lazily in the big, leather- upholstered arm-chairs. They drawled a good-natured complaint of the weather, and Hamlin told the Com- missioner an excellent story he had amassed that morn- ing from the Secretary of State.

But the Commissioner knew why they were there. He had half promised to render a decision that day upon their location.

The chief clerk now brought in a batch of duplicate certificates for the Commissioner to sign. As he traced his sprawling signature, “Hollis Summerfield, Comr. Genl. Land Office,” on each one, the chief clerk stood, deftly removing them and applying the blotter.

“I notice,” said the chief clerk, “you’ve been going through that Salado County location. Kampfer is mak- ing a new map of Salado, and I believe is platting in that section of the county now.”

“I will see it,” said the Comissioner. A few moments later he went to the draughtsmen’s room.

As he entered he saw five or six of the draughtsmen grouped about Kampfer’s desk, gargling away at each other in pectoral German, and gazing at something there- upon. At the Commissioner’s approach they scattered to their several places. Kampfer, a wizened little Ger- man, with long, frizzled ringlets and a watery eye, began to stammer forth some sort of an apology, the Commis- sioner thought, for the congregation of his fellows about his desk.

“Never mind,’ said the Commissioner, “I wish to see the map you are making”; and, passing around the old German, seated himself upon the high draughtsman’s stool. Kampfer continued to break English in trving to explain.

“Herr Gommissioner, I assure you blenty sat I haf not it bremeditated — sat it wass — sat it itself make. Look you! from se field notes wass it blatted — blease to observe se calls: South, 10 degrees west 050 varas; south, 10 degrees east 300 varas; south, 100; south, 9 west, 200; south, 40 degrees west 400 — and so on. Herr Gommissioner, nefer would I have — “

The Commissioner raised one white hand, silently, Kampfer dropped his pipe and fled.

With a hand at each side of his face, and his elbows resting upon the desk, the Commissioner sat staring at the map which was spread and fastened there — staring at the sweet and living profile of little Georgia drawn thereupon — at her face, pensive, delicate, and infantile, outlined in a perfect likeness.

When his mind at length came to inquire into the rea- son of it, he saw that it must have been, as Kampfer had said, unpremeditated. The old draughtsman had been platting in the Elias Denny survey, and Georgia’s likeness, striking though it was, was formed by nothing more than the meanders of Chiquito River. Indeed, Kampfer’s blotter, whereon his preliminary work was done, showed the laborious tracings of the calls and the countless pricks of the compasses. Then, over his faint pencilling, Kampfer had drawn in India ink with a full, firm pen the similitude of Chiquito River, and forth had blossomed mysteriously the dainty, pathetic profile of the child.

The Commissioner sat for half an hour with his face in his hands, gazing downward, and none dared approach him. Then he arose and walked out. In the business office he paused long enough to ask that the Denny file be brought to his desk.

He found Hamlin and Avery still reclining in their chairs, apparently oblivious of business. They were lazily discussing summer opera, it being, their habit — perhaps their pride also — to appear supernaturally indifferent whenever they stood with large interests imperilled. And they stood to win more on this stake than most people knew. They possessed inside infor- mation to the effect that a new railroad would, within a year, split this very Chiquito River valley and send land values ballooning all along its route. A dollar under thirty thousand profit on this location, if it should hold good, would be a loss to their expectations. So, while they chatted lightly and waited for the Commissioner to open the subject, there was a quick, sidelong sparkle in their eyes, evincing a desire to read their title clear to those fair acres on the Chiquito.

A clerk brought in the file. The Commissioner seated himself and wrote upon it in red ink. Then he rose to his feet and stood for a while looking straight out of the window. The Land Office capped the summit of a bold hill. The eyes of the Commissioner passed over the roofs of many houses set in a packing of deep green, the whole checkered by strips of blinding white streets. The horizon, where his gaze was focussed, swelled to a fair wooded eminence flecked with faint dots of shining white. There was the cemetery, where lay many who were forgot- ten, and a few who had not lived in vain. And one lay there, occupying very small space, whose childish heart had been large enough to desire, while near its last beats, good to others. The Commissioner’s lips moved slightly as he whispered to himself: “It was her last will and testament, and I have neglected it so long!”

The big brown cigars of Hamlin and Avery were fireless, but they still gripped them between their teeth and waited, while they marvelled at the absent expression upon the Commissioner’s face.

By and by he spoke suddenly and promptly.

“Gentlemen, I have just indorsed the Elias Denny survey for patenting. This office will not regard your location upon a part of it as legal.” He paused a moment, and then, extending his hand as those dear old-time ones used to do in debate, he enunciated the spirit of that Ruling that subsequently drove the land-sharks to the wall, and placed the seal of peace and security over the doors of ten thousand homes.

“And, furthermore,” he continued, with a clear, soft light upon his face, “it may interest you to know that from this time on this office will consider that when a survey of land made by virtue of a certificate granted by this state to the men who wrested it from the wilderness and the savage — made in good faith, settled in good faith, and left in good faith to their children or innocent pur- chasers — when such a survey, although overrunning its complement, shall call for any natural object visible to the eye of man, to that object it shall hold, and be good and valid. And the children of this state shall lie down to sleep at night, and rumours of disturbers of title shall not disquiet them. For,” concluded the Commissioner, “of such is the Kingdom of Heaven.”

In the silence that followed, a laugh floated up from the patent-room below. The man who carried down the Denny file was exhibiting it among the clerks.

“Look here,” he said, delightedly, “the old man has forgotten his name. He’s written ‘Patent to original grantee,’ and signed it ‘Georgia Summerfield, Comr.”‘

The speech of the Commissioner rebounded lightly from the impregnable Hamlin and Avery. They smiled, rose gracefully, spoke of the baseball team, and argued feelingly that quite a perceptible breeze had Arisen from the east. They lit fresh fat brown cigars, and drifted courteously away. But later they made another tiger- spring for their quarry in the courts. But the courts, according to reports in the papers, “coolly roasted them” (a remarkable performance, suggestive of liquid-air didoes), and sustained the Commissioner’s Ruling.

And this Ruling itself grew to be a Precedent, and the Actual Settler framed it, and taught his children to spell from it, and there was sound sleep o’ nights from the pines to the sage-brush, and from the chaparral to the great brown river of the north.

But I think, and I am sure the Commissioner never thought otherwise, that whether Kampfer was a snuffy old instrument of destiny, or whether the meanders of the Chiquito accidentally platted themselves into that memo- rable sweet profile or not, there was brought about “some- thing good for a whole lot of children,” and the result ought to be called “Georgia’s Ruling.”

BLIND MAN’S HOLIDAY

Alas for the man and for the artist with the shifting point of perspective! Life shall be a confusion of ways to the one; the landscape shall rise up and confound the other. Take the case of Lorison. At one time he appeared to himself to be the feeblest of fools; at another he conceived that he followed ideals so fine that the world was not yet ready to accept them. During one mood he cursed his folly; possessed by the other, he bore himself with a serene grandeur akin to greatness: in neither did he attain the perspective.

Generations before, the name had been “Larsen.” His race had bequeathed him its fine-strung, melancholy temperament, its saving balance of thrift and industry.

From his point of perspective he saw himself an outcast from society, forever to be a shady skulker along the ragged edge of respectability; a denizen des trois-quartz de monde, that pathetic spheroid lying between the haut and the demi, whose inhabitants envy each of their neigh- bours, and are scorned by both. He was self-condemned to this opinion, as he was self-exiled, through it, to this quaint Southern city a thousand miles from his former home. Here he had dwelt for longer than a year, know- ing but few, keeping in a subjective world of shadows which was invaded at times by the perplexing bulks of jarring realities. Then he fell in love with a girl whom he met in a cheap restaurant, and his story begins.

The Rue Chartres, in New Orleans, is a street of ghosts. It lies in the quarter where the Frenchman, in his prime, set up his translated pride and glory; where, also, the arrogant don had swaggered, and dreamed of gold and grants and ladies’ gloves. Every flagstone has its grooves worn by footsteps going royally to the wooing and the fighting. Every house has a princely heartbreak; each doorway its untold tale of gallant promise and slow decay.

By night the Rue Chartres is now but a murky fissure, from which the groping wayfarer sees, flung against the sky, the tangled filigree of Moorish iron balconies. Ths old houses of monsieur stand yet, indomitable against the century, but their essence is gone. The street is one of ghosts to whosoever can see them.

A faint heartbeat of the street’s ancient glory still sur- vives in a corner occupied by the Café Carabine d’Or. Once men gathered there to plot against kings, and to warn presidents. They do so yet, but they are not the same kind of men. A brass button will scatter these; those would have set their faces against an army. Above the door hangs the sign board, upon which has been depicted a vast animal of unfamiliar species. In the act of firing upon this monster is represented an unobtrusive human levelling an obtrusive gun, once the colour of bright gold. Now the legend above the picture is faded beyond conjecture; the gun’s relation to the title is a matter of faith; the menaced animal, wearied of the long aim of the hunter, has resolved itself into a shapeless blot.

The place is known as “Antonio’s,” as the name, white upon the red-lit transparency, and gilt upon the windows, attests. There is a promise in “Antonio”; a justifiable expectancy of savoury things in oil and pepper and wine, and perhaps an angel’s whisper of garlic. But the rest of the name is “O’Riley.” Antonio O’Riley!

The Carabine d’Or is an ignominious ghost of the Rue Chartres. The café where Bienville and Conti dined, where a prince has broken bread, is become a “family ristaurant.”

Its customers are working men and women, almost to a unit. Occasionally you will see chorus girls from the cheaper theatres, and men who follow avocations sub- ject to quick vicissitudes; but at Antonio’s — name rich in Bohemian promise, but tame in fulfillment — manners debonair and gay are toned down to the “family” stand- ard. Should you light a cigarette, mine host will touch you on the “arrum” and remind you that the proprieties are menaced. “Antonio” entices and beguiles from fiery legend without, but “O’Riley” teaches decorum within.

It was at this restaurant that Lorison first saw the girl. A flashy fellow with a predatory eye had followed her in, and had advanced to take the other chair at the little table where she stopped, but Lorison slipped into the seat before him. Their acquaintance began, and grew, and how for two months they had sat at the same table each evening, not meeting by appointment, but as if by a series of fortuitous and happy accidents. After dining, they would take a walk together in one of the little city parks, or among the panoramic markets where exhibits a con- tinuous vaudeville of sights and sounds. Always at eight o’clock their steps led them to a certain street corner, where she prettily but firmly bade him good night and left him. “I do not live far from here,” she frequently said, “and you must let me go the rest of the way alone.”

But now Lorison had discovered that he wanted to go the rest of the way with her, or happiness would depart, leaving, him on a very lonely corner of life. And at the same time that he made the discovery, the secret of his banishment from the society of the good laid its finger in his face and told him it must not be.

Man is too thoroughly an egoist not to be also an egotist; if he love, the object shall know it. During a lifetime he may conceal it through stress of expediency and honour, but it shall bubble from his dying lips, though it disrupt a neighbourhood. It is known, however, that most men do not wait so long to disclose their passion. In the case of Lorison, his particular ethics positively forbade him to declare his sentiments, but he must needs dally with the subject, and woo by innuendo at least.

On this night, after the usual meal at the Carabine d’Or, he strolled with his companion down the dim old street toward the river

The Rue Chartres perishes in the old Place d’Armes. The ancient Cabildo, where Spanish justice fell like hail, faces it, and the Cathedral, another provincial ghost, overlooks it. Its centre is a little, iron-railed park of flowers and immaculate gravelled walks, where citizens take the air of evenings. Pedestalled high above it, the general sits his cavorting steed, with his face turned stonily down the river toward English Turn, whence come no more Britons to bombard his cotton bales.

Often the two sat in this square, but to-night Lorison guided her past the stone-stepped gate, and still riverward. As they walked, he smiled to himself to think that all he knew of her — except that be loved her — was her name, Norah Greenway, and that she lived with her brother. They had talked about everything except themselves. Perhaps her reticence had been caused by his.

They came, at length, upon the levee, and sat upon a great, prostrate beam. The air was pungent with the dust of commerce. The great river slipped yellowly past. Across it Algiers lay, a longitudinous black bulk against a vibrant electric haze sprinkled with exact stars.

The girl was young and of the piquant order. A certain bright melancholy pervaded her; she possessed an untarnished, pale prettiness doomed to please. Her voice, when she spoke, dwarfed her theme. It was the voice capable of investing little subjects with a large interest. She sat at ease, bestowing her skirts with the little womanly touch, serene as if the begrimed pier were a summer garden. Lorison poked the rotting boards with his cane.

He began by telling her that he was in love with some one to whom he durst not speak of it. “And why not?” she asked, accepting swiftly his fatuous presentation of a third person of straw. “My place in the world,” he answered, “is none to ask a woman to share. I am an outcast from honest people; I am wrongly accused of one crime, and am, I believe, guilty of another.”

Thence he plunged into the story of his abdication from society. The story, pruned of his moral philosophy, deserves no more than the slightest touch. It is no new tale, that of the gambler’s declension. During one night’s sitting he lost, and then had imperilled a certain amount of his employer’s money, which, by accident, he carried with him. He continued to lose, to the last wager, and then began to gain, leaving the game winner to a somewhat formidable sum. The same night his employer’s safe was robbed. A search was had; the winnings of Lorison were found in his room, their total forming an accusative nearness to the sum purloined. He was taken, tried and, through incomplete evidence, released, smutched with the sinister devoirs of a dis- agreeing jury.

“It is not in the unjust accusation,” he said to the girl, “that my burden lies, but in the knowledge that from the moment I staked the first dollar of the firm’s money I was a criminal — no matter whether I lost or won. You see why it is impossible for me to speak of love to her.”

“It is a sad thing,” said Norah, after a little pause. “to think what very good people there are in the world.”

“Good?” said Lorison.

“I was thinking of this superior person whom you say you love. She must be a very poor sort of creature.”

“I do not understand.”

“Nearly,” she continued, “as poor a sort of creature as yourself.”

“You do not understand,” said Lorison, removing his hat and sweeping back his fine, light hair. “Suppose she loved me in return, and were willing to marry me. Think, if you can, what would follow. Never a day Would pass but she would be reminded of her sacrifice. I would read a condescension in her smile, a pity even in her affection, that would madden me. No. The thing would stand between us forever. Only equals should mate. I could never ask her to come down upon my lower plane.”

An arc light faintly shone upon Lorison’s face. An illumination from within also pervaded it. The girl saw the rapt, ascetic look; it was the face either of Sir Galahad or Sir Fool.

“Quite starlike,” she said, “is this unapproachable angel. Really too high to be grasped.”

“By me, yes.”

She faced him suddenly. “My dear friend, would you prefer your star fallen?” Lorison made a wide gesture.

“You push me to the bald fact,” he declared; “you are not in sympathy with my argument. But I will answer you so. If I could reach my particular star, to drag it down, I would not do it; but if it were fallen, I would pick it up, and thank Heaven for the privilege.”

They were silent for some minutes. Norah shivered, and thrust her hands deep into the pockets of her jacket. Lorison uttered a remorseful exclamation.

“I’m not cold,” she said. “I was just thinking. I ought to tell you something. You have selected a strange confidante. But you cannot expect a chance acquain- ance, picked up in a doubtful restaurant, to be an angel.”

“Norah!” cried Lorison.

“Let me go on. You have told me about yourself. We have been such good friends. I must tell you now what I never wanted you to know. I am — worse than you are. I was on the stage . . . I sang in the chorus . . . I was pretty bad, I guess . . . I stole diamonds from the prima donna . . . they arrested me . . . I gave most of them up, and they let me go . . . I drank wine every night . . . a great deal . . . I was very wicked, but — “

Lorison knelt quickly by her side and took her hands.

“Dear Norah!” he said, exultantly. “It is you, it is you I love! You never guessed it, did you? ‘Tis you I meant all the time. Now I can speak. Let me make you forget the past. We have both suffered; let us shut out the world, and live for each other. Norah, do you hear me say I love you?”

“In spite of — “

“Rather say because of it. You have come out of your past noble and good. Your heart is an angel’s, Give it to me.”

“A little while ago you feared the future too much to even speak.”

“But for you; not for myself. Can you love me?”

She cast herself, wildly sobbing, upon his breast.

“Better than life — than truth itself — than every- thing.”

“And my own past,” said Lorison, with a note of solicitude — “can you forgive and — “

“I answered you that,” she whispered, “when I told you I loved you.” She leaned away, and looked thought- fully at him. “If I had not told you about myself, would you have — would you — “

“No,” he interrupted; “I would never have let you know I loved you. I would never have asked you this — Norah, will you be my wife?”

She wept again.

“Oh, believe me; I am good now — I am no longer wicked! I will be the best wife in the world. Don’t think I am — bad any more. If you do I shall die, I shall die!”

While he was consoling, her, she brightened up, eager and impetuous. “Will vou marry me to-night?” she said. “Will you prove it that way. I have a reason for wishing it to be to-night. Will you?”

Of one of two things was this exceeding frankness the outcome: either of importunate brazenness or of utter innocence. The lover’s perspective contained only the one.

“The sooner,” said Lorison, “the happier I shall be.”

“What is there to do?” she asked. “What do you have to get? Come! You should know.”

Her energy stirred the dreamer to action.

“A city directory first,” he cried, gayly, “to find where the man lives who gives licenses to happiness. We will go together and rout him out. Cabs, cars, policemen, telephones and ministers shall aid us.”

“Father Rogan shall marry us,” said the girl, with ardour. “I will take you to him.”

An hour later the two stood at the open doorway of an immense, gloomy brick building in a narrow and lonely street. The license was tight in Norah’s hand.

“Wait here a moment,” she said, “till I find Father Rogan.”

She plunged into the black hallway, and the lover was left standing, as it were, on one leg, outside. His impa- tience was not greatly taxed. Gazing curiously into what seemed the hallway to Erebus, he was presently reassured by a stream of light that bisected the darkness, far down the passage. Then he heard her call, and fluttered lampward, like the moth. She beckoned him through a doorway into the room whence emanated the light. The room was bare of nearly everything except books, which had subjugated all its space. Here and there little spots of territory had been reconquered. An elderly, bald man, with a superlatively calm, remote eye, stood by a table with a book in his hand, his finger still marking a page. His dress was sombre and appertained to a religious order. His eye denoted an acquaintance with the perspective.

“Father Rogan,” said Norah, “this is he.”

“The two of ye,” said Father Rogan, “want to get married?”

They did not deny it. He married them. The cere- mony was quickly done. One who could have witnessed it, and felt its scope, might have trembled at the terrible inadequacy of it to rise to the dignity of its endless chain of results.

Afterward the priest spake briefly, as if by rote, of certain other civil and legal addenda that either might or should, at a later time, cap the ceremony. Lorison tendered a fee, which was declined, and before the door closed after the departing couple Father Rogan’s book popped open again where his finger marked it.

In the dark hall Norah whirled and clung to her com- panion, tearful.

“Will you never, never be sorry?”

At last she was reassured.

At the first light they reached upon the street, she asked the time, just as she had each night. Lorison looked at his watch. Half-past eight.

Lorison thought it was from habit that she guided their steps toward the corner where they always parted. But, arrived there, she hesitated, and then released his arm. A drug store stood on the corner; its bright, soft light shone upon them.

“Please leave me here as usual to-night,” said Norah, sweetly. “I must — I would rather you would. You will not object? At six to-morrow evening I will meet you at Antonio’s. I want to sit with vou there once more. And then — I will go where you say.” She gave him a bewildering, bright smile, and walked swiftly away.

Surely it needed all the strength of her charm to carry off this astounding behaviour. It was no discredit to Lorison’s strength of mind that his head began to whirl. Pocketing his hands, he rambled vacuously over to the druggist’s windows, and began assiduously to spell over the names of the patent medicines therein displayed.

As soon as be had recovered his wits, he proceeded along the street in an aimless fashion. After drifting for two or three squares, he flowed into a somewhat more pretentious thoroughfare, a way much frequented by him in his solitary ramblings. For here was a row of slops devoted to traffic in goods of the widest range of choice — handiworks of art, skill and fancy, products of nature and labour from every zone.

Here, for a time, he loitered among the conspicuous windows, where was set, emphasized bv congested floods of light, the cunningest spoil of the interiors. There were few passers, and of this Lorison was glad. He was not of the world. For a long time he had touched his fellow man only at the gear of a levelled cog-wheel — at right angles, and upon a different axis. He had dropped into a distinctly new orbit. The stroke of ill fortune had acted upon him, in effect, as a blow delivered upon the apex of a certain ingenious toy, the musical top, which- when thus buffeted while spinning, gives forth, with scarcely retarded motion, a complete change of key and chord.

Strolling along the pacific avenue, he experienced singular, supernatural calm, accompanied by an unusual a activity of brain. Reflecting upon recent affairs, be assured himself of his happiness in having won for a bride the one he had so greatly desired, yet he wondered mildly at his dearth of active emotion. Her strange behaviour in abandoning him without valid excuse on his bridal eve aroused in him only a vague and curious speculation. Again, he found himself contemplating, with complaisant serenity, the incidents of her somewhat lively career. His perspective seemed to have been queerly shifted.

As he stood before a window near a corner, his ears were assailed by a waxing clamour and commotion. He stood close to the window to allow passage to the cause of the hubbub — a procession of human beings, which rounded the corner aid headed in his direction. He perceived a salient hue of blue and a glitter of brass about a central figure of dazzling white and silver, and a ragged wake of black, bobbing figures.

Two ponderous policemen Were conducting between them a woman dressed as if for the stage, in a short, white, satiny skirt reaching to the knees, pink stockings, and a sort of sleeveless bodice bright with relucent, armour-like scales. Upon her curly, light hair was perched, at a rollicking angle, a shining tin helmet. The costume was to be instantly recognized as one of those amazing con- ceptions to which competition has harried the inventors of the spectacular ballet. One of the officers bore a long cloak upon his axm, which, doubtless, had been intended to veil the I candid attractions of their effulgent prisoner, but, for some reason, it had not been called into use, to the vociferous delight of the tail of the procession.

Compelled by a sudden and vigorous movement of the woman, the parade halted before the window by which Lorison stood. He saw that she was young, and, at the first glance, was deceived by a sophistical prettiness of her face, which waned before a more judicious scrutiny. Her look was bold and reckless, and upon her countenance, where yet the contours of youth survived, were the finger- marks of old age’s credentialed courier, Late Hours.

The young woman fixed her unshrinking gaze upon Lorison, and called to him in the voice of the wronged heroine in straits:

“Say! You look like a good fellow; come and put up the bail, won’t you? I’ve done nothing to get pinched for. It’s all a mistake. See how they’re treating me! You won’t be sorry, if you’ll help me out of this. Think of your sister or your girl being dragged along the streets this way! I say, come along now, like a good fellow.”

It may be that Lorison, in spite of the unconvincing bathos of this appeal, showed a sympathetic face, for one of the officers left the woman’s side, and went over to him.

“It’s all right, Sir,” he said, in a husky, confidential tone; “she’s the right party. We took her after the first act at the Green Light Theatre, on a wire from the chief of police of Chicago. It’s only a square or two to the station. Her rig’s pretty bad, but she refused to change clothes — or, rather,” added the officer, with a smile, “to put on some. I thought I’d explain matters to you so you wouldn’t think she was being imposed upon.”

“What is the charge?” asked Lorison.

“Grand larceny. Diamonds. Her husband is a jeweller in Chicago. She cleaned his show case of the sparklers, and skipped with a comic-opera troupe.”

The policeman, perceiving that the interest of the entire group of spectators was centred upon himself and Lorison — their conference being regarded as a possible new com- plication — was fain to prolong the situation — which reflected his own importance — by a little afterpiece of philosophical comment.

“A gentleman like you, Sir,” he went on affably, “would never notice it, but it comes in my line to observe what an immense amount of trouble is made by that com- bination — I mean the stage, diamonds and light-headed women who aren’t satisfied with good homes. I tell you, Sir, a man these days and nights wants to know what his women folks are up to.”

The policeman smiled a good night, and returned to the side of his charge, who had been intently watching Lorison’s face during the conversation, no doubt for some indication of his intention to render succour. Now, at the failure of the sign, and at the movement made to continue the ignominious progress, she abandoned hope, and addressed him thus, pointedly:

“You damn chalk-faced quitter! You was thinking of giving me a hand, but you let the cop talk you out of it the first word. You’re a dandy to tie to. Say, if you ever get a girl, she’ll have a picnic. Won’t she work you to the queen’s taste! Oh, my!” She concluded with a taunting, shrill laugh that rasped Lorison like a saw. The policemen urged her forward; the delighted train of gaping followers closed up the rear; and the captive Amazon, accepting her fate, extended the scope of her maledictions so that none in hearing might seem to be slighted.

Then there came upon Lorison an overwhelming revulsion of his perspective. It may be that he had been ripe for it, that the abnormal condition of mind in which he had for so long existed was already about to revert to its balance; however, it is certain that the events of the last few minutes had furnished the channel, if not the impetus, for the change.

The initial determining influence had been so small a thing as the fact and manner of his having been approached by the officer. That agent had, by the style of his accost, restored the loiterer to his former place in society. In an instant he had been transformed from a somewhat rancid prowler along the fishy side streets of gentility into an honest gentleman, with whom even so lordly a guardian of the peace might agreeably exchange the compliments.

This, then, first broke the spell, and set thrilling in him a resurrected longing for the fellowship of his kind, and the rewards of the virtuous. To what end, he vehemently asked himself, was this fanciful self-accusation, this empty renunciation, this moral squeamishness through which he had been led to abandon what was his heritage in life, and not beyond his deserts? Technically, he was uncondemned; his sole guilty spot was in thought rather than deed, and cognizance of it unshared by others. For what good, moral or sentimental, did he slink, retreating like the hedgehog from his own shadow, to and fro in this musty Bohemia that lacked even the picturesque?

But the thing that struck home and set him raging was the part played by the Amazonian prisoner. To the counterpart of that astounding belligerent — identical at least, in the way of experience — to one, by her own confession, thus far fallen, had he, not three hours since, been united in marriage. How desirable and natural it had seemed to him then, and how monstrous it seemed now! How the words of diamond thief number two yet burned in his ears: “If you ever get a cirl, she’ll have a picnic. What did that that this women instinc- tively knew him for one they could hoodwink? Still again, there reverberated the policeman’s sapient contribution to his agony: “A man these days and nights wants to know what his women folks are up to.” Oh, yes, he had been a fool; he had looked at things from the wrong standpoint.

But the wildest note in all the clamour was struck by pain’s forefinger, jealousy. Now, at least, he felt that keenest sting — a mounting love unworthily bestowed. Whatever she might be, he loved her; he bore in his own breast his doom. A grating, comic flavour to his pre- dicament struck him suddenly, and he laughed creakingly as he swung down the echoing pavement. An impetuous desire to act, to battle with his fate, seized him. He stopped upon his heel, and smote his palms together triumphantly. His wife was — where? But there was a tangible link; an outlet more or less navigable, through which his derelict ship of matrimony might yet be safely towed — the priest!

Like all imaginative men with pliable natures, Lorison was, when thoroughly stirred, apt to become tempest- uous. With a high and stubborn indignation upon him, be retraced his steps to the intersecting street by which he had come. Down this he hurried to the corner where he had parted with — an astringent grimace tinctured the thought — his wife. Thence still back he harked, follow- ing through an unfamiliar district his stimulated recollec- tions of the way they had come from that preposterous wedding. Many times he went abroad, and nosed his way back to, the trail, furious.

At last, when he reached the dark, calamitous building in which his madness had culminated, and found the black hallway, he dashed down it, perceiving no light or sound. But he raised his voice, hailing loudly; reckless of everything but that he should find the old mischief- maker with the eyes that looked too far awav to see the disaster he had wrought. The door opened, and in the stream of light Father Rogan stood, his book in hand, with his finger marking the place.

“Ah!” cried Lorison. “You are the man I want. I had a wife of you a few hours ago. I would not trouble you, but I neglected to note how it was done. Will you oblige me with the information whether the business is beyond remedy?”

“Come inside,” said the priest; “there are other lodgers in the house, who might prefer sleep to even a gratified curiosity.”

Lorison entered the room and took the chair offered him. The priest’s eyes looked a courteous interrogation.

“I must apologize again,” said the young man, “for so soon intruding upon you with my marital infelicities, but, as my wife has neglected to furnish me with her address, I am deprived of the legitimate recourse of a family row.”

“I am quite a plain man,” said Father Rogan, pleas- antly; “but I do not see how I am to ask you questions.”

“Pardon my indirectness,” said Lorison; “I will ask one. In this room to-night you pronounced me to be a husband. You afterward spoke of additional rites or performances that either should or could be effected. I paid little attention to your words then, but I am hungry to hear them repeated now. As matters stand, am I married past all help?”

“You are as legally and as firmly bound,” said the priest, “as though it had been done in a cathedral, in the presence of thousands. The additional observances I referred to are not necessary to the strictest legality of the act, but were advised as a precaution for the future — for convenience of proof in such contingencies as wills, inheritances and the like.”

Lorison laughed harshly.

“Many thanks,” he said. “Then there is no mistake, and I am the happy benedict. I suppose I should go stand upon the bridal corner, and when my wife gets through walking the streets she will look me up.”

Father Rogan regarded him calmly.

“My son,” he said, “when a man and woman come to me to be married I always marry them. I do this for the sake of other people whom they might go away and marry if they did not marry each other. As you see, I do not seek your confidence; but your case seems to me to be one not altogether devoid of interest. Very few marriages that have come to my notice have brought such well- expressed regret within so short a time. I will hazard one question: were you not under the impression that you loved the lady you married, at the time you did so;”

“Loved her!” cried Lorison, wildly. “Never so well as now, though she told me she deceived and sinned and stole. Never more than now, when, perhaps, she is laughing at the fool she cajoled and left, with scarcely a word, to return to God only knows what particular line of her former folly.”

Father Rooan answered nothing. During the silence that succeeded, he sat with a quiet expectation beaming in his full, lambent eye.

“If you would listen — ” began Lorison. The priest held up his hand.

“As I hoped,” he said. “I thought you would trust me. Wait but a moment.” He brought a long clay pipe, filled and lighted it.

“Now, my son,” he said.

Lorison poured a twelve month’s accumulated con- fidence into Father Rogan’s ear. He told all; not sparing himself or omitting the facts of his past, the events of the night, or his disturbing conjectures and fears.

“The main point,” said the priest, when he had con- cluded, “seems to me to be this — are you reasonably sure that you love this woman whom you have married?”

“Why,” exclaimed Lorisoii, rising impulsively to his feet – “why should I deny it? But look at me — am fish, flesh or fowl? That is the main point to me, assure you.”

“I understand you,” said the priest, also risino,, and laying down his pipe. “The situation is one that has taxed the endurance of much older men than you — in fact, especially much older men than you. I will try to relieve you from it, and this night. You shall see for yourself into exactly what predicament you have fallen, and how you shall, possibly, be extricated. There is no evidence so credible as that of the eyesight.”

Father Rogan moved about the room, and donned a soft black hat. Buttoning his coat to his throat, he laid his hand on the doorknob. “Let us walk,” he said.

The two went out upon the street. The priest turned his face down it, and Lorison walked with him through a squalid district, where the houses loomed, awry and desoiate-looking, high above them. Presently they turned into a less dismal side street, where the houses were smaller, and, though hinting of the most meagre comfort, lacked the concentrated wretchedness of the more populous byways.

At a segregated, two-story house Father Rogan halted, and mounted the steps with the confidence of a familiar visitor. He ushered Lorison into a narrow hallway, faintly lighted by a cobwebbed hanging lamp. Almost immediately a door to the right opened and a dingy Irish- woman protruded her head.

“Good evening to ye, Mistress Geehan,” said the priest, unconsciously, it seemed, falling into a delicately flavoured brogue. “And is it yourself can tell me if Norah has gone out again, the night, maybe?”

“Oh, it’s yer blissid reverence! Sure and I can tell ye the same. The purty darlin’ wint out, as usual, but a bit later. And she says: ‘Mother Geehan,’ says she, ‘it’s me last noight out, praise the saints, this noight is!’ And, oh, yer reverence, the swate, beautiful drame of a dress she had this toime! White satin and silk and ribbons, and lace about the neck and arrums — ’twas a sin, yer reverence, the gold was spint upon it.”

The priest heard Lorison catch his breath painfully, and a faint smile flickered across his own clean-cut mouth.

“Well, then, Mistress Geehan,” said he, “I’ll just step upstairs and see the bit boy for a minute, and I’ll take this Gentleman up with me.”

“He’s awake, thin,” said the woman. ‘I’ve just come down from sitting wid him the last hour, tilling him fine shtories of ould County Tyrone. ‘Tis a greedy gos- soon, it is, yer riverence, for me shtories.”

“Small the doubt,” said Father Rogan. “There’s no rocking would put him to slape the quicker, I’m thinking.”

Amid the woman’s shrill protest against the retort, the two men ascended the steep stairway. The priest pushed open the door of a room near its top.

“Is that you already, sister?” drawled a sweet, childish voice from the darkness.

“It’s only ould Father Denny come to see ye, darlin’; and a foine gentleman I’ve brought to make ye a gr-r-and call. And ye resaves us fast aslape in bed! Shame on yez manners!”

“Oh, Father Denny, is that you? I’m glad. And will you light the lamp, please? It’s on the table by the door. And quit talking like Mother Geehan, Father Denny.”

The priest lit the lamp, and Lorison saw a tiny, towsled- haired boy, with a thin, delicate face, sitting up in a small bed in a corner. Quickly, also, his rapid glance con- sidered the room and its contents. It was furnished with more than comfort, and its adornments plainly indicated a woman’s discerning taste. An open door beyond revealed the blackness of an adjoining room’s interior.

The boy clutched both of Father Rogan’s hands. “I’m so glad you came,” he said; “but why did you come in the night? Did sister send you?”

“Off wid ye! Am I to be sint about, at me age, as was Terence McShane, of Ballymahone? I come on me own r-r-responsibility.”

Lorison had also advanced to the boy’s bedside. He was fond of children; and the wee fellow, laving himself down to sleep alone ill that dark room, stirred-his heart.

“Aren’t you afraid, little man?” he asked, stooping down beside him.

“Sometimes,” answered the boy, with a shy smile, “when the rats make too much noise. But nearly every night, when sister goes out, Molt-her Geehan stays a while with me, and tells me funny stories. I’m not often afraid, sir.”

“This brave little gentleman,” said Father Rogan, “is a scholar of mine. Every day from half-past six to half- past eight — when sister comes for him — he stops in my study, and we find out what’s in the inside of books. He knows multiplication, division and fractions; and he’s troubling me to begin wid the chronicles of Ciaran of Clonmaciioise, Corurac McCullenan and Cuan O’Loc- hain, the gr-r-reat Irish histhorians.” The boy was evidently accustomed to the priest’s Celtic pleasantries. A little, appreciative grin was all the attention the insin- nation of pedantry received.

Lorison, to have saved his life, could not have put to the child one of those vital questions that were wildly beating about, unanswered, in his own brain. The little fellow was very like Norah; he had the same shining hair and candid eyes.

“Oh, Father Denny,” cried the boy, suddenly, “I forgot to tell you! Sister is not going away at night any more! She told me so when she kissed me good night as she was leaving. And she said she was so happy, and then she cried. Wasn’t that queer? But I’m glad; aren’t you?”

“Yes, lad. And now, ye omadhaun, go to sleep, and say good night; we must be going.”

“Which shall I do first, Father Denny?”

“Faith, he’s caught me again! Wait till I get the sassenach into the annals of Tageruach, the hagiographer; I’ll give him enough of the Irish idiom to make him more respectful.”

The light was out, and the small, brave voice bidding them good night from the dark room. They groped downstairs, and tore away from the garrulity of Mother Geehan.

Again the priest steered them through the dim ways, but this time in another direction. His conductor was serenely silent, and Lorison followed his example to the extent of seldom speaking. Serene he could not be. His heart beat suffocatingly in his breast. The following of this blind, menacing trail was pregnant with he knew not what humiliating revelation to be delivered at its end.

They came into a more pretentious street, where trade, it could be surmised, flourished by day. And again the priest paused; this time before a lofty building, whose great doors and windows in the lowest floor were carefully shuttered and barred. Its higher apertures were dark, save in the third story, the windows of which were bril- liantly lighted. Lorison’s ear caught a distant, regular, pleasing thrumming, as of music above. They stood at an angle of the building. Up, along the side nearest them, mounted an iron stairway. At its top was an upright, illuminated parallelogram. Father Rogan had stopped, and stood, musing.

“I will say this much,” he remarked, thoughtfully: “I believe you to be a better man than you think yourself to be, and a better man than I thought some hours ago. But do not take this,” he added, with a smile, “as much praise. I promised you a possible deliverance from an unhappy perplexity. I will have to modify that promise. I can only remove the mystery that enhanced that per- plexity. Your deliverance depends upon yourself. Come.”

He led his companion up the stairway. Halfway up, Lorison caught him by the sleeve. “Remember,” he gasped, “I love that woman.”

“You desired to know.

“I — Go on.”

The priest reached the landing at the top of the stairway. Lorison, behind him, saw that the illuminated space was the glass upper half of a door opening into the lighted room. The rhythmic music increased as they neared it; the stairs shook with the mellow vibrations.

Lorison stopped breathing when he set foot upon the highest step, for the priest stood aside, and motioned him to look through the glass of the door.

His eye, accustomed to the darkness, met first a blind- ing glare, and then he made out the faces and forms of many people, amid an extravagant display of splendid robings — billowy laces, brilliant-hued finery, ribbons, silks and misty drapery. And then he caught the mean. ing of that jarring hum, and he saw the tired, pale, happy face of his wife, bending, as were a score of others, over her sewing machine — toiling, toiling. Here was the folly she pursued, and the end of his quest.

But not his deliverance, though even then remorse struck him. His shamed soul fluttered once more before it retired to make room for the other and better one. For, to temper his thrill of joy, the shine of the satin and the glimmer of ornaments recalled the disturbing figure of the bespangled Amazon, and the base duplicate histories it by the glare of footlights and stolen diamonds. It is past the wisdom of him who only sets the scenes, either to praise or blame the man. But this time his love over- came his scruples. He took a quick step, and reached out his hand for the doorknob. Father Rogan was quicker to arrest it and draw him back.

“You use my trust in you queerly,” said the priest sternly. “What are you about to do?”

“I am going to my wife,” said Lorison. “Let me pass.”

“Listen,” said the priest, holding him firmly by the arm. “I am about to put you in possession of a piece of knowledge of which, thus far, you have scarcely proved deserving. I do not think you ever will; but I will not dwell upon that. You see in that room the woman you married, working for a frugal living for herself, and a generous comfort for an idolized brother. This building belongs to the chief costumer of the city. For months the advance orders for the coming Mardi Gras festivals have kept the work going day and night. I myself secured employment here for Norah. She toils here each night from nine o’clock until daylight, and, besides, carries home with her some of the finer costumes, requiring more delicate needlework, and works there part of the day. Somehow, you two have remained strangely ignorant of each other’s lives. Are you convinced now that your wife is not walking the streets?”

“Let me go to her,” cried Lorison, again struggling, “and beg her forgiveness!’

“Sir,” said the priest, “do you owe me nothing? Be quiet. It seems so often that Heaven lets fall its choicest gifts into hands that must be taught to hold them. Listen again. You forgot that repentant sin must not comprom- ise, but look up, for redemption, to the purest and best. You went to her with the fine-spun sophistry that peace could be found in a mutual guilt; and she, fearful of losing what her heart so craved, thought it worth the price to buy it with a desperate, pure, beautiful lie. I have known her since the day she was born; she is as innocent and unsullied in life and deed as a holy saint. In that lowly street where she dwells she first saw the light, and she has lived there ever since, spending her days in generous self-sacrifice for others. Och, ye spalpeen!” continued Father Rogan, raising his finger in kindly anger at Lorison. “What for, I wonder, could she be after making a fool of hersilf, and shamin’ her swate soul with lies, for the like of you!”

“Sir,” said Lorison, trembling, “say what you please of me. Doubt it as you must, I will yet prove my gratitude to you, and my devotion to her. But let me speak to her once now, let me kneel for just one moment at her feet, and — “

“Tut, tut!” said the priest. “How many acts of a love drama do you think an old bookworm like me capable of witnessing? Besides, what kind of figures do we cut, spying upon the mysteries of midnight millinery! Go to meet your wife to-morrow, as she ordered you, and obey her thereafter, and maybe some time I shall get forgive- ness for the part I have played in this night’s work. Off wid yez down the shtairs, now! ‘Tis late, and an ould man like me should be takin’ his rest.”

MADAME BO-PEEP, OF THE RANCHES

“AUNT ELLEN,” said Octavia, cheerfully, as she threw her black kid gloves carefully at the dignified Persian cat on the window-seat, “I’m a pauper.”

“You are so extreme in your statements, Octavia, dear,” said Aunt Ellen, mildly, looking up from her paper.

“If you find yourself temporarily in need of some small change for bonbons, you will find my purse in the drawer of the writing desk.”

Octavia Beaupree removed her hat and seated herself on a footstool near her aunt’s chair, clasping her hands about her knees. Her slim and flexible figure, clad in a modish mourning costume, accommodated itself easily and gracefully to the trying position. Her bright and youthful face, with its pair of sparkling, life-enamoured eyes, tried to compose itself to the seriousness that the occasion seemed to demand.

“You good auntie, it isn’t a case of bonbons; it is abject, staring, unpicturesque poverty, with ready-made clothes, gasolined gloves, and probably one o’clock dinners all waiting with the traditional wolf at the door. I’ve just come from my lawyer, auntie, and, ‘Please, ma’am, I ain’t got nothink ‘t all. Flowers, lady? Buttonhole, gentleman? Pencils, sir, three for five, to help a poor widow?’ Do I do it nicely, auntie, or, as a bread-winner accomplishment, were my lessons in elocution entirely wasted?”

“Do be serious, my dear,” said Aunt Ellen, letting her paper fall to the floor, “long enough to tell me what you mean. Colonel Beaupree’s estate — “

“Colonel Beaupree’s estate,” interrupted Octavia, emphasizing her words with appropriate dramatic ges- tures, “is of Spanish castellar architecture. Colonel Beaupree’s resources are — wind. Colonel Beaupree’s stocks are — water. Colonel Beaupree’s income is — all in. The statement lacks the legal technicalities to which I have been listening for an hour, but that is what it means when translated.”

“Octavia!” Aunt Ellen was now visibly possessed by consternation. “I can hardly believe it. And it was the impression that he was worth a million. And the De Peysters themselves introduced him!”

Octavia rippled out a laugh, and then became properly grave.

“De mortuis nil, auntie — not even the rest of it. The dear old colonel — what a gold brick he was, after all! I paid for my bargain fairly — I’m all here, am I not? — items: eyes, fingers, toes, youth, old family, unques- tionable position in society as called for in the contract no wild-cat stock here.” Octavia picked up the morning paper from the floor. “But I’m not going to ‘squeal’ — isn’t that what they call it when you rail at Fortune because you’ve, lost the game?” She turned the pages of the paper calmly. “‘Stock market’ — no use for that. ‘Society’s doings’ — that’s done. Here is my page — the wish column. A Van Dresser could not be said to ‘want’ for anything, of course. ‘Chamber- maids, cooks, canvassers, stenographers-“

“Dear,” said Aunt Ellen, with a little tremor in her voice, “please do not talk in that way. Even if your affairs are in so unfortunate a condition, there is my three thousand — “

Octavia sprang up lithely, and deposited a smart kiss on the delicate cheek of the prim little elderly maid.

“Blessed auntie, your three thousand is just sufficient to insure your Hyson to be free from willow leaves and keep the Persian in sterilized cream. I know I’d be welcome, but I prefer to strike bottom like Beelzebub rather than hang around like the Peri listening to the music from the side entrance. I’m going to earn my own living. There’s nothing else to do. I’m a — Oh, oh, oh! — I had forgotten. There’s one thing saved from the wreck. It’s a corral — no, a ranch in — let me see — Texas: an asset, dear old Mr. Bannister called it. How pleased he was to show me something he could describe as unencumbered! I’ve a description of it among those stupid papers he made me bring away with me from his office. I’ll try to find it.”

Octavia found her shopping-bag, and drew from it a long envelope filled with typewritten documents.

“A ranch in Texas,” sighed Aunt Ellen. “It sounds to me more like a liability than an asset. Those are the places where the centipedes are found, and cowboys, and fandangos.”

“‘The Rancho de las Sombras,'” read Octavia from a sheet of violently purple typewriting “‘is situated one hundred and ten miles southeast of San Antonio, and thirty-eight miles from its nearest railroad station, Nopal, on the I. and G. N. Ranch, consists of 7,680 acres of well- watered land, with title conferred by State patents, and twenty-two sections, or 14,080 acres, partly under yearly running lease and partly bought under State’s twenty- year-purchase act. Eight thousand graded merino sheep, with the necessary equipment of horses, vehicles and general ranch paraphernalia. Ranch-house built of brick, with six rooms comfortably furnished according to the requirements of the climate. All within a strong barbed-wire fence.

“‘The present ranch manager seems to be competent and reliable, and is rapidly placing upon a paying basis a business that, in other hands, had been allowed to suffer from neglect and misconduct.

“‘This property was secured by Colonel Beaupree in a deal with a Western irrigation syndicate, and the title to it seems to be perfect. With careful management and the natural increase of land values, it ought to be made the foundation for a comfortable fortune for its owner.'”

When Octavia ceased reading, Aunt Ellen uttered something as near a sniff as her breeding permitted.

“The prospectus,” she said, with uncompromising metropolitan suspicion, “doesn’t mention the centipedes, or the Indians. And you never did like mutton, Octavia. I don’t see what advantage you can derive from this — desert.”

But Octavia was in a trance. Her eyes were steadily regarding something quite beyond their focus. Her lips were parted, and her face was lighted by the kindling furor of the explorer, the ardent, stirring disquiet of the adventurer. Suddenly she clasped her hands together exultantly.

“The problem solves itself, auntie,” she cried. “I’m going to that ranch. I’m going to live on it. I’m going to learn to like mutton, and even concede the good qualities of centipedes — at a respectful distance. It’s just what I need. It’s a new life that comes when my old one is just ending. It’s a release, auntie; it isn’t a narrow- ing. Think of the gallops over those leagues of prairies, with the wind tugging at the roots of your hair, the com- ing close to the earth and learning over again the stories of the growing grass and the little wild flowers without names! Glorious is what it will be. Shall I be a shepherdess with a Watteau hat, and a crook to keep the bad wolves from the lambs, or a typical Western ranch girl, with short hair, like the pictures of her in the Sunday papers? I think the latter. And they’ll have my picture, too, with the wild-cats I’ve slain, single-handed, hanging from my saddle horn. ‘From the Four Hundred to the Flocks’ is the way they’ll headline it, and they’ll print photographs of the old Van Dresser mansion and the church where I was married. They won’t have my picture, but they’ll get an artist to draw it. I’ll be wild and woolly, and I’ll grow my own wool.”

“Octavia!” Aunt Ellen condensed into the one word all the protests she was unable to utter.

“Don’t say a word, auntie. I’m going. I’ll see the sky at night fit down on the world like a big butter-dish cover, and I’ll make friends again with the stars that I haven’t had a chat with since I was a wee child. I wish to go. I’m tired of all this. I’m glad I haven’t any money. I could bless Colonel Beaupree for that ranch, and forgive him for all his bubbles. What if the life will be rough and lonely! I — I deserve it. I shut my heart to everything except that miserable ambition. I — oh, I wish to go away, and forget — forget!”

Octavia swerved suddenly to her knees, laid her flushed face in her aunt’s lap, and shook with turbulent sobs.

Aunt Ellen bent over her, and smoothed the coppery- brown hair.

“I didn’t know,” she said, gently; “I didn’t know — that. Who was it, dear?

When Mrs. Octavia Beaupree, née Van Dresser, stepped from the train at Nopal, her manner lost, for the moment, some of that easy certitude which had always marked her movements. The town was of recent estab- lishment, and seemed to have been hastily constructed of undressed lumber and flapping canvas. The element that had congregated about the station, though not offensively demonstrative, was clearly composed of citizens accustomed to and prepared for rude alarms.

Octavia stood on the platform, against the telegraph office, and attempted to choose by intuition from the swaggering, straggling string, of loungers, the manager of the Rancho de las Sombras, who had been instructed by Mr. Bannister to meet her there. That tall, serious, looking, elderly man in the blue flannel shirt and white tie she thought must be he. But, no; he passed by, removing his gaze from the lady as hers rested on him, according to the Southern custom. The manager, she thought, with some impatience at being kept waiting, should have no difficulty in selecting her. Young women wearing the most recent thing in ash-coloured travelling suits were not so plentiful in Nopal!

Thus keeping a speculative watch on all persons of possible managerial aspect, Octavia, with a catching breath and a start of surprise, suddenly became aware of Teddy Westlake hurrying along the platform in the direction of the train — of Teddy Westlake or his sun- browned ghost in cheviot, boots and leather-girdled hat — Theodore Westlake, Jr., amateur polo (almost) champion, all-round butterfly and cumberer of the soil; but a broader, surer, more emphasized and determined Teddy than the one she had known a year ago when last she saw him.

He perceived Octavia at almost the same time, deflected his course, and steered for her in his old, straightforward way. Something like awe came upon her as the strange- ness of his metamorphosis was brought into closer range; the rich, red-brown of his complexion brought out so vividly his straw-coloured mustache and steel-gray eyes. He seemed more grown-up, and, somehow, farther away. But, when he spoke, the old, boyish Teddy came back again. They had been friends from childhood.

“Why, ‘Tave!” he exclaimed, unable to reduce his perplexity to coherence. ” How — what — when — where?”

“Train,” said Octavia; “necessity; ten minutes ago; home. Your complexion’s gone, Teddy. Now, how — what — when — where?”

“I’m working down here,” said Teddy. He cast side glances about the station as one does who tries to combine politeness with duty.

“You didn’t notice on the train,” he asked, “an old lady with gray curls and a poodle, who occupied two seats with her bundles and quarrelled with the conductor, did you?”

“I think not,” answered Octavia, reflecting. “And you haven’t, by any chance, noticed a big, gray-mustached man in a blue shirt and six-shooters, with little flakes of merino wool sticking in his hair, have you?”

“Lots of ’em,” said Teddy, with symptoms of mental delirium under the strain. Do you happen to know any such individual?”

“No; the description is imaginary. Is your interest in the old lady whom you describe a personal one?”

“Never saw her in my life. She’s painted entirely from fancy. She owns the little piece of property where I earn my bread and butter – the Rancho de las Sombras. I drove up to meet her according to arrangement with her lawyer.”

Octavia leaned against the wall of the telegraph office. Was this possible? And didn’t he know?

“Are you the manager of that ranch?” she asked weakly.

“I am,” said Teddy, with pride.

“I am Mrs. Beaupree,” said Octavia faintly; “but my hair never would curl, and I was polite to the conductor.”

For a moment that strange, grown-up look came back, and removed Teddy miles away from her.

“I hope you’ll excuse me,” he said, rather awkwardly. “You see, I’ve been down here in the chaparral a year. I hadn’t heard. Give me your checks, please, and I’ll have your traps loaded into the wagon. José will follow with them. We travel ahead in the buckboard.”

Seated by Teddy in a feather-weight buckboard, behind a pair of wild, cream-coloured Spanish ponies, Octavia abandoned all thought for the exhilaration of the present. They swept out of the little town and down the level road toward the south. Soon the road dwindled and dis- appeared, and they struck across a world carpeted with an endless reach of curly mesquite grass. The wheels made no sound. The tireless ponies bounded ahead at an unbroken gallop. The temperate wind, made fragrant by thousands of acres of blue and yellow wild flowers, roared gloriously in their ears. The motion was aërial, ecstatic, with a thrilling sense of perpetuity in its effect. Octavia sat silent, possessed by a feeling of elemental, sensual bliss. Teddy seemed to be wrestling with some internal problem.

“I’m going to call you madama,” he announced as the result of his labours. “That is what the Mexicans will call you — they’re nearly all Mexicans on the ranch, you know. That seems to me about the proper thing.”

“Very well, Mr. Westlake,” said Octavia, primly.

“Oh, now,” said Teddy, in some consternation, “that’s carrying the thing too far, isn’t it?”

“Don’t worry me with your beastly etiquette. I’m just beginning to live. Don’t remind me of anything artificial. If only this air could be bottled! This much alone is worth coming for. Oh, look I there goes a deer!”

“Jack-rabbit,” said Teddy, without turning his head.

“Could I — might I drive?” suggested Octavia, pant- ing, with rose-tinted cheeks and the eye of an eager child.

“On one condition. Could I — might I smoke? “

“Forever!” cried Octavia, taking the lines with solemn joy. “How shall I know which way to drive?”

“Keep her sou’ by sou’east, and all sail set. You see that black speck on the horizon under that lowermost Gulf cloud? That’s a group of live-oaks and a land- mark. Steer halfway between that and the little hill to the left. I’ll recite you the whole code of driving rules for the Texas prairies: keep the reins from under the horses’ feet, and swear at ’em frequent.”

“I’m too happy to swear, Ted. Oh, why do people buy yachts or travel in palace-cars, when a buckboard and a pair of plugs and a spring morning like this can satisfy all desire?”

“Now, I’ll ask you,” protested Teddy, who was futilely striking match after match on the dashboard, “not to call those denizens of the air plugs. They can kick out a hundred miles between daylight and dark.” At last he succeeded in snatching a light for his cigar from the flame held in the hollow of his hands.

“Room!” said Octavia, intensely. “That’s what produces the effect. I know now what I’ve wanted — scope — range — room! “

“Smoking-room,” said Teddy, unsentimentally. “I love to smoke in a buckboard. The wind blows the smoke into you and out again. It saves exertion.”

The two fell so naturally into their old-time goodfellow- ship that it was only by degrees that a sense of the strange- ness of the new relations between them came to be felt.

“Madama,” said Teddy, wonderingly, “however did you get it into your bead to cut the crowd and come down here? Is it a fad now among the upper classes to trot off to sheep ranches instead of to Newport?”

“I was broke, Teddy,” said Octavia, sweetly, with her interest centred upon steering safely between a Spanish dagger plant and a clump of chaparral; “I haven’t a thing in the world but this ranch — not even any other home to go to.”

“Come, now,” said Teddy, anxiously but ineredu- lously, “you don’t mean it?”

“When my husband,” said Octavia, with a shy slurring of the word, “died three months ago I thought I had a reasonable amount of the world’s goods. His lawyer exploded that theory in a sixty-minute fully illustrated lecture. I took to the sheep as a last resort. Do you happen to know of any fashionable caprice among the gilded youth of Manhattan that induces them to abandon polo and club windows to become managers of sheep ranches?”

“It’s easily explained in my case,” responded Teddy, promptly. “I had to go to work. I couldn’t have earned my board in New York, so I chummed a while with old Sandford, one of the syndicate that owned the ranch before Colonel Beaupree bought it, and got a place down here. I wasn’t manager at first. I jogged around on ponies and studied the business in detail, until I got all the points in my head. I saw where it was losing and what the reme- dies were, and then Sandford put me in charge. I get a hundred dollars a month, and I earn it.”

“Poor Teddy!” said Octavia, with a smile.

“You needn’t. I like it. I save half my wages, and I’m as hard as a water plug. It beats polo.”

“Will it furnish bread and tea and jam for another out- cast from civilization?”

“The spring shearing,” said the manager, “just cleaned up a deficit in last year’s business. Wastefulness and inattention have been the rule heretofore. The autumn clip will leave a small profit over all expenses. Next year there will be jam.”

When, about four o’clock in the afternoon, the ponies rounded a gentle, brush-covered hill, and then swooped, like a double cream-coloured cyclone, upon the Rancho de las Sombras, Octavia gave a little cry of delight. A lordly grove of magnificent live-oaks cast an area of grateful, cool shade, whence the ranch had drawn its name, “de las Sombras” — of the shadows. The house, of red brick, one story, ran low and long beneath the trees. Through its middle, dividing its six rooms in half, extended a broad, arched passageway, picturesque with flowering cactus and hanging red earthern jars. A “gallery,” low and broad, encircled the building. Vines climbed about it, and the adjacent ground was, for a space, covered with transplanted grass and shrubs. A little lake, long and narrow, glimmered in the sun at the rear. Further away stood the shacks of the Mexican workers, the corrals, wool sheds and shearing pens. To the right lay the low hills, splattered with dark patches of chaparral; to the left the unbounded green prairie blending against the blue heavens.

“It’s a home, Teddy,” said Octavia, breathlessly; that’s what it is — it’s a home.”

“Not so bad for a sheep ranch,” admitted Teddy, with excusable pride. “I’ve been tinkering on it at odd times.”

A Mexican youth sprang from somewhere in the grass, and took charge of the creams. The mistress and the manager entered the house.

“Here’s Mrs. MacIntyre,” said Teddy, as a placid, neat, elderly lady came out upon the gallery to meet them. “Mrs. Mac, here’s the boss. Very likely she will be wanting a hunk of ham and a dish of beans after her drive.”

Mrs. MacIntyre, the housekeeper, as much a fixture on the place as the lake or the live-oaks, received the imputation of the ranch’s resources of refreshment with mild indignation, and was about to give it utterance when Octavia spoke.

“Oh, Mrs. MacIntyre, don’t apologize for Teddy. Yes, I call him Teddy. So does every one whom he hasn’t duped into taking him seriously. You see, we used to cut paper dolls and play jackstraws together ages ago. No one minds what he says.”

“No,” said Teddy, “no one minds what he says, just so he doesn’t do it again.”

Octavia cast one of those subtle, sidelong glances toward him from beneath her lowered eyelids — a glance that Teddy used to describe as an upper-cut. But there was nothing in his ingenuous, weather-tanned face to warrant a suspicion that he was making an allusion — nothing. Beyond a doubt, thought Octavia, he had forgotten.

“Mr. Westlake likes his fun,” said Mrs. Maclntyre, as she conducted Octavia to her rooms. “But,” she added, loyally, “people around here usually pay attention to what he says when he talks in earnest. I don’t know what would have become of this place without him.”

Two rooms at the east end of the house had been arranged for the occupancy of the ranch’s mistress. When she entered them a slight dismay seized her at their bare appearance and the scantiness of their furniture; but she quickly reflected that the climate was a semi-tropical one, and was moved to appreciation of the well-conceived efforts to conform to it. The sashes had already been removed from the big windows, and white curtains waved in the Gulf breeze that streamed through the wide jalousies. The bare floor was amply strewn with cool rugs; the chairs were inviting, deep, dreamy willows; the walls were papered with a light, cheerful olive. One whole side of her sitting room was covered with books on smooth, unpainted pine shelves. She flew to these at once. Before her was a well-selected library. She caught glimpses of titles of volumes of fiction and travel not yet seasoned from the dampness of the press.

Presently, recollecting that she was now in a wilderness given over to mutton, centipedes and privations, the incongruity of these luxuries struck her, and, with intuitive feminine suspicion, she began turning to the fly-leaves of volume after volume. Upon each one was inscribed in fluent characters the name of Theodore Westlake, Jr.

Octavia, fatigued by her long journey, retired early that night. Lying upon her white, cool bed, she rested deliciously, but sleep coquetted long with her. She listened to faint noises whose strangeness kept her faculties on the alert — the fractious yelping of the coyotes, the ceaseless, low symphony of the wind, the distant booming of the frogs about the lake, the lamentation of a concertina in the Mexicans’ quarters. There were many conflicting feelings in her heart — thankfulness and rebellion, peace and disquietude, loneliness and a sense of protecting care, happiness and an old, haunting pain.

She did what any other woman would have done — sought relief in a wholesome tide of unreasonable tears, and her last words, murmured to herself before slumber, capitulating, came softly to woo her, were “He has forgotten.”